Enlightenment values must die!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2024

Gutfeld proves Hector right: According to this report by The Hill, the invaluable Internet Archive is fighting to get back online after some sort of cyber-attack.

The Archive is widely ignored, but it performs what would be an invaluable service in some other society. For today, we thought we'd keep you semi-current with the attack on Enlightenment values launched in prime time every night by the Fox News Channel's remarkable Gutfeld! program.

As we've tried to explain, the program starts with a few minutes of jokes by its host. It then stages inane pseudo-discussions of various news topics. 

These pseudo-discussions are conducted by panels of D-list comedians and assorted others. All panelists have agreed to agree with the host on every possible point, all of which will slavishly serve current pro-Trump interests.

Last night, the fun started instantly. Right away, at 10 o'clock sharp, this was the very first joke:

GUTFELD (10/10/24): Good evening, everyone. So!

The porn industry has launched a $100,000 ad campaign in support of Kamala Harris. 

Makes sense. They're both known for sucking.

If you think that S-bomb was meant to be taken in an inoffensive colloquial sense, you may not be a regular viewer of this prime time "cable news" program. On Gutfeld!, explicit sexual insults directed at Harris are a regular part of the stew. 

Indeed, a few minutes later last night, the host returned to his favorite nickname for Harris, referring to her as "Cackles McKneepads." This remarkable garbage can gets opened by Fox every night.

With respect to the program's host, this is pretty much all he seems to have at this point in his life. Fox News uses this braindead program for propaganda purposes. The program offers braindead propaganda services pretty much all the way down.

That first joke was a sexual insult. Two jokes later, the host indulged another favorite impulse—his relentless attraction to necromancy:

GUTFELD: Harris appeared on Stephen Colbert's show, where the host asked if she'd drink a Miller High Life with him. 

Normally, when she sits down with a cold one it's Joe Biden.

[APPLAUSE]

GUTFELD: Ha ha ha! Yeah! Because he's dead!

For whatever reason, Greg Gutfeld loves to imagine opponents being dead. Meanwhile, liberal women with whom he disagrees are persistently said to be way too fat. 

At this point in his life, this seems to be what he is.  

By 10:01, we had moved on from sexual insult to the standard suggestion that Harris is some version of a "drunk." The little guy now offered this:

GUTFELD: She also appeared on Howard Stern, where he said that he'd even vote for a wall over Trump.

Harris replied, "I'm not a wall, but I am plastered."

Along with the standard sexual insults, this has become a standard theme on this angry, soul-draining program. Next came a reference to Candidate Walz, triggering a typically sad battle cry: 

"Tampons!" the cable star yelled. 

This is all this little imp has. Sadly but instructively, his audiences eat it up.

By 10:02 p.m., we had moved to the evening's initial pseudo-discussion. At issue was a guest essay in Tuesday's New York Times which appeared beneath this headline:

We Can Do Better Than "Positive Masculinity"

The essay was written by Ruth Whippman, a British "mother of three rowdy boys" and the author of BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. 

We thought Whippman's essay was perfectly sane blending into insightful, but any such headline is sure to trigger this program's host. Even before inviting his flyweight guests to offer their comments, he was offering such analytical treasures as this in reaction to Whippman's column:

GUTFELD: It's not unlike Howard Stern. Talk about a transition! On Tuesday, he conducted an interview with Kamala Harris that was so simpering and feminine I got my period while listening to it.

[AUDIENCE: APPLAUSE AND CHEERS]

Stern's interview was way too "feminine," Gutfeld opined—and his audience plainly agreed. Nothing resembling a serious discussion of Whippman's column ever appeared.

(Tuesday afternoon, on The Five, he had expressed his instant anguish more directly. He simply denounced Stern as "a pussy" while the women of The Five looked away.)

These programs serve as anthropology lessons as our national culture dies. They offer windows onto a world of cultural conflict—a world which began taking shape in the mid-1960s, as the U.S. Army was sent into Vietnam and the Age of Aquarius dawned.

Blue America hasn't been without fault as this revolt from below has steadily taken form. Along the way, the world has gained an army of Gutfelds—people who seem unable to use their indoor voices as they angrily react to an array of contemporary liberal values and views—views and values both real and imagined.

This show is a garbage can all the way down. The Five is a vastly different kettle of fish, but as an example of "cable news," it isn't a whole lot smarter or a whole lot less clownish. 

Making matters that much worse, Jesse Watters Primetime comes on Fox at 8. 

What's happening here is a corporate-sponsored propaganda assault employing the usual gang of overpaid suspects. The New York Times doesn't talk about this. Neither do the tribunes Blue America is encouraged to love, the ones on MSNBC.

There's plenty to criticize (or not!) about Blue America's contemporary culture and politics. The people Fox puts on the air do so through clownish demagoguery pushed along by vulgar insults of the classic dimwitted kind.

The TV star is an angry child. He's also sixty years old!