I love stand-up comedy. At one time, it wouldn't have been an exaggeration to say I was a stand-up connoisseur. I watched everyone who walked up to a mic. One of the things I learned was that there's an uncomfortable feeling into some comedian's “set” when you realize he's done with the intro, he's hit his stride – this is his act. And he's just. Not. Funny.
I had that old familiar feeling a few seconds into Funny or Die's new, media-hyped, uproarious, hilarious, riotous, rollicking, feel-good, rib-cracking response to the Planned Parenthood expose videos.
I watched, prepared to laugh in spite of myself. But their one-liners were just a rehashing of Planned Parenthood's talking points. The expose is 145 seconds of “comedians” telling us Planned Parenthood is really all about prenatal care,[1] “screening for breast and cervical cancer…contraceptives…sexual health.” Heck, the abortions they perform are “privately funded,” and “97 percent of their services aren't even abortion.”
“Guys can go there, too. It's a great resource!”
This is the best you've got?
Even the “jokes” were old feminist bumper stickers recycled as humor.[2] There wasn't a laugh, not even a smile. The closest they came was, “They asked to take my blood pressure – my blood pressure. That's mine.”
First, the obvious: They call themselves “Funny or Die”? You'd think with the stakes that high, they'd make sure they delivered. Why tempt fate?
Comically, this video is an abortion.
Psychologically, it reminds me of the first phone call a guy makes to his best friend after his girlfriend dumps him. “She said I was a workaholic! Oh yeah? Well, I didn't see her complaining when I was buying her all that jewelry! And I 'never listened'? Hello! Who's the one who always took her to the movies when she said she had a hard day? And….” The whole point is to make himself feel better in the face of his own glaring faults and inadequacies.[3]
Substantively, it tries to change the conversation away from what you've seen with your own eyes about ripping out and selling babies' organs, a lack of compassion, a gruesome reveling in profits generated by death, to another subject. “But look at all this good stuff they do!”
The video also tries to create a sarcastic first-person testimonial that Planned Parenthood actually offers good medical care.
Apparently, it hasn't occurred to them that the experience of wealthy white women in the entertainment industry might differ from say, that of an impoverished inner-city minority visiting Kermit Gosnell. (In fact, it might have differed inside Gosnell's office.)
Perhaps the most egregious assertion is that Planned Parenthood respects a woman's choice. As one whistleblower after another has testified, the abortion industry is about one thing: High-pressure sales. One former abortion facility worker said she had been trained to find the woman's fear and exploit it. Reassure the woman that her parents will never find out, that she will be able to have a normal life afterwards, that she won't have to drop out of college after an abortion, that she can still play Peter Pan, etc.
Decades later, Holly O'Donnell confirms that StemExpress uses the same high-pressure tactics when obtaining the mother's consent for “fetal tissue donation” (when they bother with it, that is).
There's nothing funny about psychologically pressuring an already vulnerable mother until she says yes to a procedure that will end one life and forever change another.
Mark Twain once said, “Humor is the good natured side of a truth,” and that “genuine humor is replete with wisdom.”
Funny or Die is 0-2 on that scoreboard.[4]
But Twain also explained the reason FOD tried, when he wrote about the purpose he thought humor served. “The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant,” he wrote.
No wonder Hollywood is set to release its second “hilarious” abortion “comedy” in two years.
They're trying to laugh over the fact that Planned Parenthood is laughing all the way to the organ bank.
You can watch the unfunny “Funny or Die” video here.
ENDNOTES:
1. A real comedian could have made a joke about that term in this context.
2. “Planned Parenthood overwhelmed me with the ability to make my own choices, without having to ask my congressman.” Why not just mention the fish and the bicycle?
3. The male version ends with the buds agreeing the woman must be “crazy.” For women, this video may serve the role of the female bff reassuring her bestie that, yes, yes, you're still pretty, men still love you, and you're still young-looking at 54. Of course you don't need a gym membership! That's just your body type, Hon…
4. This also explains why the New Wave Feminists' satire of the Planned Parenthood videos was incredibly funny.