It’s a wonder “Conservative Comedian” Brad Stine didn’t run out of air and fall face-first off the stage. After Rand Paul gave a rousing and well-received speech to a packed CPAC ballroom, Stine rolled out at one thousand degrees and never cooled down.
“Hey! You can’t leave! I just got here! SIT DOWN!!!” Stine yelled.
Stine ended his “speech” (read: diatribe) on political correctness with the observation that, in the conservative movement, the missing element is comedy. Unfortunately, it’s still missing. Stine had a few good one-liners, but for the most part, his jokes received half-hearted laughs.
He failed in his attempt to walk the line between being an insult comic and Jeff Foxworthy. He spent at least fifteen minutes pacing wildly and rarely, if ever, lowering his voice. He decried the “wussification of America” and addressed most of his affected anger at some poor 17-year-old student.
“You know what you know at 17?” he screamed. “NOTHING!!”
At the heart of his talk, Stine hit on some good points. He cited an example of an extreme case of political correctness where students were told they could not dress up as witches on Halloween because a local witch was offended.
“Since when did offending a witch become a problem in the United States of America?” he asked. “If that offends you, isn’t there a potion for that?”
He also outlined how much tougher life in America used to be. Stine invoked the Founding Fathers, calling them “ruthless.” To build a house in their day, he noted, “they didn’t give you a subsidy, they gave you an ax.”
Stine also railed against political correctness’ feminine element saying that he found his feminine side.
“You know what I did? I married her,” he quipped.
Ultimately, Stine’s comedy was a letdown. He assured the audience that one day he was going to end up stuffed and mounted one day in the section of the museum called “Why He Never Got His Own Sitcom” because of his conservatism. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t think it’s his political persuasion that will land him there.
