Thanks for all your thoughts.
The existence of an absolute standard for the truth (as in the High Noon example) is not always obvious and self-evident, and it takes an extreme situation for people to notice. There are people with enough character and reasoning ability to remember where the truth lies and use it as a guidance in their lives. There are others who quickly forget about it, or never see it at all, and claim that the truth is either unknowable, or is conveniently located in the most accessible places (their reproductive organs, an NPR broadcast, or the morning issue of the New York Times).
Considering these two views of the truth, the discussion about what political humor is funny or unfunny is meaningless due the impossibility to agree on one common standard.
It’s the same problem as with political coverage in the media: there will probably never be an agreement on one standard of the truth; therefore, there can never be “neutral” and “unbiased” reporting. The pretense at neutrality at the MSM is a harmful myth, and the success of Fox News may be explained by their decision to move away from that pretense and deliver news and opinions clearly labeled as “left,” “right,” and “centrist.”
Perhaps the best way to identify liberal bias in the MSM is to let the reporters look at the People’s Cube and see if they laugh at it.
Most of them probably won’t – which explains the near absence of conservative humor in the traditional media. People who honestly believe that the absolute truth is to be found in their own pants, will not find conservative humor funny or worthy of promoting – they’ll promote the empty and pompous Bill Maher instead and continue to remain under the impression that conservatives never laugh and don’t know what “funny” is.
