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Comment by charlieflowers | Hacker News Reader

First time I've heard of the show. I watched about 20 minutes ... pretty good. The style reminds me of Samantha B ... political commentary sprinkled with humor.

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The style is very formulaic in my opinion. Find something outrageous someone said or did or contradicting themself, then say "that would be like if..." And make an extreme analogy usually with crude or sexual humor.

Personally, it's tiring and the information density is too low. And sometimes the logic of the analogy doesn't work, and they pretend the analogy proves something even though analogies never do, they can only be used to illustrate.

Oliver, Bee, all thr political comedy shows do the same thing. I can't figure out if I think Jon Stewart's show was better or if I was just younger and not tired of that style yet.

I think John Stewart’s show was a little more intelligent. His discussion with Jim Cramer comes to mind - he actually convinced him and Jim changed his show noticeably afterwards.

These newer shoes exist mainly to speak to the already converted.

why is information density a meaningful metric for comedy? i agree with the rest of your point, it's formulaic and repetitive at this point

I guess it's not, but the way the shows are structured, such as Oliver's and Minhaj's they seem to be partly educational where they try to summarize a topic, but it's frequently missing relevant information so I don't get anything out of that aspect of the show either. Audience ideally shouldn't be expecting a news comedy show to be a complete source of information.

Information density is an interesting thing to expect from an entertainment show. Not even a regular news show is informationally dense.

There's a pretty long tradition of political standup, which is what I take Minhaj's act to be. Lewis Black, Will Durst, Lenny Bruce of course, Mort Sahl (who is said by some to be the first modern standup comic), and Will Rogers all relied on current events and commentary for their routines. This doesn't even touch on the much larger (and mainstream) community of riffers like Vaughn Meader, David Frye, Rich Little, etc.

I think it's much more entertaining than Samantha B myself.

It's Samantha Bee. That's her name.

> political commentary sprinkled with humor.

I think you're right about their shows, but both Hasan Minhaj and Samantha Bee are comedians, so why are we entrusting political commentary to comedians?

Being neutral on any spectrum, Richard Pryor and George Carlin are socially accepted as two of the greatest comdeians of this time and they spoke on politics often. If doing so does anything, it accomplishes bringing awareness to bigger issues to an audience who it may not normally be exposed to.

Under the harshest rulers, very often the only person allowed to speak truth to power is the buffoon.

The same reason we trust it to anyone else. I’ve never understood the “he/she is a comedian therefore unfit to comment on serious matters.

I think we have all seen comedians shoehorn their version of values into their routine and come off unfunny and preachy. It turns out comedians write about what they think about. Even Carlin childed comedians who put their politics first. Its more a matter of You have to be funny First.

> Its more a matter of You have to be funny First.

Exactly, but then being funny renders you unable to talk about anything but funny stuff.

Because much of the best comedy is about real life, which often involves politics.

This is perhaps reductive, but maybe we should treat these shows as exposure to a certain viewpoint and nothing more: You are still absolutely free to make up your own mind on a given matter.

Political Commentary is also not something to be rationed - as per se, it would be extremely misguided (and illegal, in the US) to regulate who can be televised on a given matter (Although I assume that you mean "we" as in society rather than the state?)

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