In a Koch brothers' AFP article last year, they made the case to go after millennials in an area the right wing has consistently failed at: humor. Despite featuring conservative “comedians” in the article, the only thing funny about it was the title: “Making Freedom Cool.”
One of the people they hyped was Steve Crowder. You probably haven't heard of him, but he thinks he’s utterly hilarious—and apparently good looking according to how often he bares his chest. Hands off, ladies … he’s married—I think. I really haven't bothered to learn anything about him. All I know is that he is so painfully unfunny that despite trying to watch a recent video for this piece, I couldn’t finish it.
He may suck, but he does provide a useful illustration for an honest question:
Why are right-wing comedians such utter failures?
Right now, we are in the midst of a golden age of political satire. Not surprisingly, almost all of it is on the progressive side.
Stephen Colbert has redefined the terms of late night, Bill Maher is at the top of his game, and SNL’s biting skits have exploded in popularity. Samantha Bee has really taken off, and Trevor Noah—despite having a slow start after Jon—has now found his stride and has been consistently hitting the mark. Seth Meyers has been brutal in his takedowns, and Jimmy Kimmel’s video went viral after he openly mocked the GOP’s attempt to kill children with their heartless attempt to take away their healthcare.
John Oliver has been so successful that he’s galvanized millions of his viewers to take action on numerous occasions. Going beyond cable and networks, there are too many successful internet shows to mention. (I, like millions, enjoy watching Funny or Die and Between Two Ferns.) The one consistent thread, besides popularity, is that all of these shows are truly funny.
Conservatives desperately want in on this, but they also realize that being viciously mocked all the time is turning the younger generation against them. As a result, they have poured money into different experiments to reverse their fortunes. So far, all they’ve gotten is failure.
In 2015, a Texas tycoon funded a show called The Flipside, which was hailed as the conservative answer to The Daily Show. Haven’t heard of it? I’m not surprised. Here’s an opening monologue from the “star," Michael Loftus, on the topical subject of Hurricane Katrina. In 2015:
The only thing I laughed at in that bit was how stupid the set looked. (Who thought upside down road signs were the secret sauce to reaching the kids these days?) Lest you think that I’m cherry-picking him on an off-night, this was one of his more popular videos at over 22K views. (You should see the ones under 1K views—on second thought, don’t.)
But Loftus doesn’t come close to the Fox News parade of failure: Tom Shillue (RedEye — now cancelled), Jesse Watters (a stooge for O’Reilly in the now defunct Watter's World ), and Greg Gutfeld (still trying to break out). Fox has invested a ton on this “talent” pool, but can’t even score a modest win. When Fox’s Roger Ailes declared war on Jon Stewart, he went all in on a horrendous half-hour comedy show called the ½ Hour News Hour. It holds the distinction on Metacritic as being the lowest rated television show of all time.
Because it was Ailes' Fox News, the ½ Hour News Hour liked to make fun of sexual harassment victims. It is extra disgusting when you realize what women at Fox News were being forced to do at the time this was airing:
Yeah, hilarious.
There are all kinds of right-wing excuses for why they can’t find one comedian to compete with even on the lowest rung of success. Ever the victim, they claim that evil forces are keeping them from being successful. Yet watching any of these videos makes clear that they just suck. The Kochs, oil tycoons, and other rightwing billionaires can pour all the money they want into these right-wing hacks, but they will always suck.
One good reason for this is that good comedy comes from poking fun at the powerful, not the powerless. Good comedy has to be clever, but also inspire people to want to do good--or to at least be better. Check out Bill Maher’s segment yesterday and see what I mean.
This wasn’t even one of his strongest bits, but compare it to any of the videos above. Maher was smart, funny, and even made you self-reflect a bit. Our side uses comedy to grow.
“Conservative comedy” is incapable of doing this. They just mock and degrade the oppressed.
Here’s a Samantha Bee segment on paid Russian trolls. It’s not only more interesting and hard-hitting than any of the fluff you see on CNN, it simultaneously makes you angry and laugh out loud. It takes skill to pull this kind of thing off:
I could find numerous other examples, but I don’t need to convince anyone that right-wing "comedians" are out of their league. Even conservatives don't find them funny. After all, their fan base can mock and degrade others by themselves. Sadly, that's really all they can do. If they could do more, they wouldn’t be conservative in the first place.
Maybe then, they’d finally learn how to be funny.