Thursday, February 15, 2007

This Just In: Michael Moore is Fat

Conservatives have been trying to get a right-wing version of The Daily Show going for some time, and it's finally hatched: The Half-Hour News Hour.

Crooks & Liars has a segment of the new program for your viewing pleasure and, somehow, it's even worse than I ever thought it could be.

I haven't heard this much canned laughter since the ill-fated run of The Brady Brides sitcom. Of course, they had to manufacture the yuks, because nothing in the program would generate actual human laughter. (How unfunny is it? So unfunny that a conservative blogger "suspects the writers are all liberals deliberately sabotaging the show." No, seriously.)

The entire show is as hackneyed and moronic as a typical David Brooks column. Even the title is unoriginal. In a tribute to the porous borders of our NAFTA-era economy, they apparently stole it from the Canadian fake news program, This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

It seems The Half Hour News Hour is produced by the same guy responsible for 24. Which is fitting, since both have a common theme of growing dread punctuated by explicit torture.

(Speaking of which, if you haven't read the New Yorker piece on 24 and torture, drop whatever you're doing -- unless you're holding a baby -- and go read it now. Unbelievable.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gotta go, my damn weiner kids are listening.

Maybe they can crib another show's title and call it "Not Necessarily The Humor"

Otto Man said...

Seriously. It's like they made a live-action version of Mallard Fillmore.

Thrillhous said...

Oy, that's bad. The rod up those anchors butts have rods up their butts.

Otto Man said...

Good point, T'Hous. They were so wooden I almost thought they might be there against their will, held at gunpoint and forced to say that dreck.

I'm going to rewatch the clip to see if they're blinking out a Morse Code message.

Otto Man said...

This story just gets better and better. Fox News has placed its order for the series, and only wants two episodes. That's got to be a record low in television history.

InanimateCarbonRod said...

I couldn't tell if the anchors were making a joke of the personality-free talking head or if they were just really personality-free.

The main problem with Konservative Komedy is the old cliche "it's funny 'cause it's true." When you're making jokes that reference some kind of fantasy world, there's no "truth" to laugh at.