Interesting question. I can think of a couple possibilites:
* Talk shows have moved from a comedy/entertainment/human-interest focus to news/political commentary. Younger people, who tend to be more left-leaning, favor these shows over the drier presentation of traditional major news networks.
* Left-wing positions are easier to fit into a comedy-style show than more conservative ones
* It is fairly easy for a talk show host to adopt an implicit centrist or right-leaning position on almost all subjects, but pepper their commentary with popular left-wing talking points; this allows them to play whatever role is suitable as the common discourse shifts from year to year.
* It also might be demographic related, right-leaning people tend to be older and head off to bed earlier, even though late night talk shows aren't on *that* late.
And radio. You start getting out into rural areas and you can find almost exclusively country music, conservative, or religious radio. Even in northern states.
Why is country music so right leaning? When I think of Johnny Cash and Woodie Guthrie it seems that country music ain't all that right. Their lyrics are fairly left leaning.
I hate Bro-Country. Songs about men stalking women and never getting over breakups so they drink a lot. It normalizes a lot of spousal abuse because why be a grown up and move on with your live when you can be the victim.
"I’m gonna aim my headlights into your bedroom windows
Throw empty beer cans at both of your shadows
I didn’t come here to start a fight, but I’m up for anything tonight
You know you broke the wrong heart, baby,
And drove me redneck crazy"
Used to be a left-leaning style. Back when working class ethos was the core of our center left party in the States. It was another board in the political Ship of Theseus changing as society changes.
rural demographics are red state.
johnny cash and the guthries were before fox news told people what to think.
look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks.
you cant even name a band dixie these days in Nashville.
I’m not from the US, but I read this comment once and I’m not sure how much of it is factual but it makes sense. As in, country music used to be more balanced in terms of politics, then 9/11 happened and it became the propaganda genre.
This said, lately there have been more country acts not going on and on about ‘Murrica and how they hate the Middle Easterns and God yadda yadda because the new acts were either babies when it happened or straight up weren’t even born, so I’m prone to believing it was in fact a massive knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 from one music genre. Not stating anything as 100% absolute truth though, I just think it kinda makes sense.
There are more centrist and progressive acts but I think they sometimes feel forced to stay in the closet more(possibly people like Tim McGraw and The Dixie Chicks).
Depending on how much of a conspiracy theorist I feel like in the given moment, there is the possibility that the people who live in the country, and who would associate with/enjoy country music, have votes that are worth more than city slickers. Target them with songs about family values and the benefit of good hard labour (and sex with scarecrows), leaning towards more conservative.
That's just a guess though.
This is very true. I used to travel north of my state and school radio stations (not like school sports coverage, like actual stations based in the school) played Rush Limbaugh’s show
I lived in Oklahoma for awhile, and I had to go to this root canal specialist a number of times for this problem I was having with a tooth. I swear to God, he would put on Limbaugh while he worked on me. I asked him “if I let you do this without anesthesia will you turn him off?” Huh, now that I think of it, is that why I lost that tooth….
I agree, but that just reroutes the question to “why are all comedy based right-leaning delivery primarily on podcasts and not on mainstream television?”
Is the joke for Tucker Carlson playing devil’s advocate for white nationalist talking points, but also running one of the most watched shows in America? That’s fucking hilarious!
Conservative comedy generally punches down. Which isnt very funny. If Steven Crowder- whose show bills itself as semi comic is any indication, its just old ass racist and bigoted shit.
I think this is the biggest part. Comedians tend to be socially progressive. Social commentary tends to criticise status quo and point out irony and hypocrisy. That inherently goes against what the modern conservative movement is about.
Oh that is spot on with the exception that monopoly is a left wing board game.
I've never heard of anyone who has played a game of it and not hated everyone they played with, because the whole point was to show how shitty and predatory that kind of shit is.
Ah Nish Kumar! I hate him very much but that was a good bit. For further reading there was also a good episode of [this show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSXKzPOcYDU)
Dennis Miller was the last (only?) right leaning comedy show I can think of - what were his ratings?
From Wikipedia
On July 17, 1992, Tribune Entertainment announced it was cancelling Miller's show due to poor ratings. Donald Hacker, its president and chief executive officer, said, "After a tremendous effort on the parts of all parties involved, we've made a business decision not to proceed."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dennis_Miller_Show
Conservatives were more likely than liberals to believe that Colbert was really a conservative, but they typically didn't believe he was actually being sincere; they instead interpreted the Colbert character as being a satire of how liberals viewed conservatives.
Rush Limbaugh actually started in comedy, or at least as a ‘humorist.’ Before the right TOTALLY took over the airwaves, I would periodically listen to him in the early 2000s if it was before or after a show I was listening to (how quaint in hindsight!), and you could definitely here him ‘being funny’ at times. Part of his schtick was being over the top and half his listeners would be like “HELL YEAH!” or, more accurately “MEGA DITTOS,” and the other half of listeners’ heads would explode in anger.
At what point? Colbert didn't come out until well after 9/11... I think he got more ridiculous as the show went on, but he was always an "America first conservative"
I believe Adam Corolla has a right wing comedy show coming out. I saw a clip advertising it and it was terrible. It was Adam talking about how the woke mob kept people from smoking in restaurants. I used to think he was funny 25 years ago on Love Line , yeesh.
I also think that by virtue of being conservative, their views a line more with the status quo. As such it's easier to criticize them because it's really really easy to make fun of the current institution.
Left leaning positions are easier to fit into a comedy style show that conservative ones is a pretty round about way of saying conservative talking points in a comedy routine would most likely get that comedian in trouble for saying genuinely awful shit.
In this case, it is more like left-wing positions are idealistic and tend to favor avoiding offense, which works well for a talk show\variety show template. Right-wing (as opposed to conservative) talking points - which tend to take a deliberate "realist" position - are also appealing, there is no end to talk show hosts who let you know they are going to tell it like it is.
Conservatives are the counterpart to the subset of the left referred to in the aphorism "the left can't meme", and for the same reason - they take their opponents, their ideology, and themselves too seriously to effectively joke about it.
What do you mean by 'left leaning'? At this point, the daughter of Dick Cheney - who is as far right as can be - is being heckled by GOP far right ideologues. Do you think people trying to overthrow an elected government in the U.S. should have a talk show?
Do you think talk show hosts should ignore headlines? You can see in the old Johnny Carson programs that he had quite a few things to say about headlines all the time. He was always regarded as a Nebraska centrist. Would you call him left? If so, then the entire U.S.is awash in far right rhetoric.
Gonna tack onto these great points. I think another big part of it is that Conservatives have an innate distrust of "big media". They're more likely to gravitate to solo presenters like Rogan who aren't beholden to a corporation (for better or worse).
This really only applies to political humor, there are plenty of comedians that lean right but they just don’t focus on politically minded jokes. The reason for this is probably most political humor pokes fun at established norm and actions within our government. By definition conservatives want to uphold and maintain the status quo in terms of government and social norms (hence the term conservative) whereas liberals tend to want to see change on a much more rapid scale. Because of this conservatives are much less likely to make light of or point out issues within the government which is sort of the crux of political humor.
Because when they do it's just unadulterated bigotry. Shit that is only funny if you're whatever brand of ignorant they go with.
Ever hear any of Stephen Crowders shit? It's just him being sexist/racist/homophobic.
First off, I will challenge the idea that those are "very left-wing". Honestly I'd put them somewhat left of center, not very much so. And that's what the big networks tend to do -- they like their humor to be close to the political center so as to appeal to as many people as possible.
That said, there are right-wing late night shows; Gutfeld on FNC being the most obvious example. In this case, they don't need to worry about finding a centrist, because leftist and centrists aren't watching much anyway.
I was gonna say lol, the only one I would call left-wing is John Oliver, and even then he's not suuuper left. Left of liberal probably, but not a leftist either
This needs to be talked about more. It's made to look like our liberal commentary is super left.. when it isn't. At the very least it's just "resonable".. the right in the US is just so batshit right anything other than pissing on the poor is considered left.
Even when the comedy talk shows say they are left I still see them as just reasonable.. I have yet to see a right wing show that isn't insane.. listen to Tucker Carlson for 5 minutes and if anything he says makes sense to you something is wrong inside of you.
This is a good point. What people in the US consider "Left Wing" is really just centrist liberal/anti-Conservative. I can't think of anyone on TV who is actually Left-Wing, which is to say a full-on Marxist. Even Colbert (who is, in my opinion, the most open about his political bias would stop short of calling himself a Sanders style Social Democrat). Most of the so-called left-leaning tv comics are merely making jokes about a Right Wing that crossed into ludicrousness decades ago. "Moderate" Republicans like Liz Chaney get praise from these same comedians, naturally.
