Johnny Carson — A Model for the Democratic Party?
What made Johnny Carson, the successful host of NBC’s “Tonight Show” from 1962 to 1992, the “King of Late Night Comedy” and a beloved American institution?
Johnny Carson in the 1960s. Attribution: Wikiquote.
At his core, Carson epitomized certain basic values that endeared him to tens of millions of Americans. If you watched his show, you knew he was a decent man who treated most guests with deference and respect. He also projected an indispensable American trait: optimism and faith in a better future.
Regardless of the awful news of the day, he dealt with it in such a way that you knew everything would be alright the next day. If you saw him interact with icons of the past — among them, Milton Berle, Bette Davis, Jack Benny, Muhammad Ali, Jack Paar, Ann-Margret, Cher, Groucho Marx, Diana Ross, Gregory Peck, Joan Rivers, Jimmy Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, George Carlin, Sammy Davis, George Burns, Barbra Streisand, Richard Pryor, Carol Burnett, and so many others — you knew he was awed by their presence, greatly respected their contributions and held them in high esteem.
When mocking politicians, he was relentless no matter which political party or ideology they represented. And he was simply marvelous when dealing with animals and children. He adored everyday Americans and seemed genuinely interested in folks like him from small towns, even tolerating their idiosyncrasies and peculiar regionalisms.
His nightly monologues measured the nation's pulse and projected calmness and reassurance that made everyone feel at ease. He was rarely vulgar and never had to resort to profanity to elicit laughter and applause. His skits and unforgettable characters like Carnac the Magnificent, Art Fern, and Floyd R. Turbo provided many laughs. His self-deprecating humor and mischievousness allowed him to say things others couldn’t, but he got away with it. He could hold his own with scientists and accomplished authors and displayed intelligence in conversation that might have surprised many people. That Carson had a rather messy personal life doesn’t detract from his effectiveness as an excellent communicator and impact on the country’s psyche.
A veteran of World War II, Carson often talked about his war experiences with guests like Jimmy Stewart or his sidekick, Ed McMahon, who had both served in that war. Never did one get the impression that he was showing off, only that his country called him to duty when he was a young man, and off he went to join the United States Navy. One did not get a sense of celebratory triumphalism listening to them; there was a job to do, and they did it.
In some respects, Carson and others of his generation exemplified what author George Orwell said was the essential difference between nationalism and patriotism in one of his famous essays — “Notes on Nationalism.”
Patriotism was fine for normal people; nationalism, essentially, was for losers who were perpetual complainers.
George Orwell was arguably the best political writer of the twentieth century. Until 1948, when he published “1984,” he was bedeviled by financial problems throughout his life. He passed away in 1950 at the age of forty-six. Attribution: University College, London Archives.
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.
Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
Attribution for the graphic at the top of this diary: David Fitzsimmons, formerly of the Arizona Star.
Midwestern Authenticity
In an interesting article in the New York Review of Books (subscription required), author Ian Frazier, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, compares two sons of the Midwest — Johnny Carson and Tim Walz.
Like Johnny Carson’s affability and likeability, Frazier sees some of the same qualities in Governor Tim Walz (D-MN), who was chosen last week as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate on the 2024 Democratic ticket. He also exudes a certain honesty and decency that perhaps represents the Midwestern “niceness” many people talk about.
Those of us who live on the coasts don’t pretend to fully understand it, but it is undeniable that there is a certain level of authenticity in how Governor Walz conducts himself.
That much we can discern.
Governor and Mrs. Walz break the Democrats’ pattern of seeming to prefer the coasts
Johnny Carson Used the Word “Weird” to Great Effect
Governor Tim Walz, as everybody knows by now, comes from Minnesota by way of Nebraska. He grew up near the eastern Nebraska town of West Point, which is about forty miles from the small city of Norfolk, the childhood home of Johnny Carson, the quintessential late-night talk show host. Carson’s “The Tonight Show” (later “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson”), which appeared on NBC in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, impressed his Midwestern persona into the nation’s consciousness.
Governor Walz, in his first speech as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential nominee, displayed a sense of comic timing and a flat Nebraska accent remarkably like Carson’s. Those who remember Johnny can replay in their minds his double take, his slow shake of the head at some crazy item in the news, and his pronunciation of the single word, “weird,” which he knew enough not to elaborate on as the laughter built. Walz’s now famous one-word description of Trump & Co. is solidly Nebraskan and from the school of Carson.
A New Way Forward
Johnny Carson was born in Corning, Iowa, but grew up in Nebraska. The Midwest has always supplied its share of prominent Americans who left their indelible mark on our culture and society. This long list includes Marlon Brando, Michelle Obama, Dick Cavett, Adlai Stevenson, Michael Jackson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rocky Bleier, Eugene Debs, Simone Biles, Garrison Keillor, Amelia Earhart, Clarence Darrow, LeBron James, Harry Truman, Betty White, Bob Newhart, Sinclair Lewis, and countless others.
I live in Washington, DC — a city full of people who think that they are not only God’s gift to this country but, indeed, to the entire world. Frazier urges the Democratic Party to stop obsessing about “coastal elites” and focus on small, rural towns in the Midwest and around the country. There is no reason to concede any part of the country or, for that matter, any demographic group to the Republicans.
The Republican Party cares very little about people in small towns. Its entire focus is on grievance politics against big-city elites, and its political strategy is solely designed to create division rather than positively affect people’s lives.
