IMHO anyone who makes the transition from comedy to punditry loses their funny. Jon Stewart is still going for laughs first. So is Nick DiPaolo. Al Frankenstein and Jeanne Garafalo were immensely unfunny on their radio shows despite being funny people
I don’t think Garofalo and Franken thought they were just as funny doing their political advocacy. I’m pretty sure they recognized that they were doing something with a different purpose.
Hence the demise of the network.
Al Franken and the other comedians who hosted shows on that network ran into a major problem: Comedians go from town to town with a set routine that they polish up from time to time, telling pretty much the same jokes to different audiences every night. Comedians on radio have to tell different jokes to the same people every night, and coming up with totally new material every night that is as good as their nightclub routine just can’t be done.
PJ has gone pretty much libertarian. Miller has become a suckup, the useful kind, who can call other people suckups and get paid for it.
Having read some background about the show, I think “Portlandia” is an example of liberals making fun of extreme liberals.
And liberals gently teasing non-extreme liberals.
Really, liberals of all stripes are mocked on the show. It’s really quite hilarious. But you’re right that it seems to be essentially liberals mocking liberals.
When conservatives make fun of liberals, it’s usually followed by a leaden, thudding example of conservatism taking itself seriously. (PJ is the lone exception I can think of.)
Coming from a conservative point of view, I would say that attempt like that Fox News show fail because they start with conservative commentary and then try to add humor to it, rather than writing jokes from a conservative perspective (if you follow what I mean). Liberal shows like The Daily Show/Stephen Colbert/SNL’s Weekend Update are funny because the writers and “anchors” are actually comedians. Conservative attempts at the same style are usually done by conservative commentators who have underestimated how hard it is to time jokes and gauge audience reactions.
That’s a basic problem too, and not limited to either liberal/conservative disagreements or even comedy. A book or movie that’s written as a Message first and book/movie second tends to be inferior or outright awful compared to a book or movie that’s written as entertainment/art that happens to have a message embedded in it.
Bill Maher is a stand up comedian. Jon Stewart is a stand up comedian.
Ann Coulter is a lawyer, author, and syndicated columnist. Rush Limbaugh is a radio talk show host.
I fail to see how anyone could make a liberal vs. conservative statement by comparing 2 comedians with 2 people who are not comedians.
I realize I’m comparing apples and oranges there. And obviously it’s been pointed out that there are hilarious comedians with a conservative bent, and plenty of mean asshole liberals. But my point isn’t so much that Jon Stewart is funnier than Rush Limbaugh (of course he is, he’s a professional funnyman). Look at the people on the front lines of the popular media, the people most associated with their particular side of the aisle. When you look at the liberal side, you get a bunch of people who are stand up comedians. When you look at the conservative side, you get a bunch of people who are lawyers, authors, whatever but NOT comedians.
If you compare apples to apples, the best/most popular liberal comedians have their own wildly popular TV shows and actually shape the public discourse. The best conservative comedians are… comedians. They’re successful and funny and I’m sure pack the house every night and have even written some books, but their latest antics don’t get talked about on news and their latest ideas don’t get substantial airplay. The opposite also holds. When I think of conservative blowhards I think of Rush and Glenn Beck and all the others that have been mentioned. And they’re the ones with the TV shows and popular radio shows whose soundbites get replayed on the news and who influence popular opinion. I don’t doubt that there are liberals who are equally as hateful and toxic, but they’re not the ones on the front page.
It is valid because the conservatives with the power to create such a show (basically the powers that be at Fox News) fail to understand what makes a TV satire show funny. They think you have to start with the conservative dogma, and somehow spin comedy gold out of that right wing straw, instead of looking at the people involved and finding the humor in human foibles. The very fact that Fox chose a lawyer and a talk show host to kick off a comedy show demonstrates the lack of understanding of what is funny. That is the difference between liberal comedy and conservative comedy; conservatives squeeze all the humanity out of the situation because they think liberalism itself should be funny, when they should be look closer at liberal people.
That actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Here’s a relevant CNN article.
It’s easy to make fun of someone like Rick Santorum taking an anti-college stance. It’s harder to poke fun of Obama’s thoughtful measured comments.
And lets face it. A lot of people are conservative because they have a stupid meanness (or mean stupidness) about them. In high school, their “comedy” usually consisted of calling a kid a “fag” because he was different.
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative. - John Stuart Mill
Well, there’s your problem right there!
Oh, man. I wish this was in a different forum, but it is SOOOO difficult not calling you out for the obvious bias in this post. But I won’t, because, well, it’s the wrong forum.
Apropos film clip (abridged), from “Brassed Off”. 