« Trump slaps around the World Health Organization and China | Iran's dangerous scheme to get out of its coronavirus debacle »
May 19, 2020

Leftism: Life and politics without humor

By Andrea Widburg

Although leftists famously populate late-night "comedy," the reality is that their jokes lack any fundamental humor.  Usually, they confuse insults for humor.  Moreover, they're fatally unable to see when the joke's on them.  We got to see both problems on Monday.

If you watch leftist political "humorists" (e.g., Jon Stewart, Jon Oliver, Samantha Bee), you'll see that the laughs they get are cheaply earned.  They identify a conservative target and make a cheap analogy that's neither witty nor intelligent.  (E.g., "Calling Donald Trump smart is like calling a wombat with his head caught in a tire a genius.")

The comic then smirks knowingly at the audience.  The audience, primed to accept that an insult aimed at a despised conservative is by definition "humor," roars with laughter.  The audience has gotten its red meat.

Leftism is inherently humorless, something summed up in the common expression that "Democrats (or progressives or leftists) can't meme."  The best take on leftist humorlessness is the 1939 movie Ninotchka.  Greta Garbo plays a Soviet commissar sent to Paris on official business who ends up dealing with Leon, a fun-loving capitalist playboy.

One of the movie's running jokes is how utterly humorless communists are:

Buljanoff: How are things in Moscow?

Ninotchka: Very good. The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians.

* * *

Ninotchka: I have heard of the arrogant male in capitalistic society. It is having a superior earning power that makes you that way.

Leon: A Russian! I love Russians! Comrade, I've been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years.

Ninotchka: Your type will soon be extinct.

On Monday, there were two things that highlighted leftist humorlessness.  The first was a Washington Post opinion piece meant to ridicule the conservative belief that Obamagate is based on real wrongdoings aimed at subverting the election and then destroying the Trump presidency.  Entitled "Obamagate was the worst crime ever committed and here is what it was," it eschews wit and cleverness in favor of ponderous pedantry:

Obamagate began long ago, long before Trump even got elected, before he even knew he was running. It began before America, before time, in those early days when President Barack Obama lit the furnace of the sun, just before he fixed the paths of the planets in such a way that millennia in the future, Donald Trump would stare directly into a solar eclipse. And, of course, everyone knew about it.

Obamagate was the biggest political crime in American history by far, a fact that Barack Obama did not hesitate to tell Richard M. Nixon, causing him to shed bitter tears in an as-yet-unreleased tape. It was bigger than Teapot Dome. It was bigger than anything anyone blamed Ulysses Grant for allowing the people who surrounded him to do. Nothing could be worse than Obamagate. It went all the way to the top, where Obama floated inside a sinister Masonic eye at the apex of a pyramid on the back of a dollar bill, holding all the strings.

Copying from a history book and a conspiracy website is not humor.

The second thing was a Trump campaign approach that revealed that leftists are unable even to recognize a joke.  Riffing off Biden's gaffe that "We [the Democrats] choose truth over facts," the Trump campaign created a campaign website and video:

The Democrat response was even funnier than the campaign effort because leftists (just like Ninotchka) didn't get the joke:

Not only can't leftists meme, they can't even recognize a meme when they see one.  Being a leftist is a deadly serious business.

It was Saul Alinsky who said, "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."  Trump's team gets it, while Biden's team doesn't even get the joke.

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com