Humor, they say, is tragedy plus time.
But humor is also a something else.
Over John McQuaid from HuffPo asks the question: Why Aren't Conservatives Funny?
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Why do conservatives have such a hard time with humor? Just take a look at this clip from the new Daily Show wannabe on Fox News, The ½ Hour News Hour, produced by 24's Joel Surnow. It generates a few half-chuckles, maybe, but it's basically just lame.
Yes, this is a serious question.
And no, I'm not saying there aren't funny conservatives. Just that, generally speaking, "conservative humor" tends to be an oxymoronic term.
Sometime early in the Clinton presidency Rush Limbaugh appeared on David Letterman. Letterman was pretty generous (as opposed to his more interesting, confrontational approach to Bill O'Reilly), and lobbed some easy setups Limbaugh's way. Though Limbaugh obviously considers himself to be a witty fellow, he ignored them. The whole segment wasn't even amusing, just weird. Limbaugh gave a skeptical, somewhat bemused audience his take on Hillary Clinton. Letterman did his "dumb guy" impression.
One answer is that a sense of grievance underlies much of the conservative media. Limbaugh, Fox News and many in the right-wing punditocracy trade on the sense of being excluded and demeaned by elites, who are thus deemed to deserve nothing but scorn and mockery. So their attempts at humor - at least, the ones that get broadcast - tend to be pretty blunt and obvious, sometimes mean-spirited. That is, not funny. Dennis Miller seemed to lose it when he put himself in the Bush camp and started announcing his fervent desire to blow our enemies up. Ha ha!
Surnow, to his credit, seems to recognize that harshness doesn't do it. But he's got a long way to go.
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My answer to McQuaid’s question goes like this.
The greatest humorist in American history was Mark Twain, and even as he wickedly ripped American mores and culture one new one after another, he never put himself above or outside of the human clown college he mocked so mercilessly.
In the Great Parade of Fools he made it clear that he was right out front flingin’ poo and coveting his neighbor’s wife’s ass as big and loud as any other of us bewildered monkeys.
In the end, great humor – the kind that makes your bones hum -- is a child of intelligence, a sometimes-unwanted empathy for your fellow simians, and the eye for the telling detail honed guillotine-sharp on that whet stone of painful outsiderhood.
In other words, three of many, many, many humanizing features that Conservatives seem to lack at the molecular level.
19 comments:
That "you might be a redneck if..." guy makes me laugh sometimes. And the Fat "Cable Guy" can also be pretty funny if'n you ask me. I used to honestly like "Hee Haw" too.
Really.
Oh yeah,
I hope this 1/2 hour comedy hour/ right wing Daily Show runs for years and years. It's like those contestants on American Idol who can't sing auditioning for Mr. Simon. It's fun to watch in a train-wreck sorta way.
Dennis Miller used to be a centrist with rightish leanings.
The 9/11 attacks worked perfectly on him, making him a rabid rightist.
I suspect traitors in our own government and other power structures allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen, so that fear would license wars of conquest abroad and a police state at home.
"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."
Oh, and I would submit that Twain began as a humorist and ended as something very different, and much greater. His was an astounding moral trajectory. He is my lamp and guiding star.
You know, it's funny... or not. A bout of insomnia the other night had me watching a Dennis Miller HBO special from the beginning of the first Clinton admin - before all of the sliming began in earnest. I stopped on the channel because Miller's slide to the Dark Side always seemed incongruous to me. I SWEAR I could remember the man being funny, and I watched to see if it was all just a dream. Nope. He was funny, and even complimentary to Hillary! Thus, my theorem is proven - Conservatism sucks the funny right out of ya.
Conservatives have no sense of humor because their worldview is so fvcked, it's just not funny.
I don't know what you guys are talking about, conservatives are funny as shit. It's just that most of their humor is unintentional.
