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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 06:01 am
Why are conservatives so funny and clever while lefties are such witless bores? John Birmingham investigates.
Lefties not funny? What about Lowenstein?
Sure, he’s not “haha” funny but….
…oh.Posted by Quentin George on 2006 01 20 at 11:28 PM • permalink
Oh dear, a glimmer of self-consciosness on the Left.
Our easy days may be over, friends.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2006 01 20 at 11:33 PM • permalink
When I lived in Miami the mortgage company I worked for was one of the most politically incorrect places on earth. That’s where I heard, among other things, this: “What do you call a dead baby nailed to the wall?” “Art.”
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 20 at 11:45 PM • permalink
It isn’t that the left doesn’t have a sense of humor it’s just that the rest of us are not refined or educated enough to understand what makes the left laugh. That takes nuance, sophistication and the ability to eye roll when dealing with the hoi polloi.
Posted by Pat Patterson on 2006 01 21 at 12:13 AM • permalink
Birmingham would know. He was very funny when he used to write for Semper Floreat, the Uni of Queensland student paper. Back then he did a very good line in Hunter S Thompson ripoffs. But he used to get in trouble with the lefty editors when he used one of his favourite expressions: “as much fun as a bucket of c**ts”
Posted by Just Another Bloody Lawyer on 2006 01 21 at 12:20 AM • permalink
The selection of right-wing humor taken from P.J. O’Rourke’s book is a textbook example of why righties are usually funnier than lefties. Humor arises from the unintended results of the clash between illusion and reality, and since the Right has a much larger proportion of level-headed realists than the Left, conservatives are better equipped to make the appropriate observations. Leftists, living in a world that is predominantly illusory, are merely disappointed. Most conservatives also possess the gift of being able to laugh at themselves. The majority of leftists are so wrapped up in their own self-importance that their laughter tends to be of the hollow, mirthless variety, and is almost always directed at others (usually from the vantage point of what they take to be the summit of Olympus). Finally, genuine humor requires imagination and thought; the leftist is driven by hallucination and bile. The actor, Edmund Guinn, when lying on his death bed, remarked to a friend that dying was very hard. After a pause, he then said, “but not as hard as playing comedy”.
I ran into this very problem at the counterprotest tonite. One earnest young MoveOnBot has taken to waving a sign reading “Democrats Protect Your Civil Rights!”
So tonight I showed up and marched beside him proudly waving a sign reading: “Democrats—Protecting Your Civil Rights Since 1865”… complete with a picture of two of those pioneering Democrats in their Klan robes.
Do you know, he didn’t think that was funny at all?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 21 at 12:49 AM • permalink
Beyond paco’s fine explanation, the is one other thing:
How can the Left see any humor when the sky is falling.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 01 21 at 01:21 AM • permalink
Paco — If your reaction to an unexpected outcome is, “well, that didn’t work,” you’re probably a conservative at heart. If your reaction is, “that can’t be!” you’re probably a lefty to the soul…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 21 at 01:32 AM • permalink
In a related development, the Washington Post had to close down one of its house blogs today because the author committed the cardinal sin of pointing out that our sleazeur-du-jour Jack Abramoff bribed Democrats as well as Republicans and the fine progressive readers of the WAPO were unable to see the irony. Loudly.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 21 at 01:34 AM • permalink
I don’t buy this whole right is funnier than the left thing.
I think the spit is 50-50, and both sides have their unfunny hacks. Doonsbury was very funny, so too Bloom County, Bill Hicks etc.
So Boondocks is unfunny crap, I hate to say it but Day by Day isn’t good either.
We don’t have a right wing Opus the Penguin, but we do have plenty of great and very clever satirists, especially online like Blame Bush.
Online we got them beat, Iowahawk vs. Bartcop? No contest. Scrappleface vs. The Onion? Probably a tie.
But generally I think it’s running pretty even, to say the Left has less funny people on it’s side is an example of the kind of magical thinking the reality-based community is prone to.
“that can’t be!”
So true. Do you remember the absurd Daily Mirror headline:
“How could 59,054,087 people be so dumb?”
(Although. when all was said and done, it was over 60,000,000)
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 01 21 at 01:42 AM • permalink
Not sure how much of that article I agree with. I don’t really find Mark Steyn funny – never have. I don’t like his style much, I’ve got to admit – though he has had occasional flashes of wit.
It’s probably not a left/right split. Michael Moore WAS quite funny, in his ‘The Awful Truth’ days, though, as P. J. O’Rourke reflected, Moore is not so much a humourist, and more of a stirrer.
Anybody read the left-wing humour paper ‘The Funny Times’? They’re not funny. They’re published in Cleveland, and they mostly seem to publish overly-wordy comics fully of whiny characters making ‘wry’ observations about the world of politics. (Tom Tomorrow is a staple).