Frazier suggests that there is a different way. And with Tim Walz, Democrats are well-positioned to implement a new strategy emphasizing unity, not division. After all, regardless of one’s ideological beliefs, almost everyone loved Johnny Carson.
An Authentic Guy With a Common Touch
Governor and Mrs. Walz lift my spirits because they break the Democrats’ pattern of seeming to prefer the coasts. Trump, for all his etc., does seem to be aware of the overlooked places. Every other time he holds a rally, it’s in a town or small city I’ve never heard of. (Did anyone reading this have any idea where Butler, Pennsylvania, was three weeks ago?) Trump (or his people) may know some of the places, but they fear and falsify the history. They’re good on the geography of the US, but on dark areas like slavery or the treatment of Native Americans, they don’t want to know and don’t want children to know.
The Walzes seem to know and care about the places as well as the history. And candidate Walz should use his Carson-like gifts whenever possible. Before red and blue was a thing, the whole country loved Johnny.
Also see this article — Tim Walz: Midwestern Nice Is Tonic For Rancid Politics.
Ian Frazier is the author of thirteen books, including Great Plains, Family, On the Rez, and Travels in Siberia. Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough is out this month. (August 2024)
A son of Ohio and the author of Great Plains (1989), a best-selling account of his travels across the prairie regions of North America—writes about Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, a Nebraska native and the current governor of Minnesota. “Not enough Democrats know enough about the part of the US that’s not the coasts,” notes Frazier, but Walz, who was born forty minutes away from Johnny Carson’s hometown in Norfolk, Nebraska, “seem[s] to know and care about the places as well as the history” of the Upper Midwest. Link
The Redefinition of Masculinity in Our Politics
Author Rebecca Traister, who often writes on feminist issues, has another insightful article in New York magazine. In it, she talks about the emergence of a new kind of man on the political scene: one confident in his skin and looking at women as full partners while playing a subservient role.
If the Harris-Walz ticket wins in November, a new public title will enter our vocabulary: Doug Emhoff will formally become the First Gentleman of the United States.
Is it too soon to declare that a new — and better — era is upon us?
On the one hand is the Republican Party’s view of manhood: its furious resentments toward women and their power, its mean obsession with forcing women to be baby-makers. On the other hand is the emergence of a Democratic man newly confident in his equal-to-subsidiary status: happily deferential, unapologetically supportive of women’s rights, committed to partnership…
This is not to suggest that these Democratic guys represent some perfect specimen of evolved masculinity. But taken as a whole, as male Democrats fall over one another in an effort to elect a woman to the presidency, they are presenting a different definition of masculine strength tied to women’s liberation and full civic participation and all but declaring it a new norm.
Gender equality in politics is the new norm.
Traister examines the display of masculinity on steroids at last month’s Republic National Convention in Milwaukee, WI, and concludes that “It’s about the domination of women and the reinscription of patriarchal power.”
Democratic men, on the other hand, are learning a new language and discussing issues in ways alien to them only a few decades ago. This discussion concerns a key, central issue: how do you define masculinity in public life?
The way it should be.
It is invigorating to see Walz’s traditional form of public masculinity — “big dad energy,” as Axios put it — in service of a party that seems finally to be taking women’s rights and liberation as a central moral concern. Just a few decades ago, that stance would have gotten Democrats derisively labeled “the mommy party”…
But this is where Walz’s great rhetorical contribution to the campaign comes in: his use of the word weird to describe the backward, bizarre positions of the opposition. It’s not just that weird is an effective descriptor that drives Republicans up the wall. It’s that it also reflects its inverse: normal…
And when Democratic men speak of women as their partners, friends, colleagues, and bosses, when they make it clear that people need Pap smears and tampons and abortion care, when they show themselves willing to work for a woman to become president, they sound, well, normal.
A Few Concluding Thoughts
It’s a bright one for the Democratic Party.
Since President Joe Biden decided to step aside last month from the presidential race and the entire Democratic Party coalesced around Vice President Kamala Harris at lightning speed as the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee, it has set into motion changes that would have been considered unthinkable only a few years ago.
The massive surge in voter registration, the number of new people willing to volunteer and donate, and the addition of large amounts of money to Democratic coffers have unleashed forces that have dialed up enthusiasm to unprecedented levels. There is no doubt which side has the momentum heading into the Democratic Convention next week in Chicago, IL. Regardless of the election’s outcome — and at this point, there are many encouraging signs in public opinion polls for the Harris-Walz Campaign, though by no means is the election in the bag — it will take political scientists, sociologists, and historians years to unpack, dissect, and decipher what happened in the final four months of this remarkable election cycle.
The selection of Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) as the Vice Presidential pick allows the Democratic Party to redefine its electoral goals and reach into areas previously considered a lost cause. Many states now considered solidly Democratic weren’t necessarily so in the 1980s and 1990s. It took hard work to flip them over. Change is possible; diligently following a 50-state strategy needs commitment, resources, and a will to succeed.
If Governor Walz can capture some of the Midwestern magic that Carson had, then, as the article by Ian Frazier suggests, the Democratic Party will be in good shape for years to come.
Rebecca Traister’s article clarifies one thing: there is no going back. And that should be cause for celebration in progressive circles.
For the diary poll, and if necessary, refer to these lists of late-night television hosts — here, here, here, and here.
