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Why are most comedians left wing?

MVV said:
I struggle to understand why any thinking human would be right wing.
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No decent, intelligent, compassionate human being can be right wing. They are mutually exclusive. These qualities are very important to comedy!
Personally I utterly reject any concept of "right wing" being an acceptable viewpoint on the political spectrum. It is based on hatred, both thrives on and encourages inequality as one of its central tenets, embraces the evil of "might is right", considers the flora, fauna and mineral reserves of the planet as something to be relentlessly plundered for profit... and that's just the tip of the now melting into the ocean iceberg!
 
Cheese said:
And of the, say, 10 greatest Hollywood actors of all time, are you sure left-wingers are the majority ? John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, etc.
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John Wayne was 100% right-wing, but Clint Eastwood’s politics are not so easily categorised. He is registered as a supporter of the US Libertarian party, which is a mix of very progressive (environmental protection, LGBT rights, anti-racism) and very conservative (small government, gun rights, fiscal conservatism) viewpoints.

My own feeling is that the overall balance is pretty even, if not left-leaning. Against John Wayne, how about Marlon Brando? He generally kept his political opinions to himself (but was a registered Democrat all his life), but asked an Apache woman to reject his Oscar for The Godfather as a protest against Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans in film.

A quick web search of "greatest actors" and their political views reveals Robert de Niro to be a long-time left-winger; Elizabeth Taylor, long time Democrat (despite being married to a Republican Senator for a while), Richard Burton, very much Welsh Labour, almost Communist at times - just read his diaries (really, do: they’re beautifully written); Meryl Streep, famously left-wing. Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, all liberals. Tom Hanks more so. Even the ever-secretive Tom Cruise donates more to Democrat than Republican politicians.

Even allowing for more right-wing views being unpopular and so more likely to be hidden, it does seen that most of the most famous screen actors are left-leaning politically.
 
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Radio 4 had a disastrous experiment last year, putting 'witty' right-wingers on The News Quiz on Radio4.

It wasn't a success.

Any ribbing of a right-wing figure was met with po-faced mansplaining as to why they were wrong.

Simon Evans is very funny though.

Recently Simon Evans has been labelled as a, if not THE, right-wing comedian so here he takes a look at where those accusations have come from and whether he is guilty as charged.

The problem is that left-wing comedians will satirise all Governments and politicians. The few right-wing ones rarely will criticise Trump or the Tories and as they are in power, it leaves something of a satirical vacuum.

Stephen
 
The funniest explicitly political comedy series (Yes, Minister) was written by two blokes, one right-wing, one left-wing. (The Thick Of It might have been funnier, but I found it impossible to watch because of the hand-held camera work).

But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that you watch a new comedian and you laugh out loud at their routine. You have no idea whether he/she is left or right-wing, but you find out the next day that he/she is in fact right-wing. Does that suddenly make them less funny?
 
Joe Hutch said:
The funniest explicitly political comedy series (Yes, Minister) was written by two blokes, one right-wing, one left-wing. (The Thick Of It might have been funnier, but I found it impossible to watch because of the hand-held camera work).

But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that you watch a new comedian and you laugh out loud at their routine. You have no idea whether he/she is left or right-wing, but you find out the next day that he/she is in fact right-wing. Does that suddenly make them less funny?
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No.

I find some RW humourists quite funny PJ O’Rourke & Matthew Paris are good examples. David Sedaris is hilarious but I suspect he holds some RW views.

I find this binary analysis rather tedious as most people hold a range of contradictory views in their head.
 
Anecdotally comedians are sad, depressed people who crave applause and validation. Maybe right-wingers are just happier. All depends how you define comedy and comedian though, which I doubt we could agree on. Presumably we are talking about people who call themselves comedians.
 
Bart said:
Anecdotally comedians are sad, depressed people who crave applause and validation. Maybe right-wingers are just happier. All depends how you define comedy and comedian though, which I doubt we could agree on. Presumably we are talking about people who call themselves comedians.
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"I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that"

Robin Williams
 
Then there are the accidental comedians. Chap agitating in his wife's well-attended fertility clinic tried to lighten the air by telling a few jokes to the waiting partners. He received a standing ovulation.
 
Q: Why do late night comedians skew left wing?
A: Because right wing viewers have to work down the factory in the morning.
 
Mike Reed said:
Then there are the accidental comedians. Chap agitating in his wife's well-attended fertility clinic tried to lighten the air by telling a few jokes to the waiting partners. He received a standing ovulation.
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As long as the he did not end up with egg on his face
 
KrisW said:
The original argument is flawed, and assumes that people’s political beliefs cannot be changed by experience. (That itself is a sad reflection on how polarised political opinion has become: political allegiance is being peddled as identity, rather than something that one is free to change as circumstances change)
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That's because political beliefs at the level of left and right wing *are* identity. Or at least personality. Specifically, they are formed into deep parts of our personality as we grow up and lead to all those motivated reasoning and cognitive dissonance effects we know so well from politics.

Broadly speaking if you grow up in such a way as to have an authoritarian (in the psychology sense) personality then you will tend to be right wing. If not you tend to be left wing. Hence why they are deep rooted personality effects and cannot be changed.
 
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