Comedy Sans Humor
While it kills me to have to spend precious blog space (and it is precious, if you notice how often I post) on the vile Ann Coulter, it’s not so bad when you consider that, when you criticize Ann Coulter, you are criticizing the modern conservative movement. She is their spokesperson. I’m sure conservatives everywhere reading this (welcome!) are aghast and hopefully landed on the fainting couch and not the floor. But if it’s such a shock, then you’re not paying attention, because she’s everywhere: the bestseller list, all of the cable talk shows (and even the milquetoast Today Show, on occasion), on the minds of elected officials, and even appearing at prominent conservative events, hobnobbing with prominent conservatives who hold higher office, are running for higher office (even as high as the presidency). She says the things deeply held by conservatives that they can’t say because they would be shunned by society and not hold a single elected seat outside of the South or Utah.
The latest transgression from her is, of course, her calling John Edwards a “faggot” at the recent CPAC conference (where, at last year’s event, she referred to Arabs as “ragheads”). The day following, there was a run on fainting couches, as conservatives everywhere were in shock, disbelief, completely stunned, as they heard about what they said, and in between dusting off hardbound copies of her screeds, and tuning into Fox News for the latest on the evil Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and how we’re winning the war in Iraq so convincingly and we’d be winning even more so if it weren’t for those pesky America-hating liberals who are desperately trying to turn America into a defeated communist state that has Havana as its satellite capital while also finding 15 seconds to mock Al Gore and another 5 for Bill Clinton, they feigned outrage.
But if you’ve followed Coulter and her “controversies” over the years, you know that such sophomoric name-calling is par for the course for her, and that it will blow over and not affect her career, particularly her book deals, her media appearances, and her place in modern conservatism as its de facto spokesperson. She’s basically called both Clintons, Al Gore, and John Edwards homosexuals, which, for conservatives, is the worst thing you can do to demean someone (worse than torturing them naked and unleashing dogs on them, which they approve of anyway). She’s lamented that Timothy McVeigh didn’t blow up the New York Times building, that Norman Mineta wasn’t killed, that she had a shot at Bill Clinton, and basically called for the deaths of Supreme Court justices (the moderate-to-liberal-leaning ones, of course), among other things that I can recall at the moment that I know I have gleaned from talk about her. For most of us, she’d basically be the crazy uncle (or aunt) whom you’re embarrassed to have come down from the bedroom when your friends come over because you never know what ridiculous offensive thing he will say, except I’m not sure conservatives are all that embarrassed.
Anyway, her act, if you can call it that, is basically comedy without the humor. It has the comedic elements of, say, the act of Andrew Dice Clay (without the extreme vulgarity). Basically, it’s calling people names, wishing people dead, and mocking segments of society, while you somehow stand beyond it all as some demographic-less mouth. Except, with her, it’s not funny—it’s complete deadpan, but not with the humor that a well-timed and delivered deadpan practitioner (like Steven Wright, for instance) can give. It’s not intended to be humor, though conservatives always claim it to be (or one of their favorite words, “hyperbole”) when they get busted on their hate-fests (though up until the point they get busted, what’s being said is serious political commentary from true patriots defending their country). So, if you take the insults of a comedian and strip away the humor, what do you get?
Of course, Coulter in and of herself is not the worst thing. There are plenty of hatemongers out there; we just generally, as a mostly civil society, tune them out. The worst thing is her audience—the modern conservative movement—who think she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread and use her as a proxy for their deeply held and objectionable principles, and the media, who keep promoting her books and place her on the cover of their magazines and keep giving her air time as if she were a serious person. Frankly, the media is the worst of them. How do advertisers feel when she’s on, say, the 7:10 AM slot on the Today Show? Here’s someone willing to call for the death of other people she doesn’t like and calls people she doesn’t like faggots. Why is the media so willing to cozy up to her and her hatred and not shun her? Most people, if they said the things she said at their places of work, would be fired.
Perhaps it’s all indicative of this downward slope we’re on (this is where I really ramble). Doesn’t it seem that comedy, if it exists at all, has been reduced to the basest level to try and be funny? Wouldn’t it make sense that we just employ comedy in political discourse—the same base level comedy we’re not subjected to in our entertainment—to make a point and just strip out the humor altogether? Eventually, it’ll be so watered down, so devoid of humor and substance, that political discourse will just be an exchange of muted glances.