Some of the funniest right-wingers can be found in the British Spectator: Frank Johnson, Boris Johnson, and that Jeremy guy who writes the low life column (I forget his last name.)
How can the Left see any humor when the sky is falling.
I think that is exactly the case. For most of my lefty friends the fact that that Bush, Blair and Howard are still in office and that the war in Iraq hasn’t been lost yet means that anything to do with politics is deadly serious. There’s no humor to be found in that subject.
I’m a Bloom County fan from 20 years back. It used to be funny. Now it’s latest incarnation, Opus, seems like it’s trying too hard. It doesn’t have the clever take it used to. More reactionary than revolutionary.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 01 21 at 02:24 AM • permalink
Paco, that was a very good comment on why it seems so much easier for a conservative to be funny than a liberal. In fact, it’s so good I suspect you simply wrote what Karl Rove had said at one of the neocon meetings.
Writing down all Karl’s ruminations, eh?
Posted by wronwright on 2006 01 21 at 02:28 AM • permalink
Jeremy Clarke. He is my favorite writer these days.
No offense, Tim.
Posted by stuartfullerton on 2006 01 21 at 02:37 AM • permalink
If your reaction to an unexpected outcome is, “well, that didn’t work,” you’re probably a conservative at heart. If your reaction is, “that can’t be!” you’re probably a lefty to the soul…
Perfect!
Reminds me of the ongoing debate with a greeny friend of mine re global warming, er climate change,…whatever they’re calling it this year. The inconvenient lack of evidence just can’t be right, can it. And I’m ignorant for not seeing it.
Posted by Dean McAskil on 2006 01 21 at 02:43 AM • permalink
Richard Mcenroe: If your reaction to an unexpected outcome is, “well, that didn’t work,” you’re probably a conservative at heart. If your reaction is, “that can’t be!” you’re probably a lefty to the soul…
That really deserves to be quoted.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2006 01 21 at 02:52 AM • permalink
Completely off-topic: tonight’s episode of Battlestar Galactica had a peace movement rear its head. Stop Adama’s war, we must talk to the Cylons, etc. Along with sabotage and suicide bombings. In short, the peaceniks were portrayed as dangerously naive collaborationist fanatics.
It was rather refreshing.
(Best show on television, BTW.)
The O’Rourke article he references is available here. As for Sarah Silverman… okay, I guess.
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2006 01 21 at 03:15 AM • permalink
- Doonesbury was sometimes funny – but that was about 20 years ago, or more – there was the one about the pop musician (Eddie Thudpucker?) whose wardrobe had six identical jeans and T-shirt outfits in it – later used by Ernest in one of his movies. Or the session guitarist looking at the score in order to give a quote – “Man, these grace notes are gonna cost you”.
And there were some aimed at the Iranian courts post revolution – with the judge saying “We find the defendant guilty – bailiff, you may fire at will”.
But don’t forget Andrew Bolt! Why, his columns are side-splitters.
Posted by Bearded Mullah on 2006 01 21 at 04:26 AM • permalink
Was it in ‘Holidays in Hell’ that JP O’Rourke was speaking about that old benighted dinosaur, Communist Albania?
‘Albania only gets support now from North Korea and the English Department at Yale.’ (paraphrase)
Steyn is priceless:
“It’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog feces and mix ‘em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That’s the problem with the UN.”
Frank Devine did a brilliant, very funny ‘deconstuction’ of a typical ABC news bulletin last year.
- Rightys have wits. Leftys have half wits!!
My reasoning anyway.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 01 21 at 06:09 AM • permalink
#36—Sorry gubbaboy, I’m not associated with John at all and I’ve never met him.
I think I’ve had some similar life experiences, though. There are a lot of us ex-Sydney-inner-city-lefties.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2006 01 21 at 06:58 AM • permalink
Reading ‘he died with a felafel in his hand’ I suffer simultaneously with a sense of deja-vu ( I could swear I also lived in some of those group houses), and cognitive dissonance processing that the same author also wrote ‘Weapons of choice: The Axis of Time Trilogy, although the final book has yet to come out and I still haven’t worked out what Birmingham is trying to say with it yet.
About humour here in Oz … it helps to be a tad easy going and self deprecating, otherwise you ask yourself whether to laugh after you’ve checked if fits your political viewpoint. I’ve laughed at Howard jokes, and also Latham ones, etc … haven’t heard too many about Beazley though. Beazley who?
On a similar vein, good newspaper cartoonists humour us with political life at the moment with its absurdities, and not push a dogmatic line with each new edition. Cartoonists now seem to be very partisan. I’m bored with many newspaper cartoons lampooning Howard in a predicable way. But I would also be bored with similar stuff on other politicians or people of interest.