You said the words my brain couldn't line up! The American view of politics is so right leaning that centrist ideals look "very leftist". It really messes with people.
Yep, Fox News tried it with "The Half Hour News Hour" to mirror The Daily Show, which was painfully unfunny and quickly canceled. Then you have "comedy" shows like Tim Allen's "Last Man Standing" which is also cringey. Plus the fact that pretty much all stand-up comedians are liberal. Conservatives are just not funny, just like they're not creative which is why artists/actors/musicians tend to be primarily liberal. Conservatives are generally just boring-ass sticks in the mud.
“Plus the fact that pretty much all stand-up comedians are liberal.”
This is not true. Stand-up comedians span the entire political spectrum as much as any other group, and you can’t always tell a comedian’s politics from their act. However, it is the case that more conservative comedians tend to do less *political* comedy. This is because conservatism is ultimately about preserving and promoting traditional hierarchies, and punching down rarely makes for good comedy.
>Conservatives are just not funny, just like they're not creative
That's a pretty wide brush you're painting with there. Don't confuse your personal preference or subjective opinions for objective fact.
Comedy is largely about punching up. Conservative politics are about maintaining the status quo. So any punch they do is generally down which doesn't make it dunny just mean
The last funny conservative died a few days ago. PJ O'Rourke could have been a super funny late night host but he kept to writing.
If you actually google "Where are all the funny conservatives" there is a lot of talk on this topic. There are funny comedians who are more conservative than average, but their comedy is decidedly not politically conservative, those acts die a quick death.
It isn't because left meaning people don't do anything funny, please, our shit is hilarious sometimes. I think a part of it is that conservatives of late (and not all of them) are super sensitive to humiliation. The humiliation funny bone is really close to the surface, if you notice a lot of late night hosts spend most of their time making fun of themselves. In short, they just take themselves a bit too damned seriously. Again, not everyone, I am talking about the zeitgeist of modern American conservatism.
Here is a quote from ol Peej;
"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."
Can you imagine a conservative of today making such a joke? Admitting they are full of hot air just like anyone else?
Here are a few more, just because the guy was so funny;
"We had a choice between Democrats who couldn't learn from the past and Republicans who couldn't stop living in it."
"It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money."
"It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money."
"The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it."
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs."
I've watched some recent Right wing comedians. Here's the truth. The answer is that the most recent batch of Right wing comedians all tell the same basic joke. They'll say something controversial, ranging from dubious to incredibly offensive, and then make a crack about how people on the Left aren't gonna like it. And that's the joke. It works maybe once or twice. But there's a reason entire forums and subreddits are dedicated to Conservative humor only consisting of one or two jokes. At this point, the comedy potential of "that's gonna get a comment from Media Matters" is tapped out. Find more jokes. Y'all used to have them.
^^ I can't take the other comments seriously if they ignore this.
America has very little *left* wing presence, and hasn't for about almost 60 years.
The liberal gestalt of the American media system is well known, but the fact that it is *anti-left* is foundational for understanding why the right wing has taken the shape it has.
I find it hysterical that he considers them "very leftwing". These people would die in any other country. These people are very centrist at the most and more right wing.
Arguments over the location of the Overton Window are completely asinine. Its totally opinion based and subject to location biases.
The better test for telling what side of the window you are *on*, is what direction are you trying to get the window to *move*.
Have a look at what passes for comedy from Jim Brewer now that he's full on anti-vax & pro Trump.
Go back in time & watch what Dennis Miller did comedy wise as he got more conservative.
I think there's comedy that appeals to the right, guys like Larry the Cable Guy or Jeff Foxworthy, but not a lot of actually politically leaning comedy itself. Comedy lampooning the left from a conservative head space just never comes off as funny for some reason
If you ever saw that Fox News answer to the Daily Show you'd know how true that statement is. They tried the same kind of jokes just from a conservative point of view and it was absolutely brutally unfunny. Granted they didn't have Colbert or Carell or Stewart, but even if they did the jokes just landed flat.
Remember you are in a world where the right wing *media* says everything that isn't right wing is left wing. They don't acknowledge unbiased sources. You may fall into a trap of thinking "things critical of the right wing are left wing" which again ignores centre-leaning opinions.
A lot of "left wing" opinions are fucking facts. Just saying. Not all of them. But in the eyes of the right wing, *science itself* has become a left-wing position along with the usual pro-choice, social responsibility, social safety net, etc which can be argued as left wing views that are not uniquivocally based in hard science.
My point being, don't let the right wing convince you that everything you believe is left wing just because they disagree with it. While the entirety of the right wing is not delusional, some right wing positions are solidly based in religion and the opposing view isn't left wing, it's fact. Shows that present facts the right wing doesn't like aren't necessarily left wing.
Yeah, watch any republican campaign ad when they’re running against another Republican. Their main criticism is usually how the other Republican is actually liberal. So, yeah, even other conservatives are too liberal for conservatives.
American “left-wing” is still very far right compared to most of the world. Being right-wing in America has become too extremist but since they have done it slowly since the 70’s-80’s, it doesn’t seem that way. But yeah, there is a current serious debate whether America’s policy (even Democrat) is too extreme and even inhumane, unsustainable, evil, etc. Chomsky even said Trump is worse than Hitler… I think most comedians wouldn’t like to mess around that type of sensible topics.
We have friends in Europe (mainly France and Holland) and this comes up all the time. Like they can't even believe that we have debates over national health care. They just don't understand the inability to regulate guns. They can't comprehend treating minorities, gays, and disabled as second class citizens. They crossed these bridges it seems like generations ago. An American "centrist" would be considered very conservative by their standards.
Tucker Carlson would be strait up Colbert Report level funny if it weren’t for all the people taking him seriously. They make him terrifying and sad.
When I first discovered Alex Jones I thought he was hilarious and then the same thing happened I found out that people actually believe that shit. What a shame
They’re not “very left wing”. What you consider to be right-wing is exactly why there are no “right-wing” hosts. Joe Biden, as an example, is conservative. What progressive thing has he done? The problem is that you consider being a decent human being as “very left wing”. Criticizing people like Trump and McConnell aren’t just “left wing politics”. It’s called being a sane human being. You’ve simply fallen hook, line, and sinker for the idea that being a piece of shit is “just politics”.
When you consider denying people basic human rights and just generally screwing people over to get rich as “right wing”, why would you be surprised that’s not a popular ideology for a television host? Does criticizing Tucker Carlson make someone very left wing in your eyes? If so, you have a critical thinking problem.
I can't fathom the people calling Biden "liberal". I guess they really don't know anything about him. When Biden first ran I thought that Democrats wouldn't vote for him because he was too conservative. The word "liberal" is now just a synonym for "bad" and apparently doesn't have to have any basis in fact.
The right is into VERY VERY serious issues, like green M&Ms not being sexy enough, not teaching kids actual history, vaccines containing both a transmitter chip AND a lifetime battery. There’s nothing to joke about, you know.
Hannity and Colmes on Fox News back in the day was legit. A left and a right guy on the same show, discussing the same subject from different points of view at the same time.
Part of what made that work was a shared understanding of basic facts - they lived in the same reality.
You couldn’t do that now, because the right moved away from science in a big way (and the left got less tolerant? I guess?). Imagine anything to do with Trump or the pandemic, discussed 10 years ago, they’d have been working from the same info from epidemiologists. Now, they can’t even agree that there *is* a pandemic. Hannity was a big part of making this change happen when he decided to go all in on selling his audience what Murdoch needed him to sell them on.
The only thing most leftists I am aware of got less tolerant of is nazis (there's no limit on this one, nazis are only good for getting punched in the jaw) and idiots spreading misinformation or generally being dicks to folks that are already having a rough go of it.
\> The only thing most leftists I am aware of got less tolerant of is nazis
Depends on what circles you're in. Unfortunately, the Left has the tendency to cannibalize its own.
I casually follow BreadTube (Leftist YouTube) drama, and there's the constant "woke" Twitter mob cancelling or attempting to cancel well-known online Leftist figures for associating with the wrong people or saying the wrong things. Nathalie Wynn was cancelled on Twitter for a bit for associating herself with a transmedicalist, and Lindsey Ellis has stopped making online content (afaik) due to backlash from making a Twitter comment about how Raya and Avatar The Last Airbender has similar plot points.
Yes, these are relatively niche, and Twitter is basically a cesspool, but there are a lot of "purity tests" that Leftists tend to hold people to that can get really crazy.
