Who says there won't be anything funny to riff on in an Obama administration. Did you think all those racist homophobes are just going to give up and slink quietly away, with their Jackson Pollack hate-message posters tucked under their arms?
Earlier today we did a point/counterpoint on whether politics will ever be funny again now that Barack CRAMAZING Obama is in the White House. What, you don't think anyone made fun of George Washington's teeth? There's always something, people.
On the other hand, it's going to be hard to top the last eight years in terms of shooting fish in a comedy sized barrel. Stereohyped/Mollygood editor Cord Jefferson now gives us his take on the world of political ha-ha's:
Here we go again.
In the San Francisco Chronicle today, yet another stupid article about how it's hard for comedians to make fun of Barack Obama. This one with stats:
Point: It's inevitable that after Bush is gone, the late night hosts will be at a loss for a new target. There is just no one in the public eye with such a position of authority that can ever beat George W. for incompetence jokes. And as much as much as we've paid lip service to the idea that The Daily Show and Colbert Report can continue on due to the cleverness of its writing, there is definitely, 100%, no doubt that there will be a dearth in material that was once evident all around us.
If only because it is harder to make fun of hope than it is of crippling fear of our future. Says one writer from the satirical Onion:
"For me, comedy is essentially about personal horror, and transforming that horror into something people can laugh at." Hanson went on, "People always say, 'You should do a book.'"
And now, for the comedic good news:
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NBC might have a great comedic lineup, but one thing missing is definitely a…how do you say…more racially cultured perspective? Sure, there is Tracy Morgan on 30 Rock, and Stanley on The Office, but for the most part the programming for the peacock remains a unanimous white.
But no more!
NBC is developing a comedy based on the book "Making Friends With Black People," a buddy comedy that will focus on the state of race relations in the U.S.
So glad you needed to wait until we had an African-American in the White House before coming out with this culturally diverse show entitled, Making Friends with Black People.
Because America did!
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We're not jumping to conclusions here, but, just in case, here's three famous black comedians' (NSFW!!!!) takes on what it would be like to have a black president.
We wagered early on that Chocolate News was going to be terrible. Though we'll hate to see David Alan Grier without work yet again, it feels good to be right.
Surprisingly, the Afrocentric fake news show's premiere numbers were relatively large. According to the Nielsen ratings, 2.2 million viewers tuned into the debut episode last week, a million more than had watched the hit Colbert Report's first episode. Now if only Chocolate News' content could keep up with Colbert's.
As we said in our original post on CN, Grier is far too theatrical an actor for his part, that of "Dag," a mouthy, ballsy newscaster out to slaughter sacred cows in the black community. Occasionally he's funny, but most of the time he's just over the top and irritating.
That said, though, Chocolate News' biggest liability isn't Dag. In fact, even if Grier toned down his act, or was replaced with a more appropriate host, CN would still be difficult to watch. That's because, frankly, it's rarely funny. And occasionally, it's downright offensive.
Comedy Central's first attempt at black (as in African American) comedy following Dave Chappelle's untimely 2006 departure, Chocolate News, premieres tomorrow night. In the same vein as prime time heavyweights The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Chocolate News will attempt to mock news of the day with a wry, liberal bent. From what I've seen, it's not going to work.
I Can Has Cheezburger, the hysterical and amazingly simple blog devoted to witty captions attached to pictures of cats, should've been neutered. But then the guys behind the site launched its LOLDogs spin-off I Has a Hot Dog. And then there's the celebrity offshoot, ROFLRazzi. Big media, sensing a trend they'd be able to exploit, now finds themselves trying to replicate the enormous success of these sites. Enter Caption Splash, the just-launched gimmick from Lifetime (yes, that same network that's about to lose Project Runway) that hopes viewers will sign on to MyLifetime.com to write thought and speech bubbles on photographs.
Except, like anytime corporations try mimicking independent memes, it's failed miserably. Just take a look at the photo here to see why. It is not funny. It is poorly executed. And it's got a damn Lifetime product plug in the caption. To use a LOLCats-esque theme: FAIL.
Yes, we're aware Ms. Curry is of Japanese descent while Ms. Cho is Korean. And yes, we're aware this clip is from yesterday's Today show, making it ancient in blog years. But yes, you should still watch it to see this rip-off routine yourself. CONTINUED »
Taking no chances on Florida's political leaning this November, Sarah Silverman is urging Jews with Sunshine State-based grandparents to schlep down there and convince them to vote for Barack Obama.
Who said the traditional sitcom was dead (besides us, earlier this week)? USA Network just green-lit a project that combines the hilarity of a hospital drama with the comedy-ripe goldmine of the Iraq War:
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Rolling Stone, the increasingly terrible music magazine whose few pages of political coverage are now far more rock and roll than all of its rock and roll coverage, just released its What's So Funny? comedy issue, and it's already being crapped on, allegedly by an insider.
An anonymous person who claims to be one of the comedians highlighted in What's So Funny? sent a typed letter – complete with lots of spelling and grammatical issues – to the editors of RS admonishing them for their decision to cover bullshit, "gutless," "corporate" comedy acts. Judging by how many times Britney Spears has been on the cover of RS in the past decade, you'd think this "comedian" would have known by now that bullshit acts are kinda Rolling Stone's thing anymore. But no.
Oddly, for something that was supposedly written by a person whose job is to be witty, the letter sure is witless.
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If you think the i-bankers on Wall Street cry into their i-pillows every night, try looking into what the current climate is like in the TV writers' rooms. With the death of the traditional sitcom in favor of single-camera comedies like The Office or Always Sunny in Philidelphia, and the number of these shows cut dramatically from the prime time lineup, the job title that used to be held by up to 15 people on one show is currently in the single digits and is fast approaching a nadir. To wit: The number of NBC comedies dropped from 16 to 4 in the last decade; not a good sign for the aspiring Conans or Sedaris.
