It’s an idea I’ve had for a while, but was reminded of while reading this thread, when a comment was made comparing Bill Maher and Rush Limbaugh. Basically, it seems that the far-right political pundits schtick is that they’re “mean,” whereas your far-left tend to be “funny.” I’m thinking of Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter, vs. Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. I’m sure I could find a liberal pundit as mean-spirited as Rush Limbaugh if I really searched, but I doubt I could find a right-winger who could tell a joke like Maher or Colbert. I don’t have much to add to this idea, but I would be interested to hear ideas as to why this is, or examples of conservatives who play off liberals for comedic effect (i.e. they’re going for laughs, not sneers from their audience), or why I’m completely wrong in the first place. I would submit that this is one of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives.
PJ O’Rourke is pretty funny. Also, Dennis Miller is a conservative comedian. But I would think that Miller and Maher stopped being funny when they started getting political.
Fox News tried to do a funny conservative news show to counter Stewart and Colbert, but it sank like a stone. Either they couldn’t come up with conservative humor that was actually entertaining, or the concept was so foreign to their audience that they didn’t know how to respond.
I don’t find any political humor to be all that funny, but for those who do care I suppose the difference lies in whose ox is being gored.
I think you’ve (re)discovered “clapter.”
Also, I think Ann Coulter is a helluva lot funnier than Bill Maher.
Is there a difference between mean-spirited humor, and finding mean-spirtedness itself to be humorous?
Liberals are funny because they make fun of conservatives, and conservatives are ridiculous and embarrassing. Conservatives aren’t funny because they try to make fun of liberals, and it isn’t funny when people pick on the helplessly pathetic.
While I would generally agree that conservatives tend to have the market cornered on mean-spiritedness, there are a lot of liberals who don’t have a sense of humor about them.
My sister-in-law is a liberal who has a sense of humor, but it seems that I can’t make jokes about the inferiority of other races, or sexually abusing children, without her getting offended.
I think the basic idea is that liberal humor tends to make fun of the powerful, whereas conservative humor tends to make fun of the powerless. (I say “tends to” because it’s not always true.)
Maher has always been political.
Fine then. When we found out that while he hates religion, he has no problem with liberal “woo” like PETA nutjobbery and anti-vaxing.
From my point of view, I get really annoyed when Maher indulges odd ideas about PETA, vegetarianism, and health care, but they don’t affect the rest of his stuff.
This sums up the difference for me. Conservatives tend to view themselves as the mainstream establishment and comment on those they perceive as outside. Whereas liberals more often come from the point of view of the outsider railing at the establishment (in spite of their personal success).
But I do detect a gleeful cruelty in the humor of the Right - the image I get is a mean little boy pulling the wings off of a butterfly while chortling with an obnoxious HAR HAR HAR! This is only really possible when one is in a power position over a powerless one.
Nick DiPoalo (I think that’s how you spell it). I don’t agree with a single thing he’s ever said politically (he’s true-blue-collar conservative), but he is one of the funniest motherfuckers I’ve ever heard.
Wait, are you saying the Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter were going after laughs?
???
Quite definitely. And both have been very funny at times. People mistake their humor for serious attacks.
However, they often seem to think that any attack is a type of joke. This whole recent Limbaugh brouhaha show someone who can’t understand that a certain type of joke is beyond mere humor and into libel.
DiPaolo
You mean people think they aren’t? I have not paid any attention to Coulter, but Rush clearly thinks he is being funny.
While I agree that at times Conservative talk show host are “mean-spirited”, it is by no means solely a Conservative trait. I find it somewhat funny the responses in this post trying to indicate that Liberals cannot and have not been mean spirited. So, the things said about Sarah Palin and George W Bush were all rainbows and unicorn wishes? The things said by the Left about those two were some of the meanest, most hate filled vile I have ever heard. Everyone in this country has the right to free speech, but please don’t try and tell us that hate filled, mean-spirited comments are solely confined to us Conservatives.