I can’t believe I just sat through that…

Fox New’s new “comedy” show, “The Half Hour News Hour” debuted tonight, and I’m not sure if I’m more offended politically or comedically. It has been described by its creator as “The Daily Show for Conservatives”. I watched the entire thing.

So comedically, it just wasn’t that funny, but that’s ok, some comedies don’t start out that funny. The main problem is that it misinterprets the reasons the daily show is so funny. Yes, Jon Stewart is moderately liberal, and the audience is very liberal, but the daily show certainly makes fun of liberals a lot. It makes fun of conservatives more because they’ve been in power more so have provided more fodder for comedy. But regardless of the political leanings of a subject, the daily show will make the joke if it’s funny. The half hour news hour only targets liberals, and gets mean-spirited pretty fast. Instead of, for example, quoting a politician, then making fun of their words or playing video to point out their hypocrisy (a mainstay of the daily show), the half hour news hour just took conservative opinions of things and attached punchlines to them. For example, they had a segment making fun of an electric and/or hybrid car, saying it couldn’t get up a slight incline and ran out of power after going down the street a bit (these are the jokes). Besides not being very funny, it’s intellectually offensive.

If this is the conservative comedy that the daily show is missing because it’s “so liberal”, then I think that’s just fine.

Slate’s article about the show is a fun read, complete with a youtube link for a clip of the show.

Interestingly, “The 1/2 Hour News Hour is the brainchild of Joel Surnow, co-creator of 24″. Whenever I hear about 24 (which I don’t watch), all I think of is conservative WSJ columnist Stephen Moore’s defense of the Military Commissions Act’s torture as being “Jack Bauer Justice” and “most Americans want that sort of thing” (clip here). Not surprising it’s on Fox.