Humorless Comedy at Fox

Alessandra Stanley reviewed The 1/2 News Hour for the New York Times:

Making fun of the president is not ideological. Not making fun of the president, on the other hand, is.

And that’s what distinguishes “The ½ Hour News Hour,� a Fox News version of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,� from most other satirical shows. Comedians like Mr. Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno and David Letterman ridicule whoever is in power, be it Bill Clinton or President Bush, John McCain or Nancy Pelosi.
[...]
“ ½ Hour� is more tightly wound. Some of the writing is clever. “After months of being criticized for hosting a Holocaust denial conference in December,� Mr. McNally says, “the Iranian government is now denying that the conference ever took place.� He adds, “Or if it did, that attendance figures were greatly exaggerated by a Zionist-controlled media.�

But most of the punch lines are silly, and the material too skimpy and narrow in range. It has been a long time since anyone laughed at jokes about Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio.

There is nothing wrong with Fox News adding a comedy show to its roster, and in some ways it’s quite fitting. Humor is by definition unfair and unbalanced, but it is most effective when it is more evenly and broadly spread.

Alessandra is quite mild, in my humble opinion at least. What I saw of the show thus far is absolutely horrible. It’s not ‘just’ that they only make fun of the left (whatever works I’d say), but it’s also, quite simply, that the jokes are incredibly lame.