When I heard about Fox’s launch of a “conservative version of The Daily Show” a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but be skeptical or anything real coming out of it. Aside from the fact that conservative humor tends to be highly unfunny to me, anyone who attempts to copy a show based on its success is never a good thing. Fox has been watching its ratings fall fairly regularly lately (could it be that parroting the White House line really isn’t news?) so they’ve been ripping off all kinds of successful shows that threaten the Murdoch media hegemony.

But this recent attempt is worse than anyone could’ve imagined. Take a gander at the comments section of the Malkin blog Hot Air — even conservatives aren’t singing full praises.

I loved it and the libs will go bananas. Still wish they’d dump that stupid laughtrack.
bambam on February 14, 2007 at 10:22 PM

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They are trying too hard or maybe the show got fooled and the writers are actually liberals.
Maxx on February 14, 2007 at 10:23 PM

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Laughtrack is horrible. Coulter’s last line was the only thing that made me smile. Take some risks, grow some balls; if you want to make people laugh, you have to offend someone.
JaHerer22 on February 14, 2007 at 10:30 PM

Oh, JaHerer22, believe me when I say that people will be offended by stiff political pundits trying to be funny. The gods of comedy will be especially offended.

I am one of the first people to admit that comedy is entirely subjective. To give you an example, when I first saw Seinfeld I didn’t think it was funny at all. Same thing with Family Guy. Now those are two of my all-time favorite shows in the history of television. Sometimes a person has to be in the right frame of mind to get humor. Sometimes humor is so dry or so dark that less-than-astute or overly-sensitive people just won’t ever get it. Not everyone thinks Monty Python is funny.

But I think that JaHerer22 stumbled upon what a lot of hard-core conservatives will be looking for in this show – offensiveness. They don’t care if this show is funny, they just want to see liberals bashed forty ways from Sunday and they’ll find their own humor in it. Sad. And there is something to be said for pilot shows and all the quirks surrounding new personalities working with one another on television, but from what I’ve seen this is no better than a new SNL cast on the first episode of the season – not very promising.

What conservatives need to understand is that The Daily Show wasn’t started to pick on Republicans or conservatism. It was created to make fun of news. It just so happens that the White House and congress have been controlled by conservatives for the past six years and have produced a pretty enormous amount of material for which political humorists to play with. Cheney shot his friend in the face with a shotgun, for godssakes. That practically writes itself. Do you think that Jon Stewart and his crew would’ve held off had it happened 6 years ago with then-VP Al Gore? Hell no. That’s comedy gold. Had Cheney’s friend died as a result, and Jon mentioned this in their riffing, it wouldn’t have been funny anymore. (Those two opening monologues, by the way, remain two of my favorite moments in Daily Show, if not television, history. All Ed Helms has to do was repeat the headline over and over again in deadpan delivery and you couldn’t help but laugh uncontrollably.)

The problem is that conservatives see everything through “liberal bias” prism. Anyone who speaks ill of this Preznit and his merry band of baboons is considered liberal and branded as a new form of pariah. Meanwhile their own people can tear apart the constitution, send kids off to an illegal war, make laws out of signing statements, turn personal family medical issues into partisan politics, (etc., etc., etc…); they see nothing wrong with this at all. Really, conservatives, all we liberals can do is laugh about it because it’s just so depressing if taken seriously. Please leave the humor to the professionals.