Why Conservative Comedy Is Almost Impossible In Trump Times

Thought experiment: if you made a list of the biggest 10 comedy institutions in your life, what would be on it? Probably stuff like Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, John Oliver, network late night shows? Well if you look back over that list, you probably won't find anybody who's not openly lefty liberal (hi Stephen Colbert!) or wonky liberal (hey Seth Meyers!) or dead-center apolitical (hello Uncle John's Bathroom Reader!). Why is that? How is there a total lack of high-profile comedy platforms that cater to the Mitt Romney supporters of the world, let alone the Trump zombies?

On this week's podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Jason Pargin (Cracked) and Zack Bornstein (SNL, Jimmy Kimmel Live!) for a look at how comedy works, who's allowed to be our leading joke-tellers, where today's comedy comes from historically, and why Jimmy Fallon lost a third of his audience by treating Donald Trump like a regular guy one time.

Footnotes:

Girl At A Bar (SNL)

A Sketch For The Women (SNL)

If the Earth Treated Us the Way We Treat the Earth (Garlic Jackson)

Help! My Girlfriend Is Literally Dying (Garlic Jackson)

Jimmy Fallon Was on Top of the World. Then Came Trump. (New York Times)

Can Conservative Political Humor Be Funny? An Examination of 'The 1/2 Hour News Hour' and 'An American Carol' (Splitsider)

Protest Against Fox Correspondent Accused of Racism for Chinatown Interviews (New York Times)

Margaret Dumont: Performances With The Marx Brothers (Wikipedia)

George Soros and the Demonization of Philanthropy (The Atlantic)

Chris Christie And Pulling The Red Handle (NPR Monkey See)

Stop mocking how Kim Davis looks: Criticize her actions, not her weight, hair or clothes (Salon)