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Media Elites Are Souring Voters on the Democratic Party
Amateur insult comics in the press are alienating working-class voters with condescension and snobbery.
The golden age of television and movies primed modern society for meanness.
It created a nation of Eric Formans; of Chandlers and Regina Georges.
Sit-coms gave America much more than just laugh tracks and canned snark; more than just a satirical incision of modern life. Your mom was right about “Married…With Children,” and “Roseanne.”
No; that was not how families were supposed to treat each other.
Watching fake families and “friends” insult one another for the enjoyment of a television audience, or simulated laugh track, was not a window into polite society so much as a basic handbook of “How Not to Make Friends or Influence Anyone.”
Those characters weren’t funny and lovable; they were rude.
In reality, if a good friend arrives at your gang’s local coffee shop/hang-out spot and asks if everyone likes their shirt, and you answer in front of everyone with a brutal one-liner insult, there will be no studio audience to appreciate your wit; only your friend and their hurt feelings.
Dave Chappelle is right about comedy, at least in the modern sense. Well, he would be.