Okay. Let's talk about "Conservative Comedy" shows. They all have one thing in common: Nearly instant failure. Remember the "Half Hour News Hour" that was supposed to compete with Jon Stewart's Daily Show? No, of course you fucking don't because it lasted 17 eps on Fox News. 1/ https://twitter.com/Gutfeldfox/status/1379269379280359427

Conservatives can be funny. They can. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour guys were genuinely funny when they were doing their observational and self-deprecating humor. Might not be your thing but the laughs were there. Nobody's going to accuse any of them of being closet liberals. 2/

But, and this is important, they weren't being "Conservative Comics" on that tour. They were just comics who happened to be conservatives, talking about (mostly) relatable experiences. Their politics weren't being shoehorned into the acts. 3/

"But liberals shoehorn politics into their acts all the time and you still think they're funny!" somebody with a Don Jr. body pillow is saying right now.

Yes, they do, and yes, it works. And here's why. Bear with me because this will take a minute.

Comedy. Requires. Empathy. 4/

In order to find situational or self-deprecating jokes funny, you need to be able to place yourself within the context of the joke. You need to be able to feel what the comedian was feeling when that happened to them. You need to relate to their anxiety or embarrassment. 5/

Jokes about how their marriage is on the rocks, or how dealing with family holidays are stressful, or how work sucks, or how dating is hard, all mainstays of stand-up comedy, requires the audience to put themselves in the shoes of the comic. Otherwise, it simply doesn't work. 6/

This works in reverse, too, btw. When a comic is ripping on a politician, or actor, or whomever who did or said something incredibly stupid, racist, what have you, the audience is reacting to the public dragging because they recognize how ashamed that person SHOULD feel. 7/

Again, this all requires a connection between the comic and the audience, and that connection is based on empathy. Feeling what another person is feeling, and recognizing the validity of those feelings. 8/

When a "conservative" comic is just talking about their lives and experiences, it's still easy for audiences to connect with them as a person and feel empathy for their stories. But when they switch to trying to force a conservative ideology into their comedy, it fails. 9/

Because in many ways, the modern take on conservatism is an ideology utterly absent of empathy. It discards individual lived experiences and stories for a dogmatic defense of the status-quo and the powerful men who fight to maintain it. It is based on cruelty, indifference. 10/

It's pretty hard to write a joke that defends Amazon forcing its workers to piss in bottles or be fired that makes the workers out to be the bad guys in the situation, but that's the hill you have to climb if you're going to write "Conservative comedy." 11/

In this regard, progressive comedians do have a built-in advantage over conservative counterparts because they're not "punching down." They're speaking truth to power, which has been ne of the foundational principles of comedy going back to the Court Jester. 12/

But again, that's because comedy is, at its core, about empathy. And that's something none of these aborted attempts at comedy shows understand. Instead of comedy, they end up in a pantomime of performative cruelty that only appeals to people who tortured animals as kids. 13/

It's not funny, it's only mean. And there has to be a long-broken part of you to find entertainment in celebrating the suffering of the people you've already been tormenting for centuries. 14/14

Aaaand there it is: https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/1379982103996035073?s=19