A Howlingly Unfunny Day-Boooo

And that Dennis Miller is one outrageous dude!

Dave Weigel notes that “the Half Hour News Hour, a news satire show produced by 24‘s Joel Surnow, is set to become one of the worst pieces of television ever – mentioned in the same breath as Pink Lady and Jeff, Fish Police, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” (Well, I’m not sure if it’s quite pretentious enough to be as bad as that last one.) I think Ana Marie Cox gets at the fundamental problem, which one might call “Mallard Fillmore syndrome.” If you look at the clip, it’s not just that it’s painfully unfunny, it’s that it doesn’t even take the form of comedy. A Charles Krauthammer column doesn’t become comedy because it’s being read unironically by a badly drawn cartoon duck. Similarly, while it’s possible for a skit about Rush Limbaugh becoming President to be funny, when there’s nothing there but “boy, would that ever be cool and stick it to the Democrat Party!!!!!” it’s not failed comedy but not-comedy. (Speaking of Limbaugh, one can say something similar about a lot of Air America’s programming–starting with ideology first is going about it bass-ackwards. Limbuagh wasn’t successful because he was a conservative, but because he is a really, really gifted radio broadcaster. Limbaugh’s TV show failed because he wasn’t good at that job. As Cox points out, The Daily Show reflects liberal values, but its primary goal is to be funny. The point of the Fox show isn’t to be funny but to “stick it to liberals”, which is a guaranteed train-wreck.) My working theory is that the first sketch was written by Marty Peretz, although Ailes cut out all the Arab-bashing.

There is one funny thing to come out of this. As you can see, most conservatives correctly see that this as an abject disaster. But, via Weigel, there’s one exception: the aesthetic Stalinist’s aesthetic Stalinist Jason Apuzzo. A movie could feature two hours of a dimly lit Alan Thicke reading from Rebel-in-Chief and Apuzzo would be outraged that it didn’t make the Sight and Sound Top 10 list. (Will the Right Brothers be the first musical guest?)