And perhaps a new contest? Can any of you actually watch this entire clip? Try. I tried really hard to watch this entire 9 minute sample of Fox's "1/2 Hour News Hour." After about four minutes, I had to shut it off.
"The 1/2 Hour News Hour" is like a David Cronenberg film. You don't just watch it; instead, it becomes a part of you. The bad comedy is in my head! Dear God, grab that power drill and jam it into my eyeball! Anything to rid me of Kurt McNally's sub-SportsCenter post-Kilborn nasally smug-drone!
Seriously, Roger Ailes, I know you think you can get away with showing anything because your audience is made up exclusively of jerks who watch Fox News to pisses off imaginary hippies and 90 year olds Montanans who aren't aware that such a thing as a television has been invented, let alone that they own one and it's tuned to Fox News. But you've got to cancel this show. This thing is a trainwreck by Fox News standards. You guys pay John Gibson and I'm telling you that your decision to air "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" is considerably worse!
You could hire Colin Quinn and Jimmy Fallon to host the real NBC Nightly News and it would reflect a saner managerial philosophy than going forward with this "Daily Show" rip-off experiment one minute longer.
It's not even conservative! That opening sketch has no political perspective, really, other than making light of both the Duke Rape Case and the Imus controversy. (I thought conservatives were still upset about the Duke thing, though, because it's just another example of how white men can't get a break in this society...)
One afternoon, when I was a junior or senior in high school, I got a ride from my mother with my little brother and his friend in the backseat. (I want to say the friend's name was Nate, but it could have been Nick...I'm pretty sure it was either Nick or Nate.) Anyway, they were babbling on about some kind of silly bullshit. They were middle-school students at the time.
I'm sure any adult human being on this planet would have found their conversation inane, but for some reason, the level of inanity really started to piss me off. I was getting visibly upset that they were being so loud and boisterous and nonsensical back there, to the point that my mother had to remind me that they were just kids, and that I too sounded really stupid when I was in middle school with friends in the backseat.
That's the kind of irritation I feel when I view these "1/2 Hour Comedy Hour" clips. It has very little to do with my regular disdain for Fox News. These clips aren't genuinely offensive. That would be interesting. Rush Limbaugh's "Barack the Magic Negro" song was genuinely offensive, which is why I wrote a blog post about how he's a racist asshole. Pretty much everything Glenn Beck has ever said is offensive. (Yes, I know, he's on CNN, but bear with me here...)
Jokes about Mexican protesters enjoying the zesty flavor of pepper spray and female-on-male sexual harassment may not entirely appropriate, but they're not inherently offensive. They're just fucking stupid.
This is 9 minutes of pure pain. I defy you to watch the whole thing.
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