Conan O'Brien Shames Chris D'Elia, Or At Least Tries To

As a person who went to college (or, since it was in Canada, university) in the early-to-mid-'90s, Conan O'Brien has kind of always been "my" late-night guy. His show was buzzy and new at a time when I was generally staying up pretty late. When I would record a bit -- on a VCR, which is all we had at the time -- and try to show it to my parents later, they basically considered it anti-comedy, which only firmed up Conan's status as my generation's comedic standard-bearer. Since then, I've had the same experience with, for instance, Tim and Eric, and have much more empathy for my parents. (See also: rewatching Beverly Hills, 90210 in adulthood.) Since I spent almost every night hanging out with Conan, it felt almost like we grew up together, and even when I no longer watched him even most of the time, I kept a special place for him in my heart.

Since then, I am sorry to say that Conan has said and done some things to tarnish my pleasant memories of our earliest, happiest days. It started with his whole fight over The Tonight Show back in 2009. I am not saying -- and never would say -- that Conan didn't get screwed over by NBC and Jay Leno; clearly, he did. But his public self-pity over it seemed like it went on for a while longer than was entirely seemly. I went to see his "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television" tour when it stopped in Austin, which opened with this montage.

I obviously get that Conan couldn't not address what had happened -- it was, after all, the reason the tour was happening -- but at the same time...like, he was still an extremely wealthy and successful celebrity. So he got fired. It's not like he got waterboarded.

After Conan landed at TBS, I watched his show the way I do all late-night shows: when a guest comes on that I like. And I've been troubled in recent years about the way the show punches down. Conan's always done gay jokes -- often with himself, and the notion that he "seems" gay, as their target. But he's both made a lot of monologue jokes about Caitlyn Jenner both pre- and post-transition, and sat in silence while guests have done so as well.

And speaking of not challenging guests on problematic remarks: how about when Jeremy Renner doubled down on calling Black Widow a slut?

At the time, I tweeted (and would link if Twitter didn't make searching such an impossible chore) my curiosity about what kinds of discussions happened around this moment at the very feminist Andy Richter/Sarah Thyre household...and maybe I'm right that such discussions did occur, because Conan has actually been a lot less smdh-inducing lately! Two nights ago, he made a Caitlyn Jenner joke in which Jenner was not the punchline, to wit: "Time magazine getting ready to announce their Person Of The Year....The short list of candidates for Time magazine's Person Of The Year apparently include Caitlyn Jenner, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump....Caitlyn Jenner said, 'Those two men are the reason I identify as a woman.'" Not a great joke, but at least one that's hateful toward targets who actually deserve it.

And last night, Conan yelled at Chris D'Elia.

I'm not going to re-litigate my case against D'Elia: as I outlined last year, he skeeves me. What filled my heart with so much joy this week is that, in D'Elia's latest Conan appearance, Conan makes it seem like D'Elia skeeves him, too.

I grant that this might be a tiny, innocuous exchange for me to hang my Chris D'Elia-hating hat on. (BTW: it's a big hat. It takes up a lot of room in my millinery closet.) But given how assiduously chummy late-night talk shows have to be...you know, it's sort of like the truism that every letter a politician receives on an issue represents twenty voters who didn't bother to write. Every speck of possibly jokey hostility probably represents twenty times the intensity of hatred that it's possible to air. I may still watch Conan with a more jaundiced eye than I used to, but if he's the enemy of my super-enemy, we can be friends again.