Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Humor, Fox News style

The Blog Bob Cesca: Step Away From The Jokes, Fox News, Before You Hurt Yourself The Huffington Post

I don't have much more to say that isn't said in the posted linked above.

There appears to be a Fox News response to "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" premiering soon. From the brief teaser available on YouTube (I'm not embedding it because I don't want to help them get hits), it looks like the format of the Daily Show, but with conservative jingoism replacing the humor.

A few years ago Comedy Central ran Straight Plan for the Gay Man, an enjoyable send-up of that Bravo show. It was funny because it lampooned the source material without really negating its premise--that gay men have a lot to show straight men about fashion and hair care, or something like that. Straight guys have a thing or two to say about chilling the fuck out every once in a while. The show's humor may also have benefited from the fact that it only ran for three episodes--the joke didn't have time to get old.

Fox News' "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" (sigh...), from what little I've seen, fails because it does not acknowledge its superior source material. All it does is imitate--also, I honestly believe that "The Daily Show's" principal motivation is humor, and the "liberal" slant derives from the fact that there are far greater resources to mine for humor in that area. Fox's show's principal motivation is conservatism, and it proceeds on a snipe hunt for humor. The show seems to proceed from the belief that conservatives can do their own funny fake news show even better than Comedy Central can--then again, how the hell do I know what they're thinking? All I really know is that it isn't funny...in fact it's so unfunny that it's painful to watch.

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