Washington Post Pulls Plug On Dana Milbank Chris Cillizza “Comedy” Videos

Let’s just call it an idea whose time hasn’t come, partially because the comedy timing never came: the Washington Post has (mercifully, thankfully, graciously) pulled plug on Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza’s video “Mouthpiece Theater.”

Howard Kurtz’s piece in The Post reports:

Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli killed the satirical video series Wednesday after harsh criticism of a joke about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, which prompted him to pull the latest episode from the paper’s Web site Friday night. The Post staffers who appeared in the videos, Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza, agreed with the decision and apologized in separate interviews.

“I don’t think the series worked as they intended,” Brauchli said. “It was meant to be funny and insightful and translate the superb journalism Chris and Dana do in print and online into a new format.”

Brauchli’s statement is an understatement. So here is another one: it was an experiment that did not exactly enhance the images of the two superb journalists. More from the official explanation:

“Mouthpiece Theater” was designed as a sendup of pompous punditry, with Milbank, the paper’s Washington Sketch columnist, and Cillizza, a White House correspondent who writes The Fix blog, appearing with oversized pipes and smoking jackets. But its comedic style drew catcalls from online critics, which intensified after Friday’s episode about the kind of beer various politicians might drink. Milbank said he couldn’t reveal to whom President Obama would serve a brew called Mad Bitch Beer, which was followed by a brief shot of Clinton.

“I regret that we put up that image,” Milbank said Wednesday, “and while I highly doubt the secretary of state has seen ‘Mouthpiece Theater,’ I would be honored to have the opportunity to apologize to her over a beer.”

As for the dozen videos they have made in what was designed as a summer tryout, “it’s clear there was an audience for it out there, but not large enough to justify all the grief,” Milbank said. “My strength is in observational, in-the-field stuff, and that’s what I should do. I’m sorry about the reaction it’s caused, but I think it’s important to experiment. The real risk to newspapers is not that they take too many risks, but that they don’t take enough risks.”

Well, this wasn’t exactly a “risk.” It was just poorly excuted from the standpoint of comedy and provided content that left the two journalists open to political attack and ridicule.

The two journalists’ comedy timing was more akin to Ralph Nader’s than Steve Correll’s. And although some of the jokes were amusing, other material seemed to come from Target. MORE:

Cillizza agreed that the plug should be pulled, saying: “We’d hoped the self-deprecating humor of me and the irreverent humor of Dana would combine to make something funny and interesting and on the news. It wound up not working. . . . Ultimately it wasn’t funny.”

The Clinton joke, Cillizza said, “was inappropriate, over the line and highlighted the broader problems with the show. I’m personally apologizing on The Fix. It’s not consistent with the Post brand, but more important to me, it’s not consistent with the Fix brand I’ve worked to cultivate — insider, straight-dope journalism that tries to shoot down the middle.”

Read the entire Post article. There are even more apologies: clearly the videos’ audience wasn’t amused, the paper was showered with complaints, someone in the corporate office wasn’t exactly wowed by the videos, and the paper felt it had to act with apologies..profuse apologies…and repeat the apology often.