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February 17, 2007

And Now for Something Completely Ridiculous

by AltHippo @ 10:39 am. Filed under hacks

From the Washington Post review of the 1/2 Hour News Hour: (my emphasis)

All that aside, “ Hour” definitely has its moments. Anchors “Jennifer Lange” and “Kent McNally” (Jenn Robertson and Kurt Long — why didn’t they just use their real names?) sit at a simple desk and deliver the facetious items without any of the dreadful, overboard mugging and mincing of “Daily Show’s” obnoxious Jon Stewart.

The show opens with something of a sketch, however: It’s 2009 and guess who’s president? Rush Limbaugh, whom we discover seated at an Oval Officey desk and reciting his lines mechanically. When he calls for the vice president, in walks that spooky vampire Ann Coulter, too malicious and frightening to ever be funny. Still, the pair do have a certain star power.

On comes the artificial news. Hillary Rodham Clinton has pledged wide-ranging variety in her version of a Clinton administration, it’s reported; she vows to appoint “a diverse group . . . of angry lesbians.” An overlong segment on politically correct children’s books includes such titles as “Harry Potter and the Alternate Lifestyle” and, for the developmentally challenged, “The Little Engine That Couldn’t Quite.”

There’s a running gag about environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. attempting to get to the studio in a car that runs on, among other things, poopy, and mock commercials trashing the American Civil Liberties Union — “protecting criminals from people like you since 1920.” Here, though, the desire to deliver partisan swift kicks tends to override any impulse to amuse.

Here’s my thoughts:

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3 Responses to “And Now for Something Completely Ridiculous”

  1. Girldreams Says:
    February 18th, 2007 at 1:23 am

    Hmm . . . I was kinda surprised to see this review from the Post until I went to the paper
    and saw that it was written by none other than Tom Shales, who’s been WaPo’s TV crit since
    the Stone Age (and has remained as relevant). What I saw of the 1/2 Hour News Hour was an
    abortion; I wish I could get my hands on the Kool-Aid he’s drinking that’s making him so
    charitable towards it.

    His comments about Stewart, as rightly noted on the WaPo review site, were bitter and
    unfair. Of course, Stewart does plenty of shtick, but think of the comedians and talk show
    hosts operating today–Colbert, Williams, Seinfeld, Letterman, Maher–and tell me who
    doesn’t mug (and actually, Stewart’s live standup has evolved to being relatively muggery
    free). And in reality, I can’t think of anyone on TV who seems less pompous or obnoxious.
    I think whatbothers Shales is, Stewart and his TDS crew are so good at deflating the
    pomposity and hypocrisy of the MSM of which Tom is a too-proud part.

  2. AltHippo Says:
    February 18th, 2007 at 9:51 am

    “I think whatbothers Shales is, Stewart and his TDS crew are so good at deflating the
    pomposity and hypocrisy of the MSM of which Tom is a too-proud part.”

    That’s the best explanation I’ve seen for this review. Stewart hit Shales’ MSM nerve.

    Extrapolating from that, from Shales’ viewpoint, Stewart can’t say he’s the king of political comedy unless Shales says he’s the king of political comedy.

  3. Girldreams Says:
    February 18th, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    “That’s the best explanation I’ve seen for this review.”
    Gee, thanks! I was just going for “not bad for 1 a.m.” ;-)

    Just to add to your thought about the soul of comedy being the examination of the absurdity
    of the human condition (from a distance): This is certainly true, in the sense that it
    requires the ability to see clearly through B.S. In the wake of this Fox show turning up,
    people on the right and left have been arguing that the other side doesn’t “get” comedy. To
    me, comedy is not “left” or “right,” it’s centrist. And it requires irreverence with a
    capital I. Those who fail at it fail because they can’t let go of their own sacred cows,
    which in the neocons case seems to include God, Guns and Government. But people on the left
    can be (and have been) equally humorless. Anyway, my point is, our ability to be funny
    (and even politically funny) has little to do with whether we voted for Bush or Kerry.

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