Where Are All The Funny Conservative Bloggers?

I am not usually a funny writer.  Bitter and cranky, yes; funny, sometimes.  But I do like to read funny, smart bloggers, if for no other reason than it relieves the feelings of depression one experiences being a passenger on the USS America with a crew of drunks and fools steering us at the rocks, at full speed.  But during my recent researches into the squalid waterfront bars and seaman's whorehouses known as the right side of the blog world, the question hit me:  Why is it there are so few funny conservative bloggers? 

On the left side, there are probably a half-dozen top bloggers who are consistently funny and provide excellent commentary and criticism.  In no particular order, and just off the top of my head, we have Fafblog!, The Rude Pundit, World O' Crap, Alicublog, Fanatical Apathy, Sadly, No!, Tbogg, The Poor Man, and James Wolcott.  All consistently funny - often brilliantly so - without devolving completely into the silly. (Occasional diversions into the silly are fine.)

In addition, many top bloggers who don't write humorously all the time often display brilliant flashes of it - just for example, the farmer at Corrente with The Devil is Dead. Me and Pete Killed the Devil, Belle Waring's If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride ... A Pony!, and Michael Berube starring in Blogging From The Republican National Convention.

I  am sure there are others that I am missing, but that's the point.  It's a pretty substantial bunch. 

On the right, though, there is a noticeable absence.  There are IMAO, Scrappleface and, I suppose, Lileks.  Outside of them, it's all self-righteousness and persecution complex, all the time.  And outside of the three listed above, when a conservative blogger does employ humor, I find that usually it's in retelling a joke they read somewhere else.

Is there a genetic link between humor and political outlook?  Is there just some birth defect that prevents right-wingers from being funny? In my apology yesterday, I sarcastically asserted there was such a connection, but now I think I may have been right at that.  Perhaps people who are born with a natural disposition to see the humor in life, and to be able to laugh at themselves, may develop a sense of empathy and compassion that leads them to liberalism.  The key to successful humor, after all, is to be able to see things from other people's perspectives - a liberal trait that conservatives deride variously as "relativism" or "objectively pro-terrorist".  So conservatives may have a genetic makeup that makes them less able to appreciate what's funny, and consequently take themselves very seriously and see the world as a dour, threatening place, with all these other people having a good time and laughing - sometimes at them.  This explains a lot, I think, and deserves further research.

Comments

[J Pierpont Flathead]

I guess there's also that cartoonist guy, Day by Day.

[Mithras]

Yeah, I thought about Muir. But he's not a blogger, he's a cartoonist. I didn't include Tom Tomorrow for similar reasons.

[Ben]

Hey Don't forget Wonkette!!

That shit is funny.

[The Liberal Avenger]

I guess there's also that cartoonist guy, Day by Day.

He's funny?

[John Gillnitz]

My theory is that conservatism is, in many ways, rooted in fear. Fear just isn't funny. Comedy takes a good bit of courage.

That is a good list of consistently funny leftish bloggers. A good addition is Jesus' General at http://www.patriotboy.blogspot.com/ .

[reef the dog]

Depends on what you think is funny. If you think racism is funny, then conservatives are a knock down riot. Rush thinks it's hilarious to call a recent Iraq vet running for Congress a "staff puke"; can't you see the humor in that?

[J Pierpont Flathead]

I honestly think you're wrong about it being a left right sort of thing. Of the two funniest guys I know, one is left, the other is right. But I think you're correct that some people just have no sense of humor and that it does relate to their empathy and compassion.

My young daughters, 6 and 7, took my phone, hid in their room, and called my ex to complain that I had turned into a zombie. They couldn't keep serious, and in the end turned into a fit of giggles. The ex asked the 7 year old what daddy thought of that, and the 7 year old said daddy didn't mind, or so I have been informed. So the ex played the tape of the phone call complete with zombies and giggles and arrows on the back explaining each one to the court psych and the ex complained that I had rotten values and was a danger to the kids.

