The inept poster frequently lumps the rest of the world together by over-using "they".
The "rest of the world" is not "they" in any of my posts, of course.
That's something a competent reader in good faith would pick up easily, in part because they would not have confused their little troop with the rest of the world.
Identifying the US Republican media feed assumptions, assertions, and viewpoints with some kind of common reality as shared by the general public, the rest of the world, real America, etc, is a familiar Republican Party propaganda meme, a basic framing assertion and assumption of that specific propaganda feed, its parrots, and almost nobody else.
And it's the basis of their shared sense of humor - as immortalized in the chuckle bucket of yet another very large and bankrupt utility company with Republican protection cheating and abusing (even killing) Californians. (W and Enron, anyone?)
just dismiss every comment as "Republican talking points" even if that person isn't a Republican, doesn't watch TV and potentially isn't even from the U.S.
Not "every comment" - just the ones familiar from hate radio and Fox and Republican politicians and the rotating stable of wingnut punditry and the other long familiar parrot cages, and without other plausible origin (common error, common vocabulary, common viewpoint and emphasis, etc).
Like media accounts of Kim Jong Il's awesomeness at everything, that stuff has only one basic source.
Or do I have to dumb that down a bit more, to match the explanation templates provided by the bandarlog here?
Another personal observation: the more politically active a person is, the less inclined they are to publicly display a sense of humour.
That would rest on your ability to identify comparative political activity and the presence of a sense of humor in those not sharing your own. As you are here incapable of recognizing Republican talking points, the political activity of posters you don't know, or the humor of posting that is not framed as yours is, there is doubt on that score.
In my neck of the woods, liberals and lefties who are most politically active tend to display humor to a fault - they go shallow for cheap laughs, they offend, their mouths routinely get them into trouble. Conservatives and righties somewhat the opposite - the more politically engaged, the more solemn, dull, angry. That's reflected in the politicians on stage - compare Al Franken, Jesse Ventura, and Tom Emmer. But I think that may be a regional feature - in the honor culture regions of the US, for example, no such pattern is visible at my distance.
OK, well maybe stop quoting me and addressing me.
Or maybe just shrug off the noise, and deal with the issues as if adults were involved somewhere in the mix. That's less trouble.
Meanwhile, the first and most obvious guess at why so many victims of Republican media operations think scientists have no sense of humor (and they are the only ones who do) would be the standard anti-intellectual bias of that faction. Not having a sense of humor is widely seen as a character flaw or incapability, and the Republican base routinely assigns character flaws and incapabilities to liberal intellectual elites. Scientists, being for the most part liberals, are bad drivers and equipment operators, too. And they are poor shots, inept fishermen, etc.
But this is also true of poets, writers, artists, historians, all manner of liberal arts employers. Why does the recent Republican propaganda effort focus on denigrating scientists?
Because such reality based intellectuals threaten the corporate profits from damaging resource exploitation. They threaten taxes, and regulations, and government curbs on the making of money. Poets do not.