And of course, leave it to the professional joke guys to spin the lack of scribe positions in the geekiest way possible, as one ex-Seinfeld writer managed: “We’re devolving into a species of Morlocks. As the work continues to vanish, we’ll vanish as well.”
So what are the former Ivy League graduates doing now that The Simpsons isn't hiring?
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Further proving the theory that most people successful in traditional media are like monkeys faced with calculus when it comes to the Internet, Ashton Kutcher, actor and reality show producer, and his production company, Katalyst Media, give us Blah Girls.
Part gossip blog, part episodic comedy program, Blah Girls attempts to dally in the difficult position between mocking celebrity culture and heralding it. In the videos, the Girls prattle on about Hollywood rumors while frequently interjecting the conversation with crude jokes; in the blog, the Girls attach one-liners to famous photos of the day; and oh how terrible it all is.
When the humor isn't just bad, it's also stereotypical. For instance, the Blah Girls like to get most of their gossip from a lisping, jumping, pink-haired Internet icon named Stewart, who we're no doubt supposed to assume is gay. And in her bio, the black Blah Girl, Tiffany, not only calls her neighborhood her "hood," she also claims her biggest fear is "getting caught in a crossfire." Get it? Because she lives in a bad area and is terrified of being shot. Isn't that hilarious?
Besides all that, the site is terribly user unfriendly and its advertising gimmicks are so obvious it's pathetic. Blahhhhhhhhhhhh.
Click through for the most terrible episode of the two currently on the site.
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David Letterman, the CBS Late Show host who's being bested in the ratings by Nightline, doesn't "know why, after the job Jay [Leno] has done for them, why they would relinquish that."
"They," of course, being NBC, which wanted to badly to hold on to Conan O'Brien they promised him the premiere Late Show spot, effectively ousting Leno — according to everybody — prematurely.
Letterman is speaking to Rolling Stone, supposedly his first real print interview since 1996, and it'd be easy to assume that he's taking a sarcastic cheap shot at his former friend-cum-nemesis, who beat him out for the Johnny Carson slot in 1993, forcing him to the less stellar CBS. The two don't exactly speak anymore, and they sometimes trade barbs. But such is the nature of the tiny world of comedy. And Letterman's comments about Leno don't come across as carpet bombs, but as a genuine olive branch to the only man who arguably makes him try harder at his own job. CONTINUED »
Rather than work out his late late night routine at comedy clubs, incoming NBC show host Jimmy Fallon will ramp up his nightly shtick on the Interwebs. Sometime this fall, he'll be unleashing material 450 percent less amusing than anything posted on FunnyOrDie.com. Lorne Michaels, Fallon's boss at Saturday Night Live and now his Late Night executive producer, will "post [the clips] at 12:30 every night, so people will begin to look for Jimmy at that time." They'll also learn to post the harshest criticism Fallon has ever seen at 12:31. [NYT]
George Bush doesn't know how to speak. John McCain is old. Al Gore is stiff. Hillary Clinton is cold.
These are all character traits that allow the writers behind Leno, O'Brien, Letterman, Stewart, and Colbert to come up with bump-set-spike deliveries and amusing punchlines about the country's most high-profile politicos.
But Barack Obama? They've got nothing! He's neither too tall, nor too short. Not fat, nor anorexic. Not a baby, but not a geezer. He's got that elitist reputation, and that part about his biography where his father herds goats, but not enough to translate into regular late night fare.
We're in DEFCON 1 territory, people! CONTINUED »
Over the years, NBC's Ann Curry, who joined the network in 1990, has put together a reputation that carries many descriptions, including "affable newsreader" and "skilled reporter" to "difficult to work with" and "out for her own." In all the stories we've heard about Ms. Curry, however, "riotously funny" is not one of them. (Cheery banter during cooking segments doesn't count.)
Early next month, she aims to change all that. CONTINUED »
In not exactly news, NBC confirms they've inked Jimmy Fallon to take over for Conan O'Brien when the late night red head does some taking over himself, for Jay Leno, sometime around June 2009. [NYT] There's been mucho speculation about what Jeff Zucker & Co. were going to decide about NBC's late night slate, after rampant rumors about Jay Leno not being ready to give up his post, and NBC's fears that Leno would quickly jump to a waiting competitor like ABC or Fox, allowed for rumormongering about how Leno might not leave, which would mean the network would have to pay O'Brien a rumored $40-45 million penalty fee for not hiring him. That's a lot of cash, yes, but Leno's show is, like the Today show, a cash-frickin'-cow.
The possibility that Leno would stick around carried some weight because, well, he's Leno. And: His ratings consistently beat David Letterman at CBS, and haven't gone down the path like the sinking ship that is NBC's primetime. He remains a huge commodity, and it's certain NBC remained (remains?) nervous about his exit.
But as far back as September 2004, NBC guaranteed O'Brien the 11:30pm slot that Leno holds. They promised it to him, in ink, to keep him from defecting to another network, the very scenario they're wary of with Leno right now. CONTINUED »
Would you trust Rachael Ray for recipes? Exactly. So it makes sense you'd trust Jimmy Kimmel for advice on comedians, right? He told Reader's Digest four of his favorites that he would like to see join (replace?) the Dane Cooks of the world as funnyman household names. They are: Chris Elliot, Tracy Morgan, Artie Lange, and Zach Galifianakis.
Many of you, because you see yourselves as cultural experts, already know these names. But perhaps America does not. And it can only be a good omen, then, that Kimmel's got their backs.
After all, Americans didn't know who this Sarah Silverman girl was before Kimmel, either, and now she's recreating Britney Spears' pussy lips on the VMAs.
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