Or, according to a friend of mine from Beijing, “An American mispronouncing Cantonese.  Wow — it’s like a bad accent squared.”

But however you say it: let’s all get rich, shall we?

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Please, oh please, can I get tickets to the big Al Gore Macarena Jam-Fest?  No word yet on whether Los del Rio has been invited, but apparently Snoop Dogg will be in da house.

Jesus, sometimes this material just writes itself.

Hell, I’ll even dress up in Janet Reno drag so I can get my groove on for real.

Non-snark note: I do hope they do something real with the money, and that this will be more than just an “awareness” campaign. 

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Okay, first off, let me wave my hands really high in the air and say “someone much smarter than me has almost certainly said this before, and better,” along with “Aristotle was one of those people, and I should probably re-read him before I write this essay.”

The latter of which, of course, I probably won’t do, since I’m under some pressure (grading, recovering from a head cold that is exacerbated by awful tension in my shoulders, R&R deadlines that I’m so discouraged about that it’s hard to work up the gumption to even open the damn file, and preparations for…a talk.  Yeah, yeah, that’s it.  A talk.  To be delivered someplace far from SDOE). But not under so much pressure that procrastinating by blogging is out of the question.

So, here’s the thing.  This other site pointed out that the new “right wing Daily Show” is distinctly un-funny.   About as unfunny as Mallard Fillmore, in fact.  Now, as someone that does not currently subscribe to cable, nor possess rabbit ears for my glowing box, I cannot comment on the humor value of this particular show. 

I would, however, like to comment more generally on the problem of right-wing humor.  Let me start with a couple of observations:

Item #1: As pointed out by commenters on LGM (see above link), the Daily Show doesn’t start from the position of being a “liberal” show.  It starts from the position of being a humor show, usually about politics, and (for a number of reasons) ends up poking endless fun at the bufoonery, stupidity, venality, mendacity, meretriciousness, and all-around corruption of the current administration.

Item #2: At least one of my colleagues has reported to me that several of her students have reported to her, evidently with completely sincerity, that the Colbert Report is a “conservative” show and that Steven Colbert is “really” a right-wing Republican.

Item #3: In general when one tries to write comedy (or art more generally) with a “political agenda” in mind, it typically fails .  Now, sometimes it fails in rather glorious ways (witness certain curated shows of Soviet-era poster art that have been making the rounds of a couple of high-brow museums), but more often it comes off as ham-fisted (Ayn Rand), creepy (Mel Gibson), or mind-numbingly banal (apparently this new show everyone’s panning). 

Now, I suppose I could at this point focus on point number three — but this is well-traveled ground (aesthetics vs. politics, art vs. ideology, etc.).  I would rather concentrate on points #1 and #2.  Because I think there’s something there, you see.  Something about the conservative turn of mind, especially as instantiated by today’s generation of Christabigot idealogues. 

Humor is, at its very best, involves suborning our expectations; undercutting our frames and challenging our pieties.  It is, in a word, a form of heresy.  Real humor — the kind that gets us doubled-over with breath-shortening laughter — is deeply, profoundly, heretical.  The kinds of jokes that you only share with your most intimate friends, the ones that you save up for years to tell just the right person (note to Rex: think clown jokes here) are funny precisely because they subvert some cherished paradigm. 

This is why jokes don’t translate well across cultures; it is why they don’t even travel that well outside of particular social circles.  It is precisely why “in-jokes” are what they are.  By marking what can be mocked, they mark what is sacred.

This is why trying to make “conservative” humor runs into problems.  Conservatism — of whatever form: social, economic, neo-liberal, neo-fascist, paleo, monarchical, whatever — is about preservation of the status quo.*  If you start from the position that you are committed to a particular political view (conservative or liberal, but conservatism more especially), and then try to construct humor based upon that view, what you will end up with usually ends up being either lame (Mallard Fillmore), petty (this new show, apparently), or just plain mean.  By supporting that which is already in power, “conservative” humor can only state the obvious or come off like it’s trying to kick people when they’re already down (as in racist jokes). 

This is also why particular kinds of conservatives always sound rather flat when they try to make funny.  If you are a literalist of any kind (a Biblical literalist, a “strict constructionist” of the Constitution, a devotee of free-market orthodoxy) then irony is, at best, confusing.  If you are raised without the ability (or trained not to see) “a double meaning in that” then shows like The Colbert Report are only comprehensible as “conservative, really.”  When you are so well-socialized that you cannot see the totem except as you worship it, then the sarcasm of others flies over your head, and everything you do sounds well-rehearsed. 

Of course, one could speak instead of the kind of humor that ends up supporting the status quo, even though it wasn’t explicitly “intended” to in the first instance.  Re-watching I Love Lucy, I’m usually struck by how the slapstick always resolves itself in Ricky and Lucy together again, happily procreating for a glorious nuclear future (ah, those were the days, weren’t they?  When Hispanics were still white…). This was the kind of humor that Lucille Ball excelled at.  Much of modern sit-comery is of this variety: mild, inoffensive, fluffy — and ultimately quite conservative, precisely because Mom and Dad always kiss each other goodnight after a fight, no-one ever gets divorced (at least on screen), they tuck the kids into bed at night, and all the kids eventually go off to college.  The Cosby Show may have been many things, but “revolutionary” or even particularly “liberal” it wasn’t — not really.

