Dave Chappelle recently pointed to this trend by mentioning that most comics are doing the same jokes, underselling the problem to some extent. To label this kind of post-satirical political-reportage-with-attitude as jokes itself is a little bit too generous, as most comics are even doing away with the classic set-up and punchline routine. The most common delivery technique is instead mimicking the Stewart-esque reading of a political news tidbit followed by a variant of intensive snark n’ stare.

The other common evidence for the dearth of effort behind writing and producing these shows is the prevalence of the type of set-up and delivery that relies on punchlines completely separate from the premise of the joke, which is often a description of a political event. This new approach includes the matter-of-fact retelling of an informational tidbit, followed by a peel-off to an irrelevant giggle-worthy-at-best cultural reference to fill the show with the necessary laugh-tracks, and back to the news for a dry and boring political take. It often arrives in a format like this: “Steve Mnuchin said today that a new round of tax cuts are expected before the midterms; that is like Kardi B going to the tailor’s and so and so.”

You can count example after example of this kind of lazy writing in a sample from Hasan Minhaj’s new show, where the host discusses the recent events involving the murder of the Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Of course what’s funny about the breaking news of an American ally killing a journalist is that the story is as unbelievable as Blake Shelton winning the Sexiest Man Alive award. Haj is funny because it is like Coachella. The Media’s credulity in spreading MBS’s propaganda is mentioned as a set-up, while the punchlines divert to a series of jokes about Honda and Call me by Your Name. The news of the imprisonment of Alwaled Bin Talal is set up as the premise, and the irrelevant punchlines for that premise invite you to revisit how hilarious an obscure episode of MTV Cribs was. MBS placing his mom under house-arrest is funny because it is akin to imprisoning Magneto. The war in Yemen is described as horrific and unlasting; the punchline? It’s like the Golden Globes. MBS’s constant deflection of responsibility over various crises in the Middle East is funny because if Shaggy was doing that, he would say “it wasn’t me.” All of these punchlines are dreadfully unrelated to the political premise of the joke and can practically be transplanted into any set-up. None of the punchlines include even the slightest attempts at irony, revealing a paradox, contradiction or meaning that might be hidden to the audience or deconstructing the event to help the audience realize a detail they would otherwise miss; in all instances the punchline instead anticipates what the audience’s already-formed take on the premise might be and settles for drawing an analogy with a comical observation about a familiar, but wholly irrelevant, cultural inside-joke. It is clear that political reportage takes precedence in this format; jokes are merely there to break the tedium of news reporting.

It is increasingly evidence that these shows mainly provide a platform for discussing the daily news for the particular section of the audience on the Left who would like to stay engaged but finds other formats of digesting the daily news dry and maybe to some extent depressing. To borrow the technique from Minhaj’s writers, the comedy shows are essentially kind of like dipping your broccoli in ranch dressing. It’s very likely that if this type of comedy is succeeding at anything, it would be this. Still, in a moment where such a large part of the population mistakes “posting” for political activism, it’s fair to ask if fusing politics and comedy defuses some of the anger and seriousness that is needed for political activism, mainly by reducing the tension needed to address the gravity of the moment.

The format now fully embodies the same misguided attitude that led to the rise of cable news media — the most common target for the pioneer of this type of comedy, Jon Stewart. The cable new channels subverted the traditional format of delivering news by injecting entertainment into the format, motivated by a condescending attitude that the American audience is incapable of absorbing news and analysis without pizzazz. Likewise, the culprits of protest comedy today subvert the traditionally entertaining format of comedy and satire in the service of being serious about the news. “Entertainment needs to be news-y to sell,” is as fatuous and harmful as “news must be entertaining to sell.”

Protest art can let the artist escape the traditional system of quality control by the audience; if the reward system of your brain could be activated by reaffirming — in affect — your priors and opinions, the pleasure can linger long enough for you to confuse the artistic value of the work with the artistic manipulation of your values. As with any other social or political ill, the emotional fever would eventually dissipate, and the work can only then be judged purely on its merits.

Yet few protest-works outlive the moment they cling to. The mark of an enduring artistic work is its willingness to wrestle with human existentialism, and if politics and political angst are only short-term manifestations and symptoms of this more timeless, festering anxiety, then political art always runs the risk of missing the forest for the trees. If history is of any indication, this type of comedy, with heavy doses of social and political commentary at the center, rarely digs deep enough to circumvent the short expiration date it gets from dating itself. As Norm McDonald once observed, you’re more than free to test this hypothesis out yourself by catching the reruns of Murphy Brown today to see if any of the Ed Meese stuff still holds up.

This is also why for the few truly successful pieces of protest art that endure, the key to longevity has been the capacity of the work to be misunderstood, and thus evade being hostage to the moment. It is always fun to ask fans of Bruce Springsteen’s enduring hit, Born in the USA, if they have revisited the lyrics recently.

