Conan O'Brien's toy trains considered too disturbing for Southland audiences
A reader wrote in:
"So I'm watching Conan O'Brien (last night), and just as he launches into what sounds like a funny routine about smashing together 'celebrity douchebags' in a collider, NBC 4 cuts into the broadcast with Colleen Williams. She states, 'We'll be going back to Conan in just a couple of minutes. Right now, in New York, though, Conan is doing a comedy routine about trains crashing. And we feel with our recent train collision here in Southern California, it is just not appropriate for us to show it. In the meantime, though, here are some of the stories making news this morning.' ...
"I'm sure some viewers were annoyed at missing the routine, while others might have appreciated the sensitivity. ...
"(By the way, I DVRed the episode, so the quotes from Colleen ... are accurate.)"
Well, we checked out the offending clip at NBC.com's page for Conan's videos, and after some false starts (DSL collapse, NBC misidentifying the episode's segments - the bit in question is in the episode's first segment, not the second, as labeled), were shocked beyond all rational thought.
Well, not really. KNBC was erring on the side of caution, but, given how big a story this was locally and how disturbing the original images were, I suppose I can sort of understand why they did it. Since those with sterner constitutions can find it online, no First Amendment harm, no First Amendment foul. I guess.
(Conan had something similar happen a few years back when he hosted the Emmys - he shot a pre-taped bit featuring the plane crash from "Lost," and a plane crashed somewhere that day, and some people complained about the insensitivity, and other people complained about the people who complained, saying we're a nation of whiners or something.)
"We just thought it would be fun to smash things together at high speeds," Conan explains of his celebrity douchebag super collider. They had previously sent Spencer Pratt and Dog the Bounty Hunter careening headlong into one another, he explained, but unfortunately Pratt survived the collision, so they brought him back to smash into magician Criss Angel.
Promising "complete douchebag evisceration," Conan introduced his super collider - toy trains on a track with photos of Pratt and Angel affixed to the front of the trains. Conan was careful to insist that what we saw was, in fact, not a train set: "Do not be fooled. That is a super collider built by MIT."
"Jordan, our somewhat anal retentive producer," as Conan introduced him, emerged and declared, "Conan, I'm sorry, I can't let you do that. ... It could tear a hole in the douchebag continuum," a riff on the recent unfounded controversy surrounding the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and France.
Conan explained, "Tonight's experiment is being closely watched by douchebags all over the world," introducing images of Paris Hilton, Gene Simmons, Ryan Seacrest, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Geraldo Rivera eyeing the experiment. The trains circled the track, hit one another and burst into flames. The others then exploded, as well as Conan's producer.
In all, a pretty innocuous (and only slightly amusing) bit - the idea was better than the execution. Unless you lost a loved one in the tragedy, your mind probably wouldn't have immediately wandered back to the incident, but then, if you lost a loved one in the tragedy, you're probably not watching Conan O'Brien at this point, either.
Perhaps the train angle was just subterfuge - maybe KNBC is staffed with a lot of douchebags who took umbrage with being treated with such disrespect.
What do you think? Was KNBC displaying appropriate sensitivity in hiding this fairly juvenile joke from local viewers? Or were they being overprotective parents who force their kids to wear raincoats because there are a couple of clouds in the sky?
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David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place.
I live in Los Angeles, and as heartless as it sounds... I wish I could've seen the segment. If people are that easily offended; they can always change the channel.
We live on Catalina Island and were watching at the time. Nothing could have brought MORE attention to this joke than what KNBC did by making a fuss over a segment which apparently had nothing to do with the actual train wreck. This was what I thought happened, and removing that segment from the air made me wonder. Conan doesn't strike as a person who'd make callus jokes at the expense of personal tragedy, and sure enough he didn't.
Personally I don't believe in censure on any level, so was equally offended this harmless joke was treated as it was. Anyone can take offense at nearly anything if they so choose. Example: Should video and conversation on death by fire be banned being as I've tragically lost a loved one this way... NO. The world goes on regardless of our sorrow, and so should KNBC. Maybe their intent was good, but the result was bad. We all go through tribulations and just because it's happening to us doesn't mean the entire world need suffer along. In fact we could use all the humor we can get about now. No reason to trash Conan's show on top of things, and some need to think before they overreact.