Is Dennis Miller funny?

Question

By no means am I an idiot and don't understand humor, but I have never been able to understand comedy routines from Dennis Miller. He makes obscure references, his jokes needlessly lag on, and he is rarely funny (to me).

Am I just an idiot or is Dennis Miller's humor just too arcane?

Answer 1

He gets too involved in showing how smart he is to the point where you lose the string of what he was talking about

Answer 2

I don't really get this New York Observer article. Writer Tom Scocca talks about YouTube's influence on pop culture. How some things that we thought were good (or bad) years ago can be seen in a new light now. How incidents like the famous World Cup head butt can be uploaded a minute after it happens and viewed over and over and over again, something that would have been unheard of 10 or 20 years ago. All that's well and good, but he claims that YouTube also shows that Dennis Miller wasn't funny in 1992.

Um, yeah, actually, he was.

Now, I'm not going to defend Miller's recent work. I thought his declaration that he wasn't going to joke about Bush on his talk show disturbing, plus there was that whole Monday Night Football fiasco (though I liked him on that, but I'm not a football fan, I'm the audience they were trying to woo with that move). But the NYO uses as "evidence" this clip of Miller interviewing the Pixies after a performance on his show. You're going to judge whether a comedian is funny by what he says in the 30 seconds after a band plays? Then Carson, Letterman, and Conan aren't funny either.

I submit as evidence that Miller was funny his standup work, his Weekend Update spots on SNL, and his guest appearances on other talk shows. He's had many lines over the years that I still quote to friends.

Answer 3

His phony hipster-academic pose is totally transparent. Obscure references that were obviously dredged up by a writing staff five minutes before air time don't indicate either intellegence or erudition. Listen to Miller when he is sitting across from the likes of Christopher Hitchens or Neil Degrasse-Tyson. Neither of these two gentlemen have to strain to appear intellegent or educated. Millers insecurity will manifest itself immediately and his desperate attempt to keep up will become an embarassing fiasco. Did Miller graduate from Oxford or Harvard? In over his head in such company, poor Dennis will try his best to keep up and only appear more pretentious than he usually does. I suspect little Denny fears his secret is out and that will be the time he falls back on wise-*** bullshit. Total, typical showbiz phony.

Answer 4

He isn't funny. And it isn't just because he's conservative. When I was a kid in the eighties, I watched him on Saturday Night Live's news update, and he wasn't funny then either, and he had no discernible political bias. Now he's just bitter and hateful with a slight veneer of what we're supposed to pretend is humor. Short answer: You're not an idiot, not for that reason anyway.

Just to prove I'm not biased, Al Franken is another unfunny SNL alumnus in my opinion. Sorry, it's true. I wish it wasn't.

Answer 5

dennis miller is not a funny! he does not know the meaning of the word. he has got to have writers write stupid jokes for him because he is incapable of telling funny jokes!! so what good is he !!

Answer 6

dennis miller needs to get a real job.

Answer 7

You'll presumably get responses from fans of his who WILL dismiss you as an idiot, but in my view things like humor, tastes in movies, music, clothes, books, etc are all very subjective. I don't find him funny either. As a matter of fact to me he comes across as being unbearably smug, to the point that I find myself wanting to slap him upside the head. But that's just me. I'm all for comics who are articulate and well-read, but I just don't identify with his world view and like you don't get the majority of his references.

Answer 8

Maybe funny looking. He's never really made me laugh.

Answer 9

This guy never was funny.

Answer 10

I dont think hes funny.*