Originally published at: Even Don Jr. knows his CPAC comedy routine is a bomb | Boing Boing
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IMO, people with no sense of humor are frightening. And people with no sense of humor that attempt to be funny are probably dangerous. But you know what’s really fucked up? Trump and his boy have no sense of humor, are absolutely anti-funny, and in my estimation aren’t even able to attempt to be funny. So this is a whole other fucking category right here. But I think I have it figured out: they are incapable of humor because they don’t understand the fundamental bedrock of humor: something happens or is related that isn’t expected, and is usually the opposite or left-field of what is expected. The reason the Trump clan doesn’t understand this bedrock is b/c they have one and one only mindset due to a certain type of blindness: get the fucking green. Anything that happens to them along the way that runs counter to this represents not a moment for self-reflective humor in the face of life’s grand-scheme folly, but instead just a petty roadblock; something to be shoved aside or even obliterated so they can get right back to good ol’ snake oil type scammin’. Fuck them. Again.
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In my opinion–and this is only my opinion, as supporters of right-wing “humor” repeatedly point out to me-- the reason right-wing humorists are seldom funny is that most humor is at its root revolutionary. It’s the old punching-up / punching down thing. Humor comes from the less powerful ridiculing the foibles, inconsistencies, and stupidity of the powerful and the world they’ve fashioned.
Right wing humorists are at an immediate disadvantage because they are the powerful and they’re happy with the world they’ve fashioned. All they can do is punch down, which usually takes the form of name-calling (look at those crazy libs) or manufacturing situations in which they can pretend the less powerful are actually powerful and then take pot shots at the straw men they’ve erected.
This sort of approach is much better suited to bullying, whining, and public posturing than to humor. Indeed, the right have shown over and over that they’re masters of that sort of thing. That’s why rightist humor like Mallard Fillmore spends most of its time lecturing readers about how stupid liberals are rather than actually raising a smile.
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That clip of, was it Boebert? saying, “we don’t want your gov’t benefits!” Okay, so no more farm subsidies for agribusiness? Let’s start there!
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I would disagree somewhat.
I think you accurately describe current cultural tastes for humor, but it was not always so.
Punching down has not always been in bad taste. I very much recall when that was the case in my youth. Young people now do not seem to share that sensibility like they did then.
See: Blonde jokes (ETA: tough for me to explain how this one is punching down, but it feels accurate), pollock jokes, “guy with no arms and no legs” jokes, and many more.
As conservatism is really about not changing things at its core, it is no wonder conservative humorists still have a taste for punching down.
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Those kinds of jokes may have once been quite popular, but I think that they have always been considered to be in poor taste (as in: not for polite company).
It seems to be more a question of what people can get away with nowadays.
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Yeah, perhaps. I have a bit of a frame of reference issue assessing that. On the ground it feels like a shift. I do acknowledge that may not be reality.
If my parents were extroverts I probably could get a good perspective from them. But they aren’t.
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I once owned a joke book that was published in the '50s or '60s. I wish I still had that.
I remember it being pretty tame, but it might have had a blonde joke or two.
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The fine line between humour and ridicule. Between actual surprise/relief and confirmation of prejudices.
I would say that “guy with no arms and no legs” falls in a different category, though, as it starts off looking mean, but the puns in the punch line turns the joke into absurd silliness.
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I was confused by there being a class of jokes aimed at an abstract expressionist painter. As a non-American, my brain didn’t automatically spell-correct that to polack.
As an old fart, I remember when sexism, racism, and homophobia in mainstream humour wasn’t just accepted, but was expected.
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Something I’ve noticed is that fanatics, of every stripe, seem to lack a sense of humor. I think humor needs an understanding of nuance, of the absurd, and a certain level of empathy, that they either lack or actively repress.
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And being less hifalutin’ than you, @euansmith, I was trying to figure out how jokes about a species of fish would be funny.
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I’ve heard this many times and I’m not sure I buy this completely.
There’s plenty of ways humour could be levelled at the ridiculousness of some aspects of the left, and plenty of leftists ready to laugh at themselves too.
But at its heart it needs to be more sophisticated than ‘you guys suck’ or ‘own the libtards’ which is where much of the modern right wing humour starts and ends.
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I may be over simplifying here, but I’ve always thought that most right wingers aren’t funny because they are insensitive, selfish, unsympathetic, unthinking clods. You need some of those characteristics to be funny. If they had some of those virtues they wouldn’t be right wingers. So they are self-selected for unfunnyness.
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I think that’s part of it. Conservative humor almost always seems to involve making fun of others and never oneself, which gives it a mean-spirited feel, and that seems to be a feature for those who like that kind of “humor”. But if you can make fun of yourself, it offsets the occasions when your humor targets others.
Don’t forget oil & gas!
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