‘The right has become a home for comedians … by positing that there are funnier things to do than to argue’
I’m old enough to appreciate how the King of Late Night (and he so remains, in my view), Johnny Carson, not only was funny, but stuck it to both sides of the political aisle equally.
It didn’t matter if you were Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter — Carson was gonna bust on you. His successor Jay Leno also was pretty good about giving equal time to the political parties.
(My personal favorite Carson jokes of all time are 1) NBC has gotten Michael Landon (who was a guest that night) to agree to star in a new series about an atheist who travels the country — called “Highway to Nowhere”; 2) When she first started out in Hollywood, Whoopi Goldberg went by a different stage name — Rah Rah Rabinowitz. That sidekick Ed McMahon was dying laughing at both of these helped.)
Modern late night comedy on the Big Three networks, such that it is, has devolved over the years into straight-up Democratic Party talking points and criticisms, most especially with CBS’s Stephen Colbert (who never has been funny, IMO).
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel is possibly the biggest hypocrite on the planet, as he now uses his monologue to moralize and lecture his “inferiors” … expecting us to forget he once did a sketch in blackface (pictured), and was co-host of “The Man Show” where he spent most of his time ogling scantily clad women.
The only one of the three I can remotely stomach is NBC’s Jimmy Fallon, whose contemporary bits and sketches sometimes remind me of his (funny) Saturday Night Live glory days.
Professors Nick Marx (Colorado State U.) and Matt Sienkiewicz (Boston College) write in The Conversation that during the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris went on shows like Colbert’s and ignored calls to appear on “online comedy platforms” preferred by younger voters.
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“While Jimmy Kimmel cries and Jon Stewart rants, the right wing in the U.S. has successfully depicted itself as the new home for free speech and cutting edge comedy,” the professors write. “The right has become a home for comedians not by making political arguments through jokes, but by positing that there are funnier things to do than to argue.”
Marx and Sienkiewicz make a case that HBO’s John Oliver is the “most successful” of the (liberal) contemporary funny men, but even his schtick “is not to young undecided voters who can’t afford HBO, but to college-educated liberals predisposed to support progressive reforms.”
The professors’ book “That’s Not Funny,” which came out earlier this year, notes the right “has been slowly building up a comedy-industrial complex” in the vein of Oliver and Jon Stewart, and now figures like Greg Gutfeld regularly beat them in the ratings.
And I’ll add look out for rising stars Jimmy Failla, host of “Fox News Saturday Night” on FNC and “Fox Across America” everyday on FoxAcrossAmerica.com, as well as popular Philly radio host Rich Zeoli, a frequent guest on Failla’s show.
Liberals may “find many of these [right-wing] comedians utterly appalling, some surprisingly funny, and others just plain weird,” the professors say, but “they are all, however, culturally and politically relevant […] you might not like this brand of humor, but you can’t ignore it.”
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IMAGE: Gage Skidmore/Flickr.com; New York Post/X
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