Terrorists Don’t Know the First Thing About Comedy!
by nielskunze on September 11, 2014
It’s disgusting!
It’s your big debut. You stand and deliver the goods just like you rehearsed it. Your sidekick kinda flubs one line, but they tweak that in the editing. No problem.
The James Foley beheading video is a huge success; nearly everyone who views it laughs and laughs! And it feels pretty good, doesn’t it?
And then you go and break the first rule of comedy. You tell the exact same joke to the very same audience… and all you get are a few embarrassed snickers. Can you blame them?
You’ve got to keep the material fresh!
Now everyone’s just scratching their heads. What are they supposed to think? Are you seriously telling the same joke twice? It makes them question the first one. Maybe it wasn’t a joke at all; maybe it was intended to be serious. Now everybody’s confused.
The media’s no help. They don’t even get the joke at first. Understandable. Government officials told them to take it seriously. They ‘authenticated’ it in their best deadpan voice. Only later, when they said “Ah… gotcha!” did the media clue in. And everybody has a good laugh.
But now this… It’s not comedy. It’s certainly not terrifying! It’s just sad.
Somebody needs to go back to Clown College!
(This article is a followup to my treatment of the original beheading video in The Beheading of Western Journalism… good for a laugh, perhaps.)
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