Steve gives Emmy to Tommy Smothers


http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2008/09/emmys-mad-men.html

chicagotribune.com
September 21, 2008
The 2008 Emmys: Good wins, a tedious and embarrassing broadcast

Someone thought it would be a good idea for five – count 'em, five – different reality-TV hosts to come out at the start of Sunday's Emmy broadcast on ABC and talk about how they didn’t have anything to say. Whoever thought that was a good idea should be fired.

Not that the winners weren’t deserving – the worthy “30 Rock,” “Damages” and “Mad Men” won big, while (thank goodness) “Boston Legal” won nothing – but much of the rest of the ceremony was embarrassing, terrible or both.

And now Rob Lowe can finally consider his 19-year-old Snow White Oscar duet forgotten. TV has a new train wreck to make fun of, in the form of the 2008 Emmy broadcast that aired on Sunday.

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One of the high points of the otherwise colorless opening hour came when Steve Martin presented a commemorative Emmy to Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers.

“Tommy Smothers is a man who has given me so much,” said Martin, a former writer for the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” “Nothing I wanted. Mostly corporate gifts.”

Martin pointed out that in 1968, when the rest of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” writing staff won Emmys, Smothers didn’t get a statue. He had taken his name off the list, thinking that it was too controversial and would ruin the show’s chances of winning. The television academy, “in an effort to fill time,” Martin joked, had decided to right that wrong and give Smothers his statue 40 years later.

“It’s hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. There’s nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action,” Smothers said in his acceptance speech. “I dedicate this Emmy to all people who feel compelled to speak out and not afraid to speak to power and won’t shut up and refuse to be silenced.”

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- posted by sookeyjane 9/22/2008 05:27:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS