Is it just me or is the *vast* majority of political humor (including newspaper editorial cartoons) just, y'know . . . *not funny*?
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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It’s not just you. And it’s not just political humor. Humor in general has taken a downward turn and replaced wit with the uninspired, the gross, and the demeaning.
Humorists these days seem intent on getting laughs chiefly through vulgarity, mockery of human frailty and religious beliefs, etc. Unfortunately, (most) audiences have become attuned to such cheap gimmicks. This is true, I think, for both political humor and humor in general.
/rant.
P.S. If I may ask, what specifically compelled this post? Is there one cartoon in particular you found annoying or unfunny, or some such thing?
P.P.S. Happy Independence Day!
No particular cartoon. Just a phenomenon I started noticing years ago when I realized Mark Russell simply wasn’t funny (a conclusion on which Bart Simpson agrees with me). Gradually I noticed that virtually nothing branded “political humor”–from *either* liberal or conservative sources–was actually funny. (Nor is a lot of the rest of what passes as humor these days, as you point out.) The political stuff in particular just seemed to involve a combination of meanness coupled with overly easy, low-wattage jokes. In other words, cheap shots. Humor about politics *can* still work these days (e.g., The Simpsons tend to do it well), but that seems to happen only when it’s taken out of an overtly political context.
+JMJ+
I agree. There are so many “funny” cartoons or jokes out there that just aren’t funny.I think they are trying to redefine the word “funny” like they are redefining everything else these days. As for me, funny still means Abbot and Costello. 😉
P.S. Happy Fourth of July!
“Humor about politics *can* still work these days (e.g., The Simpsons tend to do it well), but that seems to happen only when it’s taken out of an overtly political context.”
Indeed. This brings to mind the – overtly political – ’08 Simpsons episode when Homer was eaten by the voting machine after trying to vote for Obama but repeatedly having his vote counted for McCain.
Now, if McCain had been facing allegations of election fraud, this could have been amusing. As it was, it came across as a cheap, uninspired, and partisan attack and was entirely lacking in the underlying truth required for political jokes to play with a broad audience, IMHO.
Mean-spirited jokes are not amusing, and this sequence, I think, fell into that category. I was no big fan of McCain, and was willing to laugh at a well-aimed joke, but this was one of those occasions where I just sighed and changed the channel.
I’ve noticed the same phenomenon in comedy for a while now. A comedian poking fun at himself, like Tim Allen, is unusual. It seems comedy in recent times involves pointing out how stupid, silly, incapable, or misshapen someone one else is. Not much wit is involved and I find it too easy to empathize with the victim of the “humor”. So any point being made is completely lost on me.
I don’t know what’s changed, but I don’t believe it’s for the better.
I’d take it further than that. I look at a lot of political cartoons and think, that’s supposed to be a joke? Not only is it not funny, but I can’t see how it’s supposed to be funny. Of course, that’s true of a lot of other types of humor.
It still beats what passes for non-political humor.