They're Just Not Funny

A new show on Fox News ... the 1/2 Hour News Hour. Apparently it's Fox News' version of the Daily Show, determined to provide the conservative side of comendy. Pans of the show are already coming in ... that the laughter is canned and doesn't make any sense with what is occurring on screen, and gay penguins are funny? Tom Tomorrow had this to say:

A preview of Fox’s other foray into “comedy” (adding: don’t miss the link to a second clip at the bottom of the post). The thing that really strikes me, apart from the utter lack of anything remotely resembling humor, is that the notion of a news channel producing a fake news show seemed like a good idea to anyone — especially a news channel which is already widely criticized for producing fake news. I mean, Comedy Central can do this because it is a comedy network. Fox is ostensibly a news network (albeit one which features “news” anchor John Gibson, who also hosts a partisan radio talk show, and a former “reporter” like Tony Snow, who was able to seamlessly segue into his role as White House press secretary). Point is, it makes sense for a comedy network to produce a fake news show. For Fox to do so serves only to underscore what a joke the rest of their supposed “news” operation is.

Apart from that, the flaw in the entire premise is the idea that the liberal bias of the Daily Show must be countered. I mean, I have no doubt that Jon Stewart is a liberal, in a pleasant, middle of the road, sensible kind of way, but a hardcore partisan he is not. If and when we ever see a Democratic administration again, the Daily Show will skewer them just as relentlessly as they do the Bushies. And I’m going to go way out on a limb here and predict that it’ll be much funnier than anything the Fox Fake News and Pretend Comedy Channel can come up with.