New ground for Ideas Festival

Thursday night's "The News Has No Clothes" event at the Aspen District Theater Thursday night definitely broke some new ground for the Aspen Ideas Festival. Produced with a potential TV show in mind, the event featured some straight-ahead adult stand-up comedy from D.L. Hughley, Lewis Black and Larry Wilmore, a panel discussion hosted by Kurt Anderson, and satiric video news reports from The Onion. The rowdy stand-up was appropriately rough on Aspen, with Hughley offering a one-word piece of advice to the Ideas Festival to make up for the lack of air in Aspen: "Vegas!" The mix of comedy with straight-laced guests was a tad awkward at times, but perhaps no more so than on Bill Mahr's HBO program. Former Bush press secretary Dana Perino was on the panel and came across as a tad uptight (she crossed her legs tightly exactly once, and never changed position) and defensive about the former administration, which was just completely abused by Hughley before he sat down next to her and made conversation. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff joined the panel and gamely tried to find the fine line between comedy, terrorism and a disgraced former administration. Andrea Mitchell and economist Vijay Vaitheeswaran fared better, but the evening might have been stronger with just Hughley, Black and Wilmore doing stand-up between the Onion clips. Still, it was a funny, direct and extraordinary evening for the Ideas Festival and especially for the often staid Aspen Institute. Would Mortimer Adler have approved? Probably not, but he might have still laughed.