Half Political, Half Painful

Pity Fox News, for they know not what they do. After a successful pilot in mid-February, Fox News launched its weekly news satire “The ½ Hour News Hour” this month. Witnessing the birth of the new show is like nothing more than observing the evolution of the old “liberal new bias” battle cry into the newly-minted hypothesis that a liberal bias exists in fake news. If there was doubt that the show was created to overturn this perceived liberal bias in news-based humor, the first promotional ad should have erased it.

According to the promo, “The ½ Hour News Hour” may offend “the left, the far left, anyone standing to the left,” as well as “democrats, people who voted for democrats, [and] people who know democrats” This doesn’t quite stand up to the promo’s last claim of being an “equal opportunity offender.” So much for “Fair and Balanced.” However, the greatest injury caused by the show isn’t inflicted on liberals but rather on humor itself.

Humor has long been a sacred political tool. News can be spun or deliberately falsified. Books can be burned. Opposition parties can be marginalized. But the power of laughter can never be completely eradicated. Laughter, like murder, will out the tyrants, the hypocrites, the liars, and any others who abuse publicly-entrusted power. From Aristophanes’ mockery of the Athenian city-state to Bulgakov’s comic portrayal of Communist Russia, satire has, throughout history, allowed political dialogue to escape the bog of slippery words and violent duress. This happens because despite half-truths and full-spins, something ancient still exists in us. When the wheels of our minds click onto an illogical idea, we instinctively emit a chuckle. This instinct has prevented many an enslaved people from becoming a damned people—the difference being that enslaved peoples know their enslavement is caused by an illogical madness, while the damned only consider it to be the status quo. The advancement of agendas and co-opting of history can expunge all, except that which is funny.

The obvious problem with the satire behind “The ½ Hour News Hour” is that the show isn’t funny, at least not in any honest way. Each joke projects the oily feeling that the writers first came up with their position planks and then attached whatever cheap joke they could find to get the token laugh.

The observation that Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussien is juxtaposed with the joke that Mr. Obama’s college nickname was “Gassy.” A special report about the watering-down of recess activities to avoid damage to self-esteem devolves into a rant by the fake “doctor,” complaining that his patient is now impotent because he struck out in Little League. An interview with a fake terrorism expert leaves the anchors and the expert stumped about the link between different terrorist cells in London. Everyone spouts out a long list of the Islamic names that were present in each cell, but Islam can’t be the link because it’s “a religion of peace.”

Don’t worry if you miss any of those punch lines: the show is complete with a laugh-track to remind you that the Nazi and angry lesbian references are supposed to be funny.

In its defense, the show does have a few bright spots. A few jokes are genuinely funny, like the idea that arguments over the height of James Brown are the third-leading cause of death in Alabama or that Katie Couric (whose evening news ratings have fallen) signs off with, “Why, God? Why?” The two anchors have honed their deadpan timing to be comparable to the Daily Show’s or Weekend Update’s anchors. The guest experts successfully create characters deep enough to be plausible but nutty enough to be funny. Yet, despite its strengths, I cannot get over the feeling that the show had as much sincerity as a late-night infomercial. Unlike the campy jokes of Letterman and O’Brien or the smooth irony of the Daily Show, “The ½ Hour News Hour” leaves behind the sour taste of carefully planned conservative “medicine” with a half-hearted scoop of sugar.

Assigning a specific political agenda to humor, as exemplified by “The ½ Hour News Hour,” is one of the more dangerous turns that media can take. Most people accept that American news sources are biased, whether it’s a discussion about the relative merits of Fox News and National Public Radio, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, or Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann. But our humor should be nonpartisan. Jon Stewart belittles Bush as well as Hilary Clinton and Obama. Stephen Colbert mocks Republican representatives by forcing them to reveal that they don’t know the Ten Commandments, in addition to mocking Democratic representatives by forcing them to argue in favor of throwing kittens into woodchippers. We watch and enjoy these shows because the humor is organic. The leaders and ideas that are mocked are the ones that deserve it. If a certain party or belief is mocked more often, then the cause should be because that interest has more power or more hypocrisy.

“The ½ Hour News Hour” changes this dynamic. When humor, the mechanism for dealing with bias news, becomes biased in itself, then the biggest loser is the truth.



Steven T. Cupps ’09 is an biological anthropology concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.