Some More News - REVISITING SOME NEWS: Why Is Conservative Comedy So... Not Very Good?

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Hi. Today on the podcast feed, we're re-releasing our 2021 episode "Why Is Conservative Comedy So... Not Very Good?" with a new introductory discussion between Cody Johnston and SMN head writer David Christopher Bell. They talk about new developments in the Daily Wire cinematic universe and why conservative comedy is always reacting to something "political" on "the left." Plus, they tease a sequel, of sorts, to this episode coming next week. Watch the original video: https://youtu.be/KSXKzPOcYDU Check out our MERCH STORE: https://shop.somemorenews.com   SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews

hi everybody welcome to the news we are breaking the news with facts and humor yeah welcome folks this is uh another odd episode of the show in that you might have seen it already or listened to it already because it already aired a couple years ago you might have seen it but have you just listened to have you only listened to it? Have you only listened to it? That's the real way to watch a video with clips of other videos, is to listen to it with your ears only. Welcome, folks. This is Some More News. We're re-airing our episode about conservative comedy.

We're re-airing it for a few reasons. One is we're off this week, folks, except for the other podcast where we will be doing a new episode of that. And also, we will be actually revisiting this topic, this exact topic, as I alluded to in the previous rerun about Ben Shapiro. We're going to talk about kind of the update on this Daily Wire's sort of approach to comedy and conservatives approach to the arts yeah and so we have brought david bell on with us our head writer and the twisted mind behind this episode thank you for having me yeah i am you know i'm very disturbed

and twisted you're all you're all trapped in here with me. Exactly. Right? Yeah. Staring at you with that twisted tattoo on your forehead that says twisted. Exactly. It's in Comic Sans, you sick fuck. So thank you for being here and for your patience in me getting through that really way too long intro.

Did not need to be that long it was fine thank you it was a fine intro yeah i mean thank you for having me on i'm excited for our follow-up it's like a spiritual sequel right i don't want to say too much but like you know we asked that question why is conservative comedy not good in that previous one? And, you know, the conservative media was like, was like, you know what? Watch this. Lady ballers dunk on you. Yeah.

Ooh, that's a, wow. Dunk on them. Yeah. Dunk. Like in Lady Ballers. Like in Lady Ballers. The Daily Wire's sports comedy that perhaps i have recently watched would you say it surpasses um the likes of say uh what your basketball

your dodgeball those are the two big ones i can think of at the moment yeah i'll say that it wants to be in that uhpark, you know? Okay. A lot of ballplay in our podcast right now. I know, I know. Sorry, folks. Or you're welcome. It definitely, like, basketball came up in my mind.

In fact, in the thing I have written, I compare it to basketball in, like, structure and some of the things. Also stuff like Broken Lizard. Like, that's clearly what they're aiming for. And so the question is is did they achieve that yeah a little goofball sketch comedy type of movie you know cody did did you watch it i still haven't watched it yet uh it keeps getting put off last night i couldn't get to it but it's happening tonight make sure you stay for the post credits i won't spoil it folks but i saw your email alluding to the post credits and i'm freaking out i didn't even know there was a post credits because why would i why would i watch the credits why would you think that yeah oh it is blade is blade in it no blade is not in it

i it's it's like blade. It's just as exciting. Daredevil? Yeah. Daredevil makes a... They're going to introduce a whole universe, a whole Lady Ballers cinematic universe. I'm puking right now. Nobody watch Lady Ballers. That's the main point, right?

I think that's reasonable. That's a reasonable request. Yeah, you don't need to do that enough people have watched it for you folks and i i'm gonna watch it i'm gonna watch it tonight yeah i can't wait to hear your thoughts so we had uh again this is sort of spiritual sequel to this comedy rerun that we're about to run um and also a bit of a spiritual sequel to the big ben shapiro episode that we did several years ago, which sort of concludes with an assessment of maybe what drives him, maybe like why he's in this business or industry and where a lot of his maybe like spite comes from. And there's sort of a synthesis of those two episodes leading to Lady Ballers, I would say.

I would say so, too, because I think while we're in, you know, in conservative comedy, we specifically talk about comedy and we talk about modern conservative comedy as a big component. Right. Where it's like, you know, there were conservative comedians not too long ago that were even if you don't like them they were successful right like there was that whole blue collar comedy tour we were briefly obsessed with conservative comedy and kind of similarly then to tease the next thing we're going to talk about we're not gonna say that conservatives are bad at making art. I know that is a common accusation. Yeah. But there are a lot of conservative actors and directors out there. Whether or not you like those people, I would say people like Clint Eastwood and Jon Voight

do very good work, despite the fact that they're extremely right wing. Yeah. Clint Eastwood yelled at Obama's empty chair. Yeah. But he's amazing and does makes great work. Right. So the real question is, why? Why can't the Daily Wire make things specifically? And so I think we're going to dive into that, which, yeah, makes it does connect it with conservative comedy because Lady Ballers is exactly that. makes it it does connect it with conservative comedy because lady ballers is exactly that uh but it's also part of this larger attempt to kind of join in to the pop culture around them right

there's this feeling of like this there's this extreme right wing i i wouldn't even say like conservative but like extreme right wing isolation from pop culture yeah isolation and resentment uh kind of stewing about it and so like i think that kind of plays into the conservative comedy this idea that like when you look at gutfeld it's like well you have colbert so here's ours and everything is sort of like here's our version of it and when you're doing that it's kind of reminds me a lot of like those like asylum films like transmorphers and stuff whenever they make oh yeah because what you're making is a knockoff like for better or for worse you're saying we're going to do the same thing but here's our version and so like part of going into conservative comedy which people

about to listen to i think a good addition to that is that because they're always doing quote unquote their version they don't add anything like they don't have a version themselves they're not doing like what they think is funny necessarily or what they would want to watch or or make it's always a reaction to something else yeah and so like i think that actually becomes this um it's kind of this compounding effect where i think the more they do that the less we'll have like clinius woods like the less we'll actually have conservative artists that like added to the zeitgeist and more it'll just be this like series of knockoffs that are sort of yeah the resentful sort of approach to it all because also like you know a huge

distinction here too is you know and get into this in the actual episode but like lady ballers is made by political pundits and like political operatives more or less like they're not comedians actually no they're like they're not comedians actually they're not they're not comedians there's a lot of roles that are just filled in yeah so it's not even you know people with a comedy background who happen to be conservative doing this it's just sort of like we need to we need to do it we need to get out there let's try to do comedy right you know uh recently uh or i guess last this past weekend shane gillis hosted snl which i wouldn't even necessarily say he's like conservative comedian right um i think

he's like rough around the edges and uh uses words that i think can be pretty rough to hear for people but like he also has you know a lot of his jokes sort of like come from a more empathetic place than a lot of like what you describe as conservative comedy. Right. And, you know, he's got some funny bits. That's not the same thing that we're talking about, even. No, not at all. I think like a lot of, you know, I think we talk about this in the conservative comedy thing, but a lot of it has to be due with like how how the broad appear peel like when you're you know when you're a stand-up comedian you're up there and you're

telling jokes you need to tell jokes that everybody can kind of understand uh and going to lady ballers spoilers there's like jokes about vaccines and masks and it's like that's not like like if you look up the statistics during the pandemic and stuff like yeah people were annoyed with masks and some people are anti-vaxxers but overwhelmingly most americans like if you walk into a stand-up club and make those jokes you're not going to get a big reaction because statistically speaking most of the people in there are vaccinated and don't give a shit about masks so it's like they become so insular with what they want to talk about that they can't quite make a joke. Right. There's no universality to it. There's

no like there are all these steps you have to take to get there. And if you have to take a bunch of steps or like leaps of whether it's logic or just like knowing like, oh, they're mentioning this political thing that happened like five months ago or or something like that if you have that space it's not gonna get a real laugh right and and for the record it has nothing to do with necessarily with their politics and my opinion if you go on like a warhammer subreddit there's gonna be like jokes inside warhammer jokes right that you're gonna be like i don't know what the fuck this is like any any niche group will have inside jokes and that's okay that's perfectly fine but don't expect everybody to understand those jokes or for them to even feel like they belong in this other thing you're trying to do because they're trying to do this mass appeal thing yes and not alienate people but if you do have all these like inside

like political slash culture warrior style jokes it's going to be alienating yeah and not in the way where it's like oh no uh somebody in a movie like said something about good like about feminism like that's not very alienating it's when it's like this sort of like sharp or like this sort of like cudgel that they're using to like right like you're you agree with us right yeah it's one of and i think it's worth talking about on that level because that is exactly the premise they're sort of presenting which is that their claim with mainstream comedy mainstream like hollywood is that it's so bogged down with these messages that it's not fun anymore right it's that idea of like why can't i just play a video game without it being political

