David Frum -- that delightful pip that brought "axis of evil" into our collective vocabulary -- recently experienced the first two episodes of Fox's response to The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. He was less than impressed:
Original here...
Why I thought this was interesting, beyond the being a spot-on review of this monstrosity, is the underlying theme that but for Colbert and Stewart, Conservatives would be riding high on a wave of hip cultural sentiments.
That's bullshit. I know Jonah Goldberg and his ilk tried to make conservatives "hip" by labeling themselves "South Park Conservatives" some years back. That fell on it's silly face, as it deserved to, because if there's one thing conservatives isn't it's hip. Given the stodgy, authoritarian nature of their philosophy, it's impossible to be funny or hip. Their humor consists of taking basic "truths" (like Michael Moore is stupid, Liberals are fags, and Muslims are terrorists) and repeating it over and over again. Dennis Miller is not funny, Goldberg is not funny, and no one attempting conservative political humor is funny. Really -- when you think the world is flat, how can you make fun of someone else.
Quote:
| "1/2 Hour" Revisited I DVR'd the next "1/2 Hour News Hour" on Sunday night and settled in to watch last night. The first episode at least had some emotional impact: "I can't believe how bad this is!" With episode 2, the surprise has all vanished. One just sits there wondering how long the show can last. The show jokes that it offers "an hour's worth of news in half an hour - or it's free." All I can say is that the show certainly feels like it lasts an hour. This week, the show's writers had a good idea: Remember all those news stories four and five years ago about 8-year-old boys being accused of sexual harassment because they pinched an 8-year-old girl? Let's do a pretend hidden-camera investigation of pre-school sexual predators, like something you'd see on a local news show. Could have been funny - had the concept not completely exhausted the writers creativity. The actual bit itself was dreary. Another extended joke had an expert being stumped by the two hosts as they delivered a long list of names of accused terrorists, Mohammed bin Ahmed, that kind of thing, and wondered aloud what these people could possibly have in common. That was funny when Little Green Footballs did it after the 7/7 bombings in 2005, and still kind of funny when Canadian bloggers did it after the Toronto arrests in the summer of 2006. But of course the producers of the "1/2 Hour News Hour" work on the assumption that their audience is too palsied and out-of-it to have heard anything before. The hosts are not getting any better either. Joel Surnow told NRO on Friday that he wanted to produce a program that would set Michael Moore's hair on fire. He has not done it. More seriously, he has failed to do something much more important: create a conservative institution with cultural power. The Daily Show and now Steven Colbert have taught a generation of college students that Republicans are ridiculous, absurd, hopelessly past it. And their work has had an effect: today's 20-somethings are more Democratic than any equivalent cohort since World War II. "The 1/2 Hour News Show" does not counteract Comedy Central's clever cultural sabotage. On the contrary: it contributes to it. If there is anyone under 72 still watching it, they are not thinking, "Gee - conservatives can tell a joke." They are thinking, "Conservatives are a joke." |
Why I thought this was interesting, beyond the being a spot-on review of this monstrosity, is the underlying theme that but for Colbert and Stewart, Conservatives would be riding high on a wave of hip cultural sentiments.
That's bullshit. I know Jonah Goldberg and his ilk tried to make conservatives "hip" by labeling themselves "South Park Conservatives" some years back. That fell on it's silly face, as it deserved to, because if there's one thing conservatives isn't it's hip. Given the stodgy, authoritarian nature of their philosophy, it's impossible to be funny or hip. Their humor consists of taking basic "truths" (like Michael Moore is stupid, Liberals are fags, and Muslims are terrorists) and repeating it over and over again. Dennis Miller is not funny, Goldberg is not funny, and no one attempting conservative political humor is funny. Really -- when you think the world is flat, how can you make fun of someone else.
