Saw some old stuff, and he did indeed used to be funny. Now he’s not, and it’s not just his politics. His entire attitude is different.
He’s always been funny, it’s just now he’s funny (brilliantly) at the expense of liberal idiots, so they have to hysterically insist he isn’t anymore.
:: checks join date; nods ::
Yes, there’s a certain desperation in the effort, wot?
I watched one of his more recent standups and it was ok, actually a little better than I expected. The thing is with me anyway, I don’t really think political humor is that funny, especially if that’s your whole act, it is the same reason I can’t stand to listen to Lewis Black for more than about 5 minutes, dude talk about something else, but sadly its like 95% of his material but I’m aware that’s why people go to see him. I think Jim Gaffigan is really funny, but the entire stand up about eating and food gets old as well.
I like it better the way someone like Louis CK does it, like in his last standup on Netflix he is ostensibly telling a story about why babies cry on planes, he leads you down a certain train of thought and then tells you they cry because they hate that gay people are getting married, what are you gonna do they’re fucking babies. So he made his political point but he couched it in an entirely different scenario that you don’t see coming and then he goes on to talk about non-political stuff.
I used to love Patton Oswalt a lot too because his material was just so bizarre and hilarious, but I find each new standup of his has more and more politics in it, and I just don’t find that stuff funny, he may be saying stuff that should be said, it just doesn’t make me laugh out loud the way I do when he talks about midgets, insane chefs, or deathbed: the bed that eats people.
Better than Chevy? Better than Jane? I think not.
“Try these on for size, Connie Chung!”
Conservatives aren’t usually that funny. Its hard to be funny by punching down.
While I doubt you meant to admit that conservatives are superior, I’ll take it.
It seems you don’t understand what ‘punching down’ means.
I liked Norm too. I remember one of his bits about how the LA District Attorney (or whoever) had just announced that the OJ Simpson case prosecution team would be getting bonuses for their extended service on the case. Norm added, “The DA said the bonuses would have been even bigger, except for the fact that they let a killer go free.” Doesn’t read that funny, but something about the way he delivered it makes me chuckle every time I think of it, even 20 years later.
Before 9/11, Dennis Miller was a liberal, and liberals found him hilarious. After 9/11, Dennis Miller has (quite rightly) become a conservative, and liberals find him unfunny and downright offensive. It’s as simple as that.
I don’t find political humor, aimed at either the left or the right, all that funny. Miller has always had political jokes in his bag, but it seems like it has taken over.
No, it isn’t that simple because Dennis Miller was never a liberal.
Do you actually believe this?
Do you even read posts on this board, especially this thread? I mean, for comprehension, not just looking for key words like “liberal” that trigger your stimulus/response reflex?
That’s exactly it… he was funny when he was about general stuff- pop culture, politics, trends, etc…
But after 9/11, he seemed to flip out and gravitate toward the political side of things, and his act rapidly morphed away from being comedy, and into being rather acerbic conservatively oriented political commentary. Nowadays he’s trying to make a point more than he’s trying to be funny, and that’s what’s making all the difference.
Again, good comedy typically punches up. If he was a liberal, those jokes would have been funny.
something else too he used to be called "dennis leary for smart people but that type of comedy seems to fallen out of favor entirely
Dennis Miller pre-9/11 was a moderate with a libertarian bent. He had no particular soft spot for liberals, and especially had no love whatsoever for the Clintons. (March 2001 Dennis Miller Live - “The Clintons are the Costco of sleaze.”/ Late 2000 Dennis Miller Live - disdainfully predicting Hillary’s run for president when she initially announced running for the U.S. Senate in NY and saying that if Bill would just give Hillary a good lay, she would forget all about the Senate)
He went from this:
[QUOTE=Dennis Miller pre-9/11]
Americans stick their nose where it doesn’t belong more than Cyrano de Bergerac giving head.
[/QUOTE]
to:
[QUOTE=Dennis Miller post-9/11]
Forbes magazine has named Mel Gibson this year’s most powerful celebrity. … Forbes’ least powerful celebrity? [Miller displayed the widely circulated image from the Lynndie England photographs of a hooded Iraqi prisoner with wires attached to his outstretched arms] You’re looking at him. Screw this guy. … [He’s a] bad guy.
[/QUOTE]
My appreciation for Dennis Miller’s humor tracks roughly with my esteem of Ayn Rand’s literature. I found it brilliant in 1993 when I was a college senior… now, not so much. One of us outgrew the other.
Well, just to be fair about this point, all comedians do this. If you see a comedian on a talk show having a funny conversation, it’s not extemporaneous; it’s a planned bit, being fed by the host. Very, very few comedians have ever been truly and consistently good at improvisation, and ever the ones who are famous for it aren’t actually improvising as much as you think they are.
Writing truly A-grade comedy is incredibly difficult and slow. No comedian has so much material that they won’t repeat elements of their current set from show to show.