and when they say political they usually just mean that there's like a brown-skinned person in it a lot of the time but like that accusation is like i don't think that's in a vacuum that's valid right of being like i don't want to watch like a fucking uh uh uh children's cartoon and get like a message about the election like lectured or whatever yeah exactly that i would argue that's not what's happening but it's just very funny that like that's exactly what they end up doing because like the the daily liar specifically has said like we're gonna make non-political stuff and that's so funny to me because if they had just said we're gonna make conservative stuff right we're gonna make an alternative to the thing that we are claiming that exists out there right

because we're a bunch of failed writers and actors and we want to have an outlet for that and we're like right-wing culture warriors and we've said that many times and we like talk about how uh politics is downstream from culture so we can just say that we're doing the thing that we all know we're doing right and so it's just so funny and insincere when they try to claim that they're they're doing the non-political version the non-woke version yeah you can't be not political if you're being anti-woke that's a whole different it's a that's a politics right you're doing a politics folks yeah so this is all to say uh try harder next year yeah get out there you can you can give you can you can do it we believe in you give it a shot um stop being so angry all the time and just uh maybe trust

your instincts again i don't want to get too much into what we're like the next week stuff no no and we've teased it a bit there's so much more to talk about but there's so much more it is nice because i forgot that you we had put out the the ben shapiro one and so like the ben shapiro one and now this conservative comedy one is really the perfect like mesh yes of what the next video is gonna be my biggest concern when we were going into that is like i don't want to repeat a lot of stuff and turns out there's a lot of new shit to talk about yeah exactly yeah oh they keep trying oh so beautiful uh ho Hollywood, here they come. So thanks, folks, for checking in.

Here's the rest of the episode, or I guess the whole episode from a couple years ago. And we'll see you on YouTube next week and every week after that till the end of time. Listen up, fuck fucks. It's Cody J with another fucking episode of Loosen Up Cucks with Cody J. Let's see what's in the news feed today, or should I call it the cuck feed? AOCWord recently condemned her do nothing Dem cabal for ignoring what she calls a very real threat of fascism in the country. But then the Dumbocrat responded, but if we get rid of fascism, that would make one less Democrat in this room.

Gary gets it. She's the fascist, thank you, Gary. And speaking of soy, Senator Ron Paul, look, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do this. I'm sorry, sorry, everyone. Sorry, Gary. You can go now, we'll keep in touch. Listen, we had a meeting about the numbers

and then someone, I'm not gonna name who, but someone who is very drunk and also has my name, suggested that we try and appeal to conservatives with like a conservative version of the show. You know, to prove that we're balanced and fair, T-M-C-R, and didn't just exist in this left liberal commie bubble that a lot of people, I assume, accuse us of. I don't know, I don't read the comments.

But then we sort of realized that we didn't know any conservatives to guest host. Sadly Crowder has yet to accept my friend request. So I figured how hard could it be? But now I'm realizing that I'm just doing like, like a very bad parody of conservative comedy or not even a parody. I think we had a segment plan

where I catch a bullet in my mouth, no idea why. But then when we tried to research this, we came upon a very concerning revelation. And so here's some news with a question mark because it's a question and not really news. Why aren't conservatives funny? Oh yeah, we're doing this, home slices, various slices of homes.

Sorry about your homes, but we're taking this on. And ultimately, that title card is a bit of a provocative misrepresentation of what we're really talking about. So if you'd prefer, why aren't there a lot of conservative comedians? Or rather, if you'd prefer, why aren't there a lot of conservative comedians? Or rather, if you'd prefer, why aren't there a lot of famous conservative comedians today?

These are all variations of the same question, depending on your personal views. You know, we welcome all kinds of people to Cody's Showty. We're very inclusive. Well, this episode is very inclusive because this question concerns everyone. It's a bit of a conundrum, you know, something we all kind of accept,

and the internet loves to write think pieces about. The stereotype being that as it stands now, the only joke conservatives seem to have and glom onto is the old, I identify as a blank bit, this meme and such. And it's the question we are being tasked with tonight. Because honestly, it shouldn't be that way. Humor isn't politically aligned, right? And to be clear, we're not talking about funny entertainers

who happen to be Republicans, like your Kelsey's Grammar or your David's Zucker, but rather comedy that's specifically right-leaning in themes. The Jon Stewart of the right, if you will. And just to get it out of the way, there are a lot of shitty left-leaning comics out there. You may even think I'm one of them.

I don't know, I don't read the comments. But the late night model alone seems to exclusively function by taking literally any comedian and sucking their funny force like some kind of hot mummy curse. But I don't think there's a question about how oddly one-sided political humor really is. But heck, maybe we're all wrong and bias

and conservatives are actually hilarious and liberals just don't find them funny. So do you remember Newton's law? Not that Newton, this Newton. Not that Newton, this Newton. There we go. Whew, that went over really well. Isaac Newton once said that for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction,

meaning much like my nightly massage therapists, forces always come in pairs. Nope, it's not that. Objectively speaking, that was very bad comedy. That is, of course, Gutfeld and his opening jokes pointing out that several things are, in fact, named Newton. Followed by the line, and I'm going to directly quote him here, "'Much like my nightly massage therapists, "'forces always come in pairs'

"'as a punchline intro to a segment." And it's okay if you didn't fully understand what he said just then, because his delivery reads like someone who just learned what words are. That's definitely his first problem. See, what Gutfeld has there is a throwaway joke meant to bridge two subjects. Something you would want to say naturally and fast that isn't hard to understand. Like when I'm thanking my two massage therapists for their hard work.

He's doing a casual simile where the twist is that what you're comparing says something absurd about yourself. An actual example of this structure would be saying something like, "'Comedy' is about tone and texture, something that, much like my weird smooth balls, Greg Gutfeld lacks. The joke is that I have weird, smooth, pale little boy testicles, you see. And by setting up a comparison between Greg Gutfeld and my balls,

I could further elaborate by saying something like, and also like my weird balls, Greg Gutfeld is empty inside and so on. Look, it's not perfect, but my point is that I'm giving your brain something that's easy to digest, like my weird balls. The problem with Gutfeld's joke is that he wanted to land on the phrase, forces always come in pairs.

So the natural joke writing instinct would be to take one of the words and give it a double meaning, something like, the phrase, forces always come in pairs. So the natural joke writing instinct would be to take one of the words and give it a double meaning, something like, much like a Sith and apprentice, forces always come in pairs. Or perhaps, much like a fruit fetishist, forces always come in pairs.

See, words are neat. But Greg actually does the opposite of this, creating a simile that makes your brain have to work backwards to understand it. A massage therapist, when doing a massage, presses and rubs on muscles that a fucking alien might perhaps define as a force. He's saying his massage or his force comes in pairs

like his nightly massage therapists. So what he's ultimately saying is just, I get a massage from two people every night as his ultimate joke. And that's the ending problem, which is that the final observation being made isn't creative or absurd or funny or an observation or unexpected, but rather confusing.

Why do you have two? So your brain is left searching for something it might've missed. And you find yourself repeating the joke in your mind several times to understand it, ultimately getting disappointed at the result. I probably didn't need to break it down that much, but I wanted to, because I wanted to explain

why it's fundamentally bad. Gutfeld is a fundamentally bad comedian, made worse by his weird, cruel confidence and that weird like half tone he's doing where he starts up here and then kind of eats the rest of it. He's doing like Colbert or something, I don't know. Not to mention that this whole segment turns out to be about how he's going to buy a gun

because he's scared of crime and how we should all be scared too because the Democrats are planning to destroy the country by purposefully allowing crime? Law-abiding people actually will abide by the laws that are made and criminals, they won't. They're criminals. So today's lawmakers just make it easier for themselves by making shoplifting and retail theft, car chases, and assault unworthy of arrest. It's all part of a greater mission to remake society into something new by destroying it first. And what does that do? Well, Newton also said what goes up must come down. The more the Dems

and the media try to reduce your security, it's up to the rest of us to enhance it. At this rate, by 2022, we'll all be driving tanks." And this is probably the larger issue, which is that political comedy often works best when it's pointing out a truth of some kind. And while there are a lot of harsh truths to be said about Democrats, they aren't, you know, purposefully trying to make crime legal. So it just feels like weird fear-mongering slam poetry. There's no teeth to his comedy because his message is curated propaganda from one political perspective. This isn't exclusive to the right, message is curated propaganda from one political perspective.

