Jesse Steele

The Conservartist (mp3)

I was watching Bob Mankoff, from the New Yorker, as he publicly dissected humor. He sifts through about a thousand comics each week to decide which 17 “idea drawings” will appear in the famous New York publication.

As Bob explains, a zoo with a tiger cage that has no tiger is a bad zoo, though it’s certainly “politically correct”. But who wants a politically correct zoo? Like the zoo, humor can’t work with empty tiger cages. The best smiles have teeth and you can’t laugh without both the teeth and the smile. Once you offend no one, you bore everyone. If you entertain most people, you’ll offend most of the rest.

When Rush Limbaugh said something controversial, his sponsors pulled their ads—but it was the sponsors, not Rush, who lost money. Marketing “experts” didn’t seem to get it: Controversy was always the secret to Limbaugh’s success. People don’t pay to see tiger cages without tigers.  · · · →