For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been watching and trying to put a finger on what exactly it is that makes Red State Update, by Travis and Jonathan, so damn funny and almost subversively sophisticated.

It’s not that they’re secretly liberal comics taking jabs at the flyover mindset. I don’t think that they are. Nor do I think their humor is simply an example of entertaining self depreciating comedy. It seems to be something both better and murkier than either of the two obvious and polarized examples. The mockery of the Left is both sincere and tongue in cheek, as are its self depreciating aspects. Everyone is being mocked and ridiculed. The whole Red State Blue State I Hate You Hate dichotomy of the American dialogue is the target, and rightly so. We’re all acting like idiots, and we deserve to be mocked. Some of us are willing to laugh at ourselves, and some are not.

And, yes, the production values are cheap and amateurish. ALL internet humor clips currently have cheap and amateurish production values. Even Olde English, which has perhaps the highest production values in the medium, could stand to have far more professional editing. These are not being produced with huge budgets by Comedy Central or Lorne Michaels. They’re being made in basements with digicams and army blanket backdrops.

Speaking of Lorne Michaels, for the love of God will everyone please shut up about Lazy Sunday already? Yes, it was funny once. But, “SNL is funny again!” (how many thousands of times was that written in a week?) actually roughly translates into “Oh my God! They mentioned the Magnolia Bakery! That’s where hipsters get they’re baked goods! How cool?!” One three minute video clip cannot salvage a thirty year old television show which by its very nature, much like any sports team, will naturally go through periods of glory and misery. Saturday Night Live may or may not be funny again, but everybody’s nostalgic memories of what made us laugh when we were young clouds our perceptions of what it produces today. But hey, they mentioned a bakery you heard of on the internet. Cupcakes? Nostalgia? Chasing the hipster dragon? Give me two rednecks in a basement with a digicam, a blanket, a “Shimmysham The Liberal Dummy,” three cases of empty bud cans and a truly subversive sense of humor, please. Cheap production values and all. "Hip" or not.