This isn't exclusive to the right, but any niche group pushing a political agenda. An example from the left would be something like like the subreddit Toilet Paper USA, a place where people like to blow off steam about grifters like Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro. I get it, believe me. But one of the things they like to do is Photoshop

like almost believable but fake tweets from these people, which is frustrating when they're perfectly real tweets you could actually mock. So it just feels like wish fulfillment. That's why a lot of Trump parodies fell short, because they just boiled down to pointing out stuff about him we don't like, but exaggerated. Remember the President Show?

What is it, kid? Who are they? They are incredible real estate guys who owned Studio 54, and that's a place where you could do anything. Yeah, what the heck is wrong? Fake children. We are not kids. Fake children.

We're not kids. Fake children. Play with the kids? Yeah, they're fun. What's fun about them? Pushing aside the talent of the performers or writers, why would we need or want a show like that? It's all pandering, lowest hanging fruit. Which is great if you like coming inside of pairs,

but not cutting edge when it comes to comedy. It's not exclusive to the right, but the right seems to do it almost exclusively. And we'll definitely get more into what Trump specifically did to comedy, but I need to talk about Gutfeld a little bit more. Yeah, Gutfeld! Gary, get the fuck out of here.

Why are you still here? I'll talk to you later. Now, I don't want people to think that Gutfeld is going to be my only example of conservative comedy. But the reason we need to talk about this wet sack of oats is that he's apparently getting higher ratings than any other late night talk show host. And that seems like some Twilight Zone shit, right?

Is our entire premise to this video wrong? Is conservative comedy actually extremely popular and good? Or perhaps is it that Fox News in general gets higher ratings than any other news station? Not because it's the most popular, but rather because it's the only right-leaning cable source. So of course, everyone right-leaning will flock to them, whereas centrist or left-leaning viewers

have a larger spread of options. But again, I would argue that all late night is toothless, pandering often to liberals. But the likes of Colbert and Kimmel at least have clear jokes. Good jokes? That's extremely debatable. But this is how low we're making the bar in this episode.

We're not judging the quality of jokes, just that they're able to competently make them. Anyway, since the internet exists and cable in general is dying, Fox is seeing a historic dip in ratings because of the fragmented way in which people get their news. Conservatives and liberals have options now, you see. And so yeah, Gutfeld is watched more

than other late night comedians because he's the only late night comedian that appeals to conservatives. And if conservatives had a funnier option, I'm sure they would jump on that, sorry, Greg, but it is obviously true. And here's the thing, they actually do. And by the end of this video,

I'm going to show you more than one conservative comedian who is actually good at telling conservative jokes. But before I get to them, I'd like to address the elephant in the room. Who, me? I swear to God! Maybe we all can't take a joke. You need to go now, all right?

You need to go. Can't I just help with the camera? I said I would call you later and I will do that. Just get, you need to go now. Sorry you had to see that, but back to the show and whatnot. So this would be the more centrist take, which is that both liberals and conservatives are humorless when it comes to jabs at their own beliefs.

There are multiple psychological studies claiming that conservatives don't have a sense of humor. And truth be told, I didn't look into those studies because I just don't think that that's true. Call it faith, I guess, but I think everyone has a sense of humor, even ghosts and spiders. The more nuanced phrasing of this

comes from the Washington Post, referring to Sigmund Freud's "'Wit and its relation to the unconscious,' which pointed out that a joke is only as good as a third party's willingness to accept a joke. And like, I don't know, that guy fucks cigars or whatever, but what he's saying is that even the funniest joke

falls flat with the wrong audience. But the truth is, that equation is backward. And what I mean is that it should be that even the funniest joke falls flat when it's told by someone who has bad intentions. And they've canceled people that are more powerful than me. They canceled JK Rowling. My God, JK Rowling wrote all the Harry Potter books by herself. She sold so many books, the Bible worries about her.

And they canceled her because she said in an interview, and this is not exactly what she said, but effectually, she said, gender was a fact. I'm team turf. I agree. I agree, man. Gender is a fact. First of all, he's conflating gender with sex. Gender is a social construct.

We made it up, like money or a round earth. But even if he said sex is a fact, at around five weeks, a fetus forms a cluster of cells that can either turn into weird smooth testicles or weird smooth ovaries. And it's a gene called SRY that activates the former of the two. But that gene isn't a binary on and off function,

but rather a sliding scale that can and will sometimes cause a person to be born with neither female or male genitalia. Doctors will often choose a gender to go with, but we later learned that this choice could result in the child growing up with a different gender identity than what was given to them at birth. Meanwhile, other genes like DMRT1 and FOXL2 will maintain gender characteristics later in life, but can stop functioning. On top of this, the brain itself has no binary gender. There's no male brain or female brain. The point I'm making here is that no, gender is not a fact. It's actually quite slippery according to real science.

And I'm not gonna get into all the details, nor do I want to get into this too much because Dave Chappelle, for starters, isn't a conservative. But he is an objectively successful and subjectively extremely hilarious comedian with very incorrect opinions on transgender people. He claims in this special that he has no problem with the trans community, and I'm sure he believes that,

even though he won't shut the fuck up about them. I bring all this up because his Netflix special is currently the subject of both protests and counter protestsprotests. The counter-protester's view very much being, you just can't take a joke. There's a narrative here that Dave Chappelle makes fun of everyone. So why is it that only trans people get offended? Are they just humorless?

See, the problem is that framing this about humor actually deflects from the problem. And to put it into perspective, imagine if a comedian was going around making jokes about how being gay is a choice. It wouldn't matter if the jokes they were making were funny because the premise they're selling would be fundamentally harmful and wrong. Chappelle claims he has no problem with trans people, but is saying things that are factually wrong

and designed to discredit them. It's propaganda no different than Gutfeld saying that Democrats want crime to happen. The only contrast being that Dave Chappelle is actually funny. So it's not that trans people can't take a joke. And in fact, there are tons of examples of trans comedians in stuff like roast battles, clearly taking jokes.

Is that these specific jokes are framed as hard truths that are actually based on weird lies used to justify marginalizing an already marginalized and vulnerable group of people. Lies that have been repeated as jokes over and over again by conservatives. To quote this Parker Malloy article, "'I'm not asking comedians to stop telling trans jokes.

I'm asking them to stop telling the same trans jokes over and over.'" And here's a clip of exactly that. A lot of people mad at Dave Chappelle right now. It's interesting. I look and here's my thing. He's been doing comedy for a long time. I feel like you should be able to write a trans joke without offending people. I was high the other day. I wrote this one. Check this out. I'm honestly kind of jealous of trans men, right?

Cuz they're completely men and them niggas get to have cute feet. I don't think that's fair. See, the appeal of someone like Chappelle is that he tells it like it is. That's a whole genre of comedy where the points being made can almost intersect with philosophical truths or political truths.

And there are cathartic moments where the comic doesn't even really make a joke so much as say something profound. See Carlin comma George. The problem is that this is a very hard thing to do and will go very wrong if the person is, say, incredibly wrong about stuff. Honest to God, environmentalist, quit ripping into me. I am serious when I ask you, how can the planet heating up make it colder? and the planet heating up make it colder. That's all I wanna know. Quit telling me what a stupid son of a bitch I am

and tell me that. Hey Dennis, so when the Arctic warms up, that disturbs a circular wind pattern called the polar vortex that moves cold air. Wait, actually I bet a million people already told you this, you stupid son of a bitch. Dennis doesn't make a joke there because he thinks this rotund truth dump

about climate change is huge enough to work on its own. But in reality, he's just being obtuse and using wordplay in order to seem like he's calling out an inconsistency. Why do they call them hot dogs if they're not made out of dogs? Pause for laughter and awards. I almost can't talk about this stale dip in the context of politics,

even though he is firmly conservative now. And that's because he was and always will be terrible, regardless of his political affiliation. Dennis Miller's whole bit was that he was some funny intellectual looking down at us dum-dums. But as the years progressed, it became clear that he just owned a thesaurus. He once made a tweet so confusing that people worried he was suffering

a stroke. Here's another one saying, and I'm going to do this one out loud. Progressives are shooting themselves in the foot more frequently than a centipede who quite frankly is getting no relief whatsoever from a topical application of a generic antifungal toenail cream. So ironically, he actually is an amazing asset to comedy, just not in the way he thinks he is. Remember when he starred in a Tales from the Crypt movie? That's not relevant to anything we're talking about, but I just wanted to say it out loud.

There was a brief window of time where Hollywood looked at him and saw a leading man, that window being exactly 1996 and not a year before or after. Anyway, I gotta go dump out. So I guess I'll put on some ads and then we'll be right back talking about other people, talking about funny stuff.

I promise this all like leads somewhere. Like my dump into the toilet. Ooh, do not go in there. Smoking. Okay, and we're back. In case for some reason you forgot, we're talking about conservative humor and why it doesn't work.

