Tag Archives: humor

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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Megyn Kelly Must Do Humor on a Higher Level than the Rest of Us

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Remember when Megyn Kelly was all in a huff about the idea that Santa (or Jesus) might not be white? Well…..psych!!! It was all a joke lol, and the problem is with us “humorless” folk who just don’t get her. As Jon Stewart put it:

What appeared to me to be another segment of Fox News expressing anger and victimization over the loss of absolute power and reframing it as persecution of real America by minorities, freeloaders and socialists was actually a jest, a jape, a bit of wise-crackery.

It’s not her fault that her humor is on such a higher level than us!!!

Anyway, it’s such a relief to know that Megyn Kelly is actually a comic character, not an actual, uh, journalist? Reporter? Anchor? News host? Television presenter? Whatever. Let us all remember her wisdom, and hope that we can make her uncomfortable every chance we can get:

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Humor works best, Mr. Tosh, when it points up

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There’s a reason why famous people get “roasted” once they have had a chance to develop a career. Roasting a venerable celebrity is funny, because the audience knows the person (or their persona) and it’s fun to see someone on high get taken down a few pegs in a jocular, agreed-upon-in-advance manner. If celebrities roasted some newcomer just getting their start, though, they’d just look like assholes.

Daniel Tosh, by all accounts, is quite an asshole.

I wrote a little while back that rape is not funny. I stand by that statement.

I also believe that, in comedy, nothing is definitively off limits, but it’s one person in a million that has the self-awareness and comic chops to pull off a joke about the most damaging, hurtful concepts. Daniel Tosh is with us among the 999,999 people who can’t pull it off.

To review:

– An anonymous woman writes of her experience watching Tosh at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles:

So Tosh then starts making some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc. I don’t know why he was so repetitive about it but I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find them funny and never have. So I didnt appreciate Daniel Tosh (or anyone!) telling me I should find them funny. So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”

[snip]

After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” and I, completely stunned and finding it hard to process what was happening but knowing i needed to get out of there, immediately nudged my friend, who was also completely stunned, and we high-tailed it out of there. It was humiliating, of course, especially as the audience guffawed in response to Tosh, their eyes following us as we made our way out of there. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said about me.

– The proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan.

– Tosh apologizes, sort of, saying he was misquoted but not saying what he actually said.

– Other comedians defend Tosh for a variety of reasons.

– The Laugh Factory’s owner offers an account of what happened substantially at odds with the woman’s story.

– A few people make astute observations, but most people just sort of wail.

Meghan O’Keefe had some interesting observations, and she hit on how it might be possible for someone to successfully joke about rape: she mentions Sarah Silverman, of whom I’m not a particular fan, who has such jokes in some of her routines (click through to O’Keefe’s post, because I don’t want to quote them).

The difference between her jokes and what Tosh said, basically, is about who in the joke has the power. It is also about consent to being the subject of a joke. Sarah Silverman’s jokes, essentially, are about herself. Tosh’s joke was about someone else who, unlike the subject of a roast, had not consented. Sarah Silverman’s jokes portray an absurd scenario, where the audience’s only accessible reactions are shock or laughter. Tosh’s joke, with a simple shift in tone of voice, becomes a threat–to the list of possible reactions, add fear. If you accept no other reason for why rape jokes are not funny, accept that one.

Austin comic Curtis Luciani has an excellent response to the situation, explaining how these power dynamics determine the lines between funny, creepy, threatening, and downright fucking terrifying. Rape is very, very prevalent in our society, both as an actual act of violence and a cultural motif, far more so than most men realize. Luciani’s analogy is brilliant:

I ain’t buying any of that “If I can make jokes about genocide, why can’t I make jokes about rape?” Horseshit, unless you made those genocide jokes during a gig at the Srebrenica Funny Bone. You got away with making a joke about genocide because your odds of having a holocaust survivor’s kid in the audience were pretty fucking low.

Some extra reading for people who might have a hard time grasping the prevalence of rape in society:

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Because it is time for a chuckle, dangit

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Pete Reynolds at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency takes a look at Republican exit polls, and the results are quite revealing. Excerpts follow. Prepare to be shocked, appalled, dazzled, and pwned:

Nearly 60% of those who have nicknamed a body part voted for Newt Gingrich.

Ron Paul was the choice of 72% of voters who have fired a crossbow at a ferret.

People who hired Peter Cetera to sing at their wedding overwhelmingly supported Mitt Romney.

Ron Paul was backed by three-quarters of the voters who purchase their meat from the trunk of a car.

Romney won among people who blog about board games.

Gingrich won a majority of voters who regularly send back hash browns.

Ron Paul won 63% of voters who have accidentally baked their car keys into a pie.

Romney took 88% of the votes among people whose primary issue was yacht parking.

Of those who thought President Obama was not humanity’s largest threat, 96% were just passing by the polling place on their way to Whole Foods.

It is worth reading the whole piece. Unless you are someone who actually takes this field of Republican presidential contenders seriously as anything besides a threat to our nation’s reputation as a nation not full of idiots. If this is the case, please move along quietly, and try not to touch anything.

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