Ranting Again

Written by Dennis Miller (DoubleDay)
by Ryk McIntyre

I’m not on a rant here, and I can prove it. Old comedians don’t die, they just go from one-liners to writing essays. In the follow-up to his New York Times bestseller The Rants, Miller continues to show the razor of his wit, and the depth of his commitment to truth and exposing all things, not just skewering the obvious targets (“Generation X,” “Washington D.C.”), he also examines himself and his own beliefs (“Child Rearing,” “Ethnicity”). And I think “Abortion” merits extra mention as a stunning example of standing by your own beliefs on a tense topic.

Most important, though, is that Ranting Again is genuinely funny. The magic of Dennis’ eye is his fierce intelligence, and an almost unbelievable ability to draw a cross-cultural sub-reference at will (“your future looks bleaker than Ingmar Bergman listening to an acoustic set by Leonard Cohen” from “Generation X,” or “The sex lives of the royals have always made Larry Flynt’s screening room look like an ashram” from “The Royal Family”). But it is his insight that gives his moral outrage and genuine concern its impact. If he wasn’t famous and on HBO, he’d most likely be shouting at people from atop a milk crate, next to a subway station.

The only drawbacks of this collection are pretty much technical: on the page, his material loses the benefit of his smooth delivery (and that little self-satisfied giggle he has when a joke works…), and the framing of each rant with “Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but…” at the beginning and “Of course, that’s just my opinion… I could be wrong” at the end. After a while, you begin to marvel at how he manages to fit them in each time. Still, at 200 pages for only $21.95, it’s hilarious, scandalous, interesting, honest, scathing, and widely-referenced. One of the best comedy books out recently. Now if I could only figure out why he has it in for Pavarotti…