Second the recommendations for P.J. and Dennis Miller, with the caveat that both of them were a lot funnier before they: had kids (P.J. & Miller) and 9/11 (Miller). The Off-White Album from Miller is a classic, and dates from 1988. Similarly, Parliament of Whores is one of the best books on American Government ever written. But it too, dates from about 20 years ago.
The Stones strike me as more libertarian than conservative, eagerly willing to skewer everyone’s sacred cows. I like Ron White quite a bit, bit of a guilty pleasure, and would classify his humor as having a conservative slant.
It’s all shtick though to get a laugh, and I don’t know that political humor—right or left—plays all that well. Good observational humor, OTOH, does. (RIP George Carlin and Bill Hicks. Carlin’s ‘Shell shock’ bit is, IMHO, better than Orwell at conveying doublethink and euphemism. But clearly not conservative…)
Libertarian =! (or however the “not equal” sign is represented) Conservative, but they often share some views regarding the place and powers of government, hence they’re often confused by people. Penn & Teller are supposed to skew quite libertarian, though I don’t think they are conservative. Bill Maher claims he’s a libertarian, but I’d classify him as a libertine, not libertarian. In any event, not a conservative.
Not really. He makes fun of rednecks and claims he’s one, but it’s clear that he’s not talking about himself now and it’s clear that he’s talking about the other rednecks.
When I was a kid, Scutt Farkis knocked me down, called me awful names, and smeared dog crap on my face. His band of hoodlums laughed uproariously. So, I guess funny is in the eye of the beholder.
I have to give him credit for not being easy to pigeon-hole. But he loses that credit for the slimy way he made Expelled. He was guilty of what he was charging academia. The hypocrisy of that film was too blatant to take him seriously again. Like a Michael Moore film, it’s just preaching to the choir at best, and rabble-rousing at it’s finest. But, not as amusing as Moore’s work.
Personally, I don’t find any overly politically charged humor to be funny, unless perhaps I also strongly agree with it. So, it’s not really much of a shock that a lot of people on the Dope don’t find many notorious conservatives to be particularly funny. By the same token, I know plenty of conservatives who don’t find any of the generally regarded as very funny liberal comics funny at all.
I’d also suspect that there’s plenty of hilarious liberals and conservatives that just plain don’t talk about politics much at all, other than perhaps to just make blanket make fun of all of them. For instance, love him or hate him, Daniel Tosh is one of the biggest guys on Comedy Central these days, so obviously a lot of people think he’s pretty funny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him make a political joke, so other than venturing a guess, who knows, who cares, what his political views are.
[QUOTE=South Park Studios Chat]
Q: Are you two guys liberal or conservative? Me and my friends have had debates about this.
Parker: We avoid extremes but we hate liberals more than conservatives and we hate them [conservatives].
Stone: I hate conservatives but I really fucking hate liberals.
[/QUOTE]
Well, he used to be, anyway. About 20 years ago, people would tune to his show at work. He was amusing, then. Last year, I was traveling to my brother’s house and there’s this one long stretch thru PA where I can’t find a good music station. I found a talk show, instead, that had a cranky, unfunny old fart rambling about politics. It turned out to be Limbaugh.
An essential component of a sense of humor is the ability to laugh at yourself. By that standard, most rabid and semi-rabid ideologues do not have a true sense of humor. Rush Limbaugh has featured some funny bits on his show. But it never involves poking fun at himself or like-minded people.
Greg Gutfeld can be pretty funny. His show ‘Red Eye’ is often hilarious, and he fills his panel with fellow conservative/libertarian comedians like Gavin McInnes, Andy Levy, Joe DeVito, Nick DiPaulo, Jim Norton and others. Go to youtube and look at some clips with any of those guys, and you’ll find some funny.
Steven Crowder can be pretty funny and he’s an overtly conservative comedian. Stephen Green does a pretty funny ‘week in blogs’ and ‘week in media’ podcast.
Actually, the list of conservative/libertarian comedians is pretty long. Speaking of Long, Rob Long is a conservative comedy writer/producer who won Emmy awards for Cheers and currently has a comedy show called ‘Sullivan and Sons’. He writes the back page column in Natonal Review among other things. And speaking of National Review, Jonah Goldberg can be very funny, and William F. Buckley had a rapier wit.
PJ O’Rourke used to be awesome, but there’s a fine line between “conservative comedian” and “Republican water-carrier”… and he crossed that line sometime during the GW Bush years, probably never to return.
I agree with your accessment. Also, his audiences don’t seem to be particularly redneck.
I just can’t find Conservatism funny anymore in general. William F. Buckley was hilarious, but it was his droll sense of humor and his delivery that were both funny and intellectual. He managed to make Conservative viewpoints witty.
I actually think Bill O’Reilly has a great sense of humor, and can be quite funny with his quips and retorts, especially with Jon Stewart. And I’m not just talking about laughing at him because I think he’s so insane or stupid or whatever (there is that aspect too of course).
There are a lot of funny people who are conservatives (at least, I assume; I don’t know the political affiliation of every comedian or humorist whose work I enjoy) but partisan politically based humor often seems intended to be agreed with rather than laughed at.
That said, when I see a comedian “punching down” I tend to assume they’re conservative, and vice versa.
In the same vein, I’d say that George Carlin stopped being as funny when he became overtly political as he got older.
I saw Dennis Miller in Reno last year, and he killed. Although I’ll admit that his highly political humor was not as funny as the non-political stuff. His show was about half and half. Those of you who think he’s not funny any more are probably basing that on his TV appearances where he does mostly political shtick. He still does non-political humor as well, and it’s funnier.
I find strident left-wing comedians to be tediously unfunny, just like strident right-wing comedians. The comedy has to come first, and not be shoehorned into a particular ideology. That’s one reason Louis C.K. is so good - he lets the comedy take him wherever it needs to go, and he doesn’t much care who that offends or who’s political sensibilities will be tweaked.
An example of the latter, a comedian who lets politics come first, is Steven Crowder. He can be a reasonably funny guy sometimes, but too often you can tell he starts with a political point he wants to make, then tries to inject humor into it. Sometimes it works, but most of the time it just feels strained.
I guess, with the benefit of hindsight, it should have been obvious that all that watermelon-smashing was repressed homosexual tendencies.
I know Miller used to be incredibly funny because he made John Cleese* laugh harder than I’ve ever seen him laugh at anything. It was back when he had his HBO show and did “captions” for pictures of the stuff that was in the news at the time. There was a shot of a bunch of Buddhist monks being guarded by Chinese troops, and his caption was “Chinese soldiers check to ensure protest is peaceful before opening fire.” Cleese looked like he wet himself.
While Foxworthy is definitely conservative himself, there’s nothing particularly conservative about his comedy. I doubt Rick Santorum calls him up and begs him to tell the “Britney Spears as a Baskin Robbins flavor” one, for example. I’m not sure if the OP is simply asking about conservatives who are funny, or conservative humor, though.