Uh-oh. They're catching on

My favorite comment:

"I think wat he said about Rush was highly inappropriate, but Rush, being the guy he is, will probably just ignore it, and take the high road."

Yeah, that's it: the high road! Being the great guy he is!

Wait wait, I was wrong, THIS is my favorite comment!

"Except you demean somebody very dear to America's hearts, Rush Limbaugh. He doesn't deserve that. Everybody knows he's no jerk; even some on the Left."

Very dear to America's hearts! He's like a fat, white Ed Bradley I tell you!

Oh man, thanks for that! I needed a good laugh! Jebus... get a load of the comments. This one cracked me up:

"What gets me, however, is how liberals most consistent "debating" tactic is too attack a person's intelligence or appearance. You're fat and stupid is brilliant for a 2nd grader, not for supposed "intellectuals." And Franken... oh my God... what a tool."

You mean ... you mean ... Jon Stewart is NOT a reporter, NOT a journalist, NOT a fair and balanced anchor man? And Michael Richards was putting on a sketch of a comedian going on a racist rant? Rush Limbaugh does NOT really run the Excellence in Broadcasting Institute? Magicians do NOT really saw women in half?

Just don't tell me Zeus is NOT the father of all gods.
I could not take that.

Who squealed on Stephen? Was it the bears?? OK, bears, you are *SO* on notice!!

My god that shit is hard to read. It is amazing those fucktards didn't realize all along that Cobert is playing a character. That's why it is funny!

There are NO funny people on the Right. I can't think of one. It's amazing to me, too, that these people can't find Stewart funny because it offends their retarded sensibilities.

I just figured out another code word!

"Liberal bias" = "accuracy."

No wonder it bugs them. They don't want anyone to know the facts.

I read somewhere recently that Fox news is supposedly putting on a new show that's supposed to be like Jon Stewart for conservatives. It will be interesting to see if they can pull off anything even remotely funny.

No no, there is a funny guy on the right. The guy who takes on the fifties -- the food, the decor, what's his name? Oh, Likeks. But not funny about politics. Isn't that wierd?

They're stupid.

ROTFLMAO!

P.J. O'Rourke.

Though I'm not even sure he counts as "conservative" anymore, seeing as how that mantle has been assumed by the likes of Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, both of whom are painfully unfunny at best.

"There are NO funny people on the Right."

Christopher Buckley can be very, very funny and sometimes insightful, as well. I don't think he's the kind of doctrinaire conservative that his father is, though, and I certainly haven't seen any neocon tendencies. But he's definitely no liberal.

On the whole you're right, though. There have been almost no funny conservatives since Waugh. And look what happened to Dennis Miller: all the funny just got sucked right out of him.

You can't say they don't know funny. I mean:

You can make fun of someone all day long without stepping over the line and making it extremely personal and/or a cheap shot. I've always thought that Jay Leno is the best at this during his monolouges. Unfortunatly, Jon Stewart and Colbert have yet to figure this out, as pretty much all of their "comedy" towards anyone on the right is made up of very mean spirited broadsides based on rumors, lies, and half truths.

Jay Leno, people, Jay Leno!

On an earlier show, Colbert said something to the effect that "reality has well-known liberal bias". Or may it was "facts".

He said that at the white house correspondent dinner.

Yes, they invited him. Bush was even in the room at the time.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/30/1441/59811

The White House definitely thought Colbert was on the right side. But, hey, they also thought Harriet Miers would make a good Justice.

I just about choked on my soda when I saw this one:

"What is weird is that on many of the issues that Liberals and Conservatives debate their is a very strong, difficult to refute, plausible liberal side of the argument; yet, instead a vast majority of time they resort to 'begging the question' 'ad hominums' "straw man" logical fallacies as well as transparent falsehoods.
I think it is very telling that they duck serious intellectual debate on controversial issues and are unable to reproduce anything but a caricature of our views, at the same time imagining themselves to possess the intelligent and educated viewpoint.
Isn't it odd that Ann Coulter can appear on a college campus which employs 500+ liberal intellectuals with PhDs, and not one of them shows up to refute her to engage in intellectual debate (which according to their own mythology, they should win easily) instead they send some undergraduates to shout her down with threats and obscenities. If they really had truth on their side you would think they would want to attend an Ann Coulter speech and systematically logically take her claims apart one by one and expose her as an intellectual fraud. The fact they don't makes you wonder if maybe they don't have the truth on their side."

