The American Spectator

LaneyB| 5.12.09 @ 7:57AM

Ms. Sykes' routine was emblematic of the current state of what passes for humor in contemporary entertainment. Stand-up comedy practitioners are not witty or insightful. They seem to be permanently stuck in the worst of adolescence, relying on scatological refernces and streams of obsenities to disguise a lack of real takes on real people. In essence, you can't distinguish one from the other as they have no individual personality or individual perspective. Sykes is pleasant enough in her delivery on situation comedies, but her infatuation with celebrity and worshipful devotion to her political point of view leaves her wit boring and unremarkable in the annals of comedic history.

Wit is the ecpression of genuine intelligence and irony. None of what passes for humor these days fits into that category.

Tim| 5.12.09 @ 8:43AM

The Simpsons have gone on the rocks too. Somebody should be waterboarded for thinking that you can be politically correct and funny...

David T.| 5.12.09 @ 8:59AM

The problem with comedy today is that the talent pool has been diluted (and polluted) because of comedy clubs and cable TV.

Grzmlyk| 5.12.09 @ 9:02AM

Tim:

I totally agree about the Simpsons. It's a tragedy.

Et tu, Bart?

Angel| 5.12.09 @ 10:11AM

It's cool to these fools to be a brown noser now. Two of the biggest brown nosers of all are Olbermann and Garofalo. Talk about herd mentality.

R. Dittmar| 5.12.09 @ 10:18AM

The thing that's going to make the comedic dearth even more dire is the fact that Obama himself is such a humorless and uptight individual. I had the misfortune of catching some of that dinner on TV and you could see Obama sitting there thinking - "Comments seem to elicite amusement from audience. Must feign laughter to fit in."

Grzmlyk| 5.12.09 @ 10:31AM

I totally agree that Obama is humorless and uptight - so many dupes (including many pundits on the right) think he's relaxed, self-deprecating, benevolent and always cool under pressure - the epitome of wit, elegance and savoir faire.

That is an act.

I think the facade is so tightly screwed on that when it cracks - and I pray to god it does crack, pubicly - it'll shatter into a million pieces and the lost, frightened, abandoned, angry little boy will be exposed naked to the world.

But don't look for the press to EVER put down their polishing rags and pick up a crowbar; that's reserved for the Bush legacy.

MattSwartz| 5.12.09 @ 10:43AM

Healy's hit it on the head perfectly. Successful comedy is inherently subversive; it pokes fun at the strong, not the weak.

The only possible "I wish your enemies would die" joke that could have been made at a Bush dinner would've been a self-conscious riff on the sycophancy and loyalty he was perceived to demand.

That might have been funny.

"I wish your enemies would die" as a joke on the president's enemies cannot possibly ever be funny, for the same reason that rape isn't funny. Both are un-aware, un-examined, un-ironic expressions of power and submission, and we get enough of that in the real world anyway.

Sykes' routine was the turd in a very fascistic punchbowl. She didn't even bomb, because you have to take risks to bomb.

She flopped.

Daisy| 5.12.09 @ 11:15AM

It's always fun to laugh at sycophants--that room reeked of liberal butt-kissing Saturday night. Nauseating.

wayne| 5.12.09 @ 12:44PM

The whole routine was not anything we should even accept. It is down right worrisome to see the entertainers and major press cower from saying or reporting anything that might offend our gloriuos leader. Lets get back to being real. Americans with indepndent thinking and expression's. Even if it means taking some grief or even maybe a little joking about ourselves. We all know Goerge Bush did.

Tom Paine| 5.12.09 @ 1:30PM

You people get angry because a stand-up comic calls Limbaugh a "traitor" in the midst of a comedy routine.

You should try feeling what it's like to have actual politicians and supposedly serious pundits refer to you as a "traitor" or terrorist sympathizer. Then, you'd know what it means to be angry.

Since 04, you on the right have habitually referred to Democrats as fascists, traitors, communists, and terrorists.

It doesn't matter how many of us serve in the military, how much we love our country, how much we earnestly want to work to make our country a better place: what matters is we disagree with you, which is in your view un-American.

What a bunch of weak hypocrites.

In the immortal words of Dick Cheney, you all can go fuck yourselves.

Tim| 5.12.09 @ 1:51PM

As the Ralph Wiggum of old might say: " I have wordpoopies in my mouth."

wayne| 5.12.09 @ 3:22PM

Tim you in the minority here, LOOK at the poll. Oh wait your head is stuck up Obamas Ass(cannot see like most of Obamas people). The Dems. where the group acusing our military of killing women and children. Even went as far to say Bush was Hilter. To qoute Nancy speaker of the house.

wayne| 5.12.09 @ 4:47PM

Tom, Tim, Iam just a comedian . Just joken you can take it RIGHT?

MattSwartz| 5.12.09 @ 7:05PM

Tom,
Many on the right were far too quick to toss the word "traitor" around and pin it on people with politics different than their own. I received a little of that myself as an anti-war, anti-Bush conservative.

What I didn't get is what no enemy of the conservatives ever got.

Conservatives, unlike liberals, don't make a habit of proclaiming, jokingly or seriously, that they hope their ideological opponents die.

There is a ghastly culture of death on the center-left, and it's going to keep getting worse until it gets better. It's so nasty that it won't go away on it's own. I don't want to be around when the hate bubble bursts.

Angel| 5.12.09 @ 7:40PM

Ha ha, there's TPaine/Jeremiah; the biggest Obama butt-kissing sycophant around. Nice mouth, liberal dud.

Daisy| 5.12.09 @ 7:44PM

Nice Obama kneepads, TP. Do you buy them in bulk?

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