Good Trouble for the Liberal Funny Bone

Can the left take a joke anymore?

No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That’s when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.”― George Carlin, Last Words

TLDR: One side’s inability to laugh at itself has long been used against it by the other. Today you’d be surprised to see which side that is. Clickbait: Can Liberals take a joke anymore?

There’s been a notable shift in comedy. One that’s perhaps surprising to hear considering the decades of Saturday Night Live, Daily Shows, Stewart/Colbert and otherwise left-leaning dominance of comedy.

Liberals are the new comedic punching bag

As in, if you want a laugh there’s nothing easier than poking fun at a liberal’s stiffness.

Liberals hear a joke and say ‘I’m going to need to hear some more information before I can laugh at that in public’. — Chad Daniels

Or own intolerance.

If you are not as left-wing as the left-wing man you are talking to you, you are the enemy. — Daniel Sloss

It should be noted, both Daniels and Sloss caveat their jokes by admitting ‘we’re liberal, but…’ while also going on to suggest it’s the conservative side that has become the more ‘fun’ one.

The right-wing doesn’t care how right-wing you are, they’re just happy you’re on the team. — Daniel Sloss

Why the change

In a word, COVID. The pandemic upended life for everyone, particularly live performers. Everything shut down and performers turned to other avenues to continue — namely online via Youtube, podcasts and social. Then as ‘third spaces’ opened up, those less worried about following COVID protocols were the first to return — performers and audiences. Both are great places for the like-minded to find each other out of broader public view.

At the same time as the country was debating masks, social distancing and vaccines’; there was also George Floyd’s murder, BLM, trans, pronouns, the Great Resignation, and still the fallout of the #metoo movement just to name a few.

It’s also here when ‘woke’ and ‘cancel culture’ really enter the public lexicon, giving any comedian a handy ‘catch-all’ for liberalism gone too far.

The power of a joke

‘(Humor is) a great way for us to have evolved so we don’t have to hit each other with sticks’ — Scott Weems, author Ha! The Science of When and Why We Laugh

Humor is an incredible tool for communication. For bringing people together to share a laugh. But the heart of the connection starts with an understood truth.

When we encounter something that we recognize as instantly true, but it comes to us as a surprise when we weren’t expecting it or when it’s the first time that we thought of it, well then we tend to laugh. — Adam Conover, comedian and host Factually

And from that truth, you can begin to build understanding of each other. Greater empathy. Which can be used for positive

‘When it comes to issues like social justice, humour can be a social corrective. We see this in African American comedy, LGBT comedy, … It validates shared experiences, gets us to think more flexibly and reframe situations in this shared experience we call life. — John Fugelsang, comedian and host of Tell Me Everything

A good joke opens us up to receiving more information. (see George Carlin quote above).

Harnessing the power of the taboo joke

There are, of course, many ways to tell a joke. But one common way to suss out a connection for right-leaning comics is through irony.

ComedyZola (YT) does a great job of demonstrating this with Tom Segura and Matt Rife. Both toss out a comment of taboo (Tom-confederate statues, Matt-domestic abuse) and then walk it back with a bit of irony (just taking a temperature check). It relieves the introduced tension, leading to a complicit audience laugh.

As ComedyZola notes For every person laughing at this ironically there’s at least one taking it at face value. The ironic part gets forgotten and the people who legitimately hold these beliefs remain.

Cancel Culture-proof

Right-wing comics are nothing new. What is new? Online platforms that reward extreme reactions (love and hate>middle). The algorithms quickly feed this material to the likeminded. And a right-leaning media network of podcasts that can validate and connect these artists to broader and broader audiences.

The formula seems to be working:

• The Joe Rogan Experience is the most listened-to podcast and regularly hosts very right-leaning and libertarian-leaning comedians
• Gutfeld! on Fox News is watched by 2.2MM beating out Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon
• Shane Gillis, famously fired from SNL over use of a racial slur, found even more fame on Youtube (his Austin Live special has over 25MM views). Even coming back to host SNL.

Matt Rife, who told a domestic abuse joke which by all accounts should legitimately have gotten him ‘canceled’ instead has 7MM+ followers on Instagram and gets his own Netflix deal.

Who’s laughing now

I think it is very hard for liberals to admit that within Trumpism there is a joyousness. — Ezra Klein, NY Times

Comedy has long been used to by progressives to ‘speak truth to power’. Easily casting those in the power, the conservative, as the dull ones. But perhaps we’re at a point where it seems like the Left is the ‘power’.

In some ways, the Right has taken on the counterculture edge, casting the Liberal Left as the ones dictating behavior. We,on the Right, are the ones who don’t give a fuck. An attitude that is particularly good at pulling young men over (a group you’d normally count to be more left-leaning).

(Comedy) can create a sort of deep political identification with a certain in-group and a certain out-group that like, I’m, I’m a normal person… These people on the left are crazy. Cause they’re worried about pronouns, right? They’re crazy because they’re concerned about the names of sports teams being offensive or these sorts of things. Right. And they’re very much positioning themselves on the right as the same people who see that we shouldn’t worry about these things.- Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz, authors That’s Not Funny

A liberal and a conservative walk into a bar…

The difference between a liberal Democrat and a cannibal, is a cannibal won’t eat their own,” — President Lyndon Baines Johnson

If there is a ‘culture war’ happening, then comedy is certainly a part of it. And the Left seems to be losing ground, the return of Jon Stewart notwithstanding. But it’s not so simple to tell one side to lighten up when so much of that side has/continues to be the ‘butt of the joke’. Such is the nature of Big Tent politics. You have a lot of disparate interests vying for attention with equal points of view on its importance.

But maybe, for progressives/liberals/’lefties’, this is where we can use humor to our advantage again. To acknowledge the truths that unite us and build empathy towards a path to understanding. Using humor to invite more persuadable people in.

Big Tents requires a lot of people to fill it. And we have to remember what we’re up against.

The right-wing doesn’t care how right-wing you are, they’re just happy you’re on the team. — Daniel Sloss

Some articles / videos to reference:

Wisecrack Is Politics Ruining Comedy?Adam Conover’s podcast Factually Comedy Censorship Used to be WORSE with Kliph Nesteroff and Thinking Seriously About Comedy with Nick Marx and Matt SienciwiczThat’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work Them by Nick Marx and Matt SienciwiczComedy Zola Matt Rife and the Cruelty Profiteering Formula in Natural Selection and How COVID 19 Pushed Comedy to the Right

“I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.” — Frank A. Clark