Oh, let us not forget that one of Gore’s daughter’s (Kristen IIRC) was a staff writer for “Futurama.” That gives the liberals a huge leg up, IMHO.
Liberal here.
Even Gore could make fun of his image. He once gave life-sized cardboard cutout of himself to Bill Clinton as a gag present.
[quote]
msmith537: …liberals tend to take offense at non-PC humor.
I don’t know about most other liberals, but you have me pegged. Since I have been aware that language influences the way we think, I really hate most jokes about the differences in men and women or jokes that stereotype their behavior. The same is true for racial and cultural jokes.
{b]Phase42’s** “racial” joke above is an exception. It doesn’t play on the stereotype of Blacks. It’s funny because of the twist.
And my all-time favorite conservative, William Buckley, has had such a caustic sense of humor that he made me pay attention to what he had to say. I am open to almost anyone who is genuinely witty.
Another funny conservative was Barry Goldwater. He was with JFK once and Kennedy was notorious for never carrying money. He asked Sen. Goldwater for a dime so that he could call one of his friends from a phone booth. Goldwater responded, “Here’s a quarter. Call both of them.”
I’m not an American, so i’m probably not qualified to comment on the question like i’m just about to… 
But it strikes me this is a silly question. There is a kind of implicit assumption in it that conservatives and liberals are two completely different kinds of people, who are relatively homogenous within their own particular group.
This is wrong, people have all sorts of political beliefs, ranging from authoritarian to liberal (libertarian), far left to far right. Political beliefs are distributed along two or more continuums, rather than just been divided into one of two types. The same happens with sense of humour, and there is no evidence to suggest that your position on the political belief scale is in any way correlated with your position on a sense of humour scale (if it were possible to objectively analyse humour).
Oh, I’d say it’s a wash. Ideologues of any and all persuasions have their sacred cows, and get really touchy when anyone mocks them.
And if you think the Religious Right is utterly humorless, explain Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky. I don’t think either of those guys has ever SMILED in his life, let alone laughed.
Agreed.
By the measure of “ability to laugh at oneself”, both the liberal and conservative true believers are a remarkably humorless bunch. The capacity to launch heavy-handed gibes at the other camp doesn’t count.
Oh, and when it comes to “dry sarcasm and witticism”, you could probably cite such luminaries as William Buckley and George Will. There are probably people who think Will is a laff riot, but include me out.
Of course, you say this as a liberal.
Isn’t it amazing how liberals all are in 100% agreement that their brand of humor is witty and intellectually superior while the humor of the enemy is of an inferior sort?
Should we go ask KKK members if their racial beliefs are valid or not and use that as the sole yardstick to measure them by?
Congratulations! You have just found the heart and soul of American politics. The way it is approached in this country is essentially identical to a form of racism. The liberal and conservative races hate each other with a passion, indulge in demonization at every and all opportunities, and consider the other to be genetically and irredeemably inferior. It’s not politics, it’s a form of religion.
I support this theory.
Uhh, right.
Throwing out the extremes (which has several posters have pointed out, are always humourless) The first big divide isn’t politics, it’s intellect. Smart people of any stripe are going to have better senses of humour than people who aren’t so bright.
Down on a political level, it seems to me that conservatives are more likely to poke fun at a person’s attitudes whereas liberals (paradoxically enough) are more likely to poke fun at a person’s attributes. Think, for example, of the endless hilarity over Bush’s pronounciation of certain words.
In general, and only slightly, I think there is more a tendency for conservatives to be irreverent and poke holes in sacred cows. Conservatives seem to be more able to make fun of themselves, perhaps because they’re a bit more cold-blooded and don’t identify themselves as personally with the policies they support. It’s therefore more possible to make fun of yourself without damaging the cause.
There are, of course, lots of funny people all across the spectrum. Franken and Clinton are funny (though he was hardly a hard-core liberal, I suppose) but so are McCain and Schwarzenegger.
Tom Lehrer did a pretty good job of mocking both sides equally.
Come again? I criticised the question, not American politics. I said there was an implicit assumption in the question, but i didn’t say that that assumption was shared by anyone else, let alone that it characterised US political debate.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker are Republicans? Kind of surprises me, although based on the shows they make it makes sense. They definetly leave no room for pity for either side, though. Ditto The SImpsons, which is an itneresting contrast because, even though I live the show, it seems many of the writers/producers are fairly liberal. Actually, I can’t say for sure about Groening, but I saw James L. Brooks give a political speech once and he seemed to leave no doubt about his political leanings. However, the show, much like South Park, will tell whatever joke makes people laugh no matter what political figure it skewers. After all, while they did do the whole episode where Bush Sr. moves in next door and Homer picks a fight with him (classic), they also had Bill Clinton “appear” on two separate occasions, neither one of which was very flattering at all. One he asks Marge to sleep with him and says something alone the lines of ‘I’ve slept with pigs’ (not sure if that is a sly Monica reference or not) and in another he comments about how if you don’t like the outcome of a contest, you complain until you get your way (ironically this was pre-2000 election). No pity for either party seems to be shown.
Before we ask who has a better sense of humor, shouldn’t we define that better?
