The latest rant by Mark Thomas in the New Statesman (no free link avaliable) is about the American president and he says “hatred of Bush can be measured in units of Thatchers”.
Regardless of the sub-SWP politics and shouty style of Thomas, one thing that really surprises me is that for a comedian his columns are not funny.
Even when I agree with what he is saying, I hardly ever raise a smile. Instead I find myself uncomfortable with the smug conformism. He aims at easy targets, for a left audience such as the Statesman’s readership, but the comic ingredient just seems to be missing.
It is the same with a number of the left-wing comedians currently doing the rounds such as Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel. I just don’t find them funny.
Maybe it is just the passage of time, maybe it is simply because I am now less at ease with the far left’s ‘culture’, but the eighties generation of ‘alternative comics’, the Friday Night Live crowd who were political, did actually make me laugh.
So, is it just me, or are the new lefty comedians, basically crap?