Given that researchers have discovered a correlation between funniness and high IQ, it’s not surprising that liberals have long portrayed conservatives as humorless. But now some liberals are sounding an alarm:
Conservatives not only own a large share of the political humor market, they warn their leftist brethren, but are besting them. And because ridicule “is man’s most potent weapon,” as socialist Saul Alinsky averred — and because kinder forms of humor can endear people to you and win converts — these inroads should be taken seriously.
Introducing us to some liberals thus counseling is Politico’s Ian Ward, who recently wrote that for “the past three years, Matt Sienkiewicz, an associate professor of communication and international studies at Boston College, and Nick Marx, an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, have immersed themselves in the world of conservative comedy.” They found that conservatives are winning the humor war, and detail their findings in their new book, That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them.
Yet some may say that what’s funny is that libs ever thought they had a monopoly on being funny — or that they ever even led that competition.
Consider: “Since the golden days of political satire in the early 2000s, left-leaning journalists and comedy critics have wondered — with a mix of smugness and genuine curiosity — why conservatives aren’t funny,” Ward reminds us. “Why, these critics ask, are the comedic bits at CPAC so terrible, and where is the conservative Jon Stewart and why hasn’t there been a right-of-center rejoinder to Saturday Night Live?”
But Ward perhaps forgets that leftists would ask for years, “Where is the liberal Rush Limbaugh?”; in fact, venture capitalists put up $10 million in 2003 in an effort to find one, an investment turning out to be as valuable as funny money.
As for why there never was a conservative Saturday Night Live (SNL), this is a bit like asking why there are no Christian politicians in North Korea:
NBC hosts SNL, and mainstream stations would never, ever give conservatives such a forum.
(Of course, another reason there wouldn’t be a rightist SNL, as it’s now constituted, is that conservatives are actually funny.)
In contrast, liberals absolutely had and have access to the talk radio market — they just don’t pass muster. Consider that Air America network, designed as a “progressive” Limbaugh & Co. alternative, folded after less than six years.
Note here that humor was central to Limbaugh’s prominence. He’d create hilarious spoof songs such as “Al Gore Paradise” (click here) and play audio skits making fun of high-profile liberals. Integral to the success of radio giant Michael Savage also was his complicity in ruining many a keyboard.
But conservatives’ humor has always been among the best. Republican comedian Bob Hope, while rarely political (exception here), began his career in 1925 and was among his generation’s premier funny men. Devout conservative Ronald Reagan’s — and, for that matter, Donald Trump’s — humor was instrumental in his success. (Example: Reagan once quoted Thomas Jefferson’s advice that we “should judge a president not by his age, but by his deeds,” and then added, “And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.”)
But that Reagan is considered our funniest president reflects reality: Conservatives have always led the humor department, not surprising since Truth is a central ingredient of good comedy.
Ward interviewed Sienkiewicz and Marx, and the professors got many things right — and others wrong. They pointed out correctly, for instance, that conservatives are using comedy to win new voters. And responding to Ward’s question about whether it’s liberal comedians who now have “to defend themselves against accusations of un-funniness,” Sienkiewicz stated, “I think that there is a certain level of censoriousness and risk aversion in liberal spaces.” For Marx’s part, he said that liberals’ politically correct jokes cause them to “lose a little bit of that edginess that we’re now seeing so vibrantly…on the right.”
This is as true as it is understated. While liberals had long mocked conservatives for being squares, they have now mastered malevolent “dork-dom.” Snopes has fact-checked satirical site the Babylon Bee. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Liberal comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld have said that they won’t work college campuses anymore because of the prevailing humor-hostile wokeness. And, reflecting many a victim, British Nobel laureate Tim Hunt was forced to resign his post at University College London because he made one innocent joke about women in the laboratory while at a 2015 lunch in South Korea.
Of course, understanding that “cancellation” is simply a new term for what’s existed in every time and place — the social-control mechanism known as scorn and ostracism — realize that conservatives rarely if ever play the evil nerd. When they attempt to “cancel” a person or entity, it’s virtually always a serious matter, such as a school board intent on indoctrinating children with critical race theory or “transgender” propaganda.
They don’t seek to ruin a person over a joke made seven years ago.
What’s more, conservatives tend to accept contrition and move on. Apologizing to the Left, however, just intensifies their attack. Today’s liberal-disgorged environment is like Revenge of the Nerds meets The Gulag Archipelago.
So whence really comes that old stereotype of the humorless conservative? Remember that believing you’re part of a superior, elite group (e.g., a “master race”) can be intoxicating. For no matter how lacking and insecure a person may be, he can always say, “Hey, at least I’m not like those people — the ‘other.’ I’m special.”
Many liberals derive self-esteem from the notion they’re part of an elite group: “progressives.” Hence all those put-downs about how conservatives are dumb (this feeds their superiority delusion) and what corresponds to this: mockery for being humorless, as being funny is associated with hipness and intelligence.
(By the way, this is why comedian Bill Maher won’t actually become “red-pilled” despite being fed up with the woke Left: He wants to remain one of the “cool” kids.)
In their Ward interview, Sienkiewicz and Marx failed to mention the real reason conservative humor is taking over: The internet has made journalism practice and an audience of millions accessible to everyone. So now anyone can start a podcast or put videos online and, if he has appeal, become a Mark Dice or Steven Crowder.
So the Left can shut out its more talented rightist competition no longer (which is why it wants to censor the internet). Conservatives now have a place at the table and are kicking butt and taking names. The cream is rising to the top.
