Conservative comedians don't tell or laugh at jokes, they punch down and rehash stereotypes and laugh at the hypothetical "libcuck" who they imagine to be very angry about it.
Conservative comedian: "I was out eating at Chick-fil-A and I saw this guy walking with clothes I disagree with. I can't even call him a derogatory name anymore! Ignoring that guy's freedom, these woke idiots are infringing on my freedom! But I know you people are cool so I'll say it here in this space that's safe, but we don't use that word here."
I enjoy heckling some of my more bigoted coworkers with benign dad jokes on whatever topic their hateful 'humor' gets at. Wanna hate on trans peeps? I'm gonna hit em with the "I don't get it..?" and put them in the awkward position of breaking down their joke while tip-toeing around the bits that guarantee a trip to HR.
Then it's "Ah... gotcha. Ooh! I got one too! How do transgender samurai kill enemy units?! ...they 'slash' them!" *finger guns and big cheesey grin* "Did you hear about the boy who came out to his parents as transgender? ...they looked up and said 'you're no son of mine!'"
The awkwardness just cranks higher and higher when you hit em with punch lines that aren't hateful lol; and shines the spotlight on yes you fucking can tell jokes about this stuff, just not ones that make you sound like a god damned Nazi.
You touched on one of my favorite tactics - I pretend to be very clueless and very politically low-info - while they are terminally online and expecting everyone to cop to their culture war BS shorthand, I ask them to explain what they mean and ask what are they talking about.
Takes the wind right out of their sails.
They hope that you'll act like a "triggered" liberal and give them the dopamine hit they want by shrieking or howling or whatever it is that they want, maybe followed by some gamed-out "debate" that follows a track that they want to go down so they can work in some "zinger" think-piece like "the Democrat Party doesn't even know what a woman even is" (like I just saw Dan Crenshaw do on Maher's show), or that you give them the Faux Nooz nod and the wink, maybe a "I getchooo bro! finger guns" and the high five.
They get neither. Trying to explain a joke of any kind utterly ruins it, especially if it's one of their punching down kind. The hard part is me not laughing right in their face when I see the look of disappointment on their face. The easy part is keeping my cool and not letting them try to annoy me, while doing the "just asking questions" routine that they themselves love in other instances - I've been doing this kind of thing my whole life. I can do a poker face like no one's business. It was a life skill I needed early in life just for basic survival. But trying to keep from laughing at their predictable response (oh so predictable) is a lot harder.
Unfortunately, I see lots of liberals, moderates, etc....fall for the bait.
I watched it a while ago, but from what I remember it's partly that conservatives are not very creative. It's an old bit but it's true that lots and lots of mainstream conservative pundits tried to make it as writers in Hollywood, or at least as comedians before failing and turning to right-wing grift and money.
Another point is that political comedy, by its nature, has to express an political opinion, or else it's not "political" comedy. The left wing can do this easily as a lot of left wing problems tend to punch up to the rich or to corporations. On the other hand, the political opinion a lot of conservative comics find "funny" is the fact that they hate women and minorities.
Unfortunately for them, the country is a little too WOKE to do black face anymore so they have to try to obscure that opinion with weird contrived bits. Bits so contrived that they end up having to spell out the joke at the end about how the funny part was that they hate women and minorities. (There are clips of this in the video). That's a double whammy of bad comedy because it's already a shitty premise and it breaks many rules of comedy such as punching down and explaining the joke.
Just watched it, what it basically boils down to is that nowadays most "comedy" from US conservatives isn't meant to be funny, it's meant to "own the libs." So instead of coming up with witty, valid criticism of Democrats, they do whatever they can to try to get a rise out of them, which leads to a bunch of nonsense that is more concerned with making a political point and upsetting people than it is with actually being funny or even true.
I've watched and gotten a lot out of these videos in general. I usually skip the opening comedy bits, which are mostly them swinging incredibly hard and not even hitting the ball. Does result in a too-occasional home run. But even those usually aren't in the opening.
Anyway, these may be worth going back to. Gold mines with piles of dog poop at the entrance. Or at least silver mines.
The root of it is that such "comedians" are expecting the audience to laugh atother people's "folly," when the "folly" is no such thing. The message ends up being "I'm a backwards hateful fuck, join me!"
The issue of gender neutral public bathrooms opens up a whole can of worms that cant easily be resolved. Like, is the weird wall-mounted vending machine going to dispens condoms and pheramone wipes, or perfume and period care products? Literally insurmountable conundrums.
Conservatives genuinely delight in the harm of the innocent. You can see this in their humor. Their jokes almost always punch down or involve someone being insulted or victimized. This was true before Trump and is still true now. The difference is they are much more bold about it now.
Hack comedians: “they are personally attacking my ability to be attention-grabbing edgy by feeding on controversy” or just repeat someone else’s confetti joke.
Legitimate comedians: “this actual thing happened to me as a child. It’s not great but here’s some observations I tried to lighten it up with”
Apparently Joe Rogan did a special recently and spent some time making transphobic jokes. Although, he "does" say it's okay to be trans or something but then makes transphobic jokes. He even does a "did you assume my gender?" joke in the year 2024. Definitely bleeding edge there Joe.
I think there can be good conservative jokes or whatever jokes to be honest. It just takes a lot more work. I think a lot of comedians are getting scared the zeitgeist is changing and they don't know how to adapt their work. However, you're comedians, figure it out.
Cody's showdy had an episode about conservative comedy and specifically made a point to say conservative comedy is possible and was a thing until recently all these hacks forgot what to do. He even gave several examples. My favorite was one from a brexiteer if you can believe it.
Damn just watched the two hour video on SOME MORE NEWS. It really illustrates the problem with a lot of conservative comedy and also really broke down the stuff that bugged me about Dave Chappelle's bits.
Your title is irritating because it's exactly how conservatives talk. We can add adjectives to the list of words they don't understand how to use, right beside pronouns.
Hillbillies still make good jokes. They just can't be consumed by you bleeping bleeps without an internal investigation. We keep those jokes on the DL. On the internet I used to be able to literally do anything. Now its some virtue signal fest. Enjoy being bitches, spread it wide😗
Huh. My poor, white, Appalachian relatives are split 50/50 between being bigoted shit-heads and some of the most open minded, kind, generous people you'd ever meet. The later are somehow capable of telling hilarious jokes and stories without punching down.
For the record, I used to live among the hillbillies. Surrounded by the yokelest of the rubes. A lot of their "comedy" and "jokes" and "pranks" seemed to be comprised of (actually) hurting people and animals. The rest of it was about verbally abusing others they considered "less than". Most of their jokes were filled with ethnic slurs and mostly about some ethnic group.
To be honest, other hillbillies thought all this was high comedy; a real knee slapper. Psychopathy was often rewarded by others with psychopathy. But anyone with brain cells and some normally-firing synapses connecting those brain cells found their behavior utterly exhausting and tiresome.
Again, I lived it. I'm trying to think of one funny person that stayed in the area. The ones that aspired to something else and were actually funny - all moved the fuck away, if they could.