And, seriously, conservatives really are devoid of humor and anything that resembles the skills of the entertainment industry. Conservatives will talk about a bias in the entertainment industry toward them (they’re always victims! to the fainting couch!) , but, when a conservative entertainer make their political leanings known, it seems to always coincide with a precipitous drop in their careers and/or skills (see Dennis Miller (used to be funny, no longer so), Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone among others, though I’ll give Mel Gibson some props for having talent still, he’s just lost his mind, and Clint Eastwood is and always will be Clint Eastwood).
So, Ann Coulter is the perfect comedian for the modern conservative: highly offensive, saying all the things that soothe their dark souls, and not funny in the slightest.
The latest transgression from her is, of course, her calling John Edwards a “faggot” at the recent CPAC conference (where, at last year’s event, she referred to Arabs as “ragheads”). The day following, there was a run on fainting couches, as conservatives everywhere were in shock, disbelief, completely stunned, as they heard about what they said, and in between dusting off hardbound copies of her screeds, and tuning into Fox News for the latest on the evil Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and how we’re winning the war in Iraq so convincingly and we’d be winning even more so if it weren’t for those pesky America-hating liberals who are desperately trying to turn America into a defeated communist state that has Havana as its satellite capital while also finding 15 seconds to mock Al Gore and another 5 for Bill Clinton, they feigned outrage.
But if you’ve followed Coulter and her “controversies” over the years, you know that such sophomoric name-calling is par for the course for her, and that it will blow over and not affect her career, particularly her book deals, her media appearances, and her place in modern conservatism as its de facto spokesperson. She’s basically called both Clintons, Al Gore, and John Edwards homosexuals, which, for conservatives, is the worst thing you can do to demean someone (worse than torturing them naked and unleashing dogs on them, which they approve of anyway). She’s lamented that Timothy McVeigh didn’t blow up the New York Times building, that Norman Mineta wasn’t killed, that she had a shot at Bill Clinton, and basically called for the deaths of Supreme Court justices (the moderate-to-liberal-leaning ones, of course), among other things that I can recall at the moment that I know I have gleaned from talk about her. For most of us, she’d basically be the crazy uncle (or aunt) whom you’re embarrassed to have come down from the bedroom when your friends come over because you never know what ridiculous offensive thing he will say, except I’m not sure conservatives are all that embarrassed.
Anyway, her act, if you can call it that, is basically comedy without the humor. It has the comedic elements of, say, the act of Andrew Dice Clay (without the extreme vulgarity). Basically, it’s calling people names, wishing people dead, and mocking segments of society, while you somehow stand beyond it all as some demographic-less mouth. Except, with her, it’s not funny—it’s complete deadpan, but not with the humor that a well-timed and delivered deadpan practitioner (like Steven Wright, for instance) can give. It’s not intended to be humor, though conservatives always claim it to be (or one of their favorite words, “hyperbole”) when they get busted on their hate-fests (though up until the point they get busted, what’s being said is serious political commentary from true patriots defending their country). So, if you take the insults of a comedian and strip away the humor, what do you get?
Of course, Coulter in and of herself is not the worst thing. There are plenty of hatemongers out there; we just generally, as a mostly civil society, tune them out. The worst thing is her audience—the modern conservative movement—who think she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread and use her as a proxy for their deeply held and objectionable principles, and the media, who keep promoting her books and place her on the cover of their magazines and keep giving her air time as if she were a serious person. Frankly, the media is the worst of them. How do advertisers feel when she’s on, say, the 7:10 AM slot on the Today Show? Here’s someone willing to call for the death of other people she doesn’t like and calls people she doesn’t like faggots. Why is the media so willing to cozy up to her and her hatred and not shun her? Most people, if they said the things she said at their places of work, would be fired.
Perhaps it’s all indicative of this downward slope we’re on (this is where I really ramble). Doesn’t it seem that comedy, if it exists at all, has been reduced to the basest level to try and be funny? Wouldn’t it make sense that we just employ comedy in political discourse—the same base level comedy we’re not subjected to in our entertainment—to make a point and just strip out the humor altogether? Eventually, it’ll be so watered down, so devoid of humor and substance, that political discourse will just be an exchange of muted glances.
And, seriously, conservatives really are devoid of humor and anything that resembles the skills of the entertainment industry. Conservatives will talk about a bias in the entertainment industry toward them (they’re always victims! to the fainting couch!) , but, when a conservative entertainer make their political leanings known, it seems to always coincide with a precipitous drop in their careers and/or skills (see Dennis Miller (used to be funny, no longer so), Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone among others, though I’ll give Mel Gibson some props for having talent still, he’s just lost his mind, and Clint Eastwood is and always will be Clint Eastwood).
So, Ann Coulter is the perfect comedian for the modern conservative: highly offensive, saying all the things that soothe their dark souls, and not funny in the slightest.
