Tom Smothers, a rebel with a cause
Especially on a mass medium like television, there has often been a price entertainers had to pay for bringing a political edge to their work.
Tom Smothers, who died on Tuesday at 86, paid that price, and did not seem to regret it. He preferred to tell the truth.
In 1969, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” a variety show that Smothers cohosted with his brother Dick, was canceled by CBS.
That’s the same network that today broadcasts and heavily promotes “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” which abounds in razor-sharp socio-political commentary.
Of course, the Smothers Brothers were operating in prime time, while Colbert is on late at night.
Tom Smothers said in 2004 that “he wasn’t sure American audiences could handle frank political discourse on prime time TV.” Even as “dirty words are flowing, the sex is flowing and the violence,’’ he said, social commentary was lacking.
Those words had the ring of truth then, and still do. Apart from exceptions such as Kenya Barris’s ABC comedy “Black-ish’' (2014-22), which addressed issues of racial discrimination and social justice, prime time is not the place to look for series that grapple with the nation’s ills in a tough-minded way.
No, when it comes to practitioners of noholds-barred topical satire, the true legatees of the Smothers Brothers have been found on cable, the likes of Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Amber Ruffin, Bill Maher, Desus Nice and The Kid Mero of Showtime’s “Desus & Mero,” HBO’s “Veep” and “Succession.”
And of course, Colbert during his Comedy Central days.
Back in 1969, the cancellation of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was partly prompted by complaints from rural viewers. CBS sought to mollify those viewers by replacing one variety show with its polar opposite: the corny “Hee-Haw.’’
Opponents of the Vietnam War, proponents of civil rights, and all-around foes of the establishment and its arbitrary rules, the Smothers Brothers were locked in constant battle with CBS censors virtually from their show’s 1967 premiere on.
In one notorious instance, the network cut Pete Seeger’s performance of “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” an antiwar song. But the Smothers Brothers simply invited Seeger to perform a few months later.
Within the comedy duo’s dynamic, Tom’s shtick was to play the clueless one. In reality, he was anything but. The more liberal of the pair, Tom was the one who sought to push the envelope.
“Don’t tell a comedian not to say a certain word. For sure they’ll do it,’’ Dick Smothers said in 2019. “The funny thing is, I look back at those things. They’re so benign, but at the time they were volatile.’’
Those words were an echo of words spoken by Tom Smothers back in 1969, at a press conference the day after “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was canceled.
“In any other medium we would be regarded as moderate,’’ he said, according to The New York Times. “Here we are regarded as rebels and extremists.’’