January 24, 2010
Conan (Not the Detective or the Barbarian) Support Argument
Shockingly, I ended up watching the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. How did this happen? Well, you know, friends pull me places and I watch things. I wouldn’t have watched it by myself, but I was pretty glad I got to. I dunno, Conan is a damn funny guy, and he was definitely getting jerked around by higher-ups in a company that obviously does not really know what it is doing. He does not come off completely like roses, but I think he definitely won this fight, completely, in the eyes of everyone. My parents are glad to have Leno back, but I think they have to admit that Conan was getting screwed over, to some extent. He won.
Still, it’s interesting that, like anything, the whole situation is starting to draw some backlash. The argument tends to go “look at all the energy people are putting into such a stupid thing. Why does Conan need all that support? Why can’t they use their energy for something that’s actually good? Like, I dunno, I heard there was something in Haiti.” The argument rather frustrates me, though if you’d like to read a intelligently-created version of it, instead of my mocking synopsis, Michael Ian Black wrote something pretty good over here.
I can’t disagree that, to an extent, these people saying this have a point. There are way, way more important things to rally behind. Say, getting equal rights for gays and getting gay marriage accepted, if you want to pick something that I care about. But hell, pick whatever you want. There has to be something you support that could use your help more than Conan, who is a fairly rich and successful guy, and can handle himself. He’ll survive, and whatever he does in the future will probably be awesome. No doubt about it. He’s fine.
Still, though. Don’t complain about people following their passions. Whether they are genuinely upset and want change, or they just think having a pro-Conan party would be a lot of fun, which it probably would, they aren’t doing the wrong thing. They were putting out energy for something they were passionate about, and if they had fun at it, then hell, they made the right choice. If it banded some people together for a bit, that’s the right choice. The fact that it was so successful does not mean that the effort was wasted.
It’s not like it would be a one-for-one thing anyway. If you could scientifically spend the same amount of effort planning some sort of “Conan Rally,” or this wonderful day I heard of where everyone rides mass transit without pants on, and then spend an equal amount of time working to, I dunno, get people to overturn a law or give more blood, which do you think would be more successful? I put forward it would be the “fun” option, every time.
Rallying for Conan creates a party. Riding in a subway without pants creates an awesome story for you to tell. These activities put a smile on your face, and while they can be hard to organize, like anything can be hard to organize, they’re successful because they are fun. Blood drives, charity donations, and writing your congressperson just don’t do this. They are serious, and because they are not fun, they feel like work. At the same time, neither group of activities has a good chance of creating a change that you can actually experience. If I call up the office of one of my government representatives and voice a complaint, it’s not completely impossible that it might do something, but it’s unlikely. If nothing else, whatever I want happening happening will not feel like something I had a hand in. At the same time, a pro-Conan rally had little chance of affecting the outcome of what was happening, but in that situation I don’t need that to make it feel like a worthwhile experience, because it was fun to begin with. Doing it was already a reward.
There’s nothing wrong with having fun. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with doing something productive or useful, either. In fact, if those people involved in the sort of things I am talking about here were not doing anything useful, then yes, perhaps they deserve to be berated. But I would bet that’s not the case for a huge majority of them. They have jobs. They do the useful things they do, and then they want to have fun afterward. Let them have fun.
Let’s all have fun.