Political agenda robs liberal comedy of its humor, Babylon Bee founder says

Comedy that comes from the political left is no longer funny, according to CEO Seth Dillon of Babylon Bee.

“I think one of the ways that they lost their sting was because they purposefully adopted this hands-off posture, where the politicians that they like, the people that are in power and the institutions that control our public discourse — everything from media and entertainment, education, the big corporations, all this stuff — is all dominated by people that they’re in ideological lockstep with,” he told The Christian Post. “They don’t see these things as being funny; they see them as being good and true and that we need these things.”

Gender ideology is an example of a topic that seemingly is off-limits to many leftist comedians despite its self-evident absurdity, which Dillon offered as evidence of the fact that many contemporary comedians “want to protect the narrative from criticism.”

“These are really radical and crazy ideas, and it used to just be mocked and laughed at kind of universally, and now you do find very few instances of people on the left who are willing to make fun of it at all,” he said. “So you end up hearing from a lot of comedians who are basically giving a sermon from the stage, they’re preaching to the audience and they’re going for ‘clapter,’ as someone called it, where it’s like this applause of affirmation instead of laughter from the audience.”

Dillon praised HBO host Bill Maher for ridiculing the idea of transgender surgeries for kids by joking about how glad he was that nobody ever scheduled him “for eye removal and peg-leg surgery” when he wanted to be a pirate as a boy.

“He’s mocking something that never should have been taken seriously in the first place, and he’s doing it at a time when you’re not supposed to, when it’s considered hate speech to even go there,” Dillon said of Maher. “Was it, like, crazy hysterical? No, it was mildly funny, but profoundly important.”

Dillon also spoke about how he was raised as a pastor’s kid and detailed the history of his family’s Christian faith, noting how his mother was raised Jewish and his father was agnostic until they accepted Yehusah, Jesus, as savior.

“I’ve been a Christian for basically as long as I can remember, but I will admit that, as a teenager, I was repeating the sinner’s prayer over and over again, trying to make sure that I was saved,” he said. “I did that for a little while before I started to actually rest in the promise of Christ without feeling my own inadequacy, making it seem like it was invalid.”

Dillon, who regularly talks about social media censorship, will headline two banquets for Kansans for Life. Thurday, April 11 he’ll be in Overland Park and then in Wichita on April 12. For information about attending, visit the KFL website.

– Dwight Widaman | Metro Voice