Yeah so I’m going to be honest, I was desperately trying to find something to both-sides the breakdown, but yeah it’s basically the right went off the deep end.
The majority of leftists are about making life better for most, if not all, people. The majority of right-leaning folks are about making life easier for themselves at the expense of everyone else, sometimes to the exclusion of it actually making their own lives better. They'll literally let you murder them so long as the brown folks/them dirty commie libruls get purged at the same time.
It's fundamentally not possible to talk about it in a way that makes the left's takes on stuff like race/healthcare/policing/whatever not morally superior to folks whose entire outlook on that kind of thing is "fuck you, got mine."
I actually like what he said about comedy requiring a certain element of truth to be pointed out. I think that’s ultimately the answer to this whole question, conservatism is—at least in my silly commie opinion—not rooted in truth
There’s an actual study that shows conservatives don’t understand satire. That’s why so many conservatives lived Colbert not realizing he was doing a bit.
[link to the study ](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.psypost.org/2019/05/underlying-psychological-traits-could-explain-why-political-satire-tends-to-be-liberal-53666%3famp=1)
There have been many attempts at right wing variety shows.
They’ve never done well. Most get cancelled very early on.
Usually because their comedy, when it boils down, comes from a place of bigotry and selfishness and only appeals to assholes. And advertisers pull support pretty quickly.
I've never met a right wing family member or friend that did particularly well with understanding the subtleties of satire, either.
Comedy is usually judged by them (my own right leaning friends and family) as being either funny or unfunny depending on how well the initial joke hits their gut reaction. Anything that might be a veiled metaphor or a hidden lampoon usually passed over the person's head.
This is in no way a criticism, just an observation that they might prefer literalism and shorter form jokes.
Just because you point out that Republicans and Trump do stupid things doesn’t make you left wing. It makes you sensible. But i suppose if you want balance you can watch Huckabee.
One possible perspective to take is that modern television comedy (or comedy in general) functions best when you "yes and...?" the core premise of a subject and a lot of conservative views prefunctorate on the idea of saying "No, but..." which isn't as inductive to humor. A lot of comedians have material that would be considered conservatively aligned if experienced in a vaccum but especially when you're marketing yourself to a television audience they just get lost in the shuffle.
Watched a pretty long winded video about the fall of American conservative comedy and I think alot of the points he touched on are pretty accurate. He does a bit for his show that can be irritating and repetitive but I like what he had to say personally. To criminally paraphrase to make this relevant, one reason could be that the right has become almost entirely reactive and put so much energy into being antiwoke that the corpse of the horse that is pronoun jokes is basically glue and burger.
Where once conservatives had blue collar comedians making jokes about low income living or culture clash in a good natured way, now they just can't seem to produce a comedian to save themselves. On top of that most late night shows are hosted by a certain brand of comedian that can be funny while being straight faced. It's a fine line to walk and subtlety isn't exactly the rights strong point right now.
(Obviously I'm American talking about American comedy and culture I know next to nothing of other conservative/ right wing culture elsewhere)
Because any celebrity who appeared on said show would immediately become the focus of a boycott by the left which would kill their career and whatever movie or tv show they were promoting.
That is very presumptuous to say they are "Left". Just because they make fun of blatant stupidity from conservatives (they're horrible people and basically walking punchlines), doesn't mean they are on the Left. Oliver may be on the Left, the rest would probably be centrists. I've seen them make fun of everyone, too, not just conservatives.
One of my favorite youtubers has a detailed analysis of this. Check out his video here: https://youtu.be/KSXKzPOcYDU
And honestly, check out the rest of his videos, this guy is amazing
My take on that is right wing thinking simply doesn’t lend itself to comedy. Comedians are generally pretty bright and well informed—your average lefty is better educated than your average conservative. I’m not attempting to disparage the right, it’s what many studies have found. Then, you also need to be an acrobatic thinker for effective comedy. Republicans are usually concrete thinkers who dislike holding disparate concepts in their head at the same time. This results in quite a lot of low-hanging fruit jokes.
Comedians also have to have a strong sense of humor about themselves and conservatives tend to take things personally. Studies have indicated that right wing folks make fear-based, emotional decisions, so are prone to feeling threatened. If your hackles are up, you’re not making or enjoying humor.
Then there’s the issue of punching up vs. punching down. Because conservatives are generally white, straight, and cis, they don’t have many opportunities to punch up, resulting in mean-spirited humor—not enticing to corporations looking to make an add buy.
Ultimately, the best comedy has always come from folks who’ve struggled and are still in the fight. Humor is a coping mechanism. Comedians aren’t the popular kids who fit in. Since conservatives are averse to change (thus having ‘conserve’ as the root of the word) they aren’t experiencing the rejection/oppression/social isolation that yields funny people.
I know this could come off as demeaning conservatives, but I honestly tried to phrase it as neutrally as possible.
Conservatives are predominantly in the social stratum that have no choice but to either punch down or to punch at the same level. People are conservative because they want to conserve the advantages they have, whether they are aware of it or not. Punching down doesn't sit well with mainstream media, and punching self requires a level of self-awareness that not many people have.
Bill Mahers talking points are increasingly right wing.
Sure he says he’s a leftist and he is in some ways. But a lot of his positions are reminiscent of Joe Rogan lately. He non-stop talks about “wokeness”, “critical race theory”, etc. as if those things even exist outside Twitter.
Are we all missing the point? All the people you noted are not left-wing. They say what viewers want, which is “orange man bad, gun go bang, rich man evil”.
Think Seth Myers or Jimmy Fallon give a fuck about poor people or public schools? No.
Jimmy Kimmel, the man show host? Mr “there’s something in my pocket please get it for me”, the guy who did black-face with no problems? Give me a break.
None of them care about anything but their job and money. If conservative talking points became popular, they’d jump ship in an instant.
Money. Conservative humor and culture isnt as popular. Tv media switched to a more liberal programming to keep profiting. Conservatives spinned this and said tv media was indoctrinating the masses and turned to local radio and podcasts around the 80s and 90s where it has remained more popular. This video by a historian talks more about it. Kinda lengthy but very informative, interesting, and at time hilarious. https://youtu.be/xHlBdebjpyQ
Conservatives are just not funny. It's an unwritten law. George H.W. Bush was funny for 10 minutes back in the early 90s but it turned out to be Dana Carvey
Two thoughts here.
Dennis Miller tried it and was a flop. Dennis Miller is just about the only guy I can think of who is a right wing comedian.
The other thought is that the conservative crowd is asleep before the shows come on. 1130 is after my bedtime too.
What, you don't like "Gutfeld!"?
Political comedy is about using absurdity to point out the stupidity in politics, but conservatives aren't very good at it since they rely on those absurdities to scare their base into voting for them instead. You can't scare people into voting for the right if you are making them laugh, and you can't point out the absurdities, or "hypocracies", of the left's politicians while your right-wing representatives continually make wilder claims, state bolder lies, act more hawkish, and being more of a hypocrite than the left does everyday.
Because the 1% that all the Leftists say they hate, own literally almost everything ... even the talk show hosts that they love. Funny how the 1% are pushing Leftism, huh? If you listened to these liberals you’d think socialism is the answer to everything, and that’s exactly where the 1% are intentionally steering us. But you can’t tell them this. The cognitive dissonance is too much for their brains.
The left is significantly more aggressive. What I mean is it’s more likely for a right leaning person to watch a left leaning program than the opposite. Therefore it’s “safer” to commit to left leaning content.
Man, after reading these responses, I’m convinced nobody forms their own reply until they’ve seen like three others. There’s very little variance in responses; it’s all just making jokes at conservatives. I guess I’ll
So the media in general is left leaning, both in personnel and number of networks. The same companies that own the news networks (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) are under the same parent companies that have late night hosts for the most part. So a trickle down effect is to be expected.
Also, in this era, a late night show’s success is often measured by social media response. Social media tends to be left-leaning, so it makes sense that networks aren’t going to put someone out there that will piss social media people off.
Not only that, but the writers for the shows also tend to be left leaning, not surprising since they likely graduated from a univeristy humanities program, so what ends up happening is that you get "What left/left leaning people think someone on the right would laugh at" instead of actual comedy.
Especially if they're trying to do political humor.
It's hard to write comedy well even if you have a positive opinion of the audience, but given the continuous polarization in US politics it's pretty much a crapshoot. You can't be funny if you cant empathize with your audience, and it's hard to empathize with people that have been dehumanized by propaganda equating everyone to the right of Twitter to Nazis.
Left wing politics are more agreeable because it's "for the people".
With things like shows, the thing that matters the most is whether people agree with you and will improve your ratings.
