Review: Diller's New Humor Site Busts No Guts

A new political humor site, 23/6, launches today after months of incubation by partners IAC/InterActive Corp. and the Huffington Post. I already kind of hate it, because it's really hard to write about without starting a sentence with a numeral.

But is it funny? That depends on whether you're amused by jokes like this one, about the writers strike: "There haven't been this many rich Jews doing laps since the Friars Club closed their swimming pool."

No? Well then, what about this one: "FactCheck.org Updates Item on Hillary: Not a Lesbian, Just Has a Hearty Laugh."

Nothing? How about a fake political attack ad called "SwiftKids for Truth," which is like the Swift Boat ads, only with kids?

Yeah, me neither.

It's safe to say, then, that no, 23/6 is not funny. Or at least it's not as funny as The Onion and The Daily Show, its obvious inspirations. That's not saying much, because both of those are unusually successful humor enterprises. Still, they are what 23/6 will be measured against, and it's not a flattering comparison.

Besides the mediocrity of the jokes themselves, I think the problem is the format. The Onion and The Daily Show aren't just jokes about the people and events in the news -- they're satires of "the news" itself, and that's where a lot of their best jokes come from: the pompousness of the network news broadcasts, the quotidianness of local newspapers. There's no equivalent second level of humor for 24/7 to mine. Unless you have an unquenchable thirst for ultra-topical humor, you'll probably get more enjoyment trawling The Onion's bottomless web archive.

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