So I told the court psych that while I once had a problem with my zombieism, that was only as an adolescent, so if the kids were complaining I was a zombie, they were probably playing a joke on me. But that there was a serious matter here we needed to discuss. What was the best way for the kids to understand their mom has no sense of humor? I am letting them learn it on their own, but maybe the psych should warn them for us all.

[renato]

Jesus' General! How could you forget him, you heathen frenchman?

[djangone]

Wingnuts chuckle at an illiterate satirist who calls himself Iowahawk. I just read an older post that could have been more clunky and hackneyed only if it contained the word 'methinks.'

Wingnuts chuckle at a lot of strange things. "Hey, let's nuke mecca!' seems to make them bend over in stitches.

[John Emerson]

Roger Ailes.

[nobody]

There exist people who actually think Rush Limbaugh is a humorist of sorts.

QED

[md]

I read about a German complaining in the 60's that they didn't have any good comedians, like the US did.

because they killed them all.

[djangone]

Oh wait, I just remembered an example of the 'retelling of old jokes.' In the late 90s Spy Magazine ran a cover of Hillary with her dress blowing in the wind, her underwear clearly showing the imprint of a male 'package.' A group of republicans ahead of me waiting for a restaurant table were whooping it up at that one. Back-slapping, guffaws and 'hey look at it again!'...it went on for fifteen minutes.

None of them had the slightest clue that Graydon's Gang ripped the joke from a famous National Lampoon cover of an Eastern 'Female' European swimmer for the 1976 Olympics. Obscure? A little. Superior, absolutely. Warmed-over? Like yesterday's bagels.

[crafty]

As a sort-of aside, remember when dennis miller went from left to right? he immediately became un-funny. absolutely overnight, he went from hilarious to just grating... or is that just me?

[Thersites]

The guy from Wizbang said that Steven DenBeste was a great essayist...

Now THAT'S pretty damn funny!

[md]

crafty, I don't find you grating

=rimshot=

[agave]

"So conservatives may have a genetic makeup"

Probably linked to the religion gene.

.

[renato]

As a sort-of aside, remember when dennis miller went from left to right? he immediately became un-funny. absolutely overnight, he went from hilarious to just grating... or is that just me?

uh, it was just about everyone who thought that.

Either he became unfunny if you were a lefty... or if you were a righty he just left you scratching your head since his six-degrees-of-separation hyperobscure cultural references typically sailed miles over wingnut heads.

[md]

hyperobscure cultural references

the differnce being that Jon Stewart uses hyperobtuse cultural references.

or, alternalty, conservatives are just TOO DAMN EASY as targets of wit.

Wen they attempt wit, they ususally make it but halfway there.

[Colorado Luis]

You forgot Norbizness on your list of funny lefties! The horror!

[ajm]

Well, I've had wingnuts tell me that when Ann Coulter said that she wished that the NY Times' offices had been blown up, that she was only joking. When I told them that all decent people should censure Coulter, and that I was 99.9% certain that Coulter was, in fact, a man, I wasn't joking.

Oh, and remember when Limbaugh compared a then-pre-teen Chelsea Clinton's appearance to a dog? I'm told that was a joke too. So see, those conservatives really are a bunch of cut-ups.

[garth]

renato: I followed Miller for a long time, til he went money-whacko. he seriously became not-funny, it was alarming. my stepbro is a diehard fan of the rant, the specials, the HBO show, and he's a little bit right of me (he does have to be in a union, but he doesn't like it, despite my constant harassment), and HE can't watch Miller anymore. I think it's less a political thing than him just losing it. He was so rarely funny on Monday Night Football.

And "conservatives" aren't funny because they're evil, developmentally retarded scum. just my two pennies.

[GoatBoy]

You forgot about Billmon. Wanna buy some wood?

[Roxanne]

I think that Protein Wisdom guy thinks he's funny. Whether or not he is, I'll leave to you, gentle readers.