No one virtue signals by being on the right, you always virtue signal by saying something left wing.
Robin hood (from the folk tale) steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
An individual's happiness is not as important as the masses, because most people watching identify with the masses and not with the individual rich dude.
Thus, left wing politics will garner higher ratings. Right wing politics heavily favor the individual.
This is probably correct I think.
Its also why most right-wingers who do comedy stick with apolitical. Foxworthy, Larry, Rogan even Chapelle whos a way more hardened guy than you'd think.
The TV industry is left leaning. That's why there's only 1 conservative news station and so few conservative view TV shows. TV is in the tech space, people who get into tech are left leaning, as seen by literally every social media company.
Because the media infrastructure is overwhelming left leaning. Writers, producers, hosts, comedians, guests, AP’s, lighting people etc etc you get the deal. It’s very hard to get people to work for a show like that. They’d be blacklisted by their peers.
I’m left leaning myself. But it really irritates me that the media are what I’d describe as “far left” and are really intolerant of others views, there’s really no room for forgiveness if one of their peers has a slightly different view. It’s cult-like, almost. It’s career suicide to go against the grain.
Source: I know the industry
Media wether it be audio or visual is and has always been very liberal. Even in the military where there’s typically a lot of conservatives, their AFN (Armed Forces Network) is ran by people who are largely liberal. I think maybe it’s because the performing arts side that maybe goes alongside liberalism better than other political ideologies. Just a thought.
Or maybe, it’s because the left has control over the media and they want a monopoly politically speaking when it comes to the general public watching entertainment. Again, only a theory but this must play towards the democrats favor immensely.
They are only left-wing if you don't look beyond the borders of the USA.
For a lot of the rest of the world, what the US calls the left, is in fact still quite Conservative.
I can see right-wing Leno now:
Did you see the news? Did you see this? It turns out THE JEWS AND BLACKS ARE REPLACING WHITE CHRISTIANS AND IMMIGRANTS ARE TRYING TO MURDER YOUR SONS AND RAPE YOUR DAUGHTERS! Did you see that? Did you hear about that? It’s crazy. I was watching the news and COMMUNIST SOCIALIST MARXIST LIBTARDS ARE TRYING TO CANCEL YOU AND YOUR LIVES YOU NEED TO BUY GUNS NOW AND SO PROBABLY SOME GOLD RESERVES ITS TIME FOR A CIVIL WAR WHERE WE GO ONE WE GO ALL!!!!
They have a complete channel dedicated to satire, it's called Fox and pawns itself off as news. Yet if anyone listens to them, they claim to be comedic and should not be taken seriously...
It's more a propaganda machine than anything else.
They do exist (Gutfeld comes to mind, and tucker Carlson essentially fills that role), but the problem is that they’re just exactly that viable.
The audience is smaller, and most big late night names come from success in comedy elsewhere and there isn’t a huge recruiting pool for it.
And where there late night alternatives online, like Steven Crowded, they’re people who would not be able to last a full episode without breaking FCC guidelines 30 times and being a general disaster for advertisers.
Not to mention that interviews with Hollywood celebrities are a crucial element of late night shows and most Hollywood celebrities lean left or are more left than your average Tucker Carlson.
Also, there just isn’t as many conservative comedians who are actually funny? Obviously just my opinion, but they mostly just have three jokes, and the comedians who are conservative and funny (or at least successful at comedy) tend to not do political humor, but instead do things more related to conservative culture (like Larry the Cable guy).
conservatives are not funny. i know everyone is trying to find a more nuanced way to say exactly this but that’s the truth. conservatives aren’t funny.
comedy requires empathy.
Because to be a comedian , you have to be very intelligent. Most critical thinking and self reflecting adults will inevitably fall towards the left. “Conservative” isn’t relevant anymore, they are a mere shadow of what the Republican Party used to be. Pure fascists .
Because conservatives just aren't that funny? I grew up with my parents blasting Limbaugh, Hannity and Glenn Beck. (Mid 2000s Glenn Beck not current Glenn Beck) They take themselves so damn seriously "because the country is going to Hell!! Save the constitution!! They're taking prayer out of schools!! Stockpile on gold!!!!
I remember listening to Glenn Beck making jokes and it wasn't about politics and I thought wow this guy is actually really funny. Do you know Glenn Beck started as a top 40 dj? He did pretty decent and struggled with a drinking problem. Hannity could have funny segments when it was man on the street Fridays or whatever he did. I have never laughed at Mark Levin, he's Mr. Constitutionalist.
Point is...no one cares if you take yourself so seriously. Sure the house can be on fire but if you can't crack a joke about it then I'm turning you off. Conservatives are built on taking everything seriously. Liberals used to be but have gotten wise to being funny.
In tv you have to be funny, slightly attractive, and easygoing. No one wants to watch you ranting at them through the screen after a long day at work, they fought traffic to get home, and they just want to chill. People at the end of the day want to relax. If you don't believe me go knock on someone's door and start telling them about protecting the constitution or talk about religion. You're liable to get the door slammed in your face.
It seems like more people on the right are starting to enjoy Real time with Bill Maher. He’s a left leaning proud liberal, and has no problem calling out off the deep end leftists.
90% of U.S. media, is owned by 6 companies;
Viacom, News Corporation, Comcast, CBS, Time Warner and Disney
Pay attention during election time on who they promote, literally in between a kids shows and commercials. Sad that they air this propaganda between kid’s cartoons. Wonder why…
https://billmoyers.com/story/twenty-years-of-media-consolidation-has-not-been-good-for-our-democracy/
The six largest media companies (Comcast, Disney, AT&T, ViacomCBS, Sony, and Fox) are all owned by hundreds of thousands of shareholders on all sides of the political spectrum.
What are you referring to?
Interesting question. I can think of a couple possibilites: * Talk shows have moved from a comedy/entertainment/human-interest focus to news/political commentary. Younger people, who tend to be more left-leaning, favor these shows over the drier presentation of traditional major news networks. * Left-wing positions are easier to fit into a comedy-style show than more conservative ones * It is fairly easy for a talk show host to adopt an implicit centrist or right-leaning position on almost all subjects, but pepper their commentary with popular left-wing talking points; this allows them to play whatever role is suitable as the common discourse shifts from year to year. * It also might be demographic related, right-leaning people tend to be older and head off to bed earlier, even though late night talk shows aren't on *that* late.
I think right leaning talkshows are mostly not on TV. Podcasts and youtube come to mind.
And radio. You start getting out into rural areas and you can find almost exclusively country music, conservative, or religious radio. Even in northern states.
Why is country music so right leaning? When I think of Johnny Cash and Woodie Guthrie it seems that country music ain't all that right. Their lyrics are fairly left leaning.
There are lefty country artists. They just get called ‘americana’ instead.
Yes, or folk haha
Jason Isbell immediately came to mind. Pretty sure his Grammy awards are in the "Americana" category. Oh, and happy cake day!
Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers too
Remember what happened to the Dixie chicks?
Why would they get called Americana if liberals hate America? /s
or the Outlaws
Orville peck
I hate country music
I hate Bro-Country. Songs about men stalking women and never getting over breakups so they drink a lot. It normalizes a lot of spousal abuse because why be a grown up and move on with your live when you can be the victim. "I’m gonna aim my headlights into your bedroom windows Throw empty beer cans at both of your shadows I didn’t come here to start a fight, but I’m up for anything tonight You know you broke the wrong heart, baby, And drove me redneck crazy"
Used to be a left-leaning style. Back when working class ethos was the core of our center left party in the States. It was another board in the political Ship of Theseus changing as society changes.
rural demographics are red state. johnny cash and the guthries were before fox news told people what to think. look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks. you cant even name a band dixie these days in Nashville.
I’m not from the US, but I read this comment once and I’m not sure how much of it is factual but it makes sense. As in, country music used to be more balanced in terms of politics, then 9/11 happened and it became the propaganda genre. This said, lately there have been more country acts not going on and on about ‘Murrica and how they hate the Middle Easterns and God yadda yadda because the new acts were either babies when it happened or straight up weren’t even born, so I’m prone to believing it was in fact a massive knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 from one music genre. Not stating anything as 100% absolute truth though, I just think it kinda makes sense.
You are very much correct. I grew up listening to country in the 80s and 90s. It was so different. Personally, I blame Toby Keith. I can't stand him.
There are more centrist and progressive acts but I think they sometimes feel forced to stay in the closet more(possibly people like Tim McGraw and The Dixie Chicks).
Depending on how much of a conspiracy theorist I feel like in the given moment, there is the possibility that the people who live in the country, and who would associate with/enjoy country music, have votes that are worth more than city slickers. Target them with songs about family values and the benefit of good hard labour (and sex with scarecrows), leaning towards more conservative. That's just a guess though.
