If you can't beat 'em...

One week after Samizdat defends our beloved Daily Show, along comes... The Half-Hour News Hour. We could link to the TV blogs that have clips, but we care about our readers. We couldn't, in good conscience, directly link you to such a devastatingly painful teaser clip. You'll have to google it.

In a nutshell, The Half-Hour News Hour is a Fox News production. After months of the channel's talking heads trying to marginalize the Daily Show / Colbert Report phenomenon, Fox News has taken a different tack: Let's make our own Daily Show!

After viewing the preview clip leaked to the Internets, we at Samizdat would like to point out a few things:

• Linking a Marion Barry reference to Barack Obama is many levels of bad writing. For one, few people under 25 really remember who Barry was. The only reason to use it seems to be, "Let's find another black politician who was in a cocaine scandal!"
• In other words, it's usually a bad idea to make your reliance on his skin color, for humor, so transparent.
• Oh, yeah, ditto on the "BO" thing. Wow. What is this, the seventh grade?
• I understand that Fox News is a conservative bastion. And I understand that this was pitched as a Daily Show for conservatives. But, so far, the show looks more like an attempt to disguise slinging mud at non-conservative folks as satire.
• Yes, there is a difference.
• While we're on the topic, there is a difference between "not conservative" and "liberal." Conservative/Liberal is not an either/or proposition. Shows like the Daily Show recognize this.
• Laugh tracks are bad news, folks. While the spattering of audience laughs may have been real, the canned laughter in the segment piece was... well, it made a painful piece torturous.
• Then again, the producer (Joel Surnow) is the same guy behind 24. Maybe torture is the show's intent.
• The hosts? A reality/game-show host and a TV actress whose been on Best Week Ever. Not to dig on working actors, but... We're not exactly talking about the gold standard, here.
• Oh, and apparently Brian Unger is a correspondent. Yes, the same guy who left during the Daily Show's transition to Jon Stewart.
• Finally... what's with the name? I realize Fox News viewers would never dream of watching Canadian TV. But, couldn't you come up with a name that wasn't ripped-off from a popular Canadian news parody show (This Hour Has 22 Minutes)?