The Joke's on They/Them: Why Leftists Aren't Funny
Comedy is incompatible with leftism. For evidence of this maxim, one need look no further than the most recent iteration of the White House Correspondents’ dinner.
Since the early 1980s, it has been almost standard operating procedure for a comedian to provide the night’s entertainment, often by roasting the sitting president and his administration. This year, the task fell to “Saturday Night Live” writer and co-host of the show’s “Weekend Update” segment Colin Jost.
Sitting just feet away from Jost was perhaps the easiest U.S. president to roast since Jimmy Carter, but the SNL host spent the lion’s share of his time really stretching the definition of “joke” with cracks about Trump, prominent Republicans, and conservative-leaning media outlets.
He spent almost as much time hunching his shoulders and awkwardly smiling into silence as he did speaking.
That’s not to say Jost didn’t have some good jokes — he did. The self-styled comedian took a few solid shots at Biden’s age and abysmal polling numbers. Referring to his black “Weekend Update” compatriot Michael Che, who was not present, Jost quipped, “In solidarity with President Biden, I decided to lose all my black support.”
He also joked that he was happy to meet Biden in person, so that he could figure “where Obama was pulling the strings from.”
His handful of digs at Biden were the only funny jokes in Jost’s repertoire, but he shied away from them, opting instead for the same contrived, politically-correct material that has led to the decline of SNL in recent years.
Compare this with, say, the late Norm Macdonald’s Correspondents’ dinner appearance in 1997. The legendary comic led the crowd in a rollicking good time. Commenting on the salmon served for dinner, Macdonald quipped, “I thought it was refreshing to see Democrats serve something other than subpoenas for a change.”
He also ribbed then-President Bill Clinton about claiming he had smoked marijuana in college but didn’t inhale.
Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien had made a similar crack in 1995 and also teased Clinton for dodging the Vietnam War draft to instead “go to Russia and party with communists.”
Of course, Macdonald is considered something of a legend in comedy, and O’Brien is a veteran comedy writer, so it may be unfair to compare Jost to either. But Jost did prove, with his two or three Biden zingers, that he can be funny.
The issue is much less that Jost isn’t funny and much more that leftism isn’t funny.
Another comedy legend, Jerry Seinfeld, explained why in a recent interview. “Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly, and they don’t get it,” Seinfeld explained.
He lamented that there are no funny shows on television anymore, asking, “Where is it? Where is it?” He explained, “This is the result of the extreme left, P.C. crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.”
This is not to say that good comedy is inherently offensive, of course, but there is a butt to every joke. Macdonald and O’Brien weren’t mean-spirited in their humor, but they made sure that every joke had a butt, yielding uproarious laughter from their audiences.
They weren’t worried about making fun of the president because it was just funny to make fun of the president, and they were invited to the event to be funny.
But leftism doesn’t value funny. For the leftist, laughter is not a reaction to humor; it is a signal of one’s political positions and one’s perceived self-righteousness. As a result, leftists don’t laugh at jokes that are funny; they laugh at jokes that they agree with — that is to say, they laugh when they dislike the butt of the joke, whether the joke was funny or not.
This is also why leftists’ attempts at humor are often spiteful, nasty, or mean-spirited, because it’s all about grinding the butt of the joke into the ground like they just finished their last ever cigarette. (Think of self-styled comedienne Kathy Griffin holding up what appeared to be the bloodied, severed head of Donald Trump.)
And this is why leftists don’t laugh at jokes when they like the butt of the joke, no matter how outrageous the butt is and no matter how funny the joke.
Dave Chappelle stands as a prime example of this: Over the past several years, his stand-up comedy has won numerous awards and has earned him a reputation as one of the nation’s premier comics, but leftists have still attempted to cancel him over his transgender jokes.
Chappelle’s humor is genuinely funny, of the laugh-out-loud-till-you-can’t-breathe variety; but leftists cannot laugh because they like the butt of his jokes.
Transgenders are a sort of protected species for leftists, and they see Chappelle’s jokes as a form of violence.
This is another crucial aspect of why leftists don’t like funny: They view words (jokes) as threats. To them, if something can be the butt of the joke, then it must be ridiculous, and they cannot admit that transgenderism, homosexuality, or a sleepy, senile president are ridiculous.
Seinfeld predicted that, since leftist thought-police have stifled comedy on television, the result will be an increase in stand-up comics, because stand-up comics are “not policed by anyone.” He explained, “The audience polices us. We know when we’re off-track. We know instantly, and we adjust to it instantly.” Even leftists observe this comedy rule.
During his White House set, Jost received some warm chuckles in response to his Trump jabs. The jokes weren’t funny, but his audience didn’t like Trump, so they laughed. His jokes at Biden’s expense were genuinely funny, but his audience adored Biden, so Jost got the signal and backed off.
Comedy is incompatible with leftism because comedy is built on laughter.
Laughter is the currency of comedy: A comedian or comedy writer who can earn knee slaps and belly laughs might trade those laughs for fame and fortune; a comedian who can earn guffaws and chuckles may manage to buy himself a seat in a sitcom writing room; a comedian who can only earn cringes and silence will likely find he has to supplement his income stocking shelves, selling cars, or pretty much anything else that isn’t onstage.
Leftists refuse to comply with the comedy laugh-barter system, choosing instead to use their laughter as a political message, equivocating their enjoyment and sense of fun with rainbow emojis and preferred pronouns in their Twitter bios.
In the end, leftism will be entirely driven out of comedy. Leftism has created a political and social ideology that is so outrageous, so ridiculous that it invites laughter almost without embellishment.
Comedians and comedy writers will continue making leftism and leftists the butt of their jokes because it’s easy and it’s funny.
Leftists will continue to boycott funny until either they get tired of being left out of the fun or until they forget how to laugh.
This article appeared originally on The Washington Stand.
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