"25 Funniest People"
may 23, 2008 03:28pm – in Korea
This concern's Entertainment Weekly's disgraceful "25 Funniest People In America" list, which you can read here: http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20201450_24,00.html
Maybe I'm wasting my time commenting on a magazine's obligatory, page-filling list of people, but I sincerely take issue with Entertainment Weekly's list of the "25" funniest Americans.
25 is a small number, and ranking 25 American comedians - even 25 well-known comedians could have really been interesting because of the funny people you'd have to exclude. But this was a cowardly waste of time, a disingenuous, hastily thrown-together piece of non-critique that should have been called "Roughly 50 Well-Paid Comedians and Writing Teams Who Are famous in The United States Listed in No Particular Order."
The list read as follows:
1. The "Judd Apatow Posse"
2. Stephen Colbert "and the Colbert Report Team"
3. Tina Fey
4. Jon Stewart "and the Daily Show Team"
5. Steve Carell
6. Chris Rock
7. Matt Stone and Trey Parker
8. Amy Pohler and Will Arnett
9. Larry David
10. Kristin Wiig
11. Conan O'Brien
12. David Cross
13. Ellen Degeneres
14. Ricky Gervais
15. Will Ferrell
16. Amy and David Sedaris
17. David Letterman
18. Jack Black
19. Craig Fergeson
20. Diablo Cody
21. Demitri Martin
22. Dave Chappelle
23. Sarah Silverman
24. Catherine O'hara
25. Augusten Burroughs
It doesn't reflect anyone's personal bias (apart from the bizarre last choices of Catherine O'hara and Augusten Burroughs), it mostly just refuses to exclude anyone famous for being a comedian EXCEPT Carlos Mencia. I thank them for that.
I'm not going to comment on all the mundane choices. But I will point out what's unforgivable:
Lumping people together. Parker and Stone don't work separately, but the rest of those groupings do, and many, like John Hodgman, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Rob Riggle and Amy Pohler deserve their own spot. Incidentally so do some extremely famous people like Tracy Morgan and Andy Samberg.
Excluding Patton Oswalt. He is by far the funniest person in America, and while he's not THAT well known, he did star in a little known blockbuster called Ratatouille that I think earns him a nod from this lowbrow publication.
...And including Diablo Cody.