Just Let Kimmel be Kimmel

Now I get angry at media fairness a lot.  I would like to think that it’s probably one of my most written subjects here at NP.  By the way, me and some of the boys started calling this site NP around the office for short.  We think it makes us sound clever and reverent.  We also started calling Keln BK.  It’s for “Big Keln”.  Its not cuz he’s fat or anything, it’s because he’s the big guy in charge.  So let this article also serve as your map key for abbreviations in the future.

Now that my digression has come to an end I can get back on the topic at hand, Liberal comedy.

Last night apparently Jimmy Kimmel made some Romney jokes at the Emmey's.  This made the front page of bighollywood.com and some other conservative blogs.  Personally I just shake this stuff off and don’t let it bother me at all.  We always see stories about how snl won’t skewer Obama the same way they skewer republicans and we have to remember one crucial fact.

The studio audience is who they are trying to make laugh, not the viewer at home.  If that were the case the show would have gone off the air 15 years ago.

I remember a few years ago after Al Sharpton gave his “resist we must” speech, snl did a great skit about it.  It got all of 7 laughs, and those all came from me.  A few days later I was talking about it at work and no one thought it was funny.  Reason being, they were either A-political, democrats, or didn’t watch Al’s show so they thought it was made up and over the top.  I’m sure the audience felt the same way.

Another example we can take directly from me.  Not to long ago I did my first stand up show ever.  All humbleness aside I killed.  I was very surprised at how many laughs I got.  I ended the set with a bit about Obama announcing the death of Bin laden, but I added in a bunch of N-bombs to show how stupid racism is.  It was a big risk as a white guy, but that was the point.  I wanted to shock people and show everyone how stupid it was.  It really brought the house down, and after I even got props from black people who told me how great that bit was.

Now fast forward a few months.  I get asked to perform in Detroit before my out of town friends band played.  It was mostly because he wanted to see my set.  I said sure but didn’t think it was going to play well.  He said it would be fine, either way I agreed cuz I hadn’t seen him in a few years.

This time I bombed hard core.  I got a few scattered laughs, but the average person in the audience was wearing an ironic beard and a scarf for no good reason.  That’s right; I played a room filled with hipsters.  My Obama stuff sucked more air out of the room than an air room sucking machine. 

So that in a round about sort of way is my point.  Democrats and hipsters can’t laugh at themselves.  Conservatives can, so just remember, it’s not necessarily the writers, most of the time it’s the room.

Did that make any sense?