Specifically, the excuse that liberals simply don't find their humor funny because we're triggered or offended or whatever. And while I can't speak for everyone, the actual truth there is that much like Dennis Miller's zinger about toenail cream not helping a centipede get relief so it shoots itself in the feet, like progressives, the conservative jokes about liberals

and Dems aren't really offensive, but rather so confusing or inconsistent that they just don't actually touch a nerve. For example, I'm Wes Halula. I'm Ethan Nicole. This is the Babylon Bee News Desk. As President Biden's drone strikes continue to rain down terror on unsuspecting Middle Easterners, many have begun to paint the colors of the transgender flag over their doorposts

in hopes that the drone strikes pass them by. It was discovered that President Biden programmed the drones to ignore homes showing support for transgenderism. And as a result, dozens of lives have been spared. A baker's dozen at most. Oh, sweet. The Babylon Bee. You thought I didn't see you over there, but I did.

See, the joke that they continue in the bit is that Biden is so militaristically pro-trans and therefore bombing anyone who isn't. The problem is that while Biden has reversed a lot of Trump's shitty policies surrounding the LGBTQ community, he actually hasn't done too much else besides that. And so if you were to make fun of Biden, perhaps you could mock him for presenting as an ally

while not putting his money where his mouth is. That's the reality, the actual criticism that would likely bother Biden supporters. Or, you know, slapping on a BLM sticker to a drone that's killing brown people overseas. But by framing it as this pretend world where Biden is a pro-trans fascist only appeals to the far right fantasy version of politics.

And that's fine, their audience is conservatives and not liberals after all. But what I'm honing in on here is whether these jokes would somehow offend liberals so that they don't find it funny. But it's just not funny. I don't know how else to describe it. It's not a very funny observation.

In part because it's one they tell so many times. Hey, did you know the army is woke now? That's it. That's what the joke is. Not know the army is woke now? That's it. That's what the joke is. Not that the army is woke while perpetuating, you know, war stuff, but rather that the army is now the bad thing, wokeness. I guess the framing is technically different,

but the punchline is always the same. On top of that, and this is pretty key, I just don't believe they actually care about drone strikes. What I mean is that when you look at a site like The Onion and search the word drone, you'll see satire pointing out the ghoulishness of drones under every president. Whereas the Babylon Bee only started caring

about drone strikes conveniently right as Biden took office. You can search their site and see that the only time they mentioned Trump and military drones is back when he was Biden took office. You can search their site and see that the only time they mentioned Trump and military drones is back when he was running for office. Then they dropped the subject completely during his loser term. In other words, the bee sure seems disingenuously concerned

about drones in order to roast Biden, and perhaps interestingly, specifically trans people, whereas the onion is taking a hard moral stance despite who is president. And so going back to why the Bee is less funny, it's at least in part because we all sort of know they're pulling their punches for the GOP while grotesquely demonizing the left.

They have a transparent agenda and are clearly angry at Democrats, often to the point that they forget to put satire first. For example, they have scores of articles mocking AOC for being childishly dumb, but that doesn't make any sense. What controversy there is around AOC has nothing to do with her intelligence.

Voting present was a bit of a cowardly political move, as AOC herself has pointed out about others and herself. Maybe there's like a joke there, instead of her not knowing basic words. They're just calling her dumb because they don't like her, I guess, which is not very funny or offensive or edgy because there's no actual nerve it's hitting. But according to the editor in chief of the Bee, what I just said is actually the joke. In an interview with The Atlantic, he describes their AOC is stupid articles

as an Andy Kaufman-esque self parody making fun of themselves. He calls it one of their best jokes because so many on leftist Twitter complained that the joke isn't funny. Not because it's offensive, but just because it's not funny. And that's the joke? A joke that he has to explain

because literally no one got it. So first of all, I guess, congratulations that you think your best joke is making fun of how your jokes are bad. But also there's no real way to tell that it's a parody because, and this is pretty key, it's not any different from other Babylon Bee articles. When they wanted to tackle the subject of say,

Kamala Harris and immigration, they frame it as Kamala Harris hoping her unlikeability will distract from her terrible job fixing the border. The joke being that she sucks and is not fixing the border. Was this also an Andy Kaufman self parody? Just how many of their articles are avant-garde Banksy subversions of themselves? Meanwhile, The Onion tackled the same idea with Kamala Harris deeply troubled by images of Haitian

migrants at border whom she distinctly remembers telling not to come here. And like, do you see the difference? One is just, she sucks. And more importantly, we don't like her. And the other actually points out that she's a hypocrite. I definitely don't wanna sit here and just read headlines like I'm Jay Leno or something, so I'll stop there. My point being that there are two angles here, one coming from blunt force dislike, while the other is a way more nuanced criticism.

And then apparently they will sometimes parody their own blunt force dislike without telling us, I guess. And so the intent behind a lot of Babylon Bee jokes are already extremely confusing. And it's hard to find something funny if you fundamentally don't understand the intent of it because it's being hidden from you. This also suspiciously protects the Bee

from having to admit they aren't funny because they can hide behind this end of chaos excuse where they're so funny that they aren't funny or something like that. But going all the way back to what that cigar fucker said about the audience being a key factor, any and all meta jokes are routinely lost on their core audience of conservatives. I'm going to show you one of their sketches, and I want you to try to figure out what the joke is. Hey there, you might have heard discussion about CRT and you might be worried that we teachers are brainwashing your kids with critical race theory. Well, you should be worried.

We are absolutely indoctrinating them with this stuff. If you want to know for sure that your kids are being taught CRT in school, look for these five signs. Number one, they call your boss to tell them how racist you are and they get you fired. Look, if your kid tries to get you canceled because you perpetuate systems of oppressive whiteness by treating all races equally, which is totally racist,

they might be learning CRT at school. So the premise is that these are a series of signs that critical race theory is being taught in your schools. And the joke is that all the signs are over the top reactions against appropriation and shame for being white and such. It's an exaggeration or an irony used to ridicule a belief, also known as satire.

But what's fascinating is that this premise seems to be satirizing the right, isn't it? Because the exaggeration is that CRT would turn kids into these over-the-top left-wing stereotypes when obviously it wouldn't, right? Otherwise, it's just saying what they really think CRT can do to kids, in which case, then what's the joke?

So doesn't that mean the B is making fun of the right-wing outrage at CRT? I mean, maybe, right? Is this like the AOC joke? It's possible they would do that, I guess, apparently. And yet weirdly, this video is filled with comments by anti-CRT people saying shit like, the line between satire and reality is being blurred.

As if the stuff in this video is like, real things people are saying. And this is where my brain starts hurting because the video itself really seems to be mocking the over-exaggeration of CRT fears, but the audience seems to miss that and see it as a commentary of the very real dangers of teaching CRT.

The Bees' audience are definitely more right wing than left wing, and every other thing they did on Critical Race Theory clearly reflects a right-wing view on it. I don't know, maybe this was written by their one writer who was pro-CRT or anti-anti-CRT? Or is it the Andy Kaufman thing again? But there's an easier answer here. Going back to the fact that conservative humor is often met with a level of confusion from liberals about what exactly the joke is. And perhaps right now, a Babylon Bee writer

or some conservative is watching my confusion and laughing at it. Greetings to our conservative fan. Because what Andy Kaufman was, his specific brand, would now be called trolling. Kaufman would do things like wrestle women to show how weak they are, the punchline being that he was doing an act

to get a reaction from audiences. The joke was that people were offended. That's the core idea behind trolling, which is really just another word for like a prank. You want the reaction. A notable successful troll would be people like Ken M or Daniel from SL, who prey on small circles on the internet acting oblivious and frustrating so that we,

the actual audience, can laugh at the exchanges, right? A more mainstream version is the fellows or chaps at Jackass honking air horns at cracker ass golfers trying to make their putts or swings or whatever golfers do. I didn't look into it. Something about flags. But in all of those cases, the trolls have two things in common. The people they're pranking are a small niche group,

and they inherently have a good sense of comedy in what they do. Daniel from SL's most notable work is when he played the game Rust, pretended not to know how to use a bow and arrow for way too long while other players tried to teach him and then uses the bow and arrow perfectly to kill the people trying to help him. There's a setup and punchline there beyond the frustration of the gamers in the video.

It might feel weird that I'm sitting here explaining comedy bits like a parent describing a 30 Rock episode, but honestly, you're gonna wish I kept going instead of showing you this clip. Darn tranny. It's always giving me problems with the- That's the last time I drive a Chevy. I'll tell you that. Anyway, this week I changed my gender and went to Planet Fitness.

