Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Monday May 11 2015, @03:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-is-your-talking-head dept.

Reuters tells us:

As Jon Stewart winds down his 19-year stint as host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, he and Stephen Colbert sit at the peak of American punditry despite their left-leaning view of life, the universe and everything.

In an era of diffused voices and divided politics, they are well known, widely admired, and speak to Americans in ways that no one else does, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

This poll tracks 10 different pundits. Split evenly between conservative and liberal. It is also worth noting that four of the five on the liberal side are comedians, while none of the conservative pundits are trained to tell jokes.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 12 2015, @09:15AM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Tuesday May 12 2015, @09:15AM (#181877) Journal

    If there's no truth in it, it's not funny, and it's not an effective weapon. That's the beauty of it.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 12 2015, @08:27PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 12 2015, @08:27PM (#182083) Journal
    I didn't say comedy had to be funny. And wanting something to be true is a frequent substitute for truth.
    • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday May 13 2015, @03:45PM

      by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday May 13 2015, @03:45PM (#182429) Journal

      > I didn't say comedy had to be funny.

      Let me guess, you're a conservative.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 14 2015, @12:00AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 14 2015, @12:00AM (#182716) Journal
        No, I'm not a conservative. I tend to lean libertarian which some people confuse with conservative.

        But really, there is this unwarranted assumption that comedy has to be funny. I notice this attitude on occasion when someone is losing an argument on SN or those other sites. They start cutting jokes and wittily insulting those who disagree. I gather they think they're being funny and that somehow making jokes adequately compensates for not having a thing to say, but it's a sad thing to see.
        • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday May 14 2015, @04:05PM

          by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Thursday May 14 2015, @04:05PM (#182962) Journal

          > But really, there is this unwarranted assumption that comedy has to be funny.

          Unwarranted? Surely funniness is the defining trait of comedy. What's funny is highly subjective, granted, but saying "Comedy doesn't have to be funny" is like saying "Erotica doesn't have to be sexy" or "War doesn't have to be violent" or "Food doesn't have to be edible."

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 15 2015, @12:23AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 15 2015, @12:23AM (#183186) Journal
            You'd think so, but that's not true in practice. For example, consider this exchange [soylentnews.org]:

            while most multinationals are vulnerable to boycotts, sabotage, and other public protests

            lol, funniest joke of the week!

            My observation wasn't funny or even incorrect, but it became "funniest joke" because the AC author had no basis on which to rationally argue against it. This is the form of a lot of comedy of which I speak. People often don't have a good reason to disagree, so they bitterly mock it instead.

            • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday May 15 2015, @11:10AM

              by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday May 15 2015, @11:10AM (#183301) Journal

              I suspect your sarcasm meter is incorrectly calibrated. In your example AC isn't making a joke (well, kind of), and doesn't genuinely think that you are. AC was deliberately misinterpreting your comment as a joke in order to imply that what you said was so ridiculous that you couldn't possibly have been speaking seriously. AC does have a point, but didn't bother to spell out his/ her arguments of provide links, presumably because s/he thought they would be obvious. Or maybe because s/he is lazy. Actually, I suspect it's mostly the latter.

              I am not AC so I don't know and I'm not going to bother doing his/ her research, but I'd guess the point s/he is trying to make is either:

              A) Multinationals are effectively immune to boycotts etc because they can use mass-brainwashing of the public (aka advertising) and/or re-branding to make public image problems simply go away. They can use political connections to prevent or mitigate sabotage / mass protests. Consider how many people choose to boycott Wal-Mart, or MacDonalds, or Disney for various reasons. Do those companies really seem to be suffering significantly? How many people boycotted/ protested BP following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? Are BP on their knees begging for forgiveness?

              or

              B) The vast bulk of the general public is so apathetic and uneducated about the complex ethical issues surrounding their purchasing habits that public action on the scale required to dent multinationals is so rare as to be practically non-existent. So what if twelve million dirty hippies decide to boycott Nestle when there are several billion more customers lined up around the world?

              If I could be bothered to dig up some links these would probably be points worth arguing but again, I'm not AC and only marginally less lazy than him/her.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 15 2015, @06:49PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 15 2015, @06:49PM (#183451) Journal

                In your example AC isn't making a joke (well, kind of), and doesn't genuinely think that you are. AC was deliberately misinterpreting your comment as a joke in order to imply that what you said was so ridiculous that you couldn't possibly have been speaking seriously.

                Which is a joke. This also is a standard rhetorical maneuver by comedians. I bet I could find one or two examples from a typical Jon Stewart night.

                AC does have a point, but didn't bother to spell out his/ her arguments of provide links, presumably because s/he thought they would be obvious.

                If only we knew for sure. There's a way that the AC could have done that and avoid all this meaningless speculation. They could even have been funny in the process.

                I am not AC so I don't know and I'm not going to bother doing his/ her research, but I'd guess the point s/he is trying to make

                The thing is, the AC didn't try to make that point. It's just unfounded conjecture on your part that they even understood the argument well enough to make such points.

                My point here is that humor and comedy can be and are misused easily. Sure, it can be used to illustrate the truth of some ill or evil and it can be quite engaging and memorable (for example, we still remember the gerrymander [wikipedia.org] and honor the senator who "spoke to Buncombe" [wiktionary.org]). But it can also be a tool of sloth, used by the lazy to insult or belittle without even a little bit of content. My take is that many of the people lauding the use of humor are of this listless sort, unable or unwilling to put together a more serious argument (even one using humor!).

                So I have to roll my eyes when I read stories of the truthiness of humor, especially blatantly partisan (and clueless) ones ("none of the conservative pundits are trained to tell jokes" - well I doubt any of the supposedly liberal ones were trained either). It's good to have a sense of humor, but merely going through the motions of making a joke doesn't make you funny.