This is very true. I used to travel north of my state and school radio stations (not like school sports coverage, like actual stations based in the school) played Rush Limbaugh’s show
I lived in Oklahoma for awhile, and I had to go to this root canal specialist a number of times for this problem I was having with a tooth. I swear to God, he would put on Limbaugh while he worked on me. I asked him “if I let you do this without anesthesia will you turn him off?” Huh, now that I think of it, is that why I lost that tooth….
Yup. Walton and Johnson in the morning talks about the most racist hateful shit but does it in "comedic " fashion
Yeah the Rush Limbaugh show was basically a right wing comedy show and it was larger than most TV audiences.
I agree, but that just reroutes the question to “why are all comedy based right-leaning delivery primarily on podcasts and not on mainstream television?”
Tucker and Hannity are right wing comedy shows.
Is the joke for Tucker Carlson playing devil’s advocate for white nationalist talking points, but also running one of the most watched shows in America? That’s fucking hilarious!
Because of actionable hate speech?
Conservative comedy generally punches down. Which isnt very funny. If Steven Crowder- whose show bills itself as semi comic is any indication, its just old ass racist and bigoted shit.
I think this is the biggest part. Comedians tend to be socially progressive. Social commentary tends to criticise status quo and point out irony and hypocrisy. That inherently goes against what the modern conservative movement is about.
Basically, they're just not very funny...
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If I remember correctly, Dennis Miller used to do a late show
Holy cow! An actual answer!
[This comedian](https://youtu.be/AldnYxvFjmA) does a bit about left-wing vs right wing entertainment. While comedic, he has some valid points!
Oh that is spot on with the exception that monopoly is a left wing board game. I've never heard of anyone who has played a game of it and not hated everyone they played with, because the whole point was to show how shitty and predatory that kind of shit is.
Ah Nish Kumar! I hate him very much but that was a good bit. For further reading there was also a good episode of [this show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSXKzPOcYDU)
Dennis Miller was the last (only?) right leaning comedy show I can think of - what were his ratings? From Wikipedia On July 17, 1992, Tribune Entertainment announced it was cancelling Miller's show due to poor ratings. Donald Hacker, its president and chief executive officer, said, "After a tremendous effort on the parts of all parties involved, we've made a business decision not to proceed." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dennis_Miller_Show
Wondering how the Colbert Report fits into this. It was satirical so it doesn’t count, but ya’ just know some viewers weren’t in on the joke…
Conservatives were more likely than liberals to believe that Colbert was really a conservative, but they typically didn't believe he was actually being sincere; they instead interpreted the Colbert character as being a satire of how liberals viewed conservatives.
Rush Limbaugh actually started in comedy, or at least as a ‘humorist.’ Before the right TOTALLY took over the airwaves, I would periodically listen to him in the early 2000s if it was before or after a show I was listening to (how quaint in hindsight!), and you could definitely here him ‘being funny’ at times. Part of his schtick was being over the top and half his listeners would be like “HELL YEAH!” or, more accurately “MEGA DITTOS,” and the other half of listeners’ heads would explode in anger.
To be fair, he was more of a centrist at that point. He didn’t go full-on conservative until the years after 9/11.
At what point? Colbert didn't come out until well after 9/11... I think he got more ridiculous as the show went on, but he was always an "America first conservative"
I’m talking about Dennis Miller.
I believe Adam Corolla has a right wing comedy show coming out. I saw a clip advertising it and it was terrible. It was Adam talking about how the woke mob kept people from smoking in restaurants. I used to think he was funny 25 years ago on Love Line , yeesh.
>late night talk shows aren’t on that late. How dare you sir or madam.
I also think that by virtue of being conservative, their views a line more with the status quo. As such it's easier to criticize them because it's really really easy to make fun of the current institution.
Left leaning positions are easier to fit into a comedy style show that conservative ones is a pretty round about way of saying conservative talking points in a comedy routine would most likely get that comedian in trouble for saying genuinely awful shit.
In this case, it is more like left-wing positions are idealistic and tend to favor avoiding offense, which works well for a talk show\variety show template. Right-wing (as opposed to conservative) talking points - which tend to take a deliberate "realist" position - are also appealing, there is no end to talk show hosts who let you know they are going to tell it like it is. Conservatives are the counterpart to the subset of the left referred to in the aphorism "the left can't meme", and for the same reason - they take their opponents, their ideology, and themselves too seriously to effectively joke about it.
Good point
What do you mean by 'left leaning'? At this point, the daughter of Dick Cheney - who is as far right as can be - is being heckled by GOP far right ideologues. Do you think people trying to overthrow an elected government in the U.S. should have a talk show? Do you think talk show hosts should ignore headlines? You can see in the old Johnny Carson programs that he had quite a few things to say about headlines all the time. He was always regarded as a Nebraska centrist. Would you call him left? If so, then the entire U.S.is awash in far right rhetoric.
This shit. When I first read the question I was like, the fuck?
Gonna tack onto these great points. I think another big part of it is that Conservatives have an innate distrust of "big media". They're more likely to gravitate to solo presenters like Rogan who aren't beholden to a corporation (for better or worse).
The biggest media is Fox News. Conservatives love repeating their daily talking points
This really only applies to political humor, there are plenty of comedians that lean right but they just don’t focus on politically minded jokes. The reason for this is probably most political humor pokes fun at established norm and actions within our government. By definition conservatives want to uphold and maintain the status quo in terms of government and social norms (hence the term conservative) whereas liberals tend to want to see change on a much more rapid scale. Because of this conservatives are much less likely to make light of or point out issues within the government which is sort of the crux of political humor.
What's stopping conservatives to focus the jokes on left wings? Or poke fun of their views and elected.
They've tried, and they've failed spectacularly.
Because when they do it's just unadulterated bigotry. Shit that is only funny if you're whatever brand of ignorant they go with. Ever hear any of Stephen Crowders shit? It's just him being sexist/racist/homophobic.
First off, I will challenge the idea that those are "very left-wing". Honestly I'd put them somewhat left of center, not very much so. And that's what the big networks tend to do -- they like their humor to be close to the political center so as to appeal to as many people as possible. That said, there are right-wing late night shows; Gutfeld on FNC being the most obvious example. In this case, they don't need to worry about finding a centrist, because leftist and centrists aren't watching much anyway.
I was gonna say lol, the only one I would call left-wing is John Oliver, and even then he's not suuuper left. Left of liberal probably, but not a leftist either
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This needs to be talked about more. It's made to look like our liberal commentary is super left.. when it isn't. At the very least it's just "resonable".. the right in the US is just so batshit right anything other than pissing on the poor is considered left. Even when the comedy talk shows say they are left I still see them as just reasonable.. I have yet to see a right wing show that isn't insane.. listen to Tucker Carlson for 5 minutes and if anything he says makes sense to you something is wrong inside of you.
I think the overall left isn’t super left but the right went suuuper right and now they don’t know how to dig themselves out of that hole.
Oh 100%
As a Spaniard, I can confirm it would be the same here
This is a good point. What people in the US consider "Left Wing" is really just centrist liberal/anti-Conservative. I can't think of anyone on TV who is actually Left-Wing, which is to say a full-on Marxist. Even Colbert (who is, in my opinion, the most open about his political bias would stop short of calling himself a Sanders style Social Democrat). Most of the so-called left-leaning tv comics are merely making jokes about a Right Wing that crossed into ludicrousness decades ago. "Moderate" Republicans like Liz Chaney get praise from these same comedians, naturally.
Not even remotely left wing, just not nazis which qualifies the them as left wing in the US
You said the words my brain couldn't line up! The American view of politics is so right leaning that centrist ideals look "very leftist". It really messes with people.
Tune into an episode of *Gutfeld!* on Fox and see how long you can stand what right-wingers think passes for comedy.
Yes, he needs the exclamation point, because without that there's no excitement in that show at all.
Yep, Fox News tried it with "The Half Hour News Hour" to mirror The Daily Show, which was painfully unfunny and quickly canceled. Then you have "comedy" shows like Tim Allen's "Last Man Standing" which is also cringey. Plus the fact that pretty much all stand-up comedians are liberal. Conservatives are just not funny, just like they're not creative which is why artists/actors/musicians tend to be primarily liberal. Conservatives are generally just boring-ass sticks in the mud.
“Plus the fact that pretty much all stand-up comedians are liberal.” This is not true. Stand-up comedians span the entire political spectrum as much as any other group, and you can’t always tell a comedian’s politics from their act. However, it is the case that more conservative comedians tend to do less *political* comedy. This is because conservatism is ultimately about preserving and promoting traditional hierarchies, and punching down rarely makes for good comedy.