Just one thing, careful to your back. It's, you can hurt your back. It's a little rounded. Just make sure it's flat. Excuse me. I just need just some help to get the weight up. And in case I just, you know, just in case for safety, but I should be good.

Okay, super not gonna spend a lot of time on Crowder because you know. But here we have a video where Steven Crowder pretends to be a trans woman, goes to the gym, and then just annoys people in a way that has nothing to do with being trans. Okay, I was good, thank you. I just need help lifting up.

What was that? Oh, it's trying to run away. I said it was trying to run away from me. Biting commentary about trans people going to the gym who then cause a scene and break safety rules before being called out for being a right-wing shill. But why are you telling me that I'm insincere? Because I know who you are.

How do you know who I am? Are you saying that because that's a pre-transition ID? Is that why? No, it's because I'm insincere. So what's really the punchline or observation here? I will answer that actually. The punchline is all the people who would then share this on Twitter and say,

what the fuck is this? The punchline is me, right now, asking what the punchline is. It's that I am reacting to it. Conservative comedians have become obsessed with getting a reaction from the left, to the point that they've completely forgotten to say an actual joke. They do something pointless, often cruel or weird or factually wrong, and laugh when people point out that it's pointless or cruel or weird or factually wrong. And so this idea that wit is based on the third party's

willingness to accept a joke has actually become more meta than that. It's a comedian saying unfunny things to an audience and then a second audience watching that first audience not laugh and finding that funny. Or in other words. That's gonna get a comment at Media Matters. The joke there is,

look at this mean or incorrect thing I just said. Boy, that's gonna make people mad. And the insatiable lust for this end result, to have the media outraged over you, has really thrown off a lot of conservatives' ability to tell an actual joke. Because again, if the end result is to make liberals react or go, that's not funny,

the easiest way to do that is to not be funny. And so it creates a built-in excuse for any time someone points that out. The Babylon Bee can comfortably lean back on the idea that they're comedy geniuses playing 4D chess because no one understood their super good joke about how doctors prescribe water to horses. Even if the political point they're trying to make is clear,

the language and context and attempt is just, hoo boy, not great. Often it all collapses in on itself, where the left will laugh at how ridiculous an attempt it is, and that reaction will be seen as a success. Ben Garrison comes to mind. Because I bet the first time you saw a Ben Garrison political cartoon, you assumed that it was actually a satire of right-wing politics, until learning that it was actually genuine. And while I'm guessing here, the reason he probably draws Trump as this swole fuckable is that he knows that gets a reaction from the left.

Also, there's at least a percentage of people masturbating to it, right? Like, am I right? I don't wanna derail this, but I'm sure someone is masturbating to Ben Garrison's muscular, sweaty, pumping, veiny Trump drawings, really picturing his mounting presence like a tacky steed, you know, penetration, etc. Only the main reaction, besides the furious masturbation, is the left laughing at him doing that. It's like urinating

in your own mouth on the bus and then claiming you successfully triggered the passengers when they all leave at the next stop. And so triggering or satire or trolling often feels like a stand in excuse for when they fail at a joke and need to fall back on something to save their covered face. Hey folks, this is normally a video

and we're about to show a clip from a video. So I'm gonna describe it to you briefly. It's a very poorly drawn cartoon, like a really bad job. They didn't try at all with this. And there are a bunch of indigenous people walking around happy. And oh no, they're slaughtering each other. They're killing each other, then they eat each other.

And then luckily, Christopher Columbus shows up and he brings a compass and food and a chair and a cow. And he teaches them how to grow corn apparently. And then all these cities pop up and that's the contribution that the white man made. The end of the video shows a list of contributions pre-Columbus, which are dream catchers, tomahawks, and cannibalism. And then contributions after Columbus. Those are apparently the two categories, before and after Columbus.

Very, very academic approach there. And the after Columbus contributions are written language and horses and math and philosophy and science and medicine and a bunch of other stuff um that apparently indigenous people didn't do um certainly the corn thing is maybe not applicable bad job is my point oh oh and an f oofers that's a cartoon released by the Daily Wire claiming at the end there that until the white folk came around to America, Native Americans only had dream catchers,

tomahawks, and cannibalism. And then we showed up and gave them all the other stuff like medicine, breath mints, and plumbing, which are actually all things they already had a version of, but whatever. Oh, and one of the things they list is American football, which hilariously was invented by the Iroquois. Anywho, also a whole section about the cultivation of corn,

of all things. But anywho, again, the point is that the video is clearly mocking indigenous people's day and trying wrongly to credit Europeans with advancing America. It's just what the video is about. And yet when the media correctly pointed out how racist and uneducated the video was, our pal Ben Shapiro claimed that it was just satire while also pulling the video from the site.

But what does that mean? Once again, satire is the act of using exaggerations or irony to make a point. And this video isn't an exaggeration of leftist ideas. It's a straightforward video claiming that Europeans were the ones who actually invented civilization and made corn or some shit. So what's the satire of it then? The only answer is that it would be a satire of conservative views of Thanksgiving and Columbus Day, but on a conservative website. A conservative website that's writers and editors all talk seriously about the glory of white Europeans civilizing the savages.

So like, they know their opinions are dog shit? You see how this gets so confusing and muddled. And the obvious answer is that they totally earnestly meant to make that video racist and had to backtrack. Side note, Ben said he didn't know it went up and was on vacation at the time, despite the amount of time that goes into a cartoon and scheduling that goes into publishing a Columbus Day video on Columbus Day. Also, in his attempted explanation about the satire being a response to the left turning

Columbus Day solely into a story about Western civilization genociding Native Americans, he put genociding in quotes. So maybe there's something there about the beliefs going on there. Anyway, it's like whenever people would say Trump was being sarcastic or trolling, when he said completely serious and ghoulish things, but the things they would say he's trolling about

often aligned with all of his other beliefs. So like, what was his entire presidency ironic? Was he the Andy Kaufman of elected officials? Or once again, is this idea of satire or trolling a really convenient way to deflect literally any and all criticism? I feel like it's that second thing and not the Andy Kaufman thing. So there you have it. to deflect literally any and all criticism. I feel like it's that second thing

and not the Andy Kaufman thing. So there you have it. I successfully explained, not much yet actually. Suck a ball, we still haven't figured out why conservatives aren't funny, have we? And we're... Gonna break for ads? What are we, some kind of show?

Yeah, baby, Ace Ventura, baby. Somebody smoke it. Okay, that was the last ad break. Now we can really gain some momentum here. We're sleek and we're rocket shaped and we're shooting into the tube of truth. Why, gosh darn heck it, aren't conservatives funny? I'm gonna get to it,

but first we need to talk about the cruelty factor. You see, pal, everyone has a cruelty threshold that's directly related to whoever is being victimized by a joke. Going back to the jackass, we laugh not only because they're funny guys, but often just tend to prank each other. And when they do prank someone else, like those golfs folk,

we say, eh, fuck them. They're rich and they're at a country club and probably suck, so it just feels like punching up. But if you're a golfer, you might actually find that prank cruel. And heck, maybe those golfers were actually nice. We don't know, we didn't ask them. We're just being mean for fun.

Because truthfully, everyone has a little cruelty in them. And life is about trying to control that and mock people we feel deserve it. The incredibly wealthy and powerful come to mind. Ooh, spooky. Sometimes I like to put raw meat in the mufflers of expensive cars so when they start the car,

it looks like a meat diarrhea came out. But sometimes I don't do that. And that's the balance. But there is absolutely a subset of people who find cruelty in general very funny. Not in small doses or paired with humor, but just the act of being cruel. There are loads of prank videos on the internet

that are just people assaulting other people without a joke in sight. And so going back to jokes or just weird pranks around trans people, there is an oddly large audience who think that's actually punching up against a woke mob or something like that. Who much like we say about those golfers say,

eh, fuck them. They say I was punching down on them. Punching down. The fuck does that mean? What the fuck do you think it means, millionaire comedian Dave Chappelle? The people who think the LGBTQ community has it like good now because they got some rights

and more representation don't really seem to grasp how the last few years compared to all of human history before this moment. Like this isn't the point of this video, but how fucking wild is that? That's like being saved from drowning and then everyone immediately getting mad at how much air you're taking up.

Let the fucking trans community have a goddamn motherfucking second to enjoy being slightly more represented in this country. And as this lady pointed out on Twitter, a chance to not be perpetually on the ropes about who they are. Like maybe trans comedians could have more visibility if they didn't have to spend most of their time

responding to this bullshit. You know, sweet boiling Christ. Even the beacon of edgy humor, Norman 9-11 McDonald stopped doing transgender jokes because he felt they were both lazy and potentially harmful toward trans people. To quote him directly, you don't want to have a joke be misunderstood and then someone goes and beats up a trans person. Good point. And so taking all of this and applying it to comedy and the

question, why aren't conservatives very funny? Well, if your goal is to say something from any political perspective that is designed solely to anger a group of people, it's often just pretty fucking boring unless you actually create a valid criticism, or at least involve some unbearable puppet. Not today, buddy! This is especially when it comes to political satire, which often works best with a clear observation.

