That Joke Isn't Funny Any More

I don't watch "The Tonight Show" ever, because I can not stand Jay Leno. He's the absolute definition of safe, bland, middle-of-the-road comedy. I understand that he has to try and appeal to the widest possible audience, and most Americans don't want their post-news fall-asleep hour to be too edgy, outrageous or exciting. But, Jay Leno is just such an unfunny, fawning simp. He wasn't funny even before he had a TV show, when he was free to appeal to any audience he chose.

But there's something, I think, a bit more pernicious about Leno. And not just Jay Leno, but a lot of political comedians of his ilk. I think that sometimes, they take real problems and issues and make them frivolous. I think that sometimes, genuine and truthful observations about our world are turned too quickly into just another cliched punchline.

Here's the best example I can think of...The role of Dick Cheney in our government for the last 5 years. Now, we all know that Dick Cheney has been a powerful vice-president. A party leader who essentially appointed himself to the VP position, Cheney and his office have set much of Bush's overall agenda since 2000, most notably in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

Leno and other political comics started goofing on this from Day One. It has become standard to refer to Cheney as "The Real President" and so forth. But when you just make this into a joke, it cheapens the reality. It makes a highly unfortunate situation - the fact that a shadowy figure, whose background remains unknown to most Americans, singularly wields an inordinate amount of power - into an accepted, everyday fact.

There was a time when I would have said, "Well, so what? You can't stop people from making jokes, and it doesn't hurt any one, and it's just how some people process new information." But now I think I can differentiate between types of humor.

When "The Daily Show" makes fun of Dick Cheney, they don't just make a cheesy "he's the real bhehind-the-scenes president" joke. They actual give you some context, often using a quote from Cheney or a real piece of found footage to highlight their message. The joke itself is the same - this unelected guy actually runs shit - but you come away with more insight into the situation than you might have had before.

But when Jay Leno or some other shitty "current events" comedian does yet another lame "Bush is stupid and Cheney is the actual president" joke, it actually kills the dialogue about that topic. There is a chilling effect, because to make that real observation is to repeat a stupid punchline.

Think about it. Let's say, you're in a coffee shop and you've just finished reading Dan Drezner's terrific column from yesterday about Cheney's excessive influence over US policy towards the torture of detainees. You comment to the person next to you - "Hey, did you read this thing Drezner's talking about from the Washington Post? Dick Cheney's still trying to convince people that torture is okay!"

And they'll just respond with something trite: "Well, we always knew he ran the show, you know."

And that's it. Conversation over. It's no longer an item of significance, because Carlos Mencia has been cracking wise about it 24-7 for a year now.

I can think of many, many topics which have suffered this fate. I'll call it Bad Comedy Fatigue (or BCF, for short). Bush's lack of intelligence is another big one. So is our failure to find any WMD's in Iraq. (And if you think I'm just making this whole phenomenon up, consider this article about Bush intentionally trying to turn the WMD fiasco into a joke).

And as long as I've brought up Carlos Mencia, is he not the worst professional stand-up comedian of all time? Seriously, he makes Carrot Top look like Eddie Murphy in Delirious. His jokes are absolutely ridiculously ancient and stupid. Every single joke is a Leno-style "zinger."

Here's how you compose a Leno or Mencia-style zinger. First, think of something that happened this week that you want to write a joke about.

It should be either something that everyone knows about (like a big news story) or something that can be easily explained in about 20 seconds. For my example, I'll use the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. (Bearing in mind that, in my joke, I won't be able to discuss any specific details about Samuel Alito, for fear of going over someone's head...Only the fact that he's a judge nominated to a big court).

Okay, now all you need is a lame joke about a famous person. Here are some samples:

- Michael Moore is fat
- George Bush is dumb
- Elton John and George Michael are gay
- Ted Kennedy is a fat drunk
- Madonna is a whore
- Paris Hilton is a rich whore
- Tara Reid is a stupid whore with big fake cans
- Lindsay Lohan is a whore who does a lot of coke
- Kevin Federline is a redneck

Please feel free to think of your own. Try to think of a celebrity everyone in America knows about, including old people and out-of-it weirdos and people who work 80 hours a week. Also, try to think of obvious flaws. Courtney Cox may have one arm that's slightly longer than the other, but that's not really going to sell the joke.

All you need to do is pair a celebrity with an obvious flaw to your news story. After thinking about it for all of 2 minutes, I have realized that I can tie Samuel Alito's nomination as a judge to Lindsay Lohan's legal troubles (particularly in terms of her jailbird father).

Then, it's just a matter of getting the wording right. So the joke would sound a little something a-like a-this...

"I don't know if you guys saw this...Sam Alito, new judge, nominated to the Supreme Court. They say, if and when he's confirmed, he'll have a backlog of something like 200 cases to deal with. Yeah! You believe that? 200 cases. And that's just Lindsay Lohan's file!"