If we were doing a "Most Overrated Comedians" List she'd be at the top
As I’ve written before, funny is funny. As a fan of stand-up comedy I don’t care how leftwing a comedian is as long as they make me laugh. I’ll tolerate some inane leftist argument if, and only if, it’s packaged in an entertaining fashion.
I knew not to expect that given the guests on last Friday’s Real Time. Particularly with the last one. On “progressive” comedian Bill Maher’s panel on Real Time:
- Former Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee (now an independent – surprise, surprise.)
- Marxist academic icon Cornel West (Don’t be surprised if he shows up in a certain series we’re running here at NewsReal.)
- Conspiracist Crackpot actor/comedian Richard Belzer
- And special guest Quasi-leftist nihilist comedian Sarah Silverman.
I say quasi because while Silverman’s politics obviously drift leftward they’re so incoherent and nihilistic that it seems almost absurd to even attempt putting them on the Right-Left spectrum. Margaret Cho and Wanda Sykes are “progressive” female comedians. They infuse their politics into their stand-up routines to mixed results. (I still have some affection for Cho, though her last couple stand-up specials failed to match the brilliance of I’m the One That I want and Notorious C.H.O.)
Silverman is just a shock comic who thinks being offensive is enough in and of itself to generate laughs. It isn’t.
Case in point was Silverman’s newest comedic announcement. Click here to see the mocking PSA Silverman made poking at world hunger and taking a shot at Catholics. Warning: profanity. I won’t embed so as not to offend some of our more sensitive readers.
It’s about as boring and pathetic as all of Silverman’s material, including her horrific excuse of a Comedy Central show. Surprisingly, though, Silverman did have a single joke of the evening (perhaps of her whole career) which did actually work.
Sarah Silverman: Cornel West, which I want to say: I think you’re amazing but I thought it was inappropriate what you did to Taylor Swift.
[Growns and laughs]
Cornel West: Oohhhhh!
Bill Maher: It’s Kanye West!
Richard Belzer: Kanye! Kanye!
Sarah Silverman: Oh, my mistake.
Cornel West: I love my Brother Kanye. I love Brother Kanye. He was just make some interesting, and sometimes wrong judgments. [Exact quote from West...]
(See NewsReal’s posts on Kanye West’s rude interruption of Swift’s award speech click here, here, here, and here.)
So in a backwards sort of way Silverman proves my initial point: Funny is funny — even if it comes from a comedian who normally couldn’t joke her way out of a paper bag.
