How (Not) to Make a Conservative Comedy.

 

This Just In!

2004

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Pros: The occasional funny joke (listed in quotes section)

Cons: Bland animation, Unfunny humor, Unlikable protagonist, Does terrible job of representing its ideology

     Political satire is a good idea on paper, but most of the time it doesn’t work.  Politics is, after all, a very serious subject.  Because of how important our beliefs are, it’s hard for us to distance ourselves from the debate and recognize what’s worth making fun of.   Our first instinct is to just demonize the other side for the fact that they do not agree with us.  That’s not satire, that’s just politics as usual.  This is why works like The Onion and Subnormality, which are ingeniously funny when dealing with harmless subject matter, become idiotic and puerile the moment ideology comes up.  I also find it annoying that we hold comedians up on a pedestal as if they are wiser and more honest than we are when in reality they are just as much slaves to their own belief systems as anyone else.  Our society needs to come to terms with the fact that the ability to make jokes about one’s quirky family does not necessarily translate into political savvy.

     Part of the reason I’m so bitter about this subject is that most of the people out there making these jokes are completely ideologically incompatible with me.  There are so few shows out there that are sympathetic to my conservative ideals, so I was excited to hear about the This Just In!, a cartoon which sold itself as an edgy, defiantly conservative alternative.  The only shows I know of that actually handle political satire remotely well are South Park (which is libertarian) and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (which is leftist); it would have been great to see a good comedy that was actually compatible with my own beliefs.  However, when I watched this show as a young college student, I was severely disappointed by what I saw. 

     This Just In was created by Steve Marmel, who had previously worked on Family Guy and Fairly Oddparents (so we know what kind of quality to expect), and, as you’ve probably figured out, I don’t think highly of it.  The animation is relatively cheap Flash work, mostly so that an episode can be hastily made in time to be topical (which is good in South Park’s case, because it actually was funny and insightful sometimes).  As I said before, even funny shows have trouble with political humor, so it’s a bad sign that the average apolitical joke in This Just In follows the following formula:

“That’s [insert comparative adjective] than [insert pop-cultural reference]”

It would be one thing if this cartoon was just as shallow and humorless as any editorial page comic; I would still find it to be refreshing just for being conservative.  Funny thing is, it isn’t even that.  If you want a good idea of how this show fails at being a conservative comedy, let’s take a look at the cast.   

Surely this is a refreshing departure from the standard biases we see on television.

Ok, I’m glad that the show depicts its liberal characters with respect rather than turning them into strawmen, but what’s the point of making a conservative show if all the conservative characters are fools?  If I wanted to watch a show where the Republican is a fool and the liberal character is the voice of reason, I’d watch every other show on the air.  Y’know, all those shows this show claims to be the answer to.  In an interview with The Houston Chronicle, Marmel said “Most of the time you see a conservative on a TV Show, he’s played as a zealot or a boob.  I wanted to do a show where the conservative wasn’t the idiot.”  But the problem is that Brian Newport is an idiot.  He’s crude.  He does that penis-in-the-popcorn thing at movie theaters.  Many of the episodes revolve around his foolishness, particularly one in which he creates a Web of Lies about himself in order to attract a liberal woman who is completely ideologically incompatible with him just because she’s really hot.  Who the hell does that?  It’s not like he’s shallow or anything, he once said he’d rather sleep with a 6 he agrees with, than a 10 he doesn’t (seriously, not lower than 6?).  The episode results in the most famous moment in the show, in which he sums up his conservative belief system in a rather dubious fashion:

  “I believe there is no Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, because if there was, I’d be in it. [but you          

      wouldn’t go around telling anyone about it]  I believe homeless people do not need welfare.  I’ve 

      seen homeless people.  They don’t need welfare.  They need treadmills. [I’ll admit that’s funny, 

      but it’s incredibly wrong and insensitive and sounds like something a conservative strawman 

      would say] I don’t believe we should pull out of Iraq because pulling out early is what got Bill 

      Clinton impeached. [because Clinton would have avoided that scandal if he had just knocked 

      Monica up; also, huge analogy failure]….I believe in Bush, because Bush shoots first and asks 

      questions later, and I think you get a lot less questions that way. [Yeah, we all know well that 

      worked out]”

If I’m finding this speech silly, imagine how a liberal would react.

     Despite failing at depicting its own characters in a way that’s flattering to conservatives, This Just In shows off its ideology by making fun of prominent liberal guest stars.  From what I remember, it wasn’t very satisfactory in the way it did so.  Michael Moore’s punishment in one episode was to be put in a dunk tank, a thing normally reserved for good-natured fun at parties.  An entire episode was dedicated to how Tina Fey wasn’t funny because she sometimes made jokes about conservatives on SNL.  Oh well, it’s not like she was ever responsible for a genuinely funny TV Show that’s far better than This Just In, right?

And it's not like that show has a conservative strawman who's actually cooler than the conservative protagonists of This Just In.

Perhaps even more laughable than that is the inclusion of Bill O’Reilly in that very same episode, in which this satirical comedy just lays the flattery on thick.  Not even a little bit of healthy fun-poking.  They even flatter his appearance by saying that Hu makes him look like a “skinny version of Rob Reiner,” in what is probably the only time in history in which the word has been used to describe that man.  This sycophantic admiration might make more sense if it was referring to a more reputable figure, but this is Bill O’Reilly.  Many conservatives see him as an embarrassing buffoon who’s prone to various embarrassing gaffes.  This was a man who somehow found a way to come off as more of a child than American Atheists president Dave Silverman by failing to realize that there is a scientific explanation for the tides coming in and out.

They happen when Princess Luna overeats and increases the gravitational pull of the moon.

I admit that I was mostly making this review from 8-year-old memories, and I could not find much in the way of videos or screenshots.  It only lasted 5 episodes, and as far as I know, it doesn’t have much of a following.  It’s little wonder. 

* Princess Luna Picture uploaded with permission by Duragan.

MEMORABLE QUOTES

JIMMY TOWNHOUSE: Dude, you just chased out 20 hot, single, drunk women out this bar.

BRIAN NEWPORT: I’m coming off a little gay right now, am I?

JIMMY TOWNHOUSE: You’re coming off a lotta gay right now.

BRIAN NEWPORT: Look, all I’m saying is that one morning Kurt Cobain woke up, realized he was married to Courtney Love and took the easy way out.

JIMMY FALLON: [on SNL] I’m Jimmy Fallon, and I break character in every sketch.

BRIAN NEWPORT: I believe homeless people do not need welfare.  I’ve seen homeless people.  They don’t need welfare.  They need treadmills.