Half Hour News Hour and almost all mention of it in popular culture. But now, with An American Carol, the conservatives finally have a chance to turn their image as humorless bankers around. First of all, it’s a big budget movie lampooning Michael Moore, probably the strongest choice for targets they could have made. I’m super liberal, and I find Michael Moore pretty damn irritating. He’s also fat, which is funny in and of itself (unless you’re Rush Limbaugh). But still, you’re making some rookie mistakes, and I hate fighting an unarmed opponent. It occurred to me that some constructive criticism from a magnanimous comedy pro could help you launch Republican humor to the level of a Click or Disaster Movie. And since Dennis Miller isn’t available, I’ll just have to do. So let’s go through that trailer again, and I’m going to point out places where you did things that, frankly, I can’t believe. Moments when you made such poor choices that my gut response was to shout “Liar! You LIE!” at my computer screen. Which, by the way, totally ruined my cred at the library. All right, here goes: 1. Comedy is all about subtlety. Maybe you’re still amped up from Rove’s reign of blatant attack ads, or maybe you totally missed the point of my Wednesday post, but no one’s going to laugh at a guy pointing to a stupid guy and saying “this guy’s stupid” in a deep voice. Or, I mean, maybe they would, but not for two hours. I hope. Didn’t any of your English teachers hammer “Show, Don’t Tell” into your heads? If you want to show the audience that Michael Moore is totally clueless, rather than calling him totally clueless, how about depicting him standing in front of a movie poster for the movie Clueless? Or perhaps misplacing his game of Clue? Or going to the Pope's funeral and taking a massive shit all over the floor? Believe it or not, all of those things are still technically more subtle and crafty than some of the lines in this trailer. And in case you want to say it’s just a by-product of the trailer’s distilled format, I’d like to point you in the direction of this clip, where a liberal poll taker laundry lists a series of Republican talking points so panderingly that I was waiting for her to turn to camera and say “I’m such a dick!” You want people to see the Republicans in the movie as voices of reason, not condescending, ham-fisted cynics rolling their eyes at our stupidity while they spoon feed us catchphrases from Hannity’s dream journal. 2. Gary Coleman. Funny in Diff’rent Strokes, kind of funny ten years later, no longer funny. Not only has his cachet as a public figure been used up; using him just seems like you’re a creepy old guy trying to “get in with the kids.” In fact, now that I think about it…David Zucker, Leslie Neilson, David Allen Grier…this would have been an all star cast in 1987! So you’re doing something right, just two decades late. If you want to get in with today’s kids, you’re going to need to update some of the cast and references. This is based on A Christmas Carol, right? Maybe Seth McFarlane could voice the ghost of Marley, and General Patton could be Patton Oswalt, smoking weed and grinding on a skateboard. If you really want some credibility with the youth, put some of the muppets in the background of a scene, maybe chatting with Perez Hilton or logging onto BoingBoing. 3. Kevin Farley? As in, Chris Farley’s brother? You’re practically declaring your movie a rental. Only straight-to-DVD teen comedies and desperate money grabs feature the siblings of deceased stars as their lead. My advice would be to CG him out and replace him with someone more relevant, like a Robin Williams or Don Cheadle. 4. I know this is a Zucker comedy, but the fake sound of someone getting hit over and over stopped being funny after Bob Terwilliger and a rake perfected the art. Try to branch out into some of the other well-plowed areas of comedy, like fart sounds, penis references, and someone accidentally eating or rubbing themselves with semen. 5. Here, you have a country singer perform a song about America being the greatest country in the world while pyrotechnics explode behind him and then…that’s it. It’s the only scene in the trailer that doesn’t have a joke in it. I have taken that to mean that you think this is a good idea, or somehow not deserving of mockery. Well done. I couldn’t agree more. This is the highlight of the trailer. 6. JAMES WOODS?! WHAT THE FUCK?! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO HIM YOU BASTARDS?! WHY JAMES, WHY?! So welcome, conservatives, to the big leagues of comedy. Though today you make fumbling, toddler-like steps in the general direction of a joke, tomorrow you may very well produce satire so cutting, so incisive, that it will convince conservatives to vote conservatively. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch Stephen Colbert sleep through a Neil Peart solo and thereby open the Mexican border.

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