Agreed. But it doesn’t seem like a lot of people have that ability. Witness all the “how dare you!” hand-wringing over gay penguins. Stewart may poke fun at all sides, but his biggest applause and laugh segments are those that poke fun of the right. Maybe as Washington swaps parties for a few years, his audience will morph from lefties to righties.
All the one post, you mean? The one line, two sentence post, made by a guest?
Anyway. Offending people can be funny. Repeatedly telling people how you don’t care if you offend people is not funny. It’s not even meta-funny. It’s like people who repeatedly declare themselves to be “wacky” (“I’m a bit mad, me”), and then prove it by wearing a silly tie. Bill Hicks, for example, didn’t go around shouting “hey, look at me offending everyone!” - he got on with actually offending them.
I can understand being blinded by partisanship, but damn. You do know how to spell “gay”, right?
I thought the show title was riffing on MTV’s old Half Hour Comedy Hour.
I count about seven posts in this thread addressing the ad’s mention of gay penguins. Only one of those appears to me to be expressing offence at it; the rest are pointing out - quite rightly - that it’s just massively unfunny. But maybe this is “hand-wringing” to you. Who knows? You certainly seem to be a master of projection.
Speaking of which, I realise you love your little hinterland of dorky “neutrality” whereby you feel that you can just shout “partisan!” at all and sundry like a Polish informer who needs a new winter coat, but this UK-resident, some-time Conservative, some-time Green voter finds it more than slightly pathetic. Oh yeah, I’m just balls-out for those Democrats here in London.
Sheesh.
So what? Who says it has to be created in the image of TDS?
I don’t really care for FoxNews that much… except how it seems to tweak so many people around here for absolutely ridiculous reasons. It’s not a copy of The Daily Show– BFD. If it had been a copy, someone would be Pitting it for that reason.
Well, found a segment. Wow, a Marion Barry joke! Way to stay on the cutting edge! And the laugh track is clearly stuck on infinite loop.
There’s something inherently funny about gay penguins. But wishing offense to gay penguins is really unfunny; it’s like pulling the wings off of flies. What did the gay penguins do to you?
Anyway, this kind of “look at how politically incorrect I am!” schtick is pure comedy gold to the right-wing nutbars. They’ll be saying what they’re all thinking, if it weren’t for the feminists/PC police/gay penguin advocates.
IIRC, this was the stated concept–to skewer the left the same way other satirical news shows (which would be TDS and Colbert) skewer the right. I guess they didn’t notice how vicious Stewart has been to the Democratic primary candidates.
That was awful. A joke about Obama’s initials being B.O. ? Is the show written by second graders?
Ooh, I know:
“Chappaquiddick!” <insert laugh track>
Commercials: 8 minutes
Hillary is an ugly shrill bitch: 4 minutes
Political incorrectness (aka “being an asshole”) for its own sake: 4 minutes
Ted Kennedy is a fat drunk: 4 minutes
Clinton got a blowjob: 4 minutes
Muslims ride camels and have weird names and wear funny things on their heads: 2 minutes
That one Dixie Chick sure is a bitch: 2 minutes
This post from some anonymous commenter on a Daily Kos diary shows that liberals sure are stupid: 1 minute
Man alive, do we ever hate the French: 45 seconds
Actual comedy: 15 seconds (if time allows)
Well this is the thing, innit. It’s very difficult not to be funny about gay penguins; but they managed it. Twice!
I guess I am showing my filthy partisan nature, though. It’s true; I fucking hate bad comedy. The delivery of those two anchors was awful. But then on the few occasions I’ve seen Jon Stewart I tend to think he over-eggs it a bit, too. John Oliver’s a laugh, but then we had him first on the far superior “Mock the Week” (which, incidentally, is a genuinely equal-opportunity political/current-events comedy show, but which for some strange reason feels no need to make this its unique selling point. Maybe because it’s actually funny).
I think it will be on for several seasons. I think Fox News is more interested in keeping the show on than turning a profit on it. Rightwing dialectical materialism comes to comedy. Sounds hilarious.
If they wanted to make an appropriate response to the TDS, they should put it on Fox, instead of Fox news. Put it on Sunday night and let it sink or swim, or at least take the chance of taking a bath on it. Or is that idea a little too free market?
Dead Badger:
Best metaphor ever. Well played, sir.
Despite your monumental delusion of self-importance — thinking yourself as critical to this discussion as a Chihuahua at a tea party wanting its belly rubbed — the fact of the matter is that you had not even posted when I made my original comment. Just so you know, I had not been thinking, “Badger must be out there somewhere, and so I hope he will realize that I’m talking about him.”
I can’t help but grin at anything that pokes fun at Oprah and her “I get to be on the cover EVERY SINGLE MONTH! YAY!!!” magazine.
On the other hand, those two hosts were wretched even after I had lowered my expectations dramatically in preparation for viewing the clip.
The over-use of the laugh track (And the fact that they need one in the first place) is painful.
Man, that was pretty bad. There are funny conservatives out there, I know several personally who are extremely funny. That’s right, some of my best friends are funny conservatives.
This is just wack.
The only thing that make me even smile during that 2 minutes was the “Obama vs. Tiger Woods-Whose More Diverse” headline and wimps didn’t even sell that joke.
If the show is funny, good for them, but I don’t think its going to get much better than that because of many of the reason already mentioned in this and the other threads. Offense for the sake of offense is rarely funny.
Stewie: Where did you get that thing [points at a laugh track]?
Brian: I got it from the set of the Dharma and Greg show.
Stewie: I’m surprised it had anything left in it.
To be fair there are two mentions of bigotry on the part of the gay penguins… The guest and myself.
I just think its poor taste because even though its only “meh” on the offensive scale its the only “joke” of sorts they tried to put in their promo.
Expect self loathing gay hating frat boy mentality. In suits and red ties.