Do Adjust Your Sets

No TWICO today - I just haven't had time. In part that's because I've been working on some exciting New York politics-related stuff, which (I hope) will be announcible within maybe a month or so.

So anyway, what about conservative humor? you ask. You didn't ask? Well, that's probably smart. I won't actually say that conservatives can't be funny - they've got South Park. But fifteen seconds of Julia Gorin makes me want to claw my eyeballs out, and I'm afraid that's more representative of the right's efforts at organized comedy. I've heard conservatives be quite funny in actual conversation. But, for the most part, television seems to bring out their mean-spirited and clueless sides.

So here's Vernon Lee, on the right's latest crime against comedy, which we were promised would be a conservative version of the Daily Show:

Perhaps all that Wingnut Welfare has made our brave men and women of the conservative fold soft.

For sadly, the creators seemed to have missed the point of TDS: its satire is not aimed at Republicans, it's aimed at the media and politics. (Republicans have largely dominated the political landscape, hence their overrepresentation in the goofball derby that is TDS.) Clearly, Jon Stewart is liberal; he endorsed John Kerry in 2004. And none would doubt that the show has a liberal slant.

But that's not because it attacks Republicans directly. Only indirectly. All of those Airhead Journo remotes - or better yet, faux remotes in front of greenscreen backdrops - are designed to mimic the vapidity that is our journalistic profession as practiced on teevee. And that is the heart and soul of TDS. [...]

The day conservatives leave the Barbra Streisand jokes behind is the day they lose their souls. (Or so they must believe.) But they wouldn't be losing their souls - they'd be gaining an audience.

Yeah, but I can never get enough Streisand jokes. And Michael Moore! Man, is he fat.

Labels: conservatives, Media, meta, Vernon Lee

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:43 PM