Now, Universe, I know I haven’t been a very good pantheist, but if you could just follow up on Marley’s suggestion…
I wouldn’t miss a second of it, I’ll tell you that.
Ratings gold, I tells ya!
The answer is basically no. Even if you agree with Dennis Miller’s politics, his “take a predictably partisan rant, run it through a thesaurus, add some out-there analogies, and read from teleprompter” shtick was getting as old as the Saturday Night Live “Copy Guy” sketch even before his 9/11 conversion.
Check this out:
I mean, about the only content there is that Nancy Pelosi “voted against intelligence spending” (whatever THAT means in this day and age of technical lies about what votes means what for what) and that she fumbled a bit with the gavel. Ok… Also, Miller thinks shes stupid, and he knows lots of big words and elaborate analogies to express it. Get it?
Part of the shtick with The Daily Show is that he is able to look over at the Democrats and make fun of their ineptitude and lack of ideas. The humor is often self-defacive. It gives the show a air of credibility when he points at Bush and calls him a bumbling ass. If the Foxnews version is also able to point at Bush and call him a bungling ass, then it could be amusing.
But I doubt they will be able to do that because on the same channel, they’re going to want to portray him as a competent leader. Whereas on the Daily Show, they don’t have to worry about the channel becoming less credible.
Yeah…that clip isn’t about Pelosi it’s about Miller. If that’s the best he can do in finding clips to make his point it’s pretty sad. I just watched TDS which poked fun at Pelosi having to back peddle on her criticism of Bush. IMO much of TDS success is their clever use of real clips to make the joke.
Ah - the stupid market. The terminally humourless market. The Pander to My Bigotry market. It’ll be the biggest ratings winner ever.
I think the tell-tale moment is when he puts a train in her head to illustrate some rambling analogy he’s making about her being stupid. It’s just, I dunno, kind of dumb.
And it suffers because Miller is, you can tell, seriously angry and bitter. It’s not satire, it’s just trying to mix some humor in after the fact into a speech he might give at a political rally. With even Lewis Black, you can tell that it’s part of a character, a sort of ranting Andy Rooney on crack. And, of course, Black still basically lets the material do half the funny for him.
Yes. If by “a field day” you mean “several of them, like one every day.”
That, and having a long term memory. Hanging onto clips that they think might become relevant months later. The one with Rumsfeld saying that the Iraq war should take maybe “six days, six weeks, I doubt six months” seems to come up a lot. And anytime someone denies something they previously said, it seems like the Daily Show staff new it was going to be denied the day it was said, so they stored the clip away somewhere until that day came.
Personally, I’ll watch this to see what it’s like, but I’ll probably give up after an episode or two.
The problem, of course, is that reality has a liberal bias, so the Faux version will only be funny to the extent that it’s dishonest. But then what else is new?
Add me to the list of “I’ll watch it if it’s funny.” I watch the Daily Show from time to time. It’s still funny, but not nearly as much as back in the day when Kilborn was the host.
I was also a fan of Dennis Miller on HBO. That’s a good example of conservative humor. Also, South Park and seasons 3-10 or so of the Simpsons are good examples of funny shows with a conservative edge to them.
With a majority in both houses, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean’s party should provide plenty of material for conservative comics to work with.
I predict it shall fail.
Think–if a 500 lbs wrestler trips a 5 year old boy, who falls & cries, & the wrestler points & laughs…that is not funny.
However—if a 5 year old boy trips a 500 lbs wrestler, who falls & cries, & the 5 year old boy points & laughs…that is funny.
You cannot ridicule the poor & powerless, & still get laughs. You can get them by ridiculing the rich & powerful. As long as the Republicans are in power, & identified (rightly or wrongly) as the Party of the Rich, then Conservative humor will fail.
In fact, Conservative Humor does best when the Middle Class is doing well finacially. Since good paying factory jobs are scarce, this does not bode well for Conservative Humor.
Ever heard of redneck jokes? Polish jokes? Black jokes? Pre-feminist jokes about the foolishness of women? We have a long and rich history of humor – much of it genuinely funny – ridiculing the poor and the powerless.
It’s a sad day when a news channel decides that they have to compete with a comedy channel.
There are few things sadder to watch than conservatives trying to be funny.
Case in point: Mallard Fillmore.
Unless, of course, you have a cruel, sadistic streak in your nature, in which case its a hoot! Or so I’ve heard…
Let’s see…
Dennis Miller
Dave Barry
P.J. O’Rourke
Larry Miller
Drew Carey
Ben Stein
Denis Leary
Penn and Teller
Trey Parker and Matt Stone
Nope, nobody funny there… Granted, some of them come from the more Libertarian side of the fence, but they all love to skewer the left.
As for subject matter…Hell, Barbara Streisand alone should be good for a season’s worth of jokes. The hard core left is easy to make fun off, and making fun of the Hollywood left is like shooting fish in a barrel. And the Democratic party is just full of kooks and nitwits. Now that they have control of Congress, they’ll have a lot more airtime devoted to them, and they’ll put their collective feet in their mouths with great frequency.
I’m not sure such a show will succeed, but if it doesn’t it won’t be for lack of material.
The Democrats are poor and powerless??? Have you looked at the bank accounts of many of the Dems in Congress, and did you forget the results of the election we had just a few weeks ago? Kerry, Pelosi, Kennedy, Feinstein, H. Clinton, Rockefeller… poor and powerless? What am I missing…?
Yeah, but the Daily Show and other liberal funnyfests already make fun of those Democrats. As Bosda noted, mocking the rich and powerful is funny.
IMHO, the biggest problem that a Fox conservative version of the Daily Show would face is not that conservatives can’t be funny, but that it’s death to humor to look as though you’re trying to be funny. Deliberately setting out to create a conservative version of liberal humor comes across as unimaginative, opportunistic, and/or insecure, none of which is very entertaining, except perhaps unintentionally.
So? SNL makes fun of those guys, too. I don’t see that there can’t be room for someone else to do it as well.
I’ve only watched TDS a few times, but they came across to me like they were trying to be funny. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Besides, how much of a viewership does TDS have anyway? Perhaps Fox is expecting to atrack a different set of viewers.
What seems odd to me is how many people here have dismissed this show before it even runs its first episode. Sounds like the producers have hired some people who know what they’re doing, so I’d give it the same odds I’d give any show that I hadn’t seen yet.