CoCo loses his innocence
Conan O'Brien morphs into a baby diva: 60 Minutes and Weinberg split ringspoiled
When did Paris Hilton inhabit Conan O'Brien's body?
That's all I could think as O'Brien gave his whiny, completely self-serving interview on 60 Minutes tonight. This wasn't Conan — at least not the Conan that everyone loved. O'Brien built his brand by being the quirky, rebel who'd try just about any offbeat thing on TV, he largely succeeded against all odds (when his show first came on air, no one thought he'd last a season, let alone still be around 17 years later) because he refused to take himself seriously.
Now, that's all changed — and there's a different Conan in the public eye: A complaining baby man who's as overcompensated and as arrogant as any Goldman Sachs executive. Does Conan ever listen to himself?
He's let this Tonight Show feud with Jay Leno completely disengage him from reality. Watching Conan do that dramatic pause on 60 Minutes when Steve Kroft asked him if Leno acted honorably, you couldn't help but yearn for the Masturbating Bear to suddenly pop up and knock Conan off his chair.
Could you get any more fake? Did O'Brien really think that anyone watching would feel like he was struggling with that question?
Please. He went on 60 Minutes with an agenda — to knock Leno. O'Brien wasn't going to let the interview end without getting in his shots. Kim Kardashian is less fake.
Conan received $40 million from NBC to go hang out at his house and find a new (highly-paid) TV landing spot. When Kroft talks about the the network putting a gag order on Conan that ended on May 1 like it was something out of North Korea's regime, and Conan goes along, dropping words like "toxic", that $40 million lump payment seems to cease to exist. Except in Conan's bank account. There it's still very real.
Does anybody want to hear O'Brien telling us that he "sleeps well at night", implying that Leno shouldn't? Or that he wouldn't have done what Leno did? A whine is a whine, even if you try your best to be funny while doing it.
Sorry, but the line about "murdering cats" didn't sugarcoat the vindictive, petty agenda. Ditto for the decision not to shave that seemed designed to show us that Conan is keeping it "real."
It turns out that Conan O'Brien is just as calculating as Jay Leno or David Letterman or any other TV tycoon. His recent decision to boot his longtime band leader Max Weinberg — because Weinberg reportedly flirted with the idea of trying to join Leno on The Tonight Show sometime in the future — proves as much.
Conan is just as much of a control freak as any TV star. He had his reps working overtime Sunday to try and deny the Weinberg rift, desperately trying to make sure it didn't change the tenor of the reactions to his 60 Minutes spot. You're either with Conan or you're against him. The redhead is typical TV star paranoid.
O'Brien might be surprised by how many of his most devoted fans end up in the against camp after tonight. Conan debuted while I was in college, the perfect time to embrace his show. He was easy to love back then.
Now ... who wants to root for this prima donna?
