Miller poked fun at Pelosi for cosmetic surgery and Byrd for being old. Ha Ha. He is a Hollywood guy now. He may see cosmetic surgery occasionally. That is not funny.
I think you are conflating “right-oriented” with a great deal of features that may very well tend to be present among people who also identify as politically to the right. I think that is not relevant to the issue of political humor and whether or not one’s liberal bias prevents them from finding conservative political humor funny. I suspect there are many politically liberal people who find Foxworthy amusing.
Again, is Seinfeld an example of politically liberal comedy?
I think it was too self-centered to care about politics. Although, Kramer did refuse to wear an AIDS ribbon.
I’m not sure what to think of Seinfeld in that regard. My sister likes it, and she’s a fundamentalist Christian.
I have to agree. I am to the left of center on most areas of politics, but I spent 3 hours busting a gut laughing at the first Blue Collar Comedy Tour. I don’t hunt, drink beer, watch NASCAR, or own a pickup. But I still laugh at their jokes.
None of the Blue Collar guys does political humor per se. It is all observational humor that everyone can relate to in one way or another.
Several of my friends also loved Seinfeld, and they are also fundamentalist Christions on the far right. Everytime I saw an episode, all I could think was “These people are disgusting. And not at all funny.” I admit, I would like to see the episode about the Contest.
Two questions about Miller’s reference schtick:
1=Why are his analogies/references always described as “obscure”? The shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, Tennessee Williams, or Pickett’s Charge (things I’ve heard him reference over the years)? An obscure reference would be to the The Alexiad of Anna Comnena or to James G. Blaine even.
2=When did they go from being funny to just a grindingly unfunny and annoying template? It really wasn’t when he became more conservative. Is it just a “Git’r’done” overkill?
I think both of these questions are connected. When he was lesser known- mainly as a stand up fancied by people who like more intelligent(?) fare than the average standup- the references were only known to his core audience, and they obviously liked it, becasue soon that’s what he was known for- that, and his “rants”. Then he got the HBO show, football gig, etc. and he’s now known by the masses. The American masses that is, who don’t like no smart show business guy making jokes they don’t get- and yes, for many Tennessee Williams does qualify as ultra obscure. And then comes the overkill, and the obscure reference just for the sake of it- like in a joke that would have been just as funny without mentioning Sartre or whoever.
I haven’t seen an interview that stilted since Ed Murrow said, “Hey, Joe, whaddya know?”
I agree. He uses these “obscure” references to limit his audience; to give his schtick an air of exclusivity. IOW, to seem smarter than his audience, to make his audience feel stupid. Unfortunately, he’s like a mensa geek: he’s not nearly as exceptional as he thinks he is. I dont’ think any of his references have ever gone over my head, but you get the feeling that he’s just daring you to go, “What does that mean?” so he can feel superior. The overweening smugness of his act has always–always, from the first time I saw him–made him unwatchable for me.
Sure, if you cite the completely non-obscure ones. I’d say referencing “the old broad in ‘From Russia with Love’ with the knife point coming out of her shoe” or someone sitting there like Captain Pike is as obscure as one might really want to get for a comedy routine. It has to be accessible enough that many people will still get it.
I have a feeling your sarcasm meter needs recalibrating.
Jeff Foxworthy tells jokes about rednecks to anyone. He was a big hit at Just For Laughs, which is not exactly Hicktown Revue. He’s hilarious - and he’s very smart.
Maybe SDMB needs a tutorial on how to figure out when people are poking fun at their friends or at the stereotype they belong to.
Frankly, I think we could use a good insensitivity training seminar. 
That’s a good word for the embarrassment that was the Dennis Miller interview. I didn’t understand most of what Dennis said, I didn’t catch most of his references, what I did understand just wasn’t funny, and I suspect he was high as a kite on something. It was like someone pulled his string and just let him go - his schtick didn’t seem to be in response to anything Jon was doing or saying. And did it seem to anyone else like Dennis was looking more like an interviewer than an interviewee? Like he was edging Jon out on his own set, on his own show? I was embarrassed for Jon for having such an unentertaining guest, and embarrassed for Dennis for looking so desperate.
Dennis Miller’s career certainly has been a curious thing. When he had his HBO show in the '90s, which I watched regularly, he would sometimes point out that he wasn’t a liberal, he was a pragmatist. Perhaps the relevant term today would be “maverick” since he seemed at the time to call out or make fun of anything and everything that needed to be called out or made fun of. I don’t seem to recall him making fun of Bill Clinton any more vociferously that he did people like Newt Gingrich, for example, so if he leaned specifically right or left, it was hard to tell. He certainly had a fair share of vitriol for O.J. Simpson, that much was clear. At any rate, this seeming non-adherence to any particular political party, I think, is what made him so popular at the time, because even if you didn’t agree with him 100% all the time, at least he seemed genuinely passionate about what he was talking about.
