Part-time New Orleanian Harry Shearer is a throwback to the great radio comedians Bob and Ray. Their comedy came from depicting characters who were good-natured small-timers, and the humor was never mean. The characters didn’t struggle to maintain their dignity; they were too dim to realize it was compromised, and that tone and style is all over Now You See It. The DVD is a collection of clips from his Saturday Night Live and cable television work and, as he proudly notes in the cover art, it’s “All entertainment. No commentary!” In the clips, he not only creates characters that are bumblingly endearing — or mimics magician David Copperfield with that character profile in mind — but he finds television itself charming and inept.

 

Dropping Anchors isn’t quite as charming. In a series of bits from his Le Show radio program, he depicts a darkening media environment in which the long-time TV news anchors are marginalized or put out to pasture. The opening track, “Ted Meets Mickey,” chillingly depicts Mickey Mouse — representing Disney, which owns ABC — letting Ted Koppel know where he stands in the corporate scheme of things. There’s nothing jovial about the mouse that says, “You’re lucky you weren’t pulling this scam when Walt was around,” — “scam” being hard news — “You’d have been doing The Secret Life of Walruses so fast your hair would be spinning.” He depicts the anchors kindly, particularly Dan Rather as he’s packing up at CBS. His Rather doesn’t take insult at anything, even as he’s facing just how seriously his stock has dropped. The resulting sketch is funny, but it’s also pleasantly bittersweet.

 

As an impressionist, Shearer’s up and down. His Tom Brokaw’s strong, but his Dan Rather sounds a lot like Seymour Skinner, who Shearer voices for The Simpsons. His writing ultimately tells listeners who the characters are, not just by naming them but by Shearer’s attention to their language. His ghost of Charles Kuralt is a master of homespun poetry, and his burlesques of Rather’s common man similes are unmistakable. Dropping Anchors isn’t about impressions, though. Ultimately, it’s strong satire that depicts the human reality of a cultural change that reduces news to entertainment.