Dennis Miller Is the Latest ‘Saturday Night Live’ Alum to Join the Retirement Home at Fox Nation
The only shocking part of Fox Nation’s announcement of their new docuseries hosted by Dennis Miller is the revelation that there isn’t already a Fox Nation docuseries hosted by Dennis Miller.
The show, titled The Infomercials That Sold Us will be “a nostalgic and poignant look back at the years when infomercials ruled late-night TV, featuring interviews with the colorful characters who made these ads so entertaining,” as described in The Hollywood Reporter. The Fox media empire is a fitting partner for Miller, who was once a mainstay on Fox shows such as the reviled ½ Hour News Hour, The O’Reilly Factor and Red Eye in the 2000s. Back then, the Saturday Night Live veteran pioneered a career path that’s now preposterously popular by suddenly skewing towards conservative comedy in order to find an alternative audience whom the mainstream comedians that surpassed Miller in success and achievement could not (or would not) court. Today, he finds his right-leaning comedy racket a crowded field.
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At his new home on Fox Nation, Miller will find many familiar faces from annals of SNL history, including his “Weekend Update” successor Kevin Nealon, professional brother Jim Belushi, Coneheads star Dan Aykroyd and Jimmy Fallon-lover Jon Lovitz, all of whom co-host the boozy history show A History of the World in Six Glasses with Cheers star George Wendt. With Rob Schneider already a regular fixture on the platform, Fox Nation’s comedy category is now a veritable “Who’s who?” of aging former Saturday Night Live stars who find it much easier to cling to relevance in a place where the word “pronouns” counts as a punchline all on its own.
“We’re excited to kick off 2024 with legendary comedian Dennis Miller guiding viewers through the early days of the infomercial phenomenon which played a pivotal role in the cultural zeitgeist of that era,” Fox Nation president Lauren Petterson wrote of the Infomercials That Sold Us host. Miller added in the press release, “I am very proud to be a part of this project. It’s easy to dismiss the Willy Lomans who hawked products on late night TV as nothing more than easy punchlines,” because, if there’s a single streaming service that knows anything about easy punchlines, it’s the one that made Roseanne Barr shamble onstage and shout bumper sticker slogans for an hour.
Obviously, there’s nothing inherently political or pandering about a docuseries chronicling the history of infomercials or a drinking show about historic cocktails, but Miller, Nealon, Belushi, Aykroyd and the rest of the SNL alumni with Fox deals are knowingly using the remaining respectability of a famously left-leaning and widely beloved comedy series to legitimize a far-right platform that pushes dangerous misinformation as brazenly as its hosts hawk testosterone replacement therapy.
Aging comedians using their SNL clout to launder the reputation of Fox News is a move that's as shameless as it is shallow – so Miller's going to feel right at home.
