Tag Archives: conservatives aren’t funny

Conservative Caricatures (UPDATED)

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By CBS Television (eBay item photo front photo back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsUPDATED 05/14/2014: Fixed some pronoun and spelling errors (h/t Alice).

I’ve commented before (at least twice) on the disconnect between liberals/progressives and conservatives when it comes to humor. I’m still sorting out the reasons for that, but so far I’m coming to the conclusion that humor itself, by virtue of being based in part on the unexpected, has certain inherently “liberal” qualities* (to use the parlance of our times.)

B. Spencer at Lawyers, Guns & Money (fast becoming the most-cited blog on here, I think) offered some thoughts on caricatures of liberals and conservatives in pop culture that got me thinking:

I wrote a post awhile back about liberals and conservatives and how we look at pop culture differently. I’ve noted before–in passing–that there seem to be more liberal caricatures in media than there are conservative caricatures. Yet most liberals seem much less angsty about enjoying popular culture more broadly, and liberal caricatures specifically. I think that it’s too easy and pat to say that “well, libs are just super-cool about everything.” I don’t think that quite covers it.

She proposes that the reason for this is that “most writers, most purveyors of popular culture are ‘on my side.'” She also specifically references the “dour feminists” on Portlandia and notes that they come across as funny in part because the show’s creators, he suspects, “are actually pretty feminist.”

Atrios builds on this, noting that those characters work in part because the writers are making fun of themselves to a certain extent, whereas conservatives who try to lampoon liberals do not have the same sort of understanding: Continue reading →

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Conservatives Aren’t Funny

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By this, I mean that conservatives are not funny when they are trying to be conservative. There are probably enough reasons for this to fill a book, but the fact is that comedy, i.e. the art of making people laugh, strongly tends towards ideas labeled as “liberal” in today’s society. I have argued here before that comedy works best when it is pointed upward, as when someone with less power uses humor on someone with more power. As someone else put it, there is a very good reason why employees of a company might roast their CEO, but the CEO does not roast the janitor.

Some conservatives seem to think that CBS is conspiring against them by giving the Late Show gig to Stephen Colbert. I’ll be said to see The Colbert Report go, but it’s hard to argue, from purely talent- and career-based standpoints, that Colbert hasn’t earned this. And that’s really the key: The Late Show is a comedy show, and Colbert is funny. Limbaugh, et al, are trying to pull more appropriation of progressive language regarding power and oppression, but no one who isn’t already steeped in Limbaugh’s worldview is buying it.

Rush Limbaugh can call his hate speech comedy, but Stephen Colbert’s parody character of conservative hosts is an act of war. One suspects that Colbert’s parody cuts a little too close to the bone for Limbaugh. Conservatives are always looking for a reason to go to war.

In this case, Limbaugh is expertly playing into the Republican victimization complex by claiming that CBS is somehow attacking them by hiring Stephen Colbert. The character that Colbert has played is a funhouse mirror look at how hosts like Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly really behave.

Maybe Rush thinks that he should have been given the gig? The problem with conservatives doing comedy is that they aren’t funny. Glenn Beck thinks he is funny. Rush Limbaugh thinks he is funny, but they aren’t funny. Their humor is usually mean-spirited. Conservative humor tends to enjoy laughing at the misfortune of others.

If conservatives want a spot on a show like The Late Show, they need to put humor over ideology. If conservative ideology just plain isn’t funny, that’s a problem with conservative ideology, not comedy.

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