I'm going to try on a hat that I haven't worn in 21 years — let's see how much the ol' noggin' has swollen through the years.
Yeah – just what I thought. A little snug.
From 1984 to early 1990 I was this newspaper's television critic. To give you a little perspective, this was a period of time that was dominated by NBC and its "must-see TV" line-up of quality programming that included the likes of "The Cosby Show," "Cheers," "Night Court," "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere." This was also the era of the prime-time soap opera: "Dallas," "Dynasty," "Falcon Crest," "Knotts Landing" and the David Lynch miniseries "Twin Peaks" — which, truth be told, is the show that drove me, bleary-eyed and babbling, to a different career track.
But I'm back now — there are varying opinions on whether this represents a mid-life crisis on my part, or simply the first step in a systematic degeneration to my childhood — only this time, I'm not a critic. I'm the reporter who has been assigned to cover The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a religious organization that is — let's face it — a Pretty Big Deal here in Salt Lake City, Utah, and a Much Bigger Than You Would Expect Deal around the rest of the United States, what with this being "The Mormon Moment" and all.
Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, let me just point out that the religious organization that I've been assigned to cover is the same religious organization that owns this newspaper and, not coincidentally, the religious organization to which I belong.
So there you have it. It's out of the bag. I am a Mormon, working for a Mormon-owned newspaper, covering . . . what else? . . . the Mormons.
This could make "Twin Peaks" look like "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood."
I share all of this with you because I want to provide some context for my comments about a couple of news stories that crossed the wires this week.
In my six years as a television critic, the single most memorable press conference I ever attended was an event at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles featuring Robin Williams.
To be honest, I don't remember why we were interviewing him — this was well past his "Mork and Mindy" years, so it wasn't about that. I just remember that the room was packed to see him, and not because he was doing anything of special consequence on TV, but because he was Robin Williams, and Robin Williams was crazy.
And I mean that in the nicest, silliest, zaniest possible way.
On this night, Williams did not disappoint. I don't think he had any prepared material for us. He just ... went off. It started with some comments directed at Kay Gardella, at that time the Grande Dame of the Television Critics' Association press tours because of her affiliation with a huge newspaper, the New York Daily News. Most of the critics on the tour ... well, at least SOME of the critics ... OK, I was afraid of Kay. She was intimidating in her manner and her bearing, and it bothered us ... er, me, that all of the TV producers and network executives seemed to kiss up to her.
But not Williams. He started making jokes about her, right there in front of her. And she was eating it up, laughing uproariously with each new punch line. This seemed to embolden Williams, who fed off the laughter he was creating. He continued his onslaught of Kay, TV critics in general and the whole entertainment industry, with all of the jokes seeming to explode out of his fertile mind, right at the moment.
At one point in the session, the room fell absolutely silent — not because we weren't laughing, but because we were all laughing so hard that we couldn't make a sound. We couldn't even breathe. We had laughed our breath out, and we were all going to die — laughing — if he didn't stop.
Thankfully he did. But I was sore from the laughter for two days after that.
I wish I could share with you some of his funny lines from that session. Then again, it probably wouldn't come across the same way to you. His humor was spontaneous. It was born in the moment, and was intended for a very specific audience. He is a funny man, and he was saying things that he knew would be funny to us — not necessarily to anyone else.
It is in this context that I offer an Internet report that says: "Robin Williams goes after Mormons, Octomom." According to the online story, Williams recently appeared at a benefit in New York for the Trevor Foundation, a suicide prevention organization for gay youth. According to the publication, "he used the opportunity to salute the Big Apple for making it legal for same sex couples to marry." He made a comment about hoping to see something similar pass in his home state of California, and he referenced the passage of Proposition 8, and the involvement of the LDS Church and its members in that campaign.
You can feel the punch line coming, can't you?
Said Williams: "Mormons giving marital advice is like Octomom working for Planned Parenthood."
Now, I'm not 100 percent sure what that line actually means. But I'm absolutely confident that his audience loved it. And that's sort of my point. Robin Williams is a comedian. He looks at his audience and he makes jokes that will make them laugh. That's what he does. I don't know if Williams hates Mormons, and I don't know that he doesn't. And you can certainly argue that any joke made at the expense of a specific religion in any context is inappropriate. I don't know about that. I just know that he makes jokes, and we probably ought not to read too much more into it than that.
The other story I wanted to point out to you has to do with an LDS-oriented take-off on a popular reality television program. Reality television came along AFTER I left the TV beat, for which I am profoundly grateful. Still, this story from an Arizona television station about an all-LDS version of "The Bachelorette" that is being produced online is interesting and surprisingly sweet. It explains LDS standards that evidently would make it difficult for an active, practicing Latter-day Saint to appear on the real network version.
But then, I don't know. I've never watched the real show. I didn't have to — because I wasn't wearing that hat.
Email: jwalker@desnews.com