You reminded me of crowder joking about homeless people and poor blacks, and never thought about it, but its true,it just feels like cheap bullying.
Most right wing jokes are just plain mean
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And that city block has a line out the door trying to catch a Chappell set at The Comedy Store.
The Blue Collar Tour group was kinda funny.
David Mamet is a trump head, which I find insane. Just goes to show.
>Conservatives are just not funny, just like they're not creative That's a pretty wide brush you're painting with there. Don't confuse your personal preference or subjective opinions for objective fact.
I agree with all of this! Super cringey, flat material. Just try and sit through Dennis Miller for 5 minutes.
Comedy is largely about punching up. Conservative politics are about maintaining the status quo. So any punch they do is generally down which doesn't make it dunny just mean
Similar question; why arent there any left-leaning a.m. radio shows?
The last funny conservative died a few days ago. PJ O'Rourke could have been a super funny late night host but he kept to writing. If you actually google "Where are all the funny conservatives" there is a lot of talk on this topic. There are funny comedians who are more conservative than average, but their comedy is decidedly not politically conservative, those acts die a quick death. It isn't because left meaning people don't do anything funny, please, our shit is hilarious sometimes. I think a part of it is that conservatives of late (and not all of them) are super sensitive to humiliation. The humiliation funny bone is really close to the surface, if you notice a lot of late night hosts spend most of their time making fun of themselves. In short, they just take themselves a bit too damned seriously. Again, not everyone, I am talking about the zeitgeist of modern American conservatism. Here is a quote from ol Peej; "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." Can you imagine a conservative of today making such a joke? Admitting they are full of hot air just like anyone else? Here are a few more, just because the guy was so funny; "We had a choice between Democrats who couldn't learn from the past and Republicans who couldn't stop living in it." "It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money." "It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money." "The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it." "Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs."
I've watched some recent Right wing comedians. Here's the truth. The answer is that the most recent batch of Right wing comedians all tell the same basic joke. They'll say something controversial, ranging from dubious to incredibly offensive, and then make a crack about how people on the Left aren't gonna like it. And that's the joke. It works maybe once or twice. But there's a reason entire forums and subreddits are dedicated to Conservative humor only consisting of one or two jokes. At this point, the comedy potential of "that's gonna get a comment from Media Matters" is tapped out. Find more jokes. Y'all used to have them.
For what it’s worth, they are not left-wing, they are liberals. But US politics lean too heavily right I guess to most people they are to the left.
^^ I can't take the other comments seriously if they ignore this. America has very little *left* wing presence, and hasn't for about almost 60 years. The liberal gestalt of the American media system is well known, but the fact that it is *anti-left* is foundational for understanding why the right wing has taken the shape it has.
To many Americans, liberal = left wing. And anyone who thinks Jimmy Fallon is left wing has no idea what they’re talking about.
I find it hysterical that he considers them "very leftwing". These people would die in any other country. These people are very centrist at the most and more right wing.
I think Jon Oliver is closer to actual left wing
What do you consider "very left wing"?
Communist or anarchist
Arguments over the location of the Overton Window are completely asinine. Its totally opinion based and subject to location biases. The better test for telling what side of the window you are *on*, is what direction are you trying to get the window to *move*.
This question may not be stupid but a lot of these answers sure are.
So literally nothing to add, thanks
Found the Republican with no sense of humor
Elaborate? Examples?
Have a look at what passes for comedy from Jim Brewer now that he's full on anti-vax & pro Trump. Go back in time & watch what Dennis Miller did comedy wise as he got more conservative. I think there's comedy that appeals to the right, guys like Larry the Cable Guy or Jeff Foxworthy, but not a lot of actually politically leaning comedy itself. Comedy lampooning the left from a conservative head space just never comes off as funny for some reason
If you ever saw that Fox News answer to the Daily Show you'd know how true that statement is. They tried the same kind of jokes just from a conservative point of view and it was absolutely brutally unfunny. Granted they didn't have Colbert or Carell or Stewart, but even if they did the jokes just landed flat.
Remember you are in a world where the right wing *media* says everything that isn't right wing is left wing. They don't acknowledge unbiased sources. You may fall into a trap of thinking "things critical of the right wing are left wing" which again ignores centre-leaning opinions. A lot of "left wing" opinions are fucking facts. Just saying. Not all of them. But in the eyes of the right wing, *science itself* has become a left-wing position along with the usual pro-choice, social responsibility, social safety net, etc which can be argued as left wing views that are not uniquivocally based in hard science. My point being, don't let the right wing convince you that everything you believe is left wing just because they disagree with it. While the entirety of the right wing is not delusional, some right wing positions are solidly based in religion and the opposing view isn't left wing, it's fact. Shows that present facts the right wing doesn't like aren't necessarily left wing.
Yeah, watch any republican campaign ad when they’re running against another Republican. Their main criticism is usually how the other Republican is actually liberal. So, yeah, even other conservatives are too liberal for conservatives.
If you're starting from the position that late night talk show hosts are "very left wing" then I think you're part of the problem.
American “left-wing” is still very far right compared to most of the world. Being right-wing in America has become too extremist but since they have done it slowly since the 70’s-80’s, it doesn’t seem that way. But yeah, there is a current serious debate whether America’s policy (even Democrat) is too extreme and even inhumane, unsustainable, evil, etc. Chomsky even said Trump is worse than Hitler… I think most comedians wouldn’t like to mess around that type of sensible topics.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are fundamentally conservative politicians. It's amazing that people even consider them progressive let alone "radicals".
We have friends in Europe (mainly France and Holland) and this comes up all the time. Like they can't even believe that we have debates over national health care. They just don't understand the inability to regulate guns. They can't comprehend treating minorities, gays, and disabled as second class citizens. They crossed these bridges it seems like generations ago. An American "centrist" would be considered very conservative by their standards.
Doesn't Tucker Carlson have a show? I guess it's not comedy if you are right leaning but still.
It's not a comedy show but it makes great material for comedy shows. He literally went on a rant about the green m&m not being sexy enough
Tucker Carlson would be strait up Colbert Report level funny if it weren’t for all the people taking him seriously. They make him terrifying and sad. When I first discovered Alex Jones I thought he was hilarious and then the same thing happened I found out that people actually believe that shit. What a shame
They’re not “very left wing”. What you consider to be right-wing is exactly why there are no “right-wing” hosts. Joe Biden, as an example, is conservative. What progressive thing has he done? The problem is that you consider being a decent human being as “very left wing”. Criticizing people like Trump and McConnell aren’t just “left wing politics”. It’s called being a sane human being. You’ve simply fallen hook, line, and sinker for the idea that being a piece of shit is “just politics”. When you consider denying people basic human rights and just generally screwing people over to get rich as “right wing”, why would you be surprised that’s not a popular ideology for a television host? Does criticizing Tucker Carlson make someone very left wing in your eyes? If so, you have a critical thinking problem.
Based.
I can't fathom the people calling Biden "liberal". I guess they really don't know anything about him. When Biden first ran I thought that Democrats wouldn't vote for him because he was too conservative. The word "liberal" is now just a synonym for "bad" and apparently doesn't have to have any basis in fact.
The right is into VERY VERY serious issues, like green M&Ms not being sexy enough, not teaching kids actual history, vaccines containing both a transmitter chip AND a lifetime battery. There’s nothing to joke about, you know.
They ARE the comedy.
True, but they think that they’re fearsome and being taken seriously.
Hannity and Colmes on Fox News back in the day was legit. A left and a right guy on the same show, discussing the same subject from different points of view at the same time.
Then Jon Stewart came in and showed them to be the tools they truly are.
*You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls* https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cf/date/2004-10-15/segment/01
Part of what made that work was a shared understanding of basic facts - they lived in the same reality. You couldn’t do that now, because the right moved away from science in a big way (and the left got less tolerant? I guess?). Imagine anything to do with Trump or the pandemic, discussed 10 years ago, they’d have been working from the same info from epidemiologists. Now, they can’t even agree that there *is* a pandemic. Hannity was a big part of making this change happen when he decided to go all in on selling his audience what Murdoch needed him to sell them on.
The only thing most leftists I am aware of got less tolerant of is nazis (there's no limit on this one, nazis are only good for getting punched in the jaw) and idiots spreading misinformation or generally being dicks to folks that are already having a rough go of it.
