Sites like the Exile and Something Awful offer true comedy on the web, but Exile is really like a magazine and SA is focused on making comedy—they’re not blogs.

Blogs offer snarkiness, looseness, the imperative to state one’s personal opinions, as well as true interactivity that’s not mediated by an editor deciding which one or two letters get published. Naturally there’s an element of humor in the snarkiness, but for me that’s about the extent of humor I find in lefty blogs, and it’s pretty thin sauce. Nothing wrong with any of that, but I’m interested to know whether John thinks that anything he writes here is truly lol “funny.”

“For that which can be shewn only in a certain Light, is questionable.Truth, ’tis suppos’d, may bear all Lights: and one of those principal Lights or natural Mediums, by which Things are to be view’d, in order to a thorow Recognition, is Ridicule it-self, or that Manner of Proof by which we discern whatever is liable to just Raillery in any Subject.
So much, at least, is allow’d by All, who at any time appeal to this Criterion. The gravest Gentlemen, even n the gravest Subjects, are suppos’d to acknowledg this: and can have no Right, ’tis thought, to deny others the Freedom of this Appeal; whilst they are free to censure like other Men, and in their gravest Arguments make no scruple to ask, Is it not Ridiculous?”

Stephen Colbert would not have been able to make Stewart’s point as effectively.

That made me laugh—and then I realized that it was in much the same way Steyn sometimes makes me laugh. So, your line and his are comparably funny, therefore comparably true.

Aside from demonstrating the fallacy, though, consider newspaper sports journalism. Though usually regarded as jouranlism-lite, it often packages solid reporting and sound insight with humor and the most colorful writing in the paper. To some extent, I think the use of humor can lead readers or viewers to discount the seriousness of your point. Maybe overcoming this “discount” is the mark of the truly great “funny commentator”? With Mark Twain the presumed apotheosis.

“Precisely because we are at bottom grave and serious human beings—really more weights than human beings—nothing does us as much good as a fool’s cap: we need it in relation to ourselves—we need all exuberant, floating, dancing, mocking, childish, and blissful art lest we lose the freedom above things that our ideal demands of us. It would mean a relapse for us, with our irritable honesty, to get involved entirely in morality and, for the sake of the over-severe demands we make on ourselves in these matters, to become virtuous monsters and scarecrows. We should be able also to stand above morality—and not only to stand with the anxious stiffness of a man who is afraid of slipping and falling at any moment, but also to float above it and play! How then could we possibly dispense with art, and with the fool?”

He had a name for this kind of thing: the Gay Science.

There is so much ugliness and viciousness and fundamental untruths that the blogosphere transmits. It also is a vehicle for ugly rumors, for scurrilous personal attacks, an avenue for the creation of urban legends which are deeply corrosive of the political system and of people’s faith in it.

Steve

I tend to agree with John Emerson about the limits of humor. In fact, I thought Jon Stewart was unconvincing on Crossfire—how does Stewart know he’s not hurting America, too? How does he know he’s helping by turning politics into a comedy product presented by a huge corporation and made to be consumed on a couch? (Disclaimer: I do the same thing, only worse, because my show doesn’t even have politics. Double disclaimer: having had to write daily topical jokes back in the day, I know how hard it is & appreciate hiis show even more. They need that every fourth week off, people.)