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Great analysis, DG. And since conservatives are control freaks, they can't relinquish their need to be in charge of what everyone is doing, thinking, and saying long enough to actually LISTEN to other people and gain an understanding of how they think. And they can never, never, never, never laugh at themselves because then they'd have to admit they're not perfect and in perfect control of their own behavior. It's life without any appreciation of the absurdity of living.
--gravie
Mr. Clemens is talking with his spiritual granddaughter Molly Ivins right now. They've got lots to discuss.
The rules of humor:
1) It must be grounded in reality.
2) Kicking the downtrodden or the innocent isn't funny.
GOP humor might occasionally meet the first rule, but it always falls down on the second.
Thinkin of Konservative humor, I'm reminded of the character Jorge de Burgos in U. Eco's The Name of the Rose (the Movie).
William of Baskerville: But what is so alarming about laughter?
Jorge de Burgos: Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith, because without fear of the Devil there is no more need of God.
Jorge de Burgos: Laughter is a devilish wind which deforms, uh, the lineaments of the face and makes men look like monkeys.
William of Baskerville: Monkeys do not laugh. Laughter is particular to men.
Jorge de Burgos: As is sin. Christ never laughed.
William of Baskerville: Can we be so sure?
Jorge de Burgos: There is nothing in the Scriptures to say that he did.
William of Baskerville: And there's nothing in the Scriptures to say that he did not. Why, even the saints have been known to employ comedy, to ridicule the enemies of the Faith. For example, when the pagans plunged St. Maurice into the boiling water, he complained that his bath was too cold. The Sultan put his hand in... scalded himself
Drifty, I've been wondering about this for years--wondering about their lack of capacity for humor as well as their lack of any good artists ever.
After going through more complex theories, I've settled essentially on the "child of intelligence" answer. In other words, conservatives suck at humor and art because they are stupid bastards.
Grand Moff...:o) :o) :o)
'Zackly! When bush scolds the Iraqis for not being grateful enough for all he's done for them, Robin Williams' dick shrinks 30%, just from his chagrin at hearin' the master of stand-up, speak. :o)
PhoenixLady, cool thought...:o)
The way I responded to this elsewhere:
The problem with right-wing humor is that it tries to be right-wing humor. First the agenda, then the humor... and if its not funny, add a laugh track. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as well as earlier geniuses like George Carlin and Robin Williams, go after the absurd situations of life, no matter where they found them. It just happens that right-wing politics is full of absurdities.
I have trouble putting my finger on it. There's an undercurrent of meanspiritedness, yes, but I don't think that's sufficient explanation.
I think one of the key characteristics of humor, especially Daily Show type humor, is irreverence, the sense that all these Terribly Important People are completely full of themselves. It's all about, as the British say, taking the piss out of them.
But to me, the Republican mindset is best summed up by this.
One other possible explanation, which would also explain the Dennis Miller de-funninization, is that fanatics are just too obsessed to be funny.
Sucking up to the powerful while mocking and deriding the powerless just isn't funny unless you are an authoritarian sadist, so insecure that you have to put down someone lower on the heirarchy than yourself in order to feel good.
Combined with their lack of analytical skills (who needs to analyse reality when you can just 'believe' things to make them true) and deadened lack of compassion for others, and you have the aptitudes of prison guards, playground snitches and Stasi informants rather than humorists.
As someone said earlier, you have to recognize yourself or at least a loved one in your target. Show some compassion. Then if the jokes don't always provoke belly laugh level, the audience still connects to the comic as a fellow human. So some love for, honesty about and connection to targets are essential. An audience will indulge a comic who shows these qualities more than they would one who doesn't.
Also, by being willing to engage in friendly fire, the comic broadens the audience to include nominal enemies who'll listen to the jokes about their own side but also laugh a bit when their own oxen are gored. Comics who don't, mostly rightwing ones, have narrow audiences and thus are less suuccessful. Their only audiences are their ideological bedfellows, and only as long as the shots are aimed directly at the enemy.
It's why one dead Bill Hicks is worth ten live Dennis Millers.
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