Fox News’ The Half-Hour News Hour

I have stayed away from commenting on this show because I only saw the YouTube stuff.  Yes, that was bad.  I wanted to wait for the debut episode before I passed judgment.  Of course now I realize I could have written this entire post based on the title of the show alone about a month ago...but I’ll carry on anyway.

First impression - I thought Rush Limbaugh lost the weight?  I guess they wean you off Oxycontin with Krispy Kreme.  Second - Who replaced Ann Coulter with an anorexic horse?  Key-rist that broad is scary looking.  Opening bit with Rush as President and Mr. Ed Coulter as VP?  About a D, maybe a D-.  Badly written, poorly delivered, no timing whatsoever.  You know, like Bush’s plans to win the peace in Iraq.

HEY FOX, THAT WAS A JOKE.  Moving on.

Oh God.  The “host” opened with the “half-hour news hour delivers an hour’s worth of news in 30 minutes or less or it’s free” joke.  That joke was stale when the “30 minutes or it’s free” ads were running.  Then it got more stale when MTV used it for the Heavy Metal Half-Hour.  Tired.  Old.  Played out.  I give this joke 1 out of 10 Mencias for originality and an F for effort.

First “story” - A joke about Hillary staffing the White House with angry lesbians.  Get it?  SHE WEARS SENSIBLE SHOES!  Then a clunker about how she said she wanted to chat with America, and “If you’d like to chat with Mrs. Clinton, it’s $4.99 for the first minute...”

Look, people, we’re four lousy jokes and two minutes into the show and it just sucks so bad it’s making my brain long for a Gallagher special, and not even the real guy, I mean I’ll even take the brother who smashes cantaloupes or whatever.  Lemme tell you why the Clinton joke sucked - Because it’s BILL THAT IS THE SEX ONE, NOT HILLARY.  She’s frigid.  She has a reputation as being cold, harsh, the opposite of womanly and definitely, definitely not sexy.  The joke has no ground wire, nothing to tether it to reality.  Some moron who writes for this show saw the word “chat” and thought “Chat line.” and never gave it another moment’s consideration.

Comedy by reflex is just being a hack, people.  OK, I’m going to watch a few minutes and stop commenting on every sentence.  Yeah, right.

The biggest problem here is the material is old, old old.  You cannot possibly expect this show to take off without writing fresh-that-day material.  When I was still doing the podcast every week, I would pass on topical stuff that was more than 5 days old because no one would remember the context.

Another problem is that every joke is a hack.  It’s all material someone on the web has already written, or is so obvious that the audience could write it.

Yet another problem is delivery.  The guy is HORRIBLE.  He’s quite simply the worst “host” of anything that has ever been on TV.  The woman has some promise, but she needs Samantha Bee to teach her delivery.

The ACLU joke going to commercial was just stupid.  There’s so many things about the ACLU to mock...but the fact that they protected free speech for the Klan?  Idiots, we WANT them doing that...your joke isn’t funny unless you mock them for doing something wrong.  Let;s see...off the top of my head.

In the last 25 years, the rights of American children to wear obscenities on t-shirts has been greatly infringed upon by an ever-increasing gestapo mentality in this country.  School Administrators, concerned with things like decency and discipline have had the nerve, on more than one occassion, to strip a student of not only his ir her right to express themselves, but sometimes of the very clothing they have chosen to represent that expression.  We’ve recently won a number of battles that have returned the rights of school children everywhere to exercise their First Amendment Rights as Americans.  So when your son wants to wear a shirt that bears a photo of a woman being raped by UN Peacekeeping forces in Darfur, or your daughter wants to wear a shirt that says “I may not have one yet, but even I know to F-(BEEP)-k Bush,” remember, we helped protect your rights.  We’re the ACLU.  Just don’t call us about the Second Amendment, you redneck bastards.

That needs work, obviously, but come ON, that’s a MUCH better premise.

From shitty “why is Suzanne Summers rich” jokes (Umm, she’s rich from the Thigh-Master, stupids) to outdated Marion Barry jokes to the really well-thought-out joke where the Barack Obama magazine is called “BO.” Get it?  Because black people smell!

Way to go, Fox.  What’s next, jokes about how nappy his momma’s hair is?

Oh Christ.  The Ed Bagley jokes are horrible.  And long.

How the fuck did Dom Irrera get roped into this shit?  After a truly flat and busted joke about the Che Gueverra and Mao Tse Tung shirts, the host guy asks Dom if he has any other shirts honoring brutal mass murderers and dictators who blah blah blah.

HERE’S AN OPPORTUNITY TO SHOW THAT WE CAN LAUGH AT OURSELVES, FOX!

Dom’s reply should be “No, but I do have this one” and have him hold up a shirt with Dick Cheney as Darth Vader.  See, you can do that because YOU OWN THE RIGHTS TO USE STAR WARS STUFF, FOX.  Plus, you get the whole “Cheney is Vader” and “Cheney is a brutal dictator” joke as a 2-for-1 bonus.

OH MY GOD the chick host just read the frigging shirt.  STOP READING THE SHIRTS!  STOP EXPLAINING EVERY DETAIL OF THE DAMN JOKES.  If you have to explain it, it’s not funny.  Unless the explanation itself is the funny.

I’ve isolated another problem - the writers think we’re stupid.  They’re over-explaining EVERYTHING.  This is awful.  Even the hot girl going to commercial wasn’t hot, she was just...a joke.  Not the good kind either, like you’d expect on a comedy show.

Hey, really funny joke about Ed Bagley again.  Oh, no wait, that was a delusion created when I bashed the remote into my face 236 times.

The Global Warming bit had promise, but again, it was written by monkeys.  And here comes an ACLU joke that will fall flat on it’s face.  God forbid we protect the fourth fucking amendment.  If you’re going to attack and criticize through satire, at least make sure you’re on the right side of the debate before you do it.

This sucks.  I haven’t seen anything suck this hard since I popped the question.  ba-dum-dum.

SEE THAT?  IT’S A JOKE.

And we end on a shit-tastic Ed Bagley getting raped in prison joke.

That show is horrible and it should be canceled about two weeks ago.  I’m going to fucking bed.  Fox’s attempts at humor have sent me into a shame spiral.  I need to curl up with a kitty and pretend I have a vagina and a box of Godiva truffles just to feel better.  Not exactly out of my ordinary routine, I just thought I’d mention it.

Looks like I’m not alone.  Wuzzadem = funny.  No like.  Steve H., Mr. HogOnIce no like so much he made this.  Plus he’s been on about this all week...just savagely ripping this show to shreds.  Every word, of course, is accurate and true - it stinks like a Frenchman on Friday.

Oh screw you, I dare you to stick your face in a real French guy’s armpit on any given Friday before the weekly bath.  I dare you.  Don’t go callin’ me a racist...that shit’ll peel your face like paint stripper.

Posted by JimK at 01:07 AM on February 19, 2007
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Categories: Television,  News,  Politics,  The Stupidity Of Man
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