How in the heck can anyone complain about name calling, straw men, and ad hominems and then hold up Ann Coulter like some conservative intellect any liberal (or thinking, even) person would want to debate? Talk about not having truth on your side. . .

"On the whole you're right, though. There have been almost no funny conservatives since Waugh. And look what happened to Dennis Miller: all the funny just got sucked right out of him."

Ah, Dennis Miller. Truth be told, after the 9/11 attacks I took his conversion to pathetic neocon really hard. Apparently I mistook his overblown and esoteric references (some of which I got) as true wit. Apparently I was fooled because all he had back when he was cool was a very dry wit, sarcasm, and a backlog of knowledge. Now? A freaking shill.

Maybe he was just a shill altogether.

Oh No!
==============================
t*mbler Says:
November 24, 2006 - 14:18
...
It's only after they've absorbed a little punishment these cretins give it up and ban you. They've done that to me. But only after I made a punching-bag out of a few of the regulars in there. ...

We should make it a daily strategy, with our website itinerary planned out carefully. I myself would be very grateful if other conservatives here would teach me the proper method of changing to new web addy & returning repeated under a new password, just the way rhayes and many negative trolls do in here....

The Conservatives - they're all very funny, in a an unselfconscious way - I mean, could anyone write this not tongue-in-cheek?

Isn't it odd that Ann Coulter can appear on a college campus which employs 500+ liberal intellectuals with PhDs, and not one of them shows up to refute her to engage in intellectual debate...

Liberals are often serious and so need comedy shows to lighten up.

Are we sure that Ann Coulter isn't just a reincarnation of Johnathon Swift? Her stuff just sounds too much like "A Modest Proposal."

I'm onto you, Ann! Your act has NOTHING on Colbert! Way to go!

...oh... she really isn't doing satire. *sobs*

Some navel-gazing commenter over at that place:

If they really had truth on their side you would think they would want to attend an Ann Coulter speech and systematically logically take her claims apart one by one and expose her as an intellectual fraud. The fact they don't makes you wonder if maybe they don't have the truth on their side.

Well, actually, it's because we've already spent plenty of time taking her claims apart one by one, and we're just getting tired of repeating ourselves. Because it never seems to sink in. Ever.

Ha ha ha that's it! They're stupid!

But of course, no sense of humour, dead giveaway.

It didn't occur to me that Bush invited Colbert because he thought he was a tighty-righty - are you serious? Man, these guys put the 's' in stupid....

You guys made me think of coulter while I was eating..

Shame on you.

I think the short take-home line is the '..engage (Coulter) in intellectual debate..'. People! This simply HAS to be satire! Right? Right?

You remind me of the line from a recent episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Harriet says, "remind me what we're fighting [the culture war] about."

Matt says, "you hate us because you think we think you're stupid. And we hate you...because we think you're stupid."

PZ: They're stupid.

Well DUHH, took you long enough to realize! :-) :-) :-)

The mind boggles at the worldview implied by "instead they send some undergraduates to shout her down with threats and obscenities." Does that mean all those pathetic little counterprotests with the flag-draped people with misspelled signs (poster quoted above misspelled "ad hominem," incidentally) are actually organised top-down? The professors _sent_ the undergrads to yell things and call names. *shakes head* Wow...

As someone once said on Eschaton, these people truly are cruising time and relative dimensions in the Fucktardis™ -- it's stupider on the inside than on the outside...

There are NO funny people on the Right. I can't think of one.

Occasionally they manage it, but only in the sense that you hear some of their BS and say:

"WHATTHEBLEEP????????? I can't believe I just heard that!" And even then it's only "funny" (sort of) if you're grossly sleep-deprived and/or drunk and/or high.

Personally, I can't take 99% of conservative "humor" because it's almost always either mean-spirited, bigoted, idiotic, or all three. (That even goes for the seemingly innocuous. I once grabbed a dutch oven lid and a big spoon and "gonged" Jeff Foxworthy about 5 minutes into his show. Scared my buds to death, but they got the idea.)

Some visitor from another galaxy, who will here remain nameless, said:

"If they really had truth on their side you would think they would want to attend an Ann Coulter speech and systematically logically take her claims apart one by one and expose her as an intellectual fraud. The fact they don't makes you wonder if maybe they don't have the truth on their side."

Naaah, it's just that there's no point, and certainly no fun, in getting into a battle of wits with the unarmed. Again, maybe I could make a case for it if you're really headf*cked, but otherwise..........