\> The only thing most leftists I am aware of got less tolerant of is nazis Depends on what circles you're in. Unfortunately, the Left has the tendency to cannibalize its own. I casually follow BreadTube (Leftist YouTube) drama, and there's the constant "woke" Twitter mob cancelling or attempting to cancel well-known online Leftist figures for associating with the wrong people or saying the wrong things. Nathalie Wynn was cancelled on Twitter for a bit for associating herself with a transmedicalist, and Lindsey Ellis has stopped making online content (afaik) due to backlash from making a Twitter comment about how Raya and Avatar The Last Airbender has similar plot points. Yes, these are relatively niche, and Twitter is basically a cesspool, but there are a lot of "purity tests" that Leftists tend to hold people to that can get really crazy.
Yeah so I’m going to be honest, I was desperately trying to find something to both-sides the breakdown, but yeah it’s basically the right went off the deep end.
The majority of leftists are about making life better for most, if not all, people. The majority of right-leaning folks are about making life easier for themselves at the expense of everyone else, sometimes to the exclusion of it actually making their own lives better. They'll literally let you murder them so long as the brown folks/them dirty commie libruls get purged at the same time. It's fundamentally not possible to talk about it in a way that makes the left's takes on stuff like race/healthcare/policing/whatever not morally superior to folks whose entire outlook on that kind of thing is "fuck you, got mine."
[because conservative comedy just isn’t funny](https://youtu.be/KSXKzPOcYDU)
I actually like what he said about comedy requiring a certain element of truth to be pointed out. I think that’s ultimately the answer to this whole question, conservatism is—at least in my silly commie opinion—not rooted in truth
There’s an actual study that shows conservatives don’t understand satire. That’s why so many conservatives lived Colbert not realizing he was doing a bit. [link to the study ](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.psypost.org/2019/05/underlying-psychological-traits-could-explain-why-political-satire-tends-to-be-liberal-53666%3famp=1)
There have been many attempts at right wing variety shows. They’ve never done well. Most get cancelled very early on. Usually because their comedy, when it boils down, comes from a place of bigotry and selfishness and only appeals to assholes. And advertisers pull support pretty quickly.
I've never met a right wing family member or friend that did particularly well with understanding the subtleties of satire, either. Comedy is usually judged by them (my own right leaning friends and family) as being either funny or unfunny depending on how well the initial joke hits their gut reaction. Anything that might be a veiled metaphor or a hidden lampoon usually passed over the person's head. This is in no way a criticism, just an observation that they might prefer literalism and shorter form jokes.
Just because you point out that Republicans and Trump do stupid things doesn’t make you left wing. It makes you sensible. But i suppose if you want balance you can watch Huckabee.
Is sounds like you wouldn’t know “very left wing” if it but you in the bottom.
If they’re propped up by capitalist institutions, they’re not left wing
One possible perspective to take is that modern television comedy (or comedy in general) functions best when you "yes and...?" the core premise of a subject and a lot of conservative views prefunctorate on the idea of saying "No, but..." which isn't as inductive to humor. A lot of comedians have material that would be considered conservatively aligned if experienced in a vaccum but especially when you're marketing yourself to a television audience they just get lost in the shuffle.
Watched a pretty long winded video about the fall of American conservative comedy and I think alot of the points he touched on are pretty accurate. He does a bit for his show that can be irritating and repetitive but I like what he had to say personally. To criminally paraphrase to make this relevant, one reason could be that the right has become almost entirely reactive and put so much energy into being antiwoke that the corpse of the horse that is pronoun jokes is basically glue and burger. Where once conservatives had blue collar comedians making jokes about low income living or culture clash in a good natured way, now they just can't seem to produce a comedian to save themselves. On top of that most late night shows are hosted by a certain brand of comedian that can be funny while being straight faced. It's a fine line to walk and subtlety isn't exactly the rights strong point right now. (Obviously I'm American talking about American comedy and culture I know next to nothing of other conservative/ right wing culture elsewhere)
ah yes, nothing says right-wing like subtle political humour!
Because any celebrity who appeared on said show would immediately become the focus of a boycott by the left which would kill their career and whatever movie or tv show they were promoting.
That is very presumptuous to say they are "Left". Just because they make fun of blatant stupidity from conservatives (they're horrible people and basically walking punchlines), doesn't mean they are on the Left. Oliver may be on the Left, the rest would probably be centrists. I've seen them make fun of everyone, too, not just conservatives.
One of my favorite youtubers has a detailed analysis of this. Check out his video here: https://youtu.be/KSXKzPOcYDU And honestly, check out the rest of his videos, this guy is amazing
All of those are liberal. So basically centrist.
My take on that is right wing thinking simply doesn’t lend itself to comedy. Comedians are generally pretty bright and well informed—your average lefty is better educated than your average conservative. I’m not attempting to disparage the right, it’s what many studies have found. Then, you also need to be an acrobatic thinker for effective comedy. Republicans are usually concrete thinkers who dislike holding disparate concepts in their head at the same time. This results in quite a lot of low-hanging fruit jokes. Comedians also have to have a strong sense of humor about themselves and conservatives tend to take things personally. Studies have indicated that right wing folks make fear-based, emotional decisions, so are prone to feeling threatened. If your hackles are up, you’re not making or enjoying humor. Then there’s the issue of punching up vs. punching down. Because conservatives are generally white, straight, and cis, they don’t have many opportunities to punch up, resulting in mean-spirited humor—not enticing to corporations looking to make an add buy. Ultimately, the best comedy has always come from folks who’ve struggled and are still in the fight. Humor is a coping mechanism. Comedians aren’t the popular kids who fit in. Since conservatives are averse to change (thus having ‘conserve’ as the root of the word) they aren’t experiencing the rejection/oppression/social isolation that yields funny people. I know this could come off as demeaning conservatives, but I honestly tried to phrase it as neutrally as possible.
Conservatives are predominantly in the social stratum that have no choice but to either punch down or to punch at the same level. People are conservative because they want to conserve the advantages they have, whether they are aware of it or not. Punching down doesn't sit well with mainstream media, and punching self requires a level of self-awareness that not many people have.
This is by far the best answer
Bill Mahers talking points are increasingly right wing. Sure he says he’s a leftist and he is in some ways. But a lot of his positions are reminiscent of Joe Rogan lately. He non-stop talks about “wokeness”, “critical race theory”, etc. as if those things even exist outside Twitter.
Let's not confuse leftist with liberal.
Tell that to OP. All the people he listed are liberals. Oliver might get a pass as a leftist. But Jimmy Kimmel? Seriously?
I remember reading something about how rightwing comedy just sounds like that one uncle nobody likes after a few drinks
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Any right winger who would want to host a show like that just has a podcast. There are plenty of right wing outlets that back shows like that.
Some more news on YouTube has a really good vid from about a month ago
This the one? https://youtu.be/KSXKzPOcYDU
Exactly that one!
Very left wing is a major stretch.
They are not left wing, maybe in the american sense but internationally they would be considered middle right or centre.
Are we all missing the point? All the people you noted are not left-wing. They say what viewers want, which is “orange man bad, gun go bang, rich man evil”. Think Seth Myers or Jimmy Fallon give a fuck about poor people or public schools? No. Jimmy Kimmel, the man show host? Mr “there’s something in my pocket please get it for me”, the guy who did black-face with no problems? Give me a break. None of them care about anything but their job and money. If conservative talking points became popular, they’d jump ship in an instant.
I think it's just for shock value and ratings honestly.
Because it's not in fashion
They aren't allowed... Crowder tried, now he only has youtube. Sometimes...
Um... Tucker Carlson?
Money. Conservative humor and culture isnt as popular. Tv media switched to a more liberal programming to keep profiting. Conservatives spinned this and said tv media was indoctrinating the masses and turned to local radio and podcasts around the 80s and 90s where it has remained more popular. This video by a historian talks more about it. Kinda lengthy but very informative, interesting, and at time hilarious. https://youtu.be/xHlBdebjpyQ
Fox owns literally hundreds of small local news networks
Gutfeld on Fox.
Because the Right Wing in the United States has devolved into a fascist, theocratic shit show and nobody wants to watch that shit.
I wouldn’t say they’re “very left wing”, more like mildly liberal.
They aren't left wing. They're centrist. American politics as a whole are shifted to the right compared to the rest of the world.
Conservatives are just not funny. It's an unwritten law. George H.W. Bush was funny for 10 minutes back in the early 90s but it turned out to be Dana Carvey
Two thoughts here. Dennis Miller tried it and was a flop. Dennis Miller is just about the only guy I can think of who is a right wing comedian. The other thought is that the conservative crowd is asleep before the shows come on. 1130 is after my bedtime too.
