Harry Shearer’s Le Show: Sonic Portal to News, Satire, Memory, History

"Bad Days at Black Rock"

Shearer's satires of commercial and public media are legion. He has satirized the television news industry since his work with the Credibility Gap and on Saturday Night Live.¹¹⁵ Shearer's ability to intercept and record "raw feeds," television satellite transmissions of news anchors preparing to go on the air,¹¹⁶ has provided him with unique found sound for satire, some of it worthy of installation in art galleries.¹¹⁷

On Le Show, the recurring feature "Bad Days at Black Rock" — "Black Rock" was the nickname of the CBS Building in Manhattan — reveals Shearer's fancifying about longtime CBS news anchor Dan Rather's attempts to adjust to changes in news industry practices and ethics. In this sonic satire, Shearer's Rather remarks to Shearer's Bill Plante,

You see, here's my problem, brother Plante. I care too much. I've given too many years not to CBS News — sir, please, I'm not that stupid — but to the idea of CBS News, the idea of a place that, whether it's owned by a Westinghouse or a Viacom or a pack of rabid coon dogs, still maintains a semblance of the standards it was founded on. A place that, no matter who pays its mortgage, still thinks of itself as the house Murrow built. Now if I have to stay at it a little longer and a little later in this life's final segment than Uncle Walter did, and put off the yachting and the golf playing until I'm too old to do it, well maybe that's the price I have to pay for keeping that dream alive.

"The Lighter Side of the War"

In May 1985, to mark the 10th anniversary of the last U.S. troops leaving Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, Shearer aired "The Lighter Side of the War," featuring archival audio of Dan Rather interviewing President Lyndon B. Johnson; of Henry Kissinger; and of Bob Hope entertaining U.S. troops in Saigon.

Shearer concludes the segment, "With so much to smile about, who knows? Maybe it was worth it after all."

"Inside Extra Access Tonight"

A satirical mashup of long-running programs Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight, Shearer's "Inside Extra Access Tonight" (sometimes called more simply "Extra Access Tonight") makes fun of the oxymoron "entertainment news." Shearer parodies both form and content of the programs, featuring a pair of co-hosts, energetic music, and vocal delivery reeking of promotion.

Co-hosts Pat Mungo and Mike Devere provide a contrapunctal introduction to each segment, this one looking ahead at Shearer's imagined television shows upcoming in 2003:

Mungo: “Picking the winners before the horses leave the starting gate…” Devere: “It's our first annual preview of the year ahead in entertainment.” Mungo: “Gotta be ‘Extra Access Tonight’ for the early-middle of January 2003.” Mungo: “Hi everybody, I'm Pat Mungo.” Devere: “And I'm Mike Devere. 2002 was an entertainment year to remember.” Mungo: “Mmmmmm-hmmmm.” Devere: “And 2003 promises more of the same.” Mungo: “So welcome aboard for our first annual look ahead to the stories we'll be looking back at, less than a year from now.”

"USA Today: The Radio Show"

The 1982 launch of the first U.S. general-interest nationwide weekday newspaper, USA Today, marked a further blurring of news and entertainment. USA Today used color more extensively and dramatically than other newspapers.¹¹⁸ News stories were shorter than in other major daily newspapers, and sports and entertainment were given equal play with news, thus lessening not only the amount of news covered but the depth of coverage.

Shearer sets up a 1989 satiric bit called "USA Today: The Radio Show" by noting the increasing influence of tabloid journalism in both print and on television:

Everyone knows that the trend in television shows — programs — is towards the tabloidal. I got hung up on noticing the strangeness of the titles of some of these new programs and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. A case in point, ladies and gentlemen: A Current Affair. What does that mean? It's very tricky when you think about it, but please don't. I've already wasted my time doing this. They took the phrase that's familiar to all of us from school, current events. Then they made it a singular, a current event. But event sounds so boring, so flat, so dull. So they went, OK, public affairs. Affair. A Current Affair. See what they did? Now there's a new show that's premiering next week that's, well, best described as an imitation of A Current Affair, and its name is Inside Edition. They got the title the same way. They took inside story, but story, there may be more than one story in the show. And then, news: final edition. Inside Edition! There you go.

"Rush to Recovery"

Commercial radio talk host Rush Limbaugh was a perennial object of Shearer's satire. When Limbaugh announced on-air in 2003 that he was re-entering treatment for addiction to painkilling medication purchased illegally for him by his housekeeper, Shearer created psychotropic sonic satire to answer the question "What exactly is going on at that unidentified treatment facility into which Limbaugh has checked himself"?

The satiric masterpiece opens with Shearer's echoing announcer voice mimicking Limbaugh's sign-on, again with a twist: "Now, from inside an undisclosed treatment facility, the most listened-to drug addict in America, on a Rush to Recovery." Hypocrisy of any kind is fair game for Shearer's satire, and Limbaugh's earlier statements on drug abuse made him especially ripe for ridicule.¹¹⁹

"Believia"

The United States is the only country other than New Zealand in which pharmaceuticals are marketed directly to consumers via television commercials.¹²⁰ Shearer's experience as an ad copywriter and his avid television news viewing together fuel his creation of "spots," 30- or 60-second advertisements for various fictional products, satiric commentaries on the absurdities of advertising.

Shearer invented the "Believia" spot to follow a news item about the federal government fining pharmaceutical giant Pfizer $2.3 billion to settle criminal and civil accusations of illegal marketing of its painkiller Bextra.¹²¹

Shearer's satiric commentary on the arguably unhealthy amount of pharmaceutical marketing on U.S. television, "Believia" touts the faux pharmaceutical Shearer rhetorically formulated for "age-related skeptocemia, a chronic inability to absorb and believe messages about products that might be helpful." The spot ends with a riff on the usual small-print warnings about side-effects, again with a satiric twist: "Do not use or handle Believia if you are operating machinery, becoming pregnant, or operating pregnancy machinery. Common side effects include headache, dizziness, memory loss, temporary night-blindness, and chronic gullibility. Ask your doctor if Believia is right for you. And believe him."

