He Who Laughs Left Laughs Best

Some have wondered why comedians seem so afraid these days to take on Barack Obama. I think eventually they will (though I don't know if they'll lace into him like they did our last president). On a wider level, some argue that humor is just naturally on the side of the liberal.

This idea has been around for at least a few decades now. For instance, reading through The Funniest One In The Room, a bio of improv great Del Close, I came across this interview from the early 60s:

Q: Bob Newhart said recently "I've never heard a good reactionary comic. There's no Republican Mort Sahl. Anybody as individual as a comic would naturally tend toward the liberal party." Do you agree with that?

Close: Yes, although I thought that Bob Newhart would probably be a Republican. [...] And we've been asked the same thing. Why is satire always left of center? And people say the Second City's socialist or communist oriented, but actually it's even further out than that. It's anarchistic. Anything that's organized has got to be bad, somehow or other. There's got to be something to knock in anything.

Del Close was a well-read guy, so it's a bit surprising to see this. It lacks perspective. The idea that satire is the province of the Left is a modern idea. Historically, satire has been just as likely to come from the conservative side (whatever that meant at the time) as the liberal.

Look at the first great satirist we know, Aristophanes. He often comes across as a reactionary. In The Clouds, he mocks the new-fangled ideas of the Sophists, as personified by Socrates. In The Frogs, the older, more classical tragedian Aeschylus is not only declared a greater poet than the "modern" Euripides, but also the wiser man. And though Lysistrata is often performed as a feminist/pacifist work today, to the ancient Athenian audience it probably read as a warning over what degrading levels your society could sink if your men aren't masculine enough.

Then there's the greatest satirist in the English language, Jonathan Swift. His attacks were wide-ranging, but, though he could be critical, he supported the church and aristocracy of his time. A great debate of his day was the ancients versus the moderns (with satires coming down on both sides), and I'd say in A Tale Of A Tub, his heart is more with the ancients. Then look at his most famous work, Gulliver's Travels. No one gets away unscathed, but it's hard to miss his attack in Book Three on the Academy, with its philosophers and scientists, brimming with nutty new ideas, incapable of doing anything practical.

I think it's true in recent times (how recent I can't say), satirists, and even artists in general, have become associated with the Left. But it hasn't always been the case, and there's no reason to believe it will continue this way indefinitely.