It’s relatively easy to poke fun at yourself because you’re in control. So I don’t count Bill Clinton’s video for much. Ditto for the self-mockeries of the top comedians because they’re always in control. It’s much harder when you’re not in control. I’ve found a sense of humor in that circumstance is very rare no matter where you look.
IMO the most common form of what appears to be intended as liberal humor seems to be calling Bush “Chimp” and “Shrub” and stupid. There are also occasional references to pubbies and Repugnicans. Perhaps repeated schoolkid taunts like these have drowned out whatever sarcasm and dry witticism there is.
I’ve considered this, and I’m confused. I can see only one song that specifically mocks the left: “Folk Song Army”. “National Brotherhood Week” mocks phonies with limited tolerance. You might argue “Pollution” and nuclear weaponry (“So Long Mom”, “Who’s Next?”, “We Will All Go Together”) have continued under both Republicans and Democrats, but to a lesser extent under the latter. Is he mocking the left or the right? Other songs clearly mock the right, not so much their policies but un-hip sentimental songs: “My Home Town”, “She’s My Girl”, “The Wienerschnitzel Waltz”.
Maybe it depends on where you see the middle. Or where Tom saw it.
“Sore Loserman.” “Feminazis.” “Billary.” “The Dean Scream.”
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
That isn’t humor, that is contempt. Totally different thing. It is like calling a rock “boring”
Mudslinging aside, this is pretty silly. You can go on comparing as much as you like - we’re all pretty much the same as people. Look at a place like Fark, and you’re grabbing humor from every walk of life in the same cauldron. It is easier to divide humor into “irreverant” or “satirical” groupings than political groupings. One group isn’t any more funny than the other.
Ba-dum-ding
OK, so maybe Soviets weren’t the best jokesters in the world. But the point stands.
Just a few of my faves:
Clenis Envy: (Cl)inton’s p(enis) Envy.
Clenis Syndrome: An uncontrollable urge to blurt out “Clinton did it!” or “Oh yeah? What about Clinton?” rather than using logic and reason to make one’s point.
Coulter-intuitive: Making shit up that has nothing to do with the known universe.
Condi-ment: A statement that needs to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt.
Crying Wolfowitz: Telling lies to achieve an objective.
Applepiety: A “holier (and more patriotic) than thou” attitude.
Cheney’s Razor: A philosophic rule that the most complex explanation of an unknown phenomenon is probably correct.
False DickChenomy: The arguer offers only two options in a situation, one of which is objectively pro-Saddam.
Going Dennis Miller: Using 9/11 as one’s excuse to support the entire GOP agenda, because you endorse George W. Bush’s goal to rid the world of the “Godless, Judeo-Christian-hating mud people” - but in a way that doesn’t sound racist - because 9/11 hurt you a lot.
Europlexy: The condition of a conservative being worked up into a froth about what Europeans think of the U.S. while simultaneously insisting that he/she “doesn’t care at all” what the Europeans think of the U.S.
Limbaughcrisy: loudly denouncing “degenerate” and illegal behavior, which one nevertheless secretly practices.
Noonanism: Wet, rapturous bombast about the feet and other appendages of Conservative Real Men - habitually used in comparison to Bill Clinton. See also: Pegstasy.
Reagantology: The cult of Ronald Reagan, who was obviously a perfect human being with no character flaws, and the 4th member of the Holy Trinity. Its adherents are known as Reagantologists.
Scaliosis: A condition wherein the afflicted develops a preternatural ability to read the minds of Constitutional framers at a remove of over 200 years.
Occam’s Pretzel: The logical fallacy of attempting to deduce the policy of the Bush administration by assuming that Bush makes the decisions.
Cableism: An obvious lie repeated so many times it functions as a truth, for the time being.
Originally compiled by Atrios
As a rabid West Wing fan, I like the interplay between liberals and conservatives. Ainsley Hayes, for example, the conservative white female White House counsel confronted a rather bellicose feminist working as a temp in Sam’s office. Their exchanges over Sam’s remark that Ainsley would make a good dog break a leash were illustrative. The conservative humor seems more disarming to me, as in “See? We’re not the monsters you suspected we were.” And the liberal humor seems more aggressive to me, as in “Could you possible be more of an idiot?”.
No offense, Lib, but I think using a television program featuring fictional politicians isn’t really the most reliable way of drawing conclusions. 
You contended right humor is mostly mocking. You give examples although I didn’t dispute the point. You contended left humor tends to be witty and sarcastic. I disputed that and gave common examples. You do not address them. What exactly is it you think I was trying to pull?
So how would you classify rjung’s examples?
Well, that’s basically what I was trying to point out with my examples. rjung contended otherwise.
annaplurabelle: I think most of those are forced and not very funny. I’m probably influenced by the fact that I don’t agree with Atrios’s politics. Of course, no one on the left would ever let their politics influence what they think is funny. coughDennis Millercough
I picked those examples because I thought they would work better in this format (ie debate terms parody) than a transcript of a stand-up routine (where timing and delivery nuance gets lost in print). To be fair, I tried to find some conservative/gop equivalents on the net and didn’t have much luck.
There’s gopfun.com, “Home of the original Dubya Dance” ?!!
From conservativehumor.net:
If you’ve got any examples of what you do find funny, please share.