Half Hour News Show? More Like The Half Hour Olds Show
I'll link to Hit and Run, because that'd where I saw it first, but the entire blogosphere is abuzz about Fox News's new and upcoming "The Half Hour News Show." The show is supposed to be like the Comedy Central Hit "The Daily Show" but with a conservative spin. And as was noted at Reason (and by Ann Althouse) the early clips of the show really, really really suck.
What is really funny - and who knows if anyone else will point this out - is that the show seems to fall into the same trappings as Air America did. That is the "we need to provide a response to the other side's success in this media format." Just as Air America always seemed to be liberal first, and interesting and entertaining second, The few clips of "The Half Hour News Show" seem to be well, not even just conservative, but Republican first, and interesting and entertaining second.
Actually I was intrigued when I first heard about "The Half Hour News Show." I used to love the Daily Show and now find it only watchable on occasion. Somewhere during the "Indecision 2000" coverage it began to seem like John Stewart actually cared about the results of the election. That pretty much ended the Gen-X, "don't really give a shit" appeal of the show to me. I was hoping this new Fox News show would be the same kind of thing with a different kind of spin. I was hoping for criticism of the mainstream media's coverage of Iraq, global warming, and big corporations. I was hoping for idea's, not a fake magazine about Barak Obama called "BO".
I think the thing is, people tend to miss what political humor is really all about. It's easy to make jokes about people and about political parties. It's a lot harder to do satire that actually deconstructs your opponents ideas while reinforcing your own. Ahhh well. At least we'll always have South Park.
What is really funny - and who knows if anyone else will point this out - is that the show seems to fall into the same trappings as Air America did. That is the "we need to provide a response to the other side's success in this media format." Just as Air America always seemed to be liberal first, and interesting and entertaining second, The few clips of "The Half Hour News Show" seem to be well, not even just conservative, but Republican first, and interesting and entertaining second.
Actually I was intrigued when I first heard about "The Half Hour News Show." I used to love the Daily Show and now find it only watchable on occasion. Somewhere during the "Indecision 2000" coverage it began to seem like John Stewart actually cared about the results of the election. That pretty much ended the Gen-X, "don't really give a shit" appeal of the show to me. I was hoping this new Fox News show would be the same kind of thing with a different kind of spin. I was hoping for criticism of the mainstream media's coverage of Iraq, global warming, and big corporations. I was hoping for idea's, not a fake magazine about Barak Obama called "BO".
I think the thing is, people tend to miss what political humor is really all about. It's easy to make jokes about people and about political parties. It's a lot harder to do satire that actually deconstructs your opponents ideas while reinforcing your own. Ahhh well. At least we'll always have South Park.
posted by lonely libertarian at 12:35 PM
1 Comments:
I am a South Park conservative and watched the video clips on YouTube. I thought they were hilarious and looked much like stuff on ourcountry.com.
Post a Comment
<< Home