Fox News Is The Conservative Daily Show, It Just Won’t Admit It’s A Joke

There is an article on Grantland by Brian Phillips that takes a look back at media satire on television. It focuses mainly on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, but mentions everything from Bob & Ray to Monty Python. It’s an interesting read, but this paragraph alone is worth the price of admission:

“Is it strange that, of all the current-events products currently on television, it’s often Fox News that feels most like a ‘Weekend Update’ bit? Critics are constantly asking why there’s no conservative Daily Show, but there is; it just won’t admit it’s a joke. The structure of Fox News is so deeply and basically comic that it’s impossible not to read it into the tradition of news satire. All those weeping paranoiacs! The fist-shaking curmudgeons! The gun-toting robo-blondes! Like ‘Weekend Update,’ Fox succeeded by taking the elements of a normal news broadcast and exaggerating them to ludicrous proportions. Only instead of Opera Man, it has Angry Immigration Crusader; instead of Mr. Subliminal, it has Jowly Operative Insinuating Things About Hillary Clinton’s Health; instead of Gay Hitler, it has Outmatched Token Liberal; instead of ‘Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead,’ it has Benghazi.”

Media Circus

Well said. And thanks to the wingnut brigade at NewsBusters for whining about this entertaining and accurate essay, without whom I probably would never have seen it.

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4 thoughts on “Fox News Is The Conservative Daily Show, It Just Won’t Admit It’s A Joke

  1. I watch Fox from time to time & I gotta tell
    ya, it really is some of the funniest SH*T you
    can find on cable. Like last week when Billy
    Oreilly just couldn’t help himself. He returned
    from his vacation to demonstrate to his elderly
    fans how APOPLECTIC he was over the coverage
    of the shooting in Ferguson. Get in real close….
    no…..closer! I’m just so damn mad! I’m gonna yell,
    and grimace, and point my finger, and furrow my
    brow!! ‘cuz just calling in last night could never
    capture how indignant I am!!
    Yea, THAT was some funny SH*T!!!!

  2. No way! The Daily Show is for intelligent, well informed people: Fox News is for stupid people who have no idea what makes the sun come up.

    • It’s the low-brow version of The Daily Show.

  3. Fox News Special Report: The Tides come in…The Tides Go Out. Is it the hand of God? Interviews with Religious leaders and scientists from the Creation Institute help to answer that question.

    Yes they are funny and sad at the same time!

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