Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate

Right wing shock jock Rush Limbaugh is (surprise, surprise!) none too pleased that media giant CBS has signed comedian Stephen Colbert to a five-year deal to succeed David Letterman as the host of The Late Show beginning in 2015.

“CBS has just declared war on the heartland of America,” Limbaugh sputtered. “No longer is comedy going to be a covert assault on traditional American values, conservatives. Now it’s just wide-out in the open.”

Limbaugh is wrong. Colbert’s comedy is actually a defense of traditional American values. He does our country a service by satirizing and mocking right wing talking points four nights a week. He is a talented and witty entertainer, unlike Limbaugh, who is merely capable of crudely shouting into a microphone.

Limbaugh and the Republican Noise Machine like to assert on a regular basis that the media has a liberal bias; it’s the rationale they use to justify their existence. But the traditional media actually skews conservative. Sunday talk shows, for instance, are dominated by older white men who discuss issues using right wing framing.

Limbaugh seems to consider himself to be a comedian, judging by how he explains away the dumb and insensitive things he says on air, but he’s not.

Anyone can tell a bad joke; telling good jokes is harder.

Conservatives have very few personalities that seem to be capable of telling a good joke. Perhaps that’s because comedy is an art form, and progressives are more interested in the arts than conservatives. Progressives are much more likely than conservatives to have received a liberal arts education, to have earned a college degree, and to be capable of enjoying jokes at their own expense.

This is not to say conservatives cannot be comedians, or that conservatives cannot be funny. Judging by what we’ve observed, though, there don’t seem to be many other dimensions to conservative humor beyond attempting to ridicule progressives.