Not-So-Live Satire Blogging

My original intent was to post a play-by-play of the almost certain train-wreck of Fox News Channel’s The Half-Hour News Hour for my non-existent audience. Laziness and a poignant sense of my own limitations stopped me, but lo, I bravely soldier on.

When I was younger my parents subscribed to a magazine called (rather aptly) Parents. It was full of useful tips for raising kids from birth through, I think, 12 or 13. Being my paranoid self I thought that my own parents were using these techniques to manipulate me, their guinea pig first-born. I started reading incoming issues before anyone else could get their hands on them, thus cleverly keeping myself updated on any potential enemy action.

Tonight I thought I would continue to keep myself updated on any potential enemy action (Is your tin hat adjusted? No, mine neither. Really I just have a New Years Resolution to follow the news from all perspectives.) AND repay these perceived slights by turning the tables and using my parents as guinea pigs. Ha! I am clearly still just about as clever as my 7 year old self.

Being a lucky member of the Boomerang Generation, I am a 23 year old who lives with her parents. I am neither proud of this fact nor much delighted by any aspect of it, but it will probably come up again so I may as well mention it to you now. My family gets along best while sitting silently in front of some sort of flickering image, so it’s not that shocking that we wound up watching The Half Hour News Hour tonight. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that I turned it on, either. The opinions floating around the internet have invariably been biased: liberals were/are determined not to like it, and many conservative bloggers were/are determined to portray it as hilarious and successful. So how to get an impartial reaction to cable’s newest fake news show? Poll your parents giggles.

This works especially well with my parents, since my mother is relatively moderate liberal who used to be a hippie and my father is an in-denial libertarian masquerading as a rabid conservative (who is actually registered as an Independent). A cross-section of the American public in two people! Thus I give you, segment by segment, though probably not really in order, Not-So-Live Satire Blogging.

1. The Opening: One of the segments floating around YouTube recently, featuring Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter as President and Vice President. I had already seen it and didn’t think it funny, but my father got a kick just from the fact that Limbaugh and Coulter were present. Honestly I don’t think he reacted to any of the “jokes,” but he did launch into a little anecdote about how Coulter is Colmes of Hannity and Colmes’s sister or sister-in-law? Or something. My mother didn’t react at all. I’d say this segment was neutral to mildly successful in the target demographic. If people in their 50s are even a target demographic for satire
2. The Requisite Hillary Bating: Both of my parents are ardent Hillary Haters. Neither of them gave a peep. This segment, part of the larger “Weekend Update” segment, was unsuccessful. But is it really Fox’s fault? All the jokes about her have been around for 10 years already.
3. Ed Begley Jr’s Magnificent Electric Car: Or: How To Kill Your Running Gag Dead Almost Immediately. I admit they had me fooled here. At first I really thought they were going to have Ed Begley Jr. on as a guest, and I was a little flabbergasted. “How big of them,” I thought. Well that didn’t last long. This was run into the ground by the end of the show. I even caught my father reading during all these mentions of human-waste fueled hybrids and liberals who look like homeless people. Embarrassment on behalf of whoever came up with this stuff? One can only hope. Highly unsuccessful.
4. BO Magazine: The intellectual height of comedy! Another “leaked” YouTube segment, the big draw here was the BO joke. My mother cracked a smile at the “Should We Even Bother to Hold the 2008 Election?” headline, and my father chortled at most everything, but his big belly-laugh was reserved for body odor. I thought this was all extremely lame and played out, but the laugh-o-meter tells me it was successful.
5. Children’s Book Parodies: Very weak. We’re lovers of …And Tango Makes Three around my place, so my mother and I exchanged sympathetic “awww!”s when it came on, but the rest of it drew no reaction. From anyone. Except maybe more embarrassment for whoever writes this drivel. Unsuccessful.
6. Che Guevara T-Shirt Salesman: One of two segments that I am shocked drew no reaction from my father, who went on a rant about what a criminal Che Guevara was as recently as yesterday. We all giggled at some of the t-shirt slogans. Mildly successful.
7. ACLU Commercials: The other segment(s) I’m shocked my father didn’t react to. I can’t even begin to count the number of rants he’s gone on about the ACLU. I expected at least some grunts of agreement or the start of another rant. Perhaps he was being silent so that I would have time to let the innate truth of what he has been saying all along seep into my brain? I may never know. What I do know is that, while he might have found it truthful, he didn’t laugh. Mildly to completely unsuccessful.
8. 6 Degrees of Global Warming: BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB. My mother went to bed. My father went to go get something and only returned when it was over. I don’t know if this is related to the segment in any way, but I like to think it is. Chalk it up to the tendency to idealize one’s parents, though I have already cited in this entry my childhood fears that they were cunningly manipulating me for unknown and surely nefarious reasons. In the absence of any of my (admittedly highly scientific) data I am going to go with my own gut and the sense of shame I felt watching this clown, and call this one completely unsuccessful. Completely.

When it was (blissfully) over, my father summarized it like this: “Well, parts of it were funny.” I have to agree. There were moments I giggled, though like many on the internet I would not say that the things I laughed at qualify as satire. In addition to lacking the charisma and talent of a Jon Stewart or a Stephen Colbert, the anchors were such bad actors it was painful. But that’s my biased opinion. So why not go by my biased opinion of the biased and nonverbally expressed opinion of others? Clearly it is more accurate.