Shearer at KCRW.

CPR: Continental Public Radio

Le Show has featured parodies of public media programs across its history. Shearer's titles for these segments subtly but profoundly twist the names of actual public radio programs and their hosts.

"Up To Here"

Commemorating 10 years since U.S. troops left Vietnam, a 1985 promo for the satiric program Up To Here," hosted by Ira Zipkin, forecasts a report on post-traumatic stress disorder among Americans who did not serve in the Vietnam War.

"Mind Your Own Business"

Shearer's satires of public radio programming devoted to business, economics, and personal finance news echo through the decades of Le Show via the segment "Mind Your Own Business."

The mergers and acquisitions mania of 1988¹²² was captured on Le Show in an early segment of "Mind Your Own Business" in which Shearer creates room for doubt about whether leveraged buyouts are in the public interest:

"Direct from the trading floor of Corium Slocum Oliver, I'm Pete Tuccinello welcoming you to another edition of 'Mind Your Own Business.' This week, more than the subway was shaking Wall Street. The market dropped 30 points over a rumor that George Bush had a mistress.¹²³ And the biggest business transaction in history was announced as RJR Nabisco, formerly Reynolds Tobacco, proposed to buy itself out.¹²⁴ And to explain these developments, joining me here on the trading floor is an expert on leveraged buyouts — and of course everyone around here is an expert on rumors — the head of research for the respected market letter The Donblameus Report, Mr. Carl Donblameus…."

Changes to the business of advertising caused by COVID pandemic-era inflation and digital-device overload set the stage for Shearer’s satire of a fictional business called "Brain Flush". Intended to help the “attentionally challenged," "Brain Flush" is for "anybody who's got a laptop or a cell phone," because "sometimes it feels like our brains have been colonized by over-talkative aliens."

"Karzai Talk"

Debuting in 2010 after U.S. prosecutors launched a criminal corruption investigation of Mahmood Karzai, brother of then-Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai,¹²⁵ Shearer's "Karzai Talk" takes as its satiric point of departure Car Talk, the long-running National Public Radio call-in show.

"Car Talk [was] a weekly call-in program about car repair," writes David Dzikowski, who studied Car Talk in his dissertation on the rhetorics of public radio. Car Talk was "anything but a simple fix-it show. Its superficial appeal [was] through raillery — the bantering and jesting of the hosts — which fixes it as humorous entertainment. The popular appeal of the program depends on the self-deprecating humor of the hosts, brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi. Ostensibly about cars, the program is primarily observational humor with an emphasis on word play and irony."¹²⁶

Sufficiently popular that public radio stations continued to air the program for years after Tom Magliozzi’s death,¹²⁷ Car Talk provides Shearer a perfect satiric foil for inventions about corruption in Afghanistan during what Shearer consistently referred to as "America’s Longest War." Callers to "Karzai Talk" included U.S. presidents, military, state, and intelligence officials, and members of the Taliban — all, of course, voiced by Shearer.

The Magliozzis were better known as "Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers," according to NPR, "taking their names from the clickety-clack sound made by aging autos."¹²⁸ While Hamid Karzai served as president of Afghanistan, Mahmood became wealthy by selling Toyotas,¹²⁹ a fact providing rich and regular fodder for Shearer's "Karzai Talk."

The initial episode of "Karzai Talk" opens with a nod to public radio fundraising: "From Afghanistan Public Radio, where you give us the tote bag."

As the segment became a regular feature of Le Show, Shearer added the following transition between "News from Outside the Bubble" and "Karzai Talk": "That's how it looks from over here. How does it look from over there?"

"From the newly refortified presidential palace in downtown Kabul, the city that always sleeps, I'm Mahmood … And I'm Hamid … and we're Tick and Tock, the Running Out of Time Brothers. Welcome to 'Karzai Talk.'"

"Karzai Talk: Another Brother Runs for President"

Each week's Car Talk ended with the co-hosts advising their listeners: "Don't drive like my brother." "And don't drive like MY brother." Shearer turned this into the coda for each episode of "Karzai Talk": "Don't govern like my brother!" "Don't govern like MY brother!"

Other recurring segments concerning U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan included "News of AfPak" (sounded by Shearer like the voice of the duck in Aflac insurance commercials); "News of America’s Longest War"; a subset of "News of Inspectors General" focusing on SIGAR, or the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction; and, among the most baroque of Shearer's sonic satires, "Mel Gibson and Oksana debate Afghanistan Policy".

Le Show's other satires of National Public Radio include "All in All," "More Than You Know," "Mouth To Mouth," "At Loggerheads," "Now And Then," and a 2013 tour de force satire of auditions for a new NPR announcer to read sponsorship credits. Shearer introduces the bit by quoting from the NPR ad:

Ladies and gentlemen, please give — so that public radio can have a new voice. NPR, according to an announcement made public a couple of weeks ago, is looking for quote "a great voice talent with production chops to match to be the voice of NPR's national funding credits. You'll record all of 'NPR's support for this program comes from' announcements in our national programs heard by millions of people each week. You'll get to say 'This is NPR' each day. This is more than a voice gig." I'm still quoting. "We're looking for someone with serious production chops. You should bring a voice that's clear, confident, and welcoming, and be a bit tingly at the thought that your voice will be part of public radio's daily connective tissue all across the country. Bonus points for ability to sound authentic on the radio. We're not looking for the voice of God" unquote. And they're not the only ones.

"Up To Here: CPR Searches for New Credits-Reading Voice"

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