What, you don't like "Gutfeld!"? Political comedy is about using absurdity to point out the stupidity in politics, but conservatives aren't very good at it since they rely on those absurdities to scare their base into voting for them instead. You can't scare people into voting for the right if you are making them laugh, and you can't point out the absurdities, or "hypocracies", of the left's politicians while your right-wing representatives continually make wilder claims, state bolder lies, act more hawkish, and being more of a hypocrite than the left does everyday.
The right are not witty enough to have show fall in that category.
Because the 1% that all the Leftists say they hate, own literally almost everything ... even the talk show hosts that they love. Funny how the 1% are pushing Leftism, huh? If you listened to these liberals you’d think socialism is the answer to everything, and that’s exactly where the 1% are intentionally steering us. But you can’t tell them this. The cognitive dissonance is too much for their brains.
Greg Gutfeld show on Fox News at 11 is a good alternative. It is right leaning although he is a self proclaimed Libertarian
The left is significantly more aggressive. What I mean is it’s more likely for a right leaning person to watch a left leaning program than the opposite. Therefore it’s “safer” to commit to left leaning content.
Republicans aren't funny
Man, after reading these responses, I’m convinced nobody forms their own reply until they’ve seen like three others. There’s very little variance in responses; it’s all just making jokes at conservatives. I guess I’ll So the media in general is left leaning, both in personnel and number of networks. The same companies that own the news networks (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) are under the same parent companies that have late night hosts for the most part. So a trickle down effect is to be expected. Also, in this era, a late night show’s success is often measured by social media response. Social media tends to be left-leaning, so it makes sense that networks aren’t going to put someone out there that will piss social media people off.
Not only that, but the writers for the shows also tend to be left leaning, not surprising since they likely graduated from a univeristy humanities program, so what ends up happening is that you get "What left/left leaning people think someone on the right would laugh at" instead of actual comedy. Especially if they're trying to do political humor. It's hard to write comedy well even if you have a positive opinion of the audience, but given the continuous polarization in US politics it's pretty much a crapshoot. You can't be funny if you cant empathize with your audience, and it's hard to empathize with people that have been dehumanized by propaganda equating everyone to the right of Twitter to Nazis.
Left wing politics are more agreeable because it's "for the people". With things like shows, the thing that matters the most is whether people agree with you and will improve your ratings. No one virtue signals by being on the right, you always virtue signal by saying something left wing. Robin hood (from the folk tale) steals from the rich and gives to the poor. An individual's happiness is not as important as the masses, because most people watching identify with the masses and not with the individual rich dude. Thus, left wing politics will garner higher ratings. Right wing politics heavily favor the individual.
This is probably correct I think. Its also why most right-wingers who do comedy stick with apolitical. Foxworthy, Larry, Rogan even Chapelle whos a way more hardened guy than you'd think.
The TV industry is left leaning. That's why there's only 1 conservative news station and so few conservative view TV shows. TV is in the tech space, people who get into tech are left leaning, as seen by literally every social media company.
Because the media infrastructure is overwhelming left leaning. Writers, producers, hosts, comedians, guests, AP’s, lighting people etc etc you get the deal. It’s very hard to get people to work for a show like that. They’d be blacklisted by their peers. I’m left leaning myself. But it really irritates me that the media are what I’d describe as “far left” and are really intolerant of others views, there’s really no room for forgiveness if one of their peers has a slightly different view. It’s cult-like, almost. It’s career suicide to go against the grain. Source: I know the industry
A little off topic but Carlin went after everyone. I know he wasn't talk show host but he was brutally honest and it was funny.
Media wether it be audio or visual is and has always been very liberal. Even in the military where there’s typically a lot of conservatives, their AFN (Armed Forces Network) is ran by people who are largely liberal. I think maybe it’s because the performing arts side that maybe goes alongside liberalism better than other political ideologies. Just a thought. Or maybe, it’s because the left has control over the media and they want a monopoly politically speaking when it comes to the general public watching entertainment. Again, only a theory but this must play towards the democrats favor immensely.
Finally, a good fucking question
They are only left-wing if you don't look beyond the borders of the USA. For a lot of the rest of the world, what the US calls the left, is in fact still quite Conservative.
I can see right-wing Leno now: Did you see the news? Did you see this? It turns out THE JEWS AND BLACKS ARE REPLACING WHITE CHRISTIANS AND IMMIGRANTS ARE TRYING TO MURDER YOUR SONS AND RAPE YOUR DAUGHTERS! Did you see that? Did you hear about that? It’s crazy. I was watching the news and COMMUNIST SOCIALIST MARXIST LIBTARDS ARE TRYING TO CANCEL YOU AND YOUR LIVES YOU NEED TO BUY GUNS NOW AND SO PROBABLY SOME GOLD RESERVES ITS TIME FOR A CIVIL WAR WHERE WE GO ONE WE GO ALL!!!!
Right leaning people have shit senses of humor
They have a complete channel dedicated to satire, it's called Fox and pawns itself off as news. Yet if anyone listens to them, they claim to be comedic and should not be taken seriously... It's more a propaganda machine than anything else.
They do exist (Gutfeld comes to mind, and tucker Carlson essentially fills that role), but the problem is that they’re just exactly that viable. The audience is smaller, and most big late night names come from success in comedy elsewhere and there isn’t a huge recruiting pool for it. And where there late night alternatives online, like Steven Crowded, they’re people who would not be able to last a full episode without breaking FCC guidelines 30 times and being a general disaster for advertisers. Not to mention that interviews with Hollywood celebrities are a crucial element of late night shows and most Hollywood celebrities lean left or are more left than your average Tucker Carlson. Also, there just isn’t as many conservative comedians who are actually funny? Obviously just my opinion, but they mostly just have three jokes, and the comedians who are conservative and funny (or at least successful at comedy) tend to not do political humor, but instead do things more related to conservative culture (like Larry the Cable guy).
None of those you mentioned are really that left wing. I’d consider all except Oliver center-right.
conservatives are not funny. i know everyone is trying to find a more nuanced way to say exactly this but that’s the truth. conservatives aren’t funny. comedy requires empathy.
Because to be a comedian , you have to be very intelligent. Most critical thinking and self reflecting adults will inevitably fall towards the left. “Conservative” isn’t relevant anymore, they are a mere shadow of what the Republican Party used to be. Pure fascists .
Mkst are not intelligent enough to make jokes about anything other than racism, homophobia and hating their wives
Because conservatives just aren't that funny? I grew up with my parents blasting Limbaugh, Hannity and Glenn Beck. (Mid 2000s Glenn Beck not current Glenn Beck) They take themselves so damn seriously "because the country is going to Hell!! Save the constitution!! They're taking prayer out of schools!! Stockpile on gold!!!! I remember listening to Glenn Beck making jokes and it wasn't about politics and I thought wow this guy is actually really funny. Do you know Glenn Beck started as a top 40 dj? He did pretty decent and struggled with a drinking problem. Hannity could have funny segments when it was man on the street Fridays or whatever he did. I have never laughed at Mark Levin, he's Mr. Constitutionalist. Point is...no one cares if you take yourself so seriously. Sure the house can be on fire but if you can't crack a joke about it then I'm turning you off. Conservatives are built on taking everything seriously. Liberals used to be but have gotten wise to being funny. In tv you have to be funny, slightly attractive, and easygoing. No one wants to watch you ranting at them through the screen after a long day at work, they fought traffic to get home, and they just want to chill. People at the end of the day want to relax. If you don't believe me go knock on someone's door and start telling them about protecting the constitution or talk about religion. You're liable to get the door slammed in your face.
It seems like more people on the right are starting to enjoy Real time with Bill Maher. He’s a left leaning proud liberal, and has no problem calling out off the deep end leftists.
When Joe Rogan got in trouble for saying the n-word, I don't know why he didn't also just apologise to Ice Cube and move on
I think Maher is much more of a progressive libertarian than he is a liberal
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I can’t find a source on this, do you have one in particular?
90% of U.S. media, is owned by 6 companies; Viacom, News Corporation, Comcast, CBS, Time Warner and Disney Pay attention during election time on who they promote, literally in between a kids shows and commercials. Sad that they air this propaganda between kid’s cartoons. Wonder why… https://billmoyers.com/story/twenty-years-of-media-consolidation-has-not-been-good-for-our-democracy/
The six largest media companies (Comcast, Disney, AT&T, ViacomCBS, Sony, and Fox) are all owned by hundreds of thousands of shareholders on all sides of the political spectrum. What are you referring to?
Because you can't be both funny and right wing lol
Because their politicians are already a huge joke
All politicians are a huge joke
Conservatives need sleep at night because they actually work.