And more often, the truth comes back to cruelty, to this image that runs in every conservatives head when they say what they tell themselves is a joke. The angry screaming Lib who is just so triggered and that's what they actually think is funny. The cruelty is the punchline. And honestly, the most frustrating part of all of this is the Democrats, the left, Lib bones,

Libanachis, et cetera, well, there's like so fucking much you could make fun of them for if you actually came at it from a place of nuance or valid criticism. Non-conservative websites do it all the goddamn time. Sites like Reductress, while sometimes taking shots at the right,

mainly devoted to jokes about feminists, and they're feminists. The Onion, The Hard Times, Clickhole, these are all sites that parody themselves more than others. Heck, we do it all the time, and in this video you are watching. It's very, very easy. Here's some news.

AOC's Met Gala address was criticized for being performative activism, as opposed to the rest of her time in office staying under the radar and getting a lot of stuff done. But hey, what's important is that it's driving the conversation, because that's definitely why we elect people. Weird how a lot of the most visible progressives

in Congress don't actually introduce laws or co-sponsor bills, but sure like to tweet about a bunch of stuff America should be doing. Tweet harder! I don't know, maybe we need a few more Netflix shows about inequality under capitalism that we can all glom onto and make them nearly a billion dollars that they can use to not pay their creators and fire trans people.

Hold on, I gotta make another tweet about that injustice while simultaneously gushing over the Great British Baking Show. Team Juergen, am I right? Giuseppe or bust! I'm not saying we can't enjoy ourselves, but there's gotta be an option between tweeting from your couch and shadow punching a Nazi in downtown Portland. I mean, both are fun, but perhaps if millennials are also concerned about climate change

and wealth inequality, we could run for office, or I don't know, start a YouTube show with mostly white writers complaining about the world so as to feel like we made a difference. But at least the Zoomers must think it's super cool how we're yelling at their grandparents for dooming them to a barren wasteland that we're not actually trying to do much to fix.

Point is that we're not hard to make fun of. The average 30 year old liberal male has the facial hair of a high tech viking and the secret misogyny of a regular viking. But none of this answers the original question at hand. The reason we're all here. Why aren't conservatives funny? And now I'm going to stop teasing you with all of my moist words and finally answer it. And then talk about it for probably way too long after that.

Are you ready? You look ready, I can see you, you know. The real answer is that conservatives actually are funny, just not in this country or during this era. And in fact, you could even argue the answer is simpler, that the unfunny people we've been talking about simply aren't conservatives in the traditional sense, because conservatism in this country

has lurched far beyond what other countries would define as right wing. And now their agenda isn't to sell us on Republican or Christian humor rather than tirelessly demonize the left in the context of furious culture war bullshit that was inflamed by Trump's presidency. I don't know if you recall,

but there were actually funny conservative comedians as recently as the mid 2000s. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour, the tour that's been cracking up America is finally hitting the big screen. I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability. Okay, here you are, that's fine, you're all right.

Blue Collar Comedy Tour, the movie. Comedy is subjective, so maybe the Blue Collar Comedy Tour wasn't your cup of diamond-encrusted panda flesh tea or whatever the common folk drink. However, it was wildly successful at the time. It was also not a fluke, in that you can find a bunch of other comedians

specifically pushing religious right-wing values who are, in the technical term of the word, doing actual jokes. Cause I don't care how holy you are, you slam your hand in a car door, something's coming out of your mouth. Are they jokes I like? But again, we're not trying to in a car door, something's coming out of your mouth. Are they jokes I like? Eh.

But again, we're not trying to make a judgment here, but rather identify jokes that are actually written to be a joke with like a punchline and an observation coming from a human and baseline compassionate perspective. To put it in terms they might understand, jokes that identify as jokes. There's actually a whole spectrum of types of conservative humor that was very popular or well done.

The blue collar sitcoms like Roseanne and Home Improvement, and even politically charged comedy from the right. Here's a guy named Adam Yenzer doing a jab at Obama's economy. Like Obama wants you to think this country is creating jobs, but it's not. This country created one job, which is Uber driver, and then we all signed up for it.

So now our entire economy is based on the fact that we take turns giving each other a ride to the airport. In exchange for the same $30. Conservatives were funny and successful during this time, and also in other countries right now, you know, where Trump wasn't their president. My friend is from another country, and she came in, she was like, can you please explain what everyone is annoyed about

with this whole Brexit thing? I said, look, imagine if you and 10 of your friends were in a Burger King, right? And you said, listen, who wants to leave the Burger King? And six people were like, we wanna leave the Burger King. And then somebody who didn't wanna leave a Burger King, right? And you said, listen, who wants to leave the Burger King? And six people were like, we wanna leave the Burger King. And then somebody who didn't wanna leave the Burger King was like, I'll get us out of here. I'll have a word with the manager.

I'll get us a deal. It's like, do we need a deal? Come on, no, you can't leave without a deal. I'll get a deal. You wanna leave? Yeah, I'm gonna get us a deal, right? So she goes to talk to the manager. She comes back two years later

She's been trying to leave the door says push she's pulling that thing She got great news I've done this a deal to leave what's the deal we've got paid a manager 40 billion pounds I've done us a deal to leave. What's the deal? We've got to pay the manager 40 billion pounds. And then we get to leave, technically, yes. What do you mean technically? Well, physically, we'll still be in the Burger King. But if anyone asks you, are you in Burger King? You'll be able to tell them, no, no, no, we left.

Putting aside your views on Brexit, that is a pro-Brexit comedian making a pro-Brexit joke in a way that is structurally a joke. I can't believe the bar is this low. And for the record, they still have all that cancel culture anti-woke shit going on over there. I'm not trying to make a judgment on this guy or anything like that, but rather point out that this self-proclaimed right-wing comic still does jokes that conservatives would never do today in America. In order to love your country,

you have to know what's wrong with it. Did you know, historical fact for you, the British have been to war with 75% of the countries in the world. Woo! Woo! Woo! This is why no one likes us, man.

We're trying to complete the set, right? We had a fight with Argentina over who owns the Falkland Islands. They are based right on the coast of Argentina. Who do you think might be right? Go on. I know what some of you are thinking, you're thinking Alistair careful you don't understand the political situation that surrounds him. Well I don't, here's what I do understand.

Imagine a group of people from Kenya came over here and said listen I think we own the Isle of Wight. He's not the only one, here's another right wing British comic making a joke about the low minimum wage in his country. I parked my car at a parking meter in Soho and the parking meter charged me six pounds an hour to park my car. It was actually more than the minimum wage.

There were kids working in McDonald's, could look through a window and see a parking meter earning more than they are. Again, I don't know much about these guys. Maybe they're real monsters or maybe they're great, but these simply aren't the type of conservative jokes we get over here. But we don't have to talk about Britland or Engelberg

or whatever they call it, but monarchy, fucking, I don't know. After all, this is about American conservatism, which sure seems to have veered steadily way more into the right after Trump. And I know it seems like a cop-out to put it all on that ghastly wang, but just hear me out. You can see this simply by comparing mid 2000s

American conservative comedy to comedy today. Here's Ron White, a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, doing a bit about how sexuality is on a spectrum. I go, we're all gay. It's just to what extent are you gay? He goes, that's bullshit, man. I ain't gay at all. I'm like, yeah, you are, gay? He goes, that's bullshit, man, I ain't gay at all. I'm like, yeah, you are, and I can prove it.

He goes, fine, prove it. Can you seriously imagine any conservative comedian making a joke like that now? Or this tweet about the private prison industry demonizing weed? It used to be that we were getting past the idea of Republicans or Christians versus gay rights. I'm willing to bet a lot of conservatives today

are completely on the side of LGBTQ rights, but their loudest members have somehow reverted their party because, you know, of him. Fantastic, so glad we're gonna talk about him, but we gotta, folks. He's sort of the symptom of a lot of problems and the reason for a lot of other problems, like not just in comedy, obviously, you know?

And Trump's election marked a drastic change for this country. And whenever the United States makes a drastic change, comedy also needs to shift with it. To quote Jon Stewart in his first daily show after 9-11. And we don't take that for granted here by any stretch of the imagination. And our show has changed.

I don't doubt that. What it's become, I don't know. Subliminal is not a punchline anymore. One day it will become that again, and Lord willing, it'll become that again because it means that we have ridden out the storm. Now, I'm not comparing Trump to 9-11. After all, he was right there helping people at ground zero.