Not surprisingly the handful of protest songs that achieved an enduring status beyond the Vietnam moment came from those artists who already had the proclivity for obscure lyrics and messaging. When Dylan stepped on the stage in Greenwich Village in 1962, ready to debut Blowin’ in the Wind, he told the audience “This here ain’t no protest song or anything like that, ’cause I don’t write no protest songs.” Yet the song, with its inscrutable lyrics, signature of all Dylan works, long outlives the more blatant attempts at capturing the mood of resistance in songs; one such attempt came from Dylan’s own rival, Phil Ochs, when he composed the far less culturally relevant tune, “War is Over.” Timeless political satire on what it means to live in the Trump era, if it exists, won’t be where everyone is looking.

Nonetheless, a strong fan-base of political-junkies flock to this kind of material. But it is hard to imagine that even for them, resistance-comedy is serving the goal political satire is supposed to serve: subverting conventional points of view, breaking the bounds of normal political discourse, or offering insightful observations that the audience, in more serious settings, would not be predisposed to accept. It rather merely serves to regurgitate what the core audience already believes but in a different voice and a different tone. The worst enemy of the comedian is a crowd that is determined to laugh, and the Resistance, today, is in such deep therapeutic need of this sort of material that it is extremely hard to disappoint them. Together, more and more so, they are enabling the Left’s descent into a bedridden patient who indulges bad (the worst) television in lethargy when the remote is out of reach.

The only saving-grace from the rapid spread of the bad anti-trump comedy might be that the exasperation it reveals about the current state of the Resistance can become so uncool that it itself becomes a fresh subject for satire. It seems like, increasingly, more self-aware voices on the Left are paying more attention to this diversion from traditionally effective satire. Recently the comedian Brett Davis dedicated a full episode of his YouTube show to capturing the sense of dread that this type of humor imposes on the sections of the young-Left who look for something more than easy references, name-calling, and sarcasm in political satire.

Michelle Woolf’s Segment Time raised above the moment to mock the formulaic structure of the viral political-comedy routines, and the Chapo Trap House boys lamented leftist comedy’s descent into “objectively terrible” sarcastic news-roundup.

What is it that effective satire would do? Well, one goal could be to use laughter to soften up the audience enough so that they mull over or digest a point of clarity that, in more serious settings, they would otherwise be hostile to. An old Slovenian proverb says, “Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.” The satirist figures out a way to speak and stay. Does this ever take place in the whole slew of resistance comedy today? Not really. In fact, one of the signature common elements of all the shows is to separate entirely from the more self-deprecating style that was practiced by previous hosts like Conan O’Brian or Letterman. The new shows invariably elevate the comedians, who drags up his loyal audience with him, above the subject matter and the subject of the joke. This certainly does not lay the ground for the comedian to seize the moment prepped by levity to challenge the audience in any way. An audience that has showed up for political grandstanding and determined to laugh wouldn’t be in the mood to be talked to that way. For those who find this kind of relationship between a comedian and their audience simple and desperate, the few moments of joy come when intermittent courageous attempts at testing the audience backfire, revealing the audience’s low-threshold for self-observation, and inviting the type of hiss and groan that Bill Maher is famous for dealing with.

Long-time married couples develop their own secret comedic language. There are voices, inside-jokes, and references that are funny almost as a matter of mutual agreement between the couple; it is an inside voice that is mainly designed to restress the emotional bond rather than trigger reflexive laughter, what jokes are supposed to do. Any attempt at explaining the jokes and references that work perfectly well inside the relationship to outsiders invites the type of befuddled look that belies its limited reach.

This is not a recipe for political satire, but what passes as political comedy on the left these days more and more resembles the low effort needed to keep inside jokes alive in a closed circle. If the goal is to invite the more ambivalent observers to adopt a particular point of view, this type of insider comedy is horribly failing at that. Specially since conservative comedy continues to be nonexistent, and leftist political satire of the past, at least to some extent, lines up well with the social progress made in the past fifty years, saving the format from self-destruction is critical. Maybe it can be saved before Comedy Central green lights “I guess you had to be there” by one of Jon Stewart’s understudies’ understudies.

In addition to this already non-inclusive tone, the other alienating characteristic of this type of comedy is that it refuses to be self-debasing in any way. A good satirist attempts to put himself in the center of what is being criticized, inviting the audience to adopt a point of view, that although unbearable, becomes palatable when it is approached with levity and presented as a collective error. Instead of presenting this kind of collective meditation, most of the political comedy today strives on outward contempt. The jokes can’t always comfortably reside along-side this type of pure distaste for the subjects. John Oliver’s pseudointellectualism is not a gloss on this contempt, neither is Silverman’s pretend-magnanimity, or Kimmel and Colbert’s flashes of restrained demeanor.

Not too close to home, not too near the bone, these jokes aren’t funny anymore.