[Steve G]

The way a joke works is that you have a set up with a weighted ambiguity, that is, it can be interpreted in two ways but one them is the obvious interpretation which is immediately adopted to make sense of the scenario described in the joke. Then comes the punchline which forces the listener to see reality in terms of the second, less obvious interpretation. The unexpected Gestalt switch forced on the listener to completeley reinterpret the world it was considering during the set up causes a sort of overload in the brain and this is what causes the humor (this is also why people giggle in VERY tense situations). We all know people who can't tell a joke -- they either fail to set up the situation well or tip their hand and show where the switch is going to be before the punchline.

Being funny therefore requires being able to see things in more than one way. This is why more lefties -- who prize open-minded considerations of alternative ways of thinking about things -- are funny.

Of course, there are many on the left who are completely lacking in humor and they tend to be those who are the most absolute in terms of how to proceed on policy matters, the most likely to preach and condemn opposition to a given stance. For example, take my position on abortion, please.

[Larry Allen]

You may be right in the Blog sphere but the tv-radio wingnuts often try to be funny. Unfortunately their humor is all of the frat boy, put people down or bathroom type. Maybe that's why we have the frat boy president, one who was noted for laughing and joking while signing execution orders while governor of Texas.

[pbg]

Let's be fair: there were absolutely NO funny Marxists.

Zeppo was the closest.

[Lame Man]

Mithras, you should drop in on Gene Weingarten's weekly chats at washingtonpost.com, or at least check out the transcripts. I haven't done so in a while, but he often discussed the humor quotient of libruls vs. that of conservatives.

Jesus' General is not lefty or satire, you French commie terrorists. How dare you.

[md]

Are conservatives clever?

Sadly, No!

[Diana Moon]

You say you didn't include Tom Tomorrow because he's a cartoonist and not a blogger, BUT he has a fabulous blog at http://www.thismodernworld.com

[ohdave]

What? No Jesus' General?!

The General is pee-your-pants funny on a daily basis.

[moerex]

As far as funny conservative bloggers go, I've found IowaHawk to be worth a few laughs every now 'n' then. Otherwise, if I had to turn to the right side of the blogosphere for humor--which I've never had to do, so far--I guess I'd go for ol' Lileks. When he's not in "screed" mode, he's pretty entertaining, and I like his non-political books.

[John Gorenfeld]

Don't leave out Pandagon.

[Bill in Portland Maine]

-

I knew the truth would one day get out: I'm too silly. Thanks for terminating the suspense. Goodbye, cruel world.

Bill in Portland, Maine
Cheers and Jeers
Daily Kos

[Prudence Goodwife]

He's not a blogger & I hate to admit it but I have found Jackie Mason to be very funny sometimes. It was at least 10 years ago but it was funny.

[bvocal]

My bet is that Dennis Miller lost his funn/liberal writers and was either left with just himself, or himself and some right wing idiot to write the jokes.
He did, though, dumb down the 6 degrees cultural references.

[Doug]

Lileks? Funny? Depends on how much they took out when you had your lobotomy, I guess.

I don't know. I suppose every once in a while, buried amongst his long cutesy stories about his daughter and the interminable sentences of his anti-liberal "rants," he may throw in something somewhat witty. The problem is that the way he writes, I can't read one of those witticisms without picturing him chuckling with self-satisfaction as he reads back over it, and that kind of kills it for me.

[robert]

Don't forget for the right, the cartoonists at CoxandForkum.com, those guys cartoons are usually funny and poignant at the same time.

[n.o.t.l.f]

But...but...The South Park! We find crippled kids and retards like WAY funny. And they make fun of that loudmouthed Jewish broad too! Whatshername. Babs. [/conservatron]

[chuck]

Humor assumes, most often, an appreciation for irony in the teller or the listener, particularly when the suject is politics.

That appreciation is more often than not totally lacking in people who perceive the world in absolute terms.

Hence, the virtual absence of humor and messianic self-righteousness and sanctimony on on the right side of the isle are two closely related phenomena. After all, when you're on a mission from God, what could possibly be funny?

