Propaganda: Use of Humour

Using humour in propaganda is a fine art, and you will often find that it falls flat with people who are not convinced. As a liberal I often find Conservative humour not only unfunny but actually kind of stomach turning. Very much how I feel when listening to a bully in the playground picking on someone. I'm pretty sure that conservatives must feel the same way when they listen to the daily show with Jon Stewart, or the Colbert Report.

Last Night, on Saturday Night Live, the opening skit was one of the funniest conservative-leaning bits I have heard in a while. It had Barack Obama at a joint press conference with the Chinese leader Hu Jintao. Hu is speaking Chinese, simultaneously translated by a young woman with a slightly whiny voice, who generally maintains her flat nasal interpreter's tone, but occasionally breaks into some yelling. It opens with Obama lecturing China about some human rights stuff etc, then Hu takes over with the first of many funny bits where he talks like a New Jersey lone shark collecting a debt. (except through an interpreter of course)

Interpreter: "I completely understand why you feel entitled to come here and lecture China on our shortcomings. After all my country does owe the United States a great deal of money. Oh wait... hold on a moment...now that I think about it, it is your country that owes us a lot of money!"

It is a real classic, one that rivals the "More cowbell" by Will Ferrell and Sarah Palin impersonations by Tina Fey. If the skit has not been taken down yet it's here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZXEShSIFks


The skit pokes fun at the US for owing China so much money. It is not overtly political, but several of propaganda points are made for the conservative side.

Now here is some extreme conservative humour, in a tone that I find almost unbearable, so you are forgiven if you don't click on the link. The issue is a seventeen year old girl in line for a Sarah Palin event wearing the T-shirt "Wall Street got a 700 billion dollar bailout and all I got was this lousy T-shirt". A reporter from MSNBC interviews the girl ands asks if she is aware that Sarah Palin supported the Wall Street bailout publicly (which everyone agrees is true, but embarrassing for the Republicans.) Glenn Beck uses some of his conservative humour to turn this back against the liberals.

Glenn Beck's Show (Conservative humourist/opinion commentator)

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911190016