I wonder: What proportion of her audience was loaded three or four ways going in, just so they could stand being in the same room with her?

I love how Conservatives think they are actually destroying key Liberal debaters by targetting comedians...

The Glasshouse (http://www.abc.net.au/glasshouse/) Aussie's satirical news program is being axed. Allegedly its because of anti-Howard (our PM) bias (which has soared since the axing announcement). The ABC/Fed Government defends itself saying the format is stale and was fast becoming like its predeccessor Good News Week.

It's funny that both shows were really popular, but axed because they are being deemed "stale".

That comment section is a treasure trove:

And, just as with Jon Stewart, if objections are raised, it will be dismissed as "just entertainment." Yes, but "entertainment" with an agenda.

Because the news must speak to their hearts and minds, but entertainment bust be objective. I'm waiting for these guys to condemn South Park.

Another reason the reality-based community probably doesn't show up to rip apart Ann Coulter and other right-wing hate activists at their rallies is the way they (Coulter especially) been known to tell people to literally stand up and put their fists in the air if they want to "kick some pansy liberal ass." She stops just short of telling them to go on a rampage right then and there, letting them fill in the blanks as she goads them on and tells them exactly who should be targeted for harassment and violence.

Who in their right mind would want to be personally identified as a member of one of her target groups in that kind of environment?

Huh, these people actually thought The Colbert Report was serious? Really? Next thing you'll probably claim they think Bill O'Reilly is for real as well.

What they don't seem to realize is that quite a bit of Daily Show and Colbert IS the real news, it just has a different spin than say, Faux News. I mean, it's loaded with the exact same news clips, just different commentary and not as much sympathy for the neocons. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert actually look at the news and analyze it in order to mock more effectively. The rest of the news crews are just reading what they were told to.

The first time I saw Ann Coulter on TV, I thought she was doing comedy in the genre of Don Rickles. I was actually shocked when I realized she was serious- or acting like she was serious. That girl definitley has issues.

You just can't slip anything past these wingers.

The Daily Show and Colbert are now news generators as well. The morning media often has nothing to talk about so they resort to queueing up Stewart and Colbert for a conversation starter.

Years ago, Stewart was invited on Crossfire. Tucker Carlson lost his mind and looked like he wanted to punch Jon Stewart for parodying CNN. Carlson was unrelenting in attempting to impeach Stewart. Stewart calmly explained that he works for the Comedy Channel and the lead in to his show is talking puppets making crank calls.

Tucker Carlson demonstrated that conservatives generally do not have a sense of humor and do not understand parody. Stewart was brilliant. Since then, Carlson's career has been in decline and Stewart has become the toast of the town.

Here's the you tube...
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYei1mjbbWU
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEalfYrxvyY

My favorite comment:
Andrew O. Huddleston Says:
November 24, 2006 - 15:34
A few years ago, I offered Rush one of mine--complete inner ear and eardrum. I was serious. I remain serious and would gladly... His message is too important in a sea of understated issues, mistated positions and misinformation as we receive from most of the media.
------
These people don't seem to realize that we don't hate them like they do us, they are so cartoonish that they are inherently funny. Sure they *want* to think that we hate them because there is that strange need to feel persecuted but they are just too hard to take seriously. What Colbert does really isn't a stretch from the real thing is he? No wonder that, as someone else wrote in one of those comments, a college educated friend thought that they reported real news.

Pundits only pick on comedians because their ratings are higher. Its like Steve Ballmer putting the string "Google" on his blog to get better search hits.

Ya know, ever since I read Republican Noise Machine I really can't stand conservatives who say that Rush tells the truth or the media has a liberal bias. I mean, I didn't agree with those people before, but now I have evidence to back up my point of view (which just so happens to actually reflect reality rather than my own little imaginary world).

one more riff on the wingnut, couldn't resist:

"...if they really had truth on their side you would think they would want to attend an Ann Coulter speech and systematically logically take her claims apart one by one and expose her as an intellectual fraud."

Not that they care, or ever pay attention, but for the record, Al Franken did precisely this in his book _Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right_ by Al Franken (ISBN: 0525947647 )
Rips Ann a new one, rips O'Reiley, and all the usual suspects. He demonstrates in black and white just what an dishonest intellectual fraud Ann Coulter is, if anybody on their side could be bothered to check it out.

Just sayin'--it's been done. Well.
Go forth and read, ye wingnut.
And not "my pet goat", that doesn't count.