Fox Gets Satiric

By: Brian Montopoli
Topics: In The News

(AP)

A clip from "The ? Hour News Hour," which has been billed as "'The Daily Show' for conservatives," has been making the rounds, and the reviews have not been pretty. The prospective Fox News Channel offering targets "hysteria" over topics like global warming and Barack Obama, according to Joel Surnow, the "24" co-creator who developed the show.

"One of the things that's definitely not out there is a satirical voice that skews to the right as opposed to the left," says Surnow. "You can turn on any comedy satire show on TV and you're going to hear 10 Bush jokes, 10 Cheney jokes, but you'll never hear a Hillary Clinton joke or a global-warming send-up."

Hal Boedeker calls the show a "bomb." He writes: "Laughter, of an awfully canned variety, greets all the gags. Nothing happening on screen justifies these outbursts." The Onion, panning the clip, offers this: "If you're the least-talented member of your second-rate college sketch comedy group, don't worry. One day you could host a Daily Show ripoff on the Fox News Channel!" A Lost Remote commenter, meanwhile, has this dry observation: "I hear subtlety kicks in sometime during the second episode."

Don't take their word for it, however: Watch the clip for yourself. I think it looks more like a conservative "Weekend Update" than a "Daily Show" clone.

Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is the senior political reporter at CBSNews.com.
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by atpay1 February 16, 2007 10:16 PM EST: The half hour news hour is not funny at all! It is insluting and insensative to blacks, it's racist and stupid !!; Reply to this comment


by mattcat25 February 16, 2007 12:41 PM EST: How many Conservatives does it take to change a light bulb?
NONE! They use the Media to present that a bulb needs to be changed because it might go out.
Then, they hire non-bid CONTRACTORS to remove the bulb, after much cost over runs, the Conservatives plan to hire more contractors to change the bulb, but before the job is finished the Conservatives move to change another bulb!

I mean, Liberals cut and run before the bulb is changed%u2026.and, they don%u2019t support the contractors!; Reply to this comment


by jgh7m February 15, 2007 9:18 PM EST: The thing about the "Daily Show" is that it's not partisan

Ha! Are you kidding me? Yes, they occasionally incorporate a Democrat into the joke routines, but only the most soft-ball, reluctant ways. And those jokes are always meant to engender fondness in the "gosh, isn't uncle bill just the craziest!" kind of way.

Their ideological moorings are more than clear in the vitriol they reserve for conservative joke targets.

I will submit to you the possibility that perhaps the Daily Show isn't biased. THAT my friend, will be tested in months and years to come when Democrats control Congress and the Presidency. If John Stewart and Steven Colbert are able to bend their razor whit on the once and future Democratic establishment with the same zeal they reserve for the current Republican dimwits THEN I will agree with you.

Honestly, though, do you think these shows will still have the same punchiness when there's no longer a conservative punching bag in the Executive or Legislative branches? It's not like they can devote the show to haranguing the republican minority....or can they?; Reply to this comment


by mattcat25 February 15, 2007 1:20 PM EST: How many Liberals does it take to change a lightbulb?

NONE! they just stay in the dark my friends!; Reply to this comment


by memekiller February 15, 2007 1:18 PM EST: The thing about the "Daily Show" is that it's not partisan, it's honest. It's funny because it's true. They'll make fun of Pelosi and Democrats, too. There's just a lot more material to draw from on the right these days, and a vacuum to fill. Daily Show resonated by shining a light were everyone else (especially journalists) blew smoke.

It will be very difficult to be funny while sucking up to the powerful. It's kind of anti-comedy comedy to be joking about the perfection of the boy king. There's some opportunity mocking enemies, but CNN has already beaten them to the "Osama" "Obama" puns, and it wasn't funny the first time around. NYTs already has the corner on Clinton *** references, and the "Gore invented the Internet" thing was tired before it was widely debunked. Comedy is much easier when you're bucking convention rather than reinforcing it, and the arch conservatives tend to be the guys who showed up to high school wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase, and shouting at the hormone laden kids sneaking kisses by the locker to get a room. Which even I can admit, is kind of funny.

I saw this evangelical comedian, and his jokes were along the line of, "When you see a Christian on TV, he's usually a serial killer!", which is much funnier in the original Buchanan.

Most conservatives haven't laughed since they gave the gay kid a wedgie in the locker room. If they did, probably wouldn't be conservative.; Reply to this comment


by cktirumalai February 15, 2007 1:11 PM EST: Mr. Surnow can take some comfort from the fact that while George Orwell, the master of political satire of a philosophical kind, sympathized with the left, the right has not been without its distinguished practitioners of satire. In this latter group belong the uproarious Aristophanes and the gloomy, acerbic Jonathan Swift.; Reply to this comment