Filed Under Awards, Sketch Comedy
Opening Sketch at the Emmys Insensitive?
There’s been a little discussion that it was insensitive to start the Emmys with a plane crash bit, considering the Comair crash that had occurred only hours before. I can see why they didn’t cut it - the crash is really incidental to the rest of the sketch but necessary to set up the Lost bit. (I’m sure that there was no time to shoot another bit at the same production value probably factored in as well.) It’s obvious their intentions are to parody Lost not attack a recent tragedy. I don’t think they had to cut it for that reason alone. Intentions trump an uncomfortable setup.
But perhaps the setup wasn’t necessary - could the skit have worked just as well if it began with Conan wandering out of the ocean? After all, anyone watching the Emmys probably knows how the Lost castways got there. What do you think?
Update: Well, NBC apologized. No real need to - nobody was making fun of the victims. Everybody feel better now?
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I think this whole issue is one of the biggest non-troversies of recent memory. Did any family members actually speak out? Or was it just one local NBC affiliate station manager? Because every report points to one—and only one—person making an issue out of this; the station manager at WLEX in Lexington, Kentucky.
The guy even has the gall to have said the skit ranked “somewhere between ignorance and incompetence.”
Really? Ignorant? Incompetent? You know what’s incompetent? The air traffic control crew and/or pilot who mixed up the long runway for the short runway and caused this tragedy to begin with.
My condolences and sympathies go out to those who lost loved ones, but let’s get real. Blaming comedy writers for being ignorant and incompetent when the accident was itself caused by real world ignorance and incompetence is just nuts.