I’ll leave it here, when you start analysing humour, you lose the laughs …
Oh and I almost forgot, we got Southpark.
Don’t kid yourself. Matt and Trey are more liberal than you think. In reference to Team America however, Matt was quoted as saying “We hate conservatives. But we really hate fucking liberals”.
Also interesting, is that an episode of South Park won’t be shown on TV here as Tom Cruise has threatened to sue if they air it.
I’ve seen that episode thanks to http://www.lando.co.uk and it’s a balltearer.
Tom Cruise … I remember he became offended when interviewed by Australian 60 Minutes reporter Peter Overton … why bother interviewing him. Being offended is a catchcry of the last ten years … I’m offended … hmmm …
About Quantock, I thought he was dead. I did enjoy his Spike Milligan type humour many years ago, but I didn’t know he was still around.
Matt and Trey are refreshing simply because they aren’t partisan. Obviously they hold some political views and that comes through in their work, but they don’t have a “Bush/Kerry rules because he is a Republican/Democrat and that’s all that matters” approach:
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news04/team1.php :
Trey Parker: I would care more if it was like one guy that was just like ok. This guy is awesome. This guy can really help out the country. Then I would care. Right now you kind of have two shit heads, so it is kind of like you can vote for shit head one or shit head two. You know it is like, well you are going to the movie theatre and you can either see without a paddle or some other shitty movie on. Without a paddle 2. I don’t know what I am going to do.
Matt Stone: I am opposite I think they are both so great I can’t decide. It is like cherry pie or chocolate cake on the desert tray. I don’t know.
Yep, I like South Park, except for the continuous swearing, and I’m now going to contradict myself, I have a soft spot for Kevin Bloody Wilson … he doesn’t discriminate against any person or race, he does against all … how would Kevin Bloody Wilson’s humour go in the States? …
What paco said. Lefties have a sense of humor directly proportional to their contact with reality. Formerly funny cartoonists (e.g., Doonesbury and Bloom County) ceased being funny when they retreated into their own little worlds.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 01 21 at 11:36 AM • permalink
I’m not saying that leftists can’t be funny. But professional comedians whose politics are left of center are usually only genuinely funny when they are dealing honestly with basic and universally-recognized human foibles; how many of them are truly amusing when they deal with political topics? With repect to political humorists/satirists, the only one I can think of off the top of my head who is left-wing and frequently funny is the American political cartoonist, Oliphant (not to be confused with the writer of the same name). Oliphant, in the first place, possesses a high degree of artistic skill (contrast his work with that of the late, unlamented Herblock, whose collected cartoons could legitimately be published under the title, “Left-wing Propaganda Illustrated With Simple Line Drawings”). And he succeeds because he has the skill to make the leftist illusion look like the reality, and the conservative reality look like the illusion (primarily by creating a hyberbolic conservative strawman). I disagree with 90% of Oliphant’s political opinions, but I do find much of his work amusing.
Richard, your analogy was right on the money; you said everything I had to say, but more succinctly – and your version was actually funny.
Wronwright: No, no, I’m aware that Karl absolutely prohibits the taking of notes at neocon meetings. I was just, er, doodling -yeah, that’s it, just doodling.
The left do have a funny bone, Phillip Adams and Patrice Newell (from morning TV if I remember well?) put out a book called the Great Australian Joke Book … got it a long time ago as a Christmas present when in Deni, lots of good jokes and laughs. A better book I have is one from George Coote … IMO, politics and humour rarely meet …
Amos — Also, there’s some chance the idiots on the right are fixable, if we can just get them into a Hooters over a few pitchers…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 21 at 01:25 PM • permalink
Doonsbury was funny, but now its devolved into just trying to be ‘clever’ not funny.
“Too clever by half” and boorishly partisan is how I saw Doonesbury back in the 70s, when I was in high school (and a Libertarian Party supporter).
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 01 21 at 01:55 PM • permalink
I’m not saying that leftists can’t be funny.
Actually, using the PJ O’Rourke example, a lefist slipping on the ice is very funny.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 21 at 02:26 PM • permalink
Completely off-topic: tonight’s episode of Battlestar Galactica had a peace movement rear its head. Stop Adama’s war, we must talk to the Cylons, etc. Along with sabotage and suicide bombings. In short, the peaceniks were portrayed as dangerously naive collaborationist fanatics.
It was rather refreshing.
Stargate SG-1: The “Orai” worship false gods who promise them paradise; they kill anyone who doesn’t convert; if refused, their “missionaries” either blow themselves up in planet-shattering self-detonation or spread fatal diseases.
