Rush Limbaugh with a Laugh-Track: The (Thankfully) Short Life of the 1/2 Hour News Hour

The premiere episode of The 1/2 Hour News Hour opens with a conservative fantasy: two years in the future (2009), a newly elected President Rush Limbaugh (played by Limbaugh himself) addresses the nation. Explaining that he had emerged victorious from "a bitter recount" fight with Democratic opponent Howard Dean, Limbaugh assures the audience that Dean was "finally getting the medical attention he has so desperately needed for so long." To that, laughter rings out—although it is unclear whether the source is real or canned. Either way, Limbaugh then exclaims, "After two years of the Democrat congress"—emphasis on the word Democrat—the "grown-ups are back in charge." With that, he calls for his vice president and in walks the shrill Ann Coulter.

That moment might be the subtlest in the short run of the 1/2 Hour News Hour, the Fox News attempt at right-wing political satire from conservative TV creator Joel Surnow. The juxtaposition of grown-ups and Coulter is ambiguous, perhaps suggesting that she is the adult, or conversely, suggesting that in this hyperpartisan dreamscape, the inmates would be running the asylum. That, however, may be over-interpretation. After all, self-reflexivity and carefully constructed humor was not the stock-in-trade of 1/2 Hour, which more consistently offered creatively void and mean-spirited barbs such as Limbaugh's dig at Howard Dean. That might have been expected, though, from a show that headlined Limbaugh and Coulter—a clear move to locate it within the discursive universe of conservative attack media.

It also might have been expected given the track record of Surnow, the show's chief visionary and reported good friend of Limbaugh. In 2007, Surnow was at the top of his game, having created the Fox prime-time drama 24 (2001-2010), that post-9/11 conservative fantasy in which action hero Jack Bauer races every season to defuse another ticking time bomb and always finds torture among the most effective tools in his arsenal. As former Fox executive David Nevins has explained, 24 had a definite "political attitude," a "lack of patience for the niceties of civil liberties or due process" that was a direct reflection of Surnow's worldview. According to Nevins, "Joel's politics suffuse[d] the whole show."¹

Surnow has referred to himself as a "right-wing nut job," once explaining to the New Yorker that he could "hardly think of " Ronald Reagan "without breaking into tears." Surnow has long chafed against the entertainment industry's progressive inclinations. "Conservatives are the new oppressed class," he has half joked. "Isn't it bizarre that in Hollywood it's easier to come out as gay than as conservative?"² Prompted by the same sense of victimhood that saturates the discourse of Fox News, Surnow and Manny Coto, his fellow executive producer from 24, decided that, late in the Bush years, the time was ripe to launch a right-wing satire show. "One of the things that's definitely not out there," Surnow argued, "is a satirical voice that skews to the right as opposed to the left. You can turn on any comedy satire show on TV and you're going to hear ten Bush jokes, ten Cheney jokes, but you'll never hear a Hillary Clinton joke or a global-warming send-up. It's just not out there."3

Surnow pitched the show to his "friend," Fox News chair Roger Ailes, who agreed to back an initial two episodes. Premiering on February 18, 2007, the first episode of 1/2 Hour attracted more than 1.4 million viewers, a number that quickly encouraged Ailes to add the show to the channel's regular Sunday-night lineup. For Surnow, the ostensible point was, as Fox News so often claims, to bring "balance" to television. He suggested that "in the interest of equal time there was a real need for sharp, intelligent political satire on TV from a conservative perspective to counterbalance all the really good political satire already on TV that comes from a...