Now when Lucille tried to take a turn at material that was even just a half-shade subversive — as in Mame — the results were typically a train wreck.  What should have been (admittedly gentle) mockery of the Virginia fox-and-hounds set turns, in the hands of Ms. Ball, into a paean to the Old South (”you make the cotton easy to pick” should sound like a deliberate riff on the usually-left-unsung second verse of “Dixie.”  Coming from the backup singers to Mz. Ditzy Redhead, it was “merely” a compliment, apparently of the highest order).  Her contemporary descendants (people like Tim Allen and Jeff Foxworthy) understand this danger, and restrict their humor to family-miscommunication heartwarmers and mild ethno-class in-group humor.  When Jeff Foxworthy makes jokes about kids going hungry because daddy just had to have his Yosemite Sam mudflaps, it’s funny.  When I say it, I can’t prevent the steely edge of snobbery from creeping into my voice; and hence what should be funny comes off as vicious. 

If you want to be funny, poke at piety.  If you want to “be conservative” then recognize that your best material lies in puns, slapstick, and the kind of completely forgettable situation comedy that is what bedroom farce became in the hands of well-paid hacks.  But never make the mistake that just because you don’t like someone that means that by poking fun at them you’re mocking the sacred.  If you happen to be in power — and make no mistake, despite what happened last November, Bush still has (God help us!) just shy of two years left in power, not to mention a lock-up on the federal judiciary — then “humor” in your mouth can only serve to enhance your power.  Mockery of others, when you exercise power over them, is simply a species of cruelty.  Usually of the most banal, unfunny kind.  When you start being really funny, don’t worry — you’ll know.  There will be a knock on your door, a double-click when you pick up the phone, and the unmistakable tatoo of steel-tipped boots clacking up your walk in the dead of night.

*Note: the status quo may be imagined — in fact, is almost always, already “imagined” in the most basic anthropological sense — but that hardly changes the point.  One’s own subjective positionality (”I used to have power”) is one thing.  Reliably being able to expect protection from the jack-booted agents of the state (”Respect my authoritay!”) is another thing.  But in both cases, using humor to bolster one’s authority usually isn’t all that funny.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd_1EAHgcDo

A little slice of life here in little ol’ Ville des Vaches.  The coffeeshop, btw, is where I do a good chunk of my grading. 

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So, now that I have a ready-made answer for the question (thanks to the webmaster who is, in this as in all things, wise beyond his years), I can relate what has been the rather amusing range of reactions to said qu(e)ery:

a.) an urbane, metropolitan sort of taking-it-in-stridism (this from fellows with enough self-esteem to realize that a question posed in theory has no implications whatsoever as regards practice or personal predilection).

b.) a burst of nervous laughter followed by befuddlement (this from women who find the whole question amusing but ultimately unanswerable.  This reaction is typically followed by immediate turning-of-the-tables and the voluntary offering up of self-referential answers).

c.) steadily rising anxiety followed by increasingly desperate attempts to change the subject.

The best example of (c) occured at a glittering San Francisco dinner party I attended over Winter Break.  The attendees were, not surprisingly for the City, ethnically, but not class-wise, diverse: three African-Americans, one Asian-American, and rest indubitably Honky (a Hawaiian apparently failed to show; no word on whether a Latino/a was on the guest list).  We all were “dangerously over-educated” though only four out of nine were involved in higher ed.  The rest of the guests included a consultant, a municipal civil servant, an engineer, and a writer.

One of the guests (the writer — a fellow alum of my alma mater, and the long-time boyfriend of the sassy broad of an engineer) brought along his father (a psychologist).  Towards the end of the meal, after much jerk tofu had been consumed, and much wine had been quaffed, I brought up this particular hobby-horse to the writer and the engineer.  As I proceeded to lay out the question, Mr. writer-man proceeded to display reaction (a); and while he didn’t come up with an answer, he was happy to discuss the merits of various alternatives (football star, comic-book character, etc.).

His father, however, got more and more visibly distressed as the conversation continued.  After approximately 10 minutes (which surely felt like an hour to the poor gentleman) he launched into a long anecdote regarding his own romantic escapades as an undergraduate at “West Coast University.”

Apparently he went out on a date once with a fashionably buxom blond from the Westside.  This being a first date, he was excited when, at the conclusion of the meal, she invited him back to her place. He gallantly drove her back (in his convertible, no less — this being the 70s and all) and she asked him in for a drink.

He sat down on the couch while she mixed a cocktail.  It was then that sprung a little surprise: “oh by the way,” she said, “don’t be scared when _____ comes in to join us.”

“And who might _____ be?” inquired the future shrink?

“My pet ocelot.”

The story continued on from there, but the details are less important than the overall point:

When faced with the question “who would you flip for?” evidently one avenue of escape is to tell an amusing story about petting not just a kitty-cat, but a really big kitty cat.

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