Stargate Atlantis: Last night’s episode had a bomb planted on Atlantis. With only a half hour until it detonated, they decide to torture their prime suspect. They discover they’ve got the wrong guy—who passed out before he could be tortured anyway—and instead torture the right guy.
There was a little moralizing at the end, a little “who are we to gloat over the infighting among our enemies”, but nothing like I had expected.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 01 21 at 04:07 PM • permalink
Amos — Doonesbury is factory production now. Trudeau pretty much just oversees.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 21 at 04:33 PM • permalink
Day by Day sometimes falls flat but is often hilarious. Consistently funny is James Lileks, especially his screedblog.
Oh dear, a glimmer of self-consciosness on the Left.
EvilPundit — In my experience, most lefties are extremely self-conscious, if only out of fear of letting a wrong thought slip out and being branded an apostate.
Self-awareness among lefties, however, is rare to the point of mythological among them, I find…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 21 at 04:38 PM • permalink
#59 – Could never get into SG:Atlantis (too Canadian or something, I dunno), and SG-1 seemed to have lost its goofy charm, so I stopped watching it. But good to see a post-9/11 sensibility there, too.
The #1 reason Enterprise failed was Scott “look of chronic constipation” Bakula. The #2 reason was its pre-9/11 sensibility. Maybe they shifted after I stopped watching, but the last I saw of it had a bunch of “our enemies are just friends we haven’t talked things through with yet” crap.
#53 – “…left-wing and frequently funny is the American political cartoonist, Oliphant…Oliphant, in the first place, possesses a high degree of artistic skill…”
Pat Oliphant is an Australian – a South Australian actually. He migrated to the US some 40 years ago.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 01 21 at 06:07 PM • permalink
“While the term PC has proven to be a devastating rhetorical weapon when deployed by conservatives who want to shut down any discussion of uncomfortable realities,”
He’s got it bassackwards. Reality is uncomfortable for the liberals (sensu American) who have been seeing their preferred policies failing miserably for the last 40-some years, while the conservative ones succeed for the most part. And yet the liberals learn nothing from this, and continue to advocate failed policies. For example, the success of marginal rate tax cuts in revitalizing the economy and raising government revnue is as plain as day by now, and the libs are still denouncing this policy. They want massive rises in tax rates, despite the fact that such rises will make the economy sluggish and even help put it into recession (as happened when Bush 41 went along with the tax rate rise the Dems demanded in 1990).
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 01 21 at 07:27 PM • permalink
- Paco: I disagree with 90% of Oliphant’s political opinions, but I do find much of his work amusing.
Did you know that the original [Pat?] Oliphant cartoonist came from an Adelaide, South Australia newspaper and made good in the US in the 70s?
Maybe this one is his son.Doonsbury is more than half the time making fun of value-free hippies of both the right and the left. He mocks self-absorption, which is easier to do when leftoids are the subject.For sophisticated right-of-centre humour read the British Spectator. Brilliant.
The right are satirical and witty, while the left are sardonical and wry.
- Didn’t Mencken define a Puritan as, “Someone who is sure that somewhere someone is enjoying themselves, and they should stop it immediately”?
This is what I saw on the Right in the late 50s thru the 70s, maybe, and have seen from the Left since at least the early 70s.
The Right used to be Puritans. Now the Left are. “Sir, this is a *feminist* bookstore. We don’t *have* a humor section.”
This is what happens when you get “official” humor and humor topics: Garafalo, Franken, Maher—people who cease to be funny.Humor by, “That which is not mandatory is forbidden’ makes bad humor. This is the Left’s mantra.The hard-core rule makers/enforcers are now on the Left. Not funny.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 01 21 at 09:09 PM • permalink
Two days later, the left catches up with the story. You’d think they would feel embarassed.
- I’ve popped funnier things out of my bot than Rod Quontok- I don’t recall him ever being more than mildly amusing in an irritating, patronising way. Samev can be said for most local stand-up with the exception of Lano and Woodley and a few very early gigs by the likes of Mikey Robbins and the Working Dog wankers before they started to believe their own publicity.
I can’t think of a funny lefty stand-up this side of Alexei Sayle, and a fair bit of his schtick was poking fun at the regimented prog/hippy left.
I still think Birmingham’s a git an’all.
BTW- if you need further convincing, an oracle of the left reckones that a daft bint who thinks it makes her hip to dress like a Cyndi Lauper baglady, and who wrote one of the most disastrously unfunny series ever to befoul the already shit-filled airwaves of Australian television is hilarious.
I think it’s hilarious that Channel 7 was shit-witted enough to commission Last Man Standing, and even funnier that it tanked deeper than the Kursk.
Is schadenfreude a conservative thing?
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Much deserved praise, Tim.
Mock on.