Weekend Update with Dennis Miller
……Dennis Miller
……the “Weekend Update” Dancers
……A. Whitney Brown
[Open on a cheap, plastic statue of liberty with a lightbulb as a torch. Music playing: Theme from the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcocks “Psycho”]
Announcer: Now, “Weekend Update,” with anchorperson Dennis Miller.
[applause]Dennis Miller:Thank you, thank you. Now Nancy, I know you’re still up watching your son, but I want his attention too, so Ronnie, WAKE UP, babe!
Well, President Reagan gave his State of the Union address this week, and if I might say so, Mr. President, I found it a moving, informative, and inspiring speech that made me feel fortunate to be a United States citizen during your term. [pause] Boy, am I a suck-up, huh?
“Baby Doc” Duvalier fled from Haiti to Paris yesterday declaring himself ex-President for life. The– [some applause] Yeah, the Doc-man enters that pantheon of ex-Presidents-for-life, joining such distinguished ex-Presidents as Uganda’s President-for-life Idi Amin living in Tripoli, Iran’s President-for-life Bani Sadr, now living in Paris, and CBS-ABC-NBC President-for-life Fred Silverman. [cheers and applause] I think Fred’s now living somewhere in syndication.
Convicted mass murderer Charles Manson was denied parole again this week. Manson arrived at the hearing with a swastika etched in his forehead. And you know, what better way than that to signal the board that you’ve pulled your personal thing together and are ready to hit the streets again, huh? Now Chuck did say if he was released, he might visit Libya. Yeah, in Libya, this cat could head up the Conservative Party!
Federal deficit figures are in for the last decade, and the deficit for those ten years topped the trillion-dollar-mark. A trillion! And it goes up all the time. You know what that means, somewhere out there, there’s somebody who still insists on lending us money. I don’t know about you, somebody runs up a tab like that on me, I get a call from him hitting me up for more, I think I’m gonna go, “Hey, my man! You got that trillion you owe me! And that’s 18 zeroes, babe, you know. I gotta see something, a deuce, anything,” you know. That first 50 billion, I’ll go to the wall with him, pal, but you know, I’m feeling a little used here!
This just in from the Phillipines, Aquino is leading Marcos by 32 thousand. Of course that’s just the body count, the ballots are still being tallied. [laughter, which quickly turns into groaning and booing]
Dennis Miller: You guys got a stake in Marcos, or what? Settle down, don’t make me give you the business end of this arm. [applause] Well, thank you for reacting cordially to discipline. Um–
Well, the miniseries “Sins” defeated the miniseries “Peter the Great,” in the Nielsen ratings this week, and I guess you could interpret the numbers in a lot of ways, but to me it’s just another case of Joan Collins ending up on top of Peter. [applause] I guess that probably blows my cameo on “Dynasty,” huh?
Dennis Miller: A last-minute effort to control world oil prices ended in discord at the OPEC conference in Vienna this week. Ignoring the economic plight of their poorer petrolium-exporting comrades, the Saudis raised their output to capitalize on today’s relatively high prices. Now, a new feature designed to make the most turgid news seem accessible, this week’s topic, “Falling Oil Prices,” this week’s hit tune, Billy Ocean’s “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going,” and here they are, the “Weekend Update” dancers!
[applause. Music. Zoom out to a wide shot as several women run on stage, some on top of the “Weekend Update” desk. Two dancers push a third dancer off of the desk while shaking hands with a fourth dancer who wears a hat with smokestacks on top. The dancers run off to more applause]Thank you girls. In the upcoming weeks we’ll be doing our best to bridge the gap between interpretive dance and political reportage. That is my pledge to you, and more importantly, the girls. Who says TV News has gone to hell? [little audience response; Miller sets aside the piece of paper that had the lame joke on it] OK, hold on to that one. I’m sure the coroner will want to examine it right after the show.
According to a startling new theory developed by astronomers at Mount Helemore Observatory, Halley’s Comet appears once every 76 years, then spends the rest of the time behind the dark side of the moon–giggling.
Dennis Miller: Well, here to pool all of this together for you in a way that makes some kind of sense is out senior correspondant. Ladies and gentlemen, A. Whitney Brown.
[pan to Whitney; applause]A. Whitney Brown: Thank you, thank you. Fifteen years ago tonight, I was a shoeless teenage derelict, hitchhiking fron Dead concert to Dead concert. But I was busy; I was formulating my all-encompassing view of human affairs, something I like to call The Big Picture. You know, the Big Picture is something noticeably lacking in the news coverage these days. Oh sure, they give you fragmented morsels of the news: wars, coups, epidemics, sabotage, political shenanigans, I could go on and on, but there’s really no use in beating a dead horse. I mean, except for the pure joy of it.
But the point is- the point is that all this actual information does nothing but confuse the issue. How could you place your worldview in the hands of a news medium that would actually change the name of a planet just because it sounds embarassing to say? There’s no such place as Ur-anus, folks! Give the public a little credit! We’re mature adults. Nobody’s going to break out giggling just because Dan Rather announces that dark-colored rings have been discovered around Ur-anus! [applause]
But of course, that’s no more absurd than saying we ought to send money to these rebels in Angola in the name of freedom. Let’s put this into the Big Picture. It’s an African revolution. What really are the chances of anything remotely resembling a democracy emerging from that boiling cauldron of tribal warfare? Might as well put the money on the Knicks.
Then we have these Nicaraguan contras passing the hat for another hundred million dollars. These guys are asking for four days and they don’t even have a country! Oh sure, they hope to get one someday. Don’t we all! But where’s the collateral? How do we know they won’t just blow the whole wad on Julio Iglesias albums? [applause]
Which brings us to the Phillipines. We live now in a global village, my friends. And you know, everything’s as interrelated as an Appalachian coal town. This is- this is not just some remote coconut republic in the South Seas, this the gateway to the Solomon Islands we’re talking about, the world’s richest source of guano! Let me just ask, how many of you actually took the time to vote in the Phillipine elections? Do you realize without our naval base in Subic Bay, the entire southern flank of the International Date Line would just be dangling in front of the Soviets like a sardine at Sea World? What if the Russians- what if the Russians snapped up the International Date Line and moved it to Moscow? I’ll tell you what, they could launch an attack the day before yesterday, that’s what!
Now you’re starting to get the Big Picture. Insights like these don’t come from traipsing the overused path of reason and logic, my friends. No, they must be drawn instinctively, from that ever-flowing fountain of ignorance within us all. And that’s the Big Picture for tonight.
[applause; Dennis and Whitney shake hands]Dennis Miller: Senior correspondent A. Whitney Brown, ladies and gentlemen.
You know, I just had a thought. How come Kadaffi’s only a colonel?
In closing, I’d like to say a belated Happy Birthday to the president, who turns sevent- seventy-five? Seventy-five, is that right? Seventy-five, and he has access to the button? You know, my grandfather’s seventy-five, we won’t let him use the remote control for the TV set! [applause] This guy woulda been kicked out of Menudo sixty years ago!
Well that’s the news, ladies and gentlemen, I am out of here! Good night!
[applause; fade]Thanks to Michael C. Arroyo for this transcript!