What I'm saying is that these were both big political and societal shifts that would change entertainment with them. It's often what politicizes comedians in the first place. Before Trump, I wasn't doing a news show where I wore a violently unwashed suit. I was making dumb sketches and music and junk. I mean, I still do that too, but I also have to do this now.

They won't let me stop. I once did an entire parody video where I made up a fake Dave Matthews band song for just like, you know, I don't know why I did that, but it was funny. Point is that these changes happen all the time. It's just how society works. Like when people say you couldn't make a film

like Blazing Saddles today, the answer is, I guess, yes. Yeah, you couldn't make any old film today because that's how time works, right? You know, we used to love slapstick and Westerns and then stopped. There was a point not too long ago where kids were wearing inflated circus jeans

and that was sexy because culture changed. Judd Apatow was cutting edge at one point. South Park was the height of edgy and absurdist satire. And all they had to do at the time was kill Kenny over and over again and perform gay stereotypes. Everything gets stale as time lurches on. Jokes get old. Things that are seen as progressive suddenly become

standard ideas and so forth. It's not confusing. It's actually the opposite of that. Unfusing. And as the mid-2000s turned into the late 2000s, it really seemed like we were making meaningful steps forward. We had our first black president and legalized gay marriage, and we're ignoring all the drone murder and so on.

And one of the responses from entertainment was a push towards edgy roast style humor. We felt like it was safe to take satirical jabs at historically oppressed people as a sort of parody of prejudice. Look no further than the fact that one of the hottest comedians at the time was a white dude who often made shock jokes about rape and racism under the idea

that he wasn't really a bad person, but you know, just doing it all ironically. Who was that guy? Ugh. Right. that he wasn't really a bad person, but you know, just doing it all ironically. Who was that guy? Ugh. Right. See, around 2016 and 2017, two very specific things happened that would change comedy.

Trump would get elected and Louis C.K. would get found out for being a bit of a sex criminal. And so in a very short amount of time, the era of edgy insult humor against women and minorities just felt really gross. We began to realize that some of these edgy comics weren't actually doing a character. And we got a very real reminder that non-cis and non-white people still didn't have it great. Something I suspect they already knew. And comedy took another shift.

Insult comics either became self-aware enough to change their profession or just stopped getting booked. And a lot of them were somewhat conservative leaning. This is probably what a lot of them perceive as cancel culture. But the reality is just that we weren't buying what they were selling anymore because time happened. Meanwhile, as you no doubt recall, conservatives lost their fucking minds.

Trump, a man who is objectively funny, both on purpose and by accident, became the person the Republican Party had to get behind as their totally competent and good leader. He made every issue divisive, started his MAGA and QAnon cult, and just threw conservatives so far to the right that they looked nothing like themselves even a decade ago.

Somehow, the most ghoulish of grifters like Tompa Watterson would start new Trump era shows that quickly rose in the ratings. White supremacists marched in the streets and mass shootings by angry, mostly white, often racist young men became an epidemic. And those were the shootings that weren't done by cops. And so on.

We've already done a bunch of videos about that stuff. Like I don't know all the videos we've ever made, so I won't get into it. But what came out of this is an era where edgy insult comics, no matter their political affiliation, didn't really have a place anymore. After all, the least funny insult comic during this era

was the President of the United States. Why would we want more of that? The world was cruel and bizarre enough, and conservative comedians suddenly had a way different audience they had to appeal to. Or in the case of the older ones, they also drank the Kool-Aid and became extremely unfunny. Because once you get to a point where you have to act like Trump, an objectively hilarious person, is somehow a competent and serious president, you can no longer do relatable comedy.

So the only option is to sort of ignore the reality and just focus on culture war stuff, also known as the quest to trigger the libs. That comedian I showed before named Adam Yenzer is a good example because he now does a lot of work with the Babylon Bee, a site where you can very clearly see this change happen. Before Trump, the Bee focused primarily

on being a Christian version of the Onion, which honestly isn't a bad idea at all. I would even argue that it's good. They had satire headlines going after super churches and doomsaying Christianity, essentially trying to keep the extreme evangelists in check. Again, an extremely good idea that in fairness, they still do from time

to time. They even took shots at Trump when he first ran for office. But as Trump's presidency took hold and the bee sold ownership, something shifted. The Babylon Bee began to identify as a shitty right-wing comedy site. Greetings, listeners. So visually, this is a montage of a bunch of Babylon Bee headlines that are all constructed like blank identifies as blank. It's just a constant stream of it. Oh, my gosh. Too much. OK.

OK, bye. My God, it's full of the exact same joke. The fact that conservatives only have one joke is such a running joke that even the joke that they have one joke is an old joke. To the point that even the Babylon Bee made a sketch with that Yenzer guy, making fun of the fact that they only have one joke. In this case, they were able to identify

two jokes that they had. All right guys, listen up. As conservative comedy writers, it is not good that we only have two jokes. We've got blank identifies as blank, and did you just assume my gender? We need to think of a third joke. And first of all, are those different jokes?

Are they really? It seems like maybe they're the same joke still. Anyway, more of this torture. Seems like maybe they're the same joke still. Anyway, more of this torture. Holy, we were liberal comedy writers. All right, days and dems, we need some jokes for tonight's monologue. Good thing we're not conservatives

with only two jokes, am I right? So, what do you guys got? I tried to talk to my right wing uncle, but whoops, he was dumb. Stupid, brainless, big old idiots. Call them what you like. They're all conservatives, not me. Knock, knock.

Who's there? I don't know because I'm a Republican and my brain can't tell when somebody's at my doorstep. This sketch is fascinating. For starters, it absolutely has a point that liberal comedy can and will fall back on simply framing conservatives as dumb hicks, which isn't good or helpful.

But then it cuts to a liberal comedy room parody. And ironically, it's literally them doing exactly what they are critiquing liberals for by just making them out to be dumb. And the cherry of it all is that they still do a bunch of they-them jokes in the sketch about how that's their only joke. That and showing the liberal writers wearing masks inside,

which like, isn't that what we're supposed to be doing? Like if you wanted to mock masks, you show people using them in places where we don't have to use masks, like in a large field or something like that. So this meta joke about how conservatives only have two jokes ends up proving exactly that by not having more than two jokes.

Maybe three. I mean, there are little things in the sketch that are fun non sequitur gags, but the biting observations against liberals don't really have any smart observations. It just devolves into shrieking about whatever that was. And I think the reason why is that they're just so clearly angry.

From Gutfeld to this shit, a lot of it is just spiteful and angry to the point that it just feels like they're retaliating against a bunch of perceived slights instead of trying to come up with something funny. As it stands, the pro-Trump right really just seems too mad to make jokes. And to top it off, when the Bee tweeted this video out,

it got only about a thousand likes. Compare that to any of their anti-Fauci or I identify as jokes, and you see exactly why they only have two jokes. Because their audience only wants those two jokes. Because their audience, much like them, are just mad. They don't care about exploring comedy, but rather sticking with the culture war ammunition

they perceive as effective. And this is the core of the problem. See, back when The Daily Show started, it was a comedy show first. Jon Stewart was a comedian by profession. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Samantha Bee, John Oliver. They're all comedians who became interested in politics and media criticism.

From the right, it was perceived as comedy being weaponized against them. And so in response, they tried to weaponize that back. And conservative comedians now have to perform at shows specifically geared towards pro-Trump crowds. All their jokes are reactive in nature. So the problem is that the political side came first and the comedy came second.

Going back to their bits about AOC being dumb, that's probably honestly because some people see her as the ideological opposite of Trump. And since we always call Trump dumb, they want to call her dumb, despite that not really fitting. It's not even close to new. Fox News first tried this in 2007

with their half hour news hour, which was, um... Tonight's top story, dispelling reports that she would staff her White House with long-time cronies and political appointees. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton vowed that if she becomes president, she will surround herself with a diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-generational group of angry lesbians. During this week's Miss Universe pageant in Mexico City, Miss USA, Rachel Smith was booed by a mostly Mexican audience, probably because for the pageant's talent competition, she built a 700-mile fence. Chief Elina Weck will no longer appear on the sidelines of the University of Illinois

football games because his character is considered outdated and demeaning to Native Americans. The school's new athletic mascot will be a blackjack dealer. Pretty racist. Not sure I was expecting any different. It was racist and again, clearly angry and openly made as a reaction to The Daily Show instead of trying to be its own thing. The two hosts were actors using different names because I guess they couldn't get anyone willing and openly made as a reaction to The Daily Show instead of trying to be its own thing. The two hosts were actors using different names because I guess they couldn't get anyone willing to play themselves and it got canceled impressively fast.

