A Tale of Two Characters

Two talk show hosts associated with New Jersey have been in the news of late.  As I have already mentioned here, rapper-turned-all-around-entertainer Dana Owens - Queen Latifah to her fans and to anyone too chicken to call her by her real name - learned that her "syndicated" (it's actually aired on CBS affiliates, but let that pass) daytime talk show was canceled part of the way into its second season.  As someone who actually liked her personally (though not musically, of course) when she first appeared in 1989 but has long since tired of her, I was relieved at the thought of not having to worry about turning on the TV set in the nine o'clock hour when the TV was already set to the local CBS station without my knowledge.  But though it was canceled in December - and, by the way, award Owens points for paying her staff through the holidays - there were so many unaired installments of her show left over that it'll be on TV through March.  So, after watching CBS on Sunday nights, I still have to remember to change the channel before turning off the TV so I don't accidentally turn her on Monday morning.

Why the schadenfreude-laden attitude?  Well, the reason I liked Owens at first was because she originally appeared as black nationalist feminist who made conservative white people squirm, but her sista act wore very thin very quickly.  To be blunt, she annoys me now.  Furthermore, I get the sense that Queen Latifah is a character played by Dana Owens, and her character is whatever she wants her to be.  She used to be a plus-sized, dashiki-wearing Afrocentrist from Newark with street cred, boasting that she didn't have to change who or what she was to make it in show business.  Now she's slimmed down, dressed in a blazer, shirt and slacks, her hair colored (the African crown is long since gone), and she's been hosting a talk show chatting up the same sort of Hollywood celebrities she insisted she wouldn't try to be.  Well, Dana, which is it?  Is this Queen Latifah character a girl from the 'hood or is she a mainstream Hollywood star?  As long as people tune in - they didn't this time - Owens doesn't care what stage persona she presents.  That's how a hard-edged girl from the streets becomes a cosmetics spokeswoman and a mistress of ceremonies at awards shows. That's how someone who spent the Bush 41 administration talking about the unfairness of racism and sexism spent the Bush 43 years making movies where she got to play a savvy black woman showing up clueless white men.  I have no sense of who Dana Owens is because I can't pinpoint who Queen Latifah is supposed to be.

Oh yeah, she's playing blues singer Bessie Smith in a new HBO movie.  I don't think she can pull it off.  Being plus-sized, like Bessie Smith, isn't enough; I've heard both women sing, and Owens doesn't sing like Bessie Smith; her singing style is so bland you wonder if maybe she should stuck strictly to rapping.  (Her 2004 cover of jazz and R&B covers was, tellingly, called The Dana Owens Album.)  And Owens is so wrapped up into her own character, how can she convincingly play another?    

The other news involves comedian and Montclair, New Jersey resident Stephen Colbert, who played a character on TV named . . . Stephen Colbert.  Stephen Colbert, the comedian, retired Stephen Colbert, the right-wing talk show character, by ending "The Colbert Report" in December.  Colbert the comedian promises that, when he takes over from David Letterman on CBS's "The Late Show,"  we'll be seeing him, not his Comedy Central character, on TV.  Stephen Colbert the man is nothing like Stephen Colbert the right-wing talk show host, who offered traces of the man playing him through irnoic asides and snarky double-talk, inventing "truthiness" in the process.  We don't yet have the full picture of the real person named Stephen Colbert.  Those of us waiting to see what Colbert the man is like will have to wait longer than expected.  Instead of debuting on "The Late Show" in April or May, as many of us thought he would, he's taking over much later - on September 8 of this year, the day after Labor Day.  

So, one talk show host I thought was leaving is sticking around for a long goodbye and another talk show I host I expected to debut soon is debuting later.  But, except for how he will pronounce his name (though the character's name is pronounced coal-BEAR, the real Stephen's family name is pronounced COAL-bert), I already have at least some sense of who the real Stephen Colbert is after having seen nine years of the fictional one.  But after 26 years of Dana Elaine Owens, I still can't discern the true nature of this sista. And most what I've seen, I'm not too crazy about.