King of the Hill is the only show that derives comedy from a conservative point of view. And I can’t even think of one stand up comic, Googling just pathetically coughs up Brad Stine. I’m not saying there aren’t more well known comedians that happen to be conservative but:
Bill Cosby - His source material is his childhood and experience being a father.
The Blue Collar Comedy Tour - Their source material comes from their experiences with the South and hicks with personal anecdotes sprinkled in.
Craig T Nelson, Victoria Jackson- Fox News wingnuts both, but Coach wasn’t a conservatively leaning show and I can’t remember a conservative political skit on SNL.
Sure all comedians make fun of Liberals on occasion, Denis Leary stands out, but no one would be confused enough to think he votes Republican. Perhaps you think I’m moving the goalposts for each side but just a simple search for the top 10 political comedians doesn’t include one conservative.
As a moderately leaning liberal, granted I’m not the target demographic, but if half of the population of the United States leans right there has to be a market for it. I know if there was FOX News would embrace them. The Rights answer to The Daily Show twitched a horrible spasm a few minutes after it’s birth and flat lined, why?
Dennis Miller is on your top 10 list. That’s who I thought of when reading your OP. I suppose the real answer is that conservatives are rather stuffy, and in a lot of cases kind of long in the tooth, so they aren’t going to make any top 10 lists for comedy usually.
How many comedians are brazenly liberal? Not many of the greats do partisan humor; even many of the greats that did political humor, like George Carlin, were more anti-establishment than card-carrying partisan liberal. The best standup is observational comedy.
That said, entertainment and the arts is a heavily liberal culture (and I’m no conservative, I’m just stating the obvious.) A comedian who IS conservative is probably going to keep his yap shut about it. Why piss anyone off?
Yeah, but I’m saying if half of the population IS conservative why would you keep your yap shut about it? Conservatives are consumers too so why does entertainment have to maintain a liberal culture?
Theres clearly a niche here not being filled and I wonder why.
This would be my thoughts on it as well. Beyond that, I’d guess that knowing that probably encourages many conservative leaning comedians to simply stay away from politics to avoid alienating some of their audience.
I think another thing is that it depends on the time. Like him or hate him, Bush was comedy gold. Beyond that, Republicans had a lot of power for a considerable amount of time, so it’s also going to draw a lot of the moderates and anti-establishment people into bashing conservatives. On the other side, the Democrats gained only really had similar power for a couple years recently, and even that was mitigated to some extent. Perhaps if the Republicans hadn’t gained back the House in 2010 and, instead, the Democrats stayed in power for another couple of elections, with Obama getting re-elected, we’d probably see a culture that more readily accepted conservative comedians, particularly if the electorate turned against them, as they did against the Republicans. Afterall, I think comedy reflects the culture, and we seldom seem to stay with one party in significant power for any significant amount of time.
Well, saying half the population is ‘conservative’ (even if it were true) doesn’t really mean anything, since ‘conservative’ means different things to different people, and such a diverse group isn’t going to find the same things funny. Think about how a religiously conservative comedian would tell jokes or what jokes s/he would tell verse an economic conservative, or a social conservative.
The thing is that humor is going to vary wildly with different groups, but conservatives, especially religious conservatives aren’t going to go in for the stuff that most people are going to find funny…and they are almost never going to say ‘fuck’, which means they will leave most Americans scratching their heads and wondering when this comedian is going to get to the funny stuff.
I dunno. Seems like the best comedy, like SNL over the years, has been more anti-authority or anti-whoever-is-in-office rather than pro-liberal or pro-conservative. I agree with **RickJay **on this. I didn’t click on your youtube link, but unless it linked to dozens pro-liberal comedians, it’s just an anecdote.
Perhaps it has something to do with laughter being a way to relieve tension. Who is the audience for a conservative comedian? There are the conservative well-off, and the conservative needy. The well-off aren’t in need of pain relief, psyche-wise. The conservative needy are in need of that relief, but jokes about welfare, loss of jobs and other popular conservative topics hit too damn close to home to be comfortable.
And yet religious conservatives or neo-cons might not then self describe themselves as ‘conservatives’ based on that definition. You might think I’m just splitting hairs, but ‘conservative’ means a lot of different things to different people, and they aren’t all going to find the same things funny as others who self identify as ‘conservatives’.
Sorry that you hate reading this ‘crap’, but neither liberals nor conservatives are monolithic groups who are going to be in lock step on anything, especially humor.
I don’t think political conservatism lends itself much to humor, at least not social conservatism. Not much funny in talking about “defending marriage” or the sanctity of life. I’ve seen comics try to do
“conservative” in a micro way, like mocking political correctness (Colin Quinn does a lot of that), environmentalism, vegetarianism and the like. Dane Cook even does a bit about atheists.
A macro level, partisan political approach wouldn’t work for conservatives, though. Comedy works better when it’s transgressive, rebelious, anti-establishment. Not so much when it’s flags, guns and Jesus. What’s the funny way to defend Sarah Palin or deny global warming?
I dunno; surely lots and lots of humour is really “about” re-enforcing the status quo, mainly by playing off of commonly-held stereotypes. Think of racist, sexist and homophobic humour, either played ironically or straight. In one sense it is “transgressive”, since it offends people and is officially disapproved of (and can get the joker in controversy or trouble), but in another it underpins the status quo - or at least, a certain version of it.
I do think you’re splitting hairs. It’s not as if you have to avoid telling "why did the chicken cross the road’ jokes because chickens mean different things to different people.
A farmer would get the joke, a chicken futures selling stockbroker would get the joke, a chef would get the joke.
I think Dennis Miller is a great case study on this subject. His time on SNL, “Off-White” Album, even his rants stuff were hilarious. I remember my jaw hurting from laughing so hard during his shows.
The content was not at all political. His stuff on airlines, with the subreferences to James Bond and stockbrokers on thorazine, was beautiful, for example.
Whether it was his own development or whether 9/11 was the transformative event that he describes it as I can’t say. All I know is that he is just terribly, awfully, painfully not funny anymore. He tries, but his stuff is just shit.
I don’t think it’s the material. I think it’s the mindset and manner of looking at the world. The ability to take other people’s perspectives has to play a part in it all, too. My hypothesis is that it relates to being a good actor as well. Conservatives just don’t make good actors either.
It’s not like the attempt hasn’t been made: Witness things like the Half Hour News Hour, which was supposed to be a right-wing answer to the Daily Show. Despite people definitely trying to produce conservative humor, it just didn’t work.
But people who dislike strong language aren’t going to find someone funny who doesn’t use strong language…or vice versa. And people who joke about religious subjects aren’t going to find a strong sympathetic audience among people who don’t think religion is funny…or who think that religion is not a proper subject for humor because they take it too seriously.
Really, man…you don’t know all this? Who do you think self identified conservatives in the US are??
And I wouldn’t find it humorous, since it neither uses the word ‘fuck’, nor do I find that sort of corny pre-school humor very, well, humorous. I don’t believe you’d be knocking them down in the isles doing chicken jokes…which means they wouldn’t make your top 10 list, even if people would get the jokes (I was actually a fan of Steven Wright…one of who’s big selling points were how hard it was to get is jokes by large segments of the population).
I think DtC said best what I was trying to get at:
