Seriously: “The 1/2 Hour News Hour” is so unfunny as to be affirmatively insulting. Do the programmers at Fox really think that we their viewers are this dumb? ~David Frum

This is what’s so amusing about Surnow’s little project.  Indeed, it is probably the only amusing thing about this project.  Yes, they think their conservative viewers are this dumb and easily amused because, well, FoxNews’ entire portrayal of what passes for conservatism operates at a pretty low, visceral level–and their viewers apparently can’t get enough of it.  They just aimed a little too low in this case, but in the world of Idiocracy (which is effectively the ideal world as imagined by FoxNews pundits 500 years from now with a Costco as large as a lake and a President who fires off a machine gun during his State of the Union) it would be the perfect fit.  That’s it–Surnow was just ahead of his time!  This is a depressing phenomenon to observe, but what it isn’t is surprising.  This is the same audience that regularly tunes in to hear Bill Kristol’s thoughts on foreign policy, which they apparently must regard as informed and interesting, so how sharp could they really be?   

There is comedy in all of this–it just doesn’t come from the show’s own skits.  This show has been conceived by avowed torture-con Joel Surnow and Roger Ailes for the explicit purpose of providing the “conservative” fake news comedy we’ve all supposedly been dying to have, and it appears on FoxNews, where all good Republicans go to receive their reprogramming lessons.  Its pedigree as a product of the nightmare that is Murdoch’s empire is unsurpassed.  Its self-conscious pretensions to conservatism are at least as great and as false as those of David Frum himself.  And it is horrible!  Absolutely horrible!  So horrible that even Frum must turn away in disgust–now he understands how the rest of us feel. 

Frum’s review of the show reminds me of the suggestion that was made not that long ago that Michael Savage had to be some kind of double agent working for the left to make people on the right appear to be lunatics (in the same way, I suppose, that Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore are actually secretly doing the bidding of Karl Rove, right?).  That his ranting performance has a fairly large and loyal following did not seem to shake the doubter’s view that Savage couldn’t really be what he claimed he was.  Apparently, the would-be high-brow set in the movement don’t get down into the muck of the madness that is lgf nor do they wade into the Freeper fever swamp very often.  This allows them plausible deniability: “No one on our side advocates torture!  That would be wrong!”