Esteemed WF alum B-Spence Vacuum-Noise Slaywater a few days ago axed about conservatives and comedy.
I wrote a post awhile back about liberals and conservatives and how we look at pop culture differently. I’ve noted before–in passing–that there seem to be more liberal caricatures in media than there are conservative caricatures. Yet most liberals seem much less angsty about enjoying popular culture more broadly, and liberal caricatures specifically. I think that it’s too easy and pat to say that “well, libs are just super-cool about everything.” I don’t think that quite covers it....
I laugh at the annoying, dour feminists on Portlandia because a.) it’s funny but also because b.) I suspect the show’s creators are actually pretty feminist. And I wonder if this is why I find lots of portraits of liberals or characters who would presumably be liberal-leaning funny.
I think there is a lot to this; jokes, like curses, are something that ties a group together. Find out what a group laughs at, and what a group hates, and you find out perhaps everything you need to know about that group -- how it organizes itself, how it defines itself, how it conceives of itself within the wider social world.
So, well, take it away, funnyman Robert Stacy McCain (no link, of course).
You’re not a real feminist until you (a) kill your own baby and (b) become a lesbian. Of course, if you avoid heterosexuality altogether, this deprives you of the opportunity to get pregnant (and then kill your baby like a good feminist should), but lifelong lesbians can make up for skipping the otherwise necessary abortion experience by encouraging other women to kill their babies.
And, punchline!
(Did I mention that this is National Offend a Feminist Week?)
Yuk yuk.
Now, pretty much nobody shares the assumptions that would make this funny, except for a select bunch of Internet Weirdos. As I've pointed out before, no doubt Advanced Scientologists share some hearty guffaws over uncleared Thetans and Zenu and shit, but no one else would get it.
I'd posit, though, that by and large, jokes with a widespread appeal are humane, in that they provoke pleasure as regards how every human experience can be viewed from different perspectives. A good joke is startling: it shows something new.
This thing above is worse than not funny. It's too dull to even be offensive.
Which is not to say that McC should not be gargling rusty fishooks through his urethra. It's just to say, he shoud keep doing that.