If you ever want to see an explicit demonstration of the difference, check out the book fair "debate" between Bill O'Reilly and Al Franken.

[mark]

All dem blogs are funny. As in, 'not to be taken seriously'. Rather telling that despite their reports of humor, there is no successful Democratic voice in radio.

Leave it the 'doctors' to diagnose themselves.

Keep laughing, I'll keep voting.
Voting with a majority.

[plantsman]

Attaturk, at Rising Hegemon; hits and misses, but when he's on the mark - as he often is in his foto essays-- he's devastatingly funny, and so unpopular, comments are virtually troll-free!

[robert]

As a sort-of aside, remember when dennis miller went from left to right? he immediately became un-funny. absolutely overnight, he went from hilarious to just grating... or is that just me?

Posted by: crafty

Now that you disagree with him, you find him grating. I thought he was funny either way. A little too intent on sounding cerebral sometimes, but better than the rantings of Dennis Leary anytime.

[Coultergeist (no relation to Ann)]

I totally used to dig Dennis Miller. Talk about intelligent humor. You used to have to have a copy of the dictionary, a thesaurus, Chaucer, the complete works of Shakespeare, Rawls, Locke, Rousseau, Calvin, Martin Luther, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Conan Doyle, a visual memory of every movie ever made, and the Bible with you in order to follow his stream of consciousness rants. Wingnuts only seem to know the Bible so I guess he had to dumb it down a bit to appeal to them.

You forgot the Rudepundit for those who are not gallows humor challenged.

[Hubris]

Let me be sure I understand:

-The ability to see things from others' perspectives, a "liberal" trait, is the key to humor.
-In your case, the manifestation of this ability to consider other perspectives, including presumably the perspectives of conservatives, it to conclude that they have a genetic defect which renders them less able to appreciate what's funny.

Yep, that makes sense. A wondrous display of empathy and understanding.

[Guest]

You must be a namby-pamby Frenchman, ranking very low on the manly scale. How else to account for the omission of the alpha heterosexual Jesus' General, everybody's favorite conservative?

[kei & yuri]

The answer we came up with was that the basis of leftist politics is morality; before you have morality you need honesty; humor and true sarcasm are like the excercise of honesty, the smashing of illusions and pretense; rightist politics is immoral and all about perpetuating or building illusions, like terrorists being inspired by religion or all government intervention in the market being unimaginably evil or Bush being smart or even average or Iraq being able to destroy the US in under 45 minutes.

[Sherman]

The Rude Pundit, hands down, is the most offensive and funny of the bloggers mentioned.

I have a Christian Conservative friend who is incredibly funny, but I do believe he is the only one on Earth. We spent a lot of time as teenagers talking about Monty Python skits and the newest episode of the Young Ones that aired on MTV the Sunday previous. To this day he still has a much quicker wit than most people I know, regardless of political persuasion. He has lost a step or two, but that is due to the overall level of mental atrophy we males tend to experience once we reach 30. Also he has kids so a good deal of his time is spent thinking about them and not humorous remarks. But I think even he would agree that the Right is definitely lacking in the whole jocularity concept. As for me, I think they just suck at telling jokes because they are too busy thinking about how to destroy liberals.

[shecky]

Whoopi Goldberg-she's funny.
That Chao woman she's funny too.
Rosie always makes me chuckle.
Al Franken with the sattelite thingy on his head...oh boy.

Almost as good as knock knock jokes.

Knock, knock...
Who's there?
The IRS.
IRS who?
IRS is a government agency that finds fraudulent use of funds, please come with us Al...

[Innocent Bystander]

Hey Bill-

Neighbor upstate in Dexter....I was gonna give you a plug. You gotta have a sense of humor living up heah.

My observations on the relationship of humor and politics. The further off in either direction of center, the grimmer the people. The center has the funniest people...they also have the least political opinions. Correlation?

That said, yes, the Right is most certainly humor impaired. They are much better at moralizing/preaching than telling jokes. I guess every group has their strong suits, humor isn't it for the Right.