STARTING TOMORROW: Our Townies, Ourselves!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2020

The statements you'll hear in Our Town: The first thing we heard this Sunday morning may have been the dumbest.

It didn't occur during our own unusual sacred hour—the hour we spend at 7 A.M. listening to callers during the open phones segment on C-Span's Washington Journal. 

The first, possibly dumbest thing had been uttered even earlier than that.

C-Span callers were their usual selves during the sacred hour. But the first thing we heard this Sunday morning was uttered on the painful program Fox & Friends Weekends, as seen on the Fox News Channel.

In real time, we weren't sure who had made these dumbest remarks. We'd been listening at the time, not yet actually watching. 

That said, hail Columbia! The Daily Beast's Justin Baragona had heard these same dumbest remarks! He'd even transcribed some of the dumbest remarks—dumbest remarks which had been made by a "former reality star."

As it turned out, the former reality star was guest host Rachel Campos-Duffy, late of The Real World. Her remarks were reinforced by regular Fox & Friends Weekend host Pete Hegseth, who's most fondly remembered for having explained, in 2019, why he hadn't washed his hands in ten year.

On Sunday, Campos-Duffy may have been trying to prove that she's willing to be sufficiently dumb for a regular spot on Fox. Cued by the inexcusable Will Cain, Campos-Duffy offered these remarks, occasioning Hegseth's instant support:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (12/13/20): Yeah, absolutely! That Georgia pipeline thing is really something that—

You know, if this had been flipped, if this had happened to Joe Biden, this story would be investigated to the very bottom. You say there's a pipeline that, water—you know, that's why they had to stop, and all of a sudden they go back and they look at the work orders and there was no, there was no pipe that burst, there was no reason to stop the counting.

So you know, I just feel for the president. I see the pain and the frustration. You do everything you’re supposed to do. You run the country well. You campaign your heart out while the other guy is in a basement. And then in the end, fraud and shenanigans at the local level, you’re robbed. And we’ve all been robbed because when the elections don’t go well, when there is fraud, when there is these kinds of shenanigans, we all lose!

Campos-Duffy was feeling the president's pain concerning the fraud and shenanigans. He'd done everything he was supposed to do! While Biden was down in a basement!

With regard to "that Georgia pipeline thing," the former Real World star was referring to comments Trump had made the day before, at the Army-Navy game. He'd done so in an interview with Fox & Friends reality star Brian Kilmeade. Here's how that went down:

Speaking with Kilmeade, the commander had revisited a claim he'd first made in real time, in the first week in November. 

The commander's claim about the pipe that burst had been fact-checked to death at that time. But five weeks later, the commander had brought it up again, and Campos-Duffy, cued by Cain, was totally feeling his pain.

To watch this inanity unfold, just move to minute 23 of the Daily Beast videotape. Cued by Cain, then supported by Hegseth, Campos-Duffy may have topped C-Span's callers in the constant battle to utter Sunday morning's dumbest remarks.

The background to this is daunting:

If you watch the tape of this inanity, you'll be watching another installment of American intellectual / epistemic carnage. According to the leading authority on the topic, a long and winding reality road had brought Campos-Duffy to Sunday morning's program.

In 1994, as Rachel Campos, she'd starred on The Real World: San Francisco. But after that stardom, this:

In 1999, Campos taped Road Rules: All Stars, along with alumni of other past Real World seasons, such as Sean Duffy of the Real World: Boston cast, whom she would later marry.

Campos-Duffy was one of ten Real World alumni who starred in the 2003 film The Wedding Video, a Real World parody centered on the wedding of first season alumnus Norman Korpi.

She thrice vied for a role on the daytime television talk show The View. After Debbie Matenopoulos left the show in 1999, Campos competed in an on-air try-out with Lisa Ling and Lauren Sánchez. Ling was eventually hired. After Ling's departure in 2002, Campos—who by then held her own "coffee talk" show with other Wisconsin housewives—again competed in a week-long on-air try-out, this time against Erin Hershey Presley and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. In November 2003 Hasselbeck was hired to replace Lisa Ling. In July 2013 when Hasselbeck left The View to replace Gretchen Carlson as the female co-host of Fox & Friends, Campos once again tried out, but Jenny McCarthy was hired to fill the spot.

She'd thrice auditioned for a role on The View, even losing to Jenny McCarthy! Now, she may have been trying to show that she was able to seem dumb enough for a role on Fox & Friends, or possibly on Fox & Friends First, or maybe just Fox & Friends Weekend.

Watching this endless inanity, you're watching American carnage. For ourselves, we see no obvious way out of this burgeoning mess.

Spokespersons for a group of despondent though highly credentialed anthropologists insist that this represents a chance to explore the actual state of our species' self-ballyhooed "rationality." That said, the American experiment, such as it has been, is rapidly sinking into the sea as this corporate-fueled nonsense unfolds.

The analysts groaned and tore at their hair as Campos-Duffy spoke. That said, we'd been walking the streets of our own failing town all through the preceding week.

As you may recall, Our Townies had taken numbers and stood in line to caterwaul about Melania's Christmas decorations. Because they'd done so in the dumbest way humanly possible, we assembled the youngsters and posed an anthropological question about Campos-Duffy's emission:

To what extent does comparable nonsense routinely take place in Our Town?

We noted clear problems with Town and Gown. We told them to listen to Townies.

Donald J. Trump may be dangerously mentally ill, we once again told the analysts. (In Our Town, this obvious possibility cannot, by law, be discussed.) But what about our townies? we asked. And what about ourselves?

Because it's all anthropology now, we ran through a list of examples. It's hard to know just where to begin.

Anthropology can be daunting. By tomorrow morning, we will have made our choice.

Tomorrow: These Townies Today!