It's a wild, wily Wuhl
July 6, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
Listen, it's the slack summertime. I'm trying to find good TV for you to watch this weekend, but it's hard. I could stomach only 10 minutes of MTV's "My Super Sweet 16: The Movie" (1 p.m. Sunday), because I'm not charmed by idiotic 16-year-old girls whose mantra is "OMG!"
And Comedy Central's * debut of "American Body Shop" (9:30 p.m. Sunday) sets up elaborate comedy bits in a fictional auto shop. But I've laughed more at my own ex-mechanic, who rode a bicycle to his shop because he racked up too many DUIs.
So the TV winner this weekend is HBO's "Assume the Position 201." Comedian Robert Wuhl -- who used to play the skeezy sports agent on HBO's "Arli$$" -- presents a fairly funny lecture about history, to a small class of college-age kids.
He spends most of this second-season premiere pondering the question: Is George W. Bush the worst president in history?
Well, that's not exactly his point. His thesis is this isn't the first time we'll survive a doofus executive swept into the white male club.
"Lousy leaders are as American as apple pie," Wuhl, 55, says.
Yes, indeedy. Vice President Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton to death after he opposed Burr's presidential aspirations.
And President Franklin Pierce was a pro-slavery alcoholic who hastened the Civil War and drove over a woman with a horse-drawn carriage. There is a fantastic payoff to the Pierce story I didn't see coming. Along the way, Wuhl spins stories with the sort of spirited and lighthearted comparisons to pop culture that made my history professors engaging.
So, is Bush numero uno in regards to craptacularness? Wuhl doesn't vote on that. But he delivers a correlating message.
"We'll get through it," he says. "I'm an optimist. ... I always look at the bong as half-full."
The second half of "Assume the Position" focuses on the history of non-political pop culture. One quiz: Which of the following "people" were "Real or Not Real"? Chef Boyardee. Little Debbie. Jose Cuervo. And Aunt Jemima.
To add spice (this is HBO after all), four women in tight clothes hold briefcases during that quiz. This comes across not as a dumbing down of history but as an integration of pop culture while lampooning it.
Wuhl keeps saying that what we know of history isn't necessarily true, because the details depend on the storytellers.
And Wuhl himself is such a flawed storyteller. In a New York Times interview last year, he misquoted Tolstoy's bottom line about history.
"Tolstoy said, 'History is a wonderful thing, if only it were true,' " Wuhl told the Times.
What Tolstoy really said was, "History would be a wonderful thing -- if it were only true."
But what do I know? I was a just history minor at Louisiana State University, where bumper stickers proclaimed LSU "the Harvard of the South," because everyone knows LSU is the Harvard of the South.
And speaking with all my South Harvard wisdom, I say the worst president of all time can't be Bush, because the bottom spot is firmly held by Ronald Wilson Reagan. Each of his names contains six letters: 666. Class dismissed.
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
Listen, it's the slack summertime. I'm trying to find good TV for you to watch this weekend, but it's hard. I could stomach only 10 minutes of MTV's "My Super Sweet 16: The Movie" (1 p.m. Sunday), because I'm not charmed by idiotic 16-year-old girls whose mantra is "OMG!"
And Comedy Central's * debut of "American Body Shop" (9:30 p.m. Sunday) sets up elaborate comedy bits in a fictional auto shop. But I've laughed more at my own ex-mechanic, who rode a bicycle to his shop because he racked up too many DUIs.
So the TV winner this weekend is HBO's "Assume the Position 201." Comedian Robert Wuhl -- who used to play the skeezy sports agent on HBO's "Arli$$" -- presents a fairly funny lecture about history, to a small class of college-age kids.
He spends most of this second-season premiere pondering the question: Is George W. Bush the worst president in history?
Well, that's not exactly his point. His thesis is this isn't the first time we'll survive a doofus executive swept into the white male club.
"Lousy leaders are as American as apple pie," Wuhl, 55, says.
Yes, indeedy. Vice President Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton to death after he opposed Burr's presidential aspirations.
And President Franklin Pierce was a pro-slavery alcoholic who hastened the Civil War and drove over a woman with a horse-drawn carriage. There is a fantastic payoff to the Pierce story I didn't see coming. Along the way, Wuhl spins stories with the sort of spirited and lighthearted comparisons to pop culture that made my history professors engaging.
So, is Bush numero uno in regards to craptacularness? Wuhl doesn't vote on that. But he delivers a correlating message.
"We'll get through it," he says. "I'm an optimist. ... I always look at the bong as half-full."
The second half of "Assume the Position" focuses on the history of non-political pop culture. One quiz: Which of the following "people" were "Real or Not Real"? Chef Boyardee. Little Debbie. Jose Cuervo. And Aunt Jemima.
To add spice (this is HBO after all), four women in tight clothes hold briefcases during that quiz. This comes across not as a dumbing down of history but as an integration of pop culture while lampooning it.
Wuhl keeps saying that what we know of history isn't necessarily true, because the details depend on the storytellers.
And Wuhl himself is such a flawed storyteller. In a New York Times interview last year, he misquoted Tolstoy's bottom line about history.
"Tolstoy said, 'History is a wonderful thing, if only it were true,' " Wuhl told the Times.
What Tolstoy really said was, "History would be a wonderful thing -- if it were only true."
But what do I know? I was a just history minor at Louisiana State University, where bumper stickers proclaimed LSU "the Harvard of the South," because everyone knows LSU is the Harvard of the South.
And speaking with all my South Harvard wisdom, I say the worst president of all time can't be Bush, because the bottom spot is firmly held by Ronald Wilson Reagan. Each of his names contains six letters: 666. Class dismissed.
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