Fake news entry cranks up the volume, not laughs

That's what he's trying to do, ostensibly, as executive producer of "The 1/2 Hour News Hour, " a faux news report that premieres Sunday night at 10 on the Fox News Channel. But "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" feels less like a current-events parody and more like a form of revenge: a wholly-partisan response to the perceived left-wing biases of "The Daily Show, " "The Colbert Report ," and anything else on television that Rush Limbaugh doesn't like.

Indeed, Limbaugh turns up briefly in Sunday's premiere as a fantasy US president, which, itself, seems an answer to Al Gore's turn on "Saturday Night Live " last fall. (It won't take much imagination to guess who Limbaugh's thin, blond vice president might be.)

And then there's the make-believe newscast itself, so filled with pointedly partisan jokes that it feels like each punch line should be followed with a bitter "nyah-nyah-nyah." Sunday's installment, which re-airs on Feb. 25, pokes fun at Barack Obama , fear of global warming, and Ed Begley Jr.'s electric car. For good measure, it tacks on a couple of bilious fake ads for the American Civil Liberties Union.

It's tailor-made to push a particular set of buttons, and though Fox hasn't made much of a commitment so far -- only two episodes have been ordered, the second will air March 4 -- the show may well find an audience. A leaked clip has already made wide rounds on YouTube, and prompted the expected string of politically-charged comments: Love the show, hate liberals, and vice versa.

In truth, there's nothing wrong with partisan humor, as long as it's actually funny. But here, even the less-political jokes are hopelessly obvious or old; there's a riff, for instance, on Suzanne Somers's destroyed house in Malibu. And hard as comedians Kurt Long and Jenn Robertson try to channel the perky hosts of "Weekend Update," the scripts bludgeon even the easiest punch lines to death, like the one about a "Shi'ite Happens" T-shirt.