News You Can't Use: Comedy Is Not Pretty, and Nowadays It Isn’t Even Funny

We are facing a humor famine. After many comfortable decades of braying like a buffoon while tears stream down your fat greasy face at dat funny doe, we're suddenly finding the knee-slapper harvest devoured by a dust bowl of thin skin, sanctimony and Right Think. Everything that might even generate a smile is offensive, if not Room 101 material, and acting as a jester for wealthy oligarchs is not the ticket to happy-town you might expect it to be. What's the solution, then? Well, there isn't any, but here's some more words bemoaning the sad state of affairs.

I found myself seated at my computer last month, watching on YouTube  

Wow, what a glamorous and exciting life you lead, Wall Street Journal columnist.

the comedian Bill Maher talk about Donald Trump’s marriage. If you don’t share Mr. Maher’s politics, you are likely to find him an odious, even loathsome character, for he doesn’t really exist outside politics. 

I would like to think we can all unite as one people in finding this guy to be loathsome. If we can't agree on something as self-evident as that, where else are we going to find common ground?

His standard tone is mockery, his modus operandi to lacerate his targets with obscenities, flash a nervous smile, and then bask in applause from his audience.

That Drumpf, he's an idiot! Fudge! Bushel baskets! *nervous smile* *wild applause*

I was watching Mr. Maher on YouTube to see how far he would go on the subject of the Trump marriage. Would he attack the Trumps’ 11-year-old son, or perhaps attack the family for not having a dog?

...and what's the deal with not having a dog? Every healthy home is also an amateur kennel, right?

His final punch line was that Melania Trump hadn’t accompanied her husband to Davos, Switzerland, because she had spent the day having to “lay a wreath on the tomb of the unknown trophy wife.”

Why would the trophy wife of a celebrity be "unknown" and why would his next wife be expected to mourn her? I may have found a logical problem, here.

Yet to have taken what I think of as the Trumpian option in their comedy has rendered these comedians charmless while strikingly limiting their audiences to those who share their politics.

Meanwhile, jokes about t.v. dinners, airline food, toilet seats and why 24 hour gyms have locking doors are going unmade.

I recently wrote a book on the subject of charm, in preparation for which I asked a great many people to name five persons in public life they thought charming.

I just want to mention I wrote a book and am something of a big shot. Stop with the lame promotion, buddy. No one wants to hear it. 

Yet these insufficiently funny comedians, with their crude political humor, do little more than add to the sad divisiveness that is rending the country.

We need more "getting along" jokes.

Right, looks like the bloody Labour Party has done it again...

Something, surely, has been lost if one can no longer turn to comedy as a relief from the general woes of life and the greater farce that has for some years now been playing out in our everyday politics. 

After all of that, you commit the same crime you were condemning.

Full Article.

Komment Korner    

We should be more diligent before taking a hardened position, let alone accepting someone else's.

I think what we need is some bubble wrap made for conservatives

I wished Samantha Bee would run for Congress.

Pieces like this erode the credibility of the organization.

want to really laugh?  look at a mirror.

Take a close look at your TV Remote device and you'll see a button saying, "ON." Don't press it (I don't).

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.