Wednesday, September 05, 2018

Political Humor Is Almost Never Funny

... because it always feels like the comedians are grinding your face into some particular talking point, over and over and over again.

Dig this bit from the right-wing group, We The Internet.


I couldn't finish it any more than I can watch clips of the far-left, late-night comics. You can see all the jokes coming from a mile away and the point of the thing isn't to make me laugh, it's to make me angry. At the end, I'm not supposed to be entertained, I'm supposed to take action. If I wanted to take action, I'd be doing something real, like working on my MGB restoration instead of watching YouTube clips.

Now compare that to Don Rickles at the second Reagan Inaugural. He's not feeding you talking points, he's doing his typical Don Rickles insult schtick and it's pretty funny. It's comedy in a political context, not politics with a smirk and a sneer.


I don't think I'd consider that political comedy at all, at least not in the modern way. Maybe that's because it made me laugh.

5 comments:

Foxfier said...

There can be political-ish stuff that's funny, though.

You can see a lot of the jokes coming, and some of them are childish, but understated-- and it's a heck of a song.

https://youtu.be/d0nERTFo-Sk

Mostly Nothing said...

I made it 1:01 into the first video, it wasn't the least bit funny.

Don was hilarious.

We have taken to muting the TV whenever Sandra Bee comes on, it is just a political attack, it isn't comedy.

tim eisele said...

Yes, I never thought political "humor" was all that funny either. It's easy enough to avoid on TV, though. Everybody in my house just watches Netflix anyway, and the "comedians" never come up.

The political cartoons in the paper usually are depressingly unfunny, too.

Foxfier said...

Warning, this is very, very rude.

BAD LANGUAGE.

But both makes a point and is kinda funny, even though dang does he not understand the right-- or "alt-right"-- and I'm not sure if the examples of alt-right were chosen with humor in mind.

https://www.facebook.com/ABCiview/videos/1870904259886168/UzpfSTE3NDAxMjU4NjI3ODQ0OTo3NTkyMzk4NTc3NTU3MTY/

Eponymous said...

I thought one of the comments was funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHcrucXncdA&lc=UgwoY0esg8DWepgbdH14AaABAg
Zak Nusbaum
I was waiting for him to pull out his "trump" card and take over the conversation.
---

The Trump card, antidote to the woman AND the race card.