Or to quote one of their guests on the show, I'm not saying it was short-lived, but William Henry Harrison's talking to a Victorian inventor about building a time-swing machine. Am I right, Chachi? Am I right? Am I fucking right, Chachi? Am I right? Am I fucking right, Chachi? Am I right?

Anyway, you can see why it didn't work. Every bit came across as a retaliation more than a joke. Oh, we can't say certain things on the air now, but we don't care, we're gonna say them. To the reaction of cathartic forced laughs from the audience. The left has their comedy weapon and now we have ours! And so on.

And on top of the intent not serving comedy, one thing you'll notice on the show is a profound lack of comedians. Yes, I'm including Dennis Miller as one of the non-comedians. And in fact, they would often do, and this is fucking incredible, sketches or bits with political pundits or influencers instead of actual comedians. Hi, I'm Dennis Prager, lover of fine Americana. The day America finally calls it quits in Iraq will be a day we'll all want to remember. And now you can.

Thanks to the Road to Surrender commemorative plate series by the Frankfurt Mitten. The Road to Surrender series is a magnificent collection of beautifully illustrated, signed, and numbered, and fired plates elegantly commemorating each step on America's road to humiliating defeat in Iraq. Absolutely unreal. Along with fucking Dennis fucking Prager, they would do additional sketches

with the likes of Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh, comedy icon. And this is where I get to show you one of my favorite clips. Well, let me say, I've yet to know of too many conservatives, which is where you put yourself, who are funny.

I mean, it has to do with a humor that is transferable to everyday living. I mean, I utterly disagree with that. I think there can be conservatives who are funny. Liberals may not find them funny. All right. I mean, okay, Ann Coulter for conservatives is funny. Okay, for liberals, she's not funny.

Beautiful. What's happening here is that because they see comedy exclusively as a political weapon, they're getting right wing political pundits and then trying to teach them to be funny. Greg Gutfeld isn't a comedian, but rather the guy that people at Fox felt was the funniest person in their office.

I haven't mentioned Mike Huckabee in any of this because he's just so transcendentally bland that his name and face erase from your memory every time you think of him like a Lovecraftian spell. But of course he has an entire comedy talk show that is once again an attempt to retaliate against liberal comedy. I'm not gonna show you a clip or talk about it at all.

In fact, I'm not even sure who I was just talking about. Mike Judge? Something about throwing bees. Doesn't matter. If you're wondering why they don't just get one of those blue collar comedy guys to do a show, it's because people like Jeff Foxworthy famously have no interest in politics.

His comedy isn't political or mean. He was focused on ribbing rednecks, the thing he was, which is probably what made his comedy accessible in the first place. Coincidentally, that's not unlike early Tim Allen either, his persona being a big macho dummy in Home Improvement and his standup. And while Tim Allen doesn't have good opinions,

he's also gone on record of wanting to stay out of Trump era politics. They were all comedians first. Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy are both dudes who have lived or worked in Los Angeles, getting their start doing comedy stuff with other comedians from many different backgrounds and politics. That lovable country boy, Larry the Cable Guy, is actually good friends with cynical city man Louis fucking Black.

Larry isn't his real name, and the voice you know him for isn't even his actual accent. It's a character he does like some kind of soy boy actor type. How easily can you go in and out? I can get into it easily. I'm like a I'm a linguist chameleon. I mean, I go to Wisconsin and I'll hang out with my cousin. Next thing you know, two days later, you know, I'm talking like I'm from, you know, Sirona, Wisconsin, because all my cousins talk like that. Now this isn't to discredit them as conservatives or rednecks or whatever. And in fact, Larry there has gotten a bit off the rails

lately with the COVID stuff. But generally speaking, most comedians are interested in comedy and subsequently going where the comedy is. And this angry culture war MAGA bullshit is just not very funny. And so your choice is to either do transphobic bits for the huckaboner fun time conservative retaliation hour,

or you try to maintain the more folksy Christian persona and get seen by exactly nobody. A really good example of everything I'm describing is a comedian by the name of Owen Benjamin. Owen got his start just doing the normal comedy path and getting roles in various TV and films before establishing himself as a far right comedian during the Trump era. He made a video with PragerU called The Strange Death of Comedy, and it's weird. It was pulled from the site. I'm sure that's not a harbinger of anything,

but luckily we have a clip. Comedy is important. Why? Because it's a pressure valve that allows us to discuss uncomfortable truths in a friendly way. Laughs are better than punches. So to start, it's a bit of a red flag that he thinks the purpose of comedy is to keep people from hitting each other. Almost like he's got a lot of personal anger that comes out in his jokes. Anywho, he gives us an example of an absolute banger of a joke. Take this joke. Why do you always go fishing with at least two Baptists? Because if you only take one, he'll drink all your beer.

And let me tell you, I didn't get the joke. Luckily, he then explains it. The reason this gets a laugh is because most of us recognize that many religious people are a little more religious around other religious people. That hypocrisy is funny, because everyone can relate to it on some level. Oh, okay.

That actually makes sense in like religious circles. But again, very telling that Owen identified this insular Baptist joke as a joke that everyone would understand. Also the joke still isn't like very good. Much like our boy Gutfeld, it kind of needs to be explained and isn't worded great. But then Owen stops telling jokes altogether.

And the rest of this video is just him listing his own personal grievances with leftist actors on Twitter. During the run-up to the release of the movie Black Panther, all the marketing push was about how, finally, there was a black movie made by black people, with black people for black people. I found this to be fairly hilarious, so I simply took any statement about the film and responded as a white person that actually had that insane way of viewing the world.

I just saw the trailer for Black Panther. Ugh, no white people. Looks terrible. Hard pass. Who am I supposed to relate to? No one's white. Not one, but two prominent black actors, Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright,

started tweeting me about how it's time black people had a movie and how I should be more sensitive to their situation. He just stops making jokes and goes on a rant in a video about how comedy is dying. Imagine that. It's literally all the steps we're talking about here. Plus the added bonus that the reason this video got pulled from PragerU is probably Imagine that! It's literally all the steps we're talking about here.

Plus, the added bonus that the reason this video got pulled from PragerU is probably because Owen Benjamin had a full fucking racist and transphobic meltdown in the following years. He began posting anti-Semitic and flat earth conspiracy theories on Instagram, got kicked off of social media and YouTube for this behavior, plus a bunch of oddly obsessive tweets

about David Hogg's pubes. He got kicked from Patreon and tried to sue them. And to be clear, none of this was for jokes, but just wild statements and accusations, such as stating that having a trans kid was child abuse and doubling down on it a bunch. Much like this Prager video, his real life devolved into an unending unhinged rant.

And now he is, and I shit you not, trying to form a compound in Idaho that residents are worried will become another Ruby Ridge situation. Anyway, the Daily Wire called him one of the last real comics standing. And so, yeah, conservative comedy ain't what it used to be. And so now for any right-leaning chuckle dealer from the States, you either have to be Adam Carolla

triggering the libs with a villain from a Rodney Dangerfield movie and risk losing your entire moral compass, or I guess like become a lefty because there's no room for non-culture war, non-hateful conservative comedians. And probably the closest thing to an actual successful conservative comic right now

is Bill Maher. And boy, that should upset everyone to hear me say out loud, including Bill Maher. And boy, that should upset everyone to hear me say out loud, including Bill Maher. And honestly, that must suck. Like, I feel bad. See, the final thing here, and I guess this is conjecture, is that Republicans are way less fractured than Democrats. What I mean is that the GOP tends to put importance

on toeing the line. You saw that a lot with Trump, who initially was met with a lot of pushback that the GOP tends to put importance on toeing the line. You saw that a lot with Trump, who initially was met with a lot of pushback from the GOP until, yeah. Republican policies are traditionally about limiting things like regulations or spending, again, traditionally, where Democrats are built on inclusivity and progressiveness and like a huge jumble of policies,

too many policies and ideals and so on. You could argue that might be a problem they have, especially if they don't really believe it and don't really try to do it. But the good part is that this creates a bigger tent for a wider variety of people. It creates more push and pull for ideas, which ultimately makes it easier for comedy.

So I guess my conclusion is that conservatives, if they really wanna get funnier, need to like spread out or loosen a bit. Loosen up, cucks. See, that's a callback. Loosen up, cucks. Gary, did you just like come back? What are you doing here?

Can't even look at me? Come on. Gary, I'm sorry. You levitated? Something is going on right now. Enjoy the credits. Just kidding. Gary's like a character we made up.

He's not even here. Warmbo's here though. And he's real. Right? Right? Warmbo? Warmbo? WARMBO! Alright, we're done.