Just Joking Around

Being a right-winger nowadays may seem like no laughing matter, but there really are conservatives with a sense of humor. Even ones who tell jokes professionally. Even Jewish ones. And some of them appear at “Right to Laugh,” a comic showcase staged most recently at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills earlier this month.

But are they funny? You decide:

“If God had known all his chosen people were gonna turnout socialist, he would have left all our [rear ends] in Egypt…. Jews may have been the Chosen People once, but somewhere between Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy, I think God gave up. At this point, it’s between Christians and Muslims….” — Julia Gorin

“How do I understand a liberal? I take a conservative, then I take away reason and accountability.”

“I’m a Jew and an American, so I have so many reasons to dislike the French…. We bail this country out every 30 years…. They helped us during the Revolutionary War, and they’ve been milking that … but wasn’t that right after the French and Indian Wars…? The last war France won was led by a 12-year-old girl.” — Keith Barany

“I heard that ‘Republicans are the daddy party’ and ‘Democrats are the mommy party….’ Well, folks … mommy is no longer with us. We Republicans are now single parents. There is now only the grown-up party and the kiddy party…. Once you understand Democrats are children, you understand everything you need to know about them…. Why Democrats are children: Children and Democrats have a very rich fantasy life … a hard time differentiating between fantasy and truth…. When you don’t believe in truth … your job becomes to indoctrinate others, to undermine other people’s belief in truth…. That’s why they don’t like intelligent design — they don’t like intelligent anything.” — Evan Sayet, presenter of “Right to Laugh”

Fans include Jim Gilchrist, founder of The Minutemen. “Jack Benny … and Jackie Gleason were conservatives,” he asserted. “I don’t really have an appreciation for the irresponsible liberal [comedians] because they tend to be risqué, insulting and offensive.”

Another enthusiast is David Horowitz: “Howard Dean is an unintentional laugh riot…. The stance of conservatism is to see irony…. So of course, the conservative viewpoint is compatible with comedy.”

He added: “Comedy is often the compensation of the victimized, excluded and oppressed…. Who’s more persecuted in the laugh culture and literary culture than conservatives?”

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