I have not seen Maher do a full stand up routine in years but his older specials hold up. At the top of his game he was one of the best. I haven’t heard of Amber Ruffin until this thread. I take it that she is on air sometimes with Seth Meyers? I find his show to be the worst of all the late night shows so it’s not surprising I wouldn’t know her.
Yeah, Maher’s standup routines like “I’m Swiss” and “Be More Cynical” are really damn good, and full versions are out there on YouTube.
I find it by far the best. When did you try watching it? It’s gotten loads better since the first year. Unless you’re a Trump supporter, in which case I’d understand why you wouldn’t appreciate his humor.
That was the basis for Joan Rivers’ entire career. The National Lampoon called her on it back in the Seventies as “someone who has managed to have a career in comedy without ever saying anything funny - she just talks loud.”
I don’t find any of them close to what Letterman was. Out of what’s on now I probably like Kimmel the most.
National Lampoon is hardly the arbiter of good taste or a good source of criticism. They made jokes. Her style was old fashioned for my tastes but she was very well respected amongst other comics and she was far more than being loud.
I am not a Trump supporter but I still find Seth pretty lame. So many of his “takedowns” of Trump and his minions are based on their appearance. And just not that funny regardless. I mean IMHO and all. And Amber’s “say what?” with different innotations was pretty funny the first time I saw it but got old quick. Unlike Meyer’s “you’re burnt” bit which started off weak and stayed there.
National Lampoon covered a huge range of styles of comedy over many years - satire, parody, pathos, gallows humor…you name it, they had it in there. They lost it in their later years, but at their best they were as funny as the best years of The Onion.
I’m curious, can you repeat a single particularly funny line Joan Rivers line? Anything that works outside of the context of her delivery? Other comics respect Gilbert Gottfried as well, for reasons beyond understanding.
Same here. Love Bill Maher. Never heard of Ruffin.
That’s not at all fair. Delivery is way too important. I don’t remember any funny Joan Rivers stuff but if I want to be proven wrong, a video clip of a decent section of a routine is what you want not a transcript of one line.
I’ve seen him live and I consider him one of the best comedians working today. He controls a room better than any other comic I’ve ever seen.
I’m 57, I grew up with Joan Rivers, and remember her being the most frequent guest host on the Tonight Show, and I’ve never laughed at a single thing she ever said.
I think Gottfried’s pretty funny too and his delivery demands your attention. Whether you like it or not! Lol
First of all, congratulations on being 8 years older than me. Secondly, my point stands.
Her “delivery” is basically as the Lampoon said, talking loud. A written transcription of one of her lines that you think is funny is fair, in my opinion.
Anyway, it’s probably better as it’s own topic.
I searched “Joan Rivers” and “quote” and these were the first two that came up on the page:
Both pretty good regardless of delivery.
“The first time I see a jogger smiling, I’ll consider it” -JR
Decent joke, imho.
That either says something about Joan Rivers or about you.
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Here’s the Maher #MeToo conversation from the last show. I don’t think I heard him or his guest say anything that I don’t agree with.
[/QUOTE]And I disagree with it from the beginning. I covered this more extensively before when the #metoo backlash was brought up here, but I’ll briefly say what’s wrong with it: the people being attacked for innocuous actions are largely fictitious, and bringing them up like this makes makes it seem like some huge problem. But it’s not. All the people #metoo have forced to pay consequences are pretty bad dudes. The one example they can point to as an issue, Anzari, had a ton of #metoo defending him. He was never treated the same as the others. Everyone in the movement was on and on about how what he did wasn’t so bad, to the point of ignoring what problems were actually there.
Overblowing the fringe bad parts of a movement is a common tactic used to undermine a movement. You can’t be caught in public saying you don’t agree with the stated goals of #metoo without being treated badly, so you overplay the bad sides so you can take refuge in them. It’s what happened with feminism. Equal rights for men and women is a good thing, so you have to try and undermine it with the few misandrists. It’s why I hate the word “SJW,” as it usually means taking some fringe liberals with some questionable ideas, playing up the questionable parts of those ideas, and then using that outrage to go after liberals in general. It’s not just a term for people who go overboard a bit and need to consider things a bit more carefully, which is what is really happening.
People love to talk about how Maher has on people who oppose him. But here he has on someone he consideres “reasonable” and “open minded,” seemingly meaning “someone who agrees with me.” A real argument would have been with a full on #metoo supporter who could point out what I said above. Instead, he brings on someone pulling out the Republican hashtags of #dueprocess and such. Nevermind that the #metoo movement is about raising awareness of bad stuff from people who have not been convicted, and, due to the legality of what they did or the time when they did it, may never be convicted. So the real concept of “due process” is impossible. If the law was handling it, the #metoo movement wouldn’t need to exist!
But it’s a convenient place to hang your hat. “I’m not really against the #metoo movement. I’m against the #hardleft who want to throw people in jail without a trial!” Bullshit.
As for Amber, I admit I didn’t really get the joke without the context, which I do think is not a good thing. That said, I don’t know how much of the context had been established before, so maybe the joke works. As it is, I took it as him just being an acceptable punching bag for a certain joke setup (because he is all about that sort of asshole humor), and thus just saw it as weak.
That said, at least it wasn’t smug and condescending. That is why I can only take Maher in small doses. In theory, a lot of his stuff would be funny, but that attitude of his is just so infuriating that it cancels out a lot of the humor. And it’s clearly not just his shtick, since it informs his personality when he’s not joking around. So there’s no release of that tension he constantly builds up.
Seth’s show (and, by extension Amber as one of its writers) is something I can watch pretty much any time I’m not tired of Trump. And Amber’s segments are the parts that often don’t lean so hard on Trump. All of the people on Seth’s show seem like nice people who are telling you about stuff and joking about it along with you. It feels like friends getting together and ribbing on things. And that goes a long way, even when their material isn’t as biting as Maher’s.
I actually have a similar problem with Jimmy Kimmel, albeit to a much, much lesser degree. He just occasionally does this stuff, but is otherwise convivial. Maher always seems like there’s this anger under the surface, ready to come out. Even Lewis Black feels better, despite his comedy style being that he’s angry and ranting. Because, once the set is done, he seems nice to talk to, while Maher is a smartass to his core.
And this is all without getting into any of the stuff above where I disagree with Maher on issues and how he handles things. I’m just commenting on his humor style and how his show comes off to me, and why I prefer Seth Meyers. And, yes, Amber Ruffalo, whose segments I watch more than I do Seth himself.
Right, they were a humor magazine. They were known for making jokes. They were not known for deep insights and critiques. I wouldn’t put it past them to put that line in for a laugh without agreeing to the premise.
I am not a Joan Rivers historian. But come on, her entire career was jokes. She said one liners. One after another. No one is saying you have to find anyone funny but to say her act was just her delivery is just wrong. In a routine she would toss out dozens of punchlines. She was a joke machine.
And Gilbert Godfried is hilarious and incredibly quick witted. Yes he is intentionally odd, sometimes more than others, but he is a great comic. And yes he’s another one that is universally admired by other comics.