A 2022 Best Comedy Book, Vulture
A rousing call for liberals and progressives to pay attention to
the emergence of right-wing comedy and the political power of humor.
"Why do conservatives hate comedy? Why is there no right-wing
Jon Stewart?" These sorts of questions launch a million tweets,
a thousand op-eds, and more than a few scholarly analyses. That's
Not Funny argues that it is both an intellectual and politically
strategic mistake to assume that comedy has a liberal bias. Matt
Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx take readers––particularly
self-described liberals––on a tour of contemporary conservative
comedy and the "right-wing comedy complex."
In That's Not Funny, "complex" takes on an important
double meaning. On the one hand, liberals have developed a
social-psychological complex—it feels difficult, even dangerous, to
acknowledge that their political opposition can produce comedy. At
the same time, the right has been slowly building up a
comedy-industrial complex, utilizing the humorous, irony-laden media
strategies of liberals such as Jon Stewart, Samantha Bee, and John
Oliver to garner audiences and supporters. Right-wing comedy has been
hiding in plain sight, finding its way into mainstream conservative
media through figures ranging from Fox News's Greg Gutfeld to
libertarian podcasters like Joe Rogan. That's Not Funny taps
interviews with conservative comedians and observations of them in
action to guide readers through media history, text, and technique.
You will find many of these comedians utterly appalling, some
surprisingly funny, and others just plain weird. They are all,
however, culturally and politically relevant—the American right is
attempting to seize spaces of comedy and irony previously held firmly
by the left. You might not like this brand of humor, but you can't
ignore it.