Well, I do agree with him on one thing, and that is that 9/11 changed him. I recall him stating once that he flat-out refused to make fun of Bush in any way, which seemed to me like an odd thing to say for someone who apparently considered everyone fair game. But going out of his way to make fun of people like Nancy Pelosi seems to me even more suspicious, because if Miller is truly a comedian and not a commentor, then surely he could find better source material. I mean, Pelosi is certainly influential in politics right now, but I wouldn’t say she’s particularly easy to poke fun at without resorting to sexist pot-shots. She’s no Ted Kennedy or Tony Snow, for example. So one must wonder if he truly has the same mindset that he once did, or if he really has leaned in a certain direction.
One thing that has stuck in my mind is the swiftness of Bill Maher’s canning after he made his remarks just after 9/11 equating US bomber pilots to cowards. This probably was a result of the political climate of the time, where digs at the administration or military were generally considered verboten. Could it be that Miller took this as a sign to lay off his usual digs at everything in sight, and to stick to just the gun aimed at everything unrelated to the ruling party?
He didn’t seem so much conservative as misogynistic to me. Between the lame-ass digs at Pelosi’s appearance (wtf? is she supposed to look like a movie star because she’s Speaker of the House?) and his gleefully rabid riffing on a woman who was, rightly or wrongly, an alleged rape victim was just distasteful, IMO. And, as others have mentioned, Not Funny. I’ll bet he gets kicked to the couch a lot at home…
That was the worst “interview” I’ve seen on the Daily Show in a long time. Mr. singular made a good observation - he’s like Robin Williams, only not as funny. :eek:
I watched it last night. Yikes, was that awful! I was even disappointed with Jon for playing along with something so bad. I thought the clip of Byrd wasn’t even worth the effort of showing a clip, and his punch line to the whole thing was “If that was your grandfather at Thanksgiving dinner, you’d say ‘WTF is up with grandpa’!” Ouch.
He reminded me of Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day when he’s trying to get Andie McDowell into bed at the end of the day, so he’s just rushing things through the motions. Of course, it completely fails, and it’s uncomfortable and embarrassing to watch.
I just saw a repeat of the interview and agree it was worse than usual. I love Jon but his rotfl at every stupidly arcane reference Miller made was pandering for no reason- I could see if he was interviewing Clinton, but what appeared to be fake laughs for Dennis Miller was pretty pathetic and pointless. And Miller has upped the reference quote exponentially to the point where every joke becomes a set up for a reference, like he can’t tell a joke without one anymore.
The thing that struck me most (somewhat echoing what others have said) was how pointless and meanspirited his “jokes” were. Pelosi blinks a lot. Byrd is old. Harry Reid is boring? Is that all you got? Really?
Sure, Jon Stewart jokes about Bush’s goofy vocal mannerisms, but he mainly jokes about actual things that have happened, actual policies and decisions and so forth.
(I do want to know more about this $78 million for peanut storage, though… that sounds like something truly scummy that the congress (thus, presumably, democrats) have done, and it deserves to be talked about more and mocked… even if talking about it just results in someone pointing out that it’s around the same level of pork attached to every spending bill from all parties back to the beginning of time, which may or may not be true.)
I remember being very disappointed years ago when I saw Dana Carvey promoting (something) on several talk shows over the course of a few days and he did the same zany “improv” bits on three talk shows, all with clear lead-ins by the host. I’ve seen Dave Barry and several other comics do this as well (including to some extent Robin Williams). While I can understand that you’re not always at your creative zenith and that sometimes you can’t improv as well as you can others, you’d think that being in the business they’d realize how rehearsed, fake, and boring it seems to use the same word for word spiel on each show, each time pretending it’s off the cuff, especially when you should figure out there are people who will watch both shows (especially if they’re fans of yours, as presumably Miller’s radio listeners are) and watch specifically for your appearance.
I’m of an opposite opinion on Miller’s politics, incidentally (and I couldn’t care less that he’s conservative, it’s the 38th parallel ceasefire he has with Bush & cronies). I think it probably kept his career stronger than it would have been otherwise; he’s been riding a dying horse for a while as his act becomes more formulaic and he becomes more obviously bitter (he just seems like he’d be a total asshole in person); I think it gave his career a boost. Though I’ve no doubt he feels that liberals are responsible for his decline.