CHARADES: Variety calls Gutfeld! "an alternate universe!"

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2025

Top org (almost) gets it right: As we've noted, Gutfeld! isn't a late night show. It also isn't a comedy show.

Technically, Gutfeld! is a (mainly) primetime show. It actually airs before prime time all up and down the west coast. 

Gutfeld! is also a show which appears on the nation's most-watched "cable news" channel. But no, it isn't a news show. At its fairly obvious heart, Gutfeld! is a corporate propaganda show. 

It's an astoundingly stupid propaganda show which hides behind comedy elements.

In fairness, who know? Variety's Tatiana Siegel may not be hugely familiar with the Gutfeld! program. That may explain how she (or her editor) could have come up with this ludicrous thumbnail account of what the program does: 

How Greg Gutfeld Became the Bill Maher of Fox News—And Toppled Fallon and Colbert in the Ratings

[...]

Gutfeld differs significantly from the [late night network comedy] field in tone...“Gutfeld!” is a closer match to Bill Maher’s old ABC show “Politically Incorrect,” with co-hosts Kat Timpf and Tyrus helping to anchor conversations that frequently rib the obese, the easily triggered and the hosts of “The View.”

Belated full disclosure! We ourselves made six award-winning appearances on Maher's original show. We have our collection of (free-of-charge) Politically Incorrect caps to establish our role as a founding commentator.

That said, Siegel's account of what occurs on Gutfeld! comes straight outta Fantasyland. 

Timpf and Tyrus have indeed been regular co-hosts on the program. That said, do the program's (pseudo) conversations "rib the obese, the easily triggered and the hosts of The View?"

That statement was crafted in LaLa Land. Consider the first "conversation" which occurred on last night's Gutfeld! 

As always, the evening's charade began with the selection of panelists. Timpf has been away on maternity leave. Tyrus, the former professional "wrestler," has merely been away, apparently on his current comedy tour.

Normally, Timpf and Tyrus fill two of the four panelist chairs. Last night, believe it or not, this was the panelist lineup:

Gutfeld! panelists, 2/27/25
Andrew Gruel: American chef and television personality
Charly Arnolt: Sports broadcaster and television personality for OutKick
Kennedy: Libertarian political commentator [and] radio personality
George Santos:  Former politician and convicted felon

We're offering the thumbnail descriptions penned by the leading authority. And yes, it was actually that George Santos who sat on the panel last night.

The program had assembled three "personalities" and one felon—one expelled former member of Congress. They'd be asked to offer their "takes" on the evening's selection of topics. 

Needless to say, all four would agree with every word the program's host tossed out.

It didn't take long to get to the nightly "ribbing!" At 10:04 p.m., to cite one example, one early bit of "ribbing" was directed at "the skin stretched across Nancy Pelosi's face." 

That came at the very start of the host's nightly issue-based monologue. In his opening two or three minutes, he had already offered a string of jokes about the way women suffer from cramps. They also take too long to get ready to leave the house and they travel with too much luggage.

From there, the host proceeded to a joke about another standard topic—about the way Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who's way too fat, completely stinks up adjoining rooms when he uses the bathroom. 

As the host continued, he ribbed Bill Clinton for having "ruined Monica Lewinsky's best interview dress."  He ribbed Kris Jenner because of the fact that her former husband now goes by the first name of Kaitlan. 

Mercifully, at 10:03 Eastern, his brief string of opening jokes ended with this:

GUTFELD (2/27/25): According to the Daily Mail, JFK had a secret gay lover.

Big deal! So did Michelle Obama! 

[PHOTO OF MICHELLE OBAMA]

AUDIENCE: APPLAUSE

GUTFELD: If one of those doesn't get me fired, I'm safe!

Was that final joke supposed to imply that Barack Obama is gay?

On its face, the meaning of the joke wasn't clear. More often, Gutfeld likes to offer jokes based on the premise that Michelle Obama is actually a man.

This happens on a nightly basis as the Fox News Channel opens the can at 10 p.m. (That's 7 p.m. on the coast.) According to Siegel (or perhaps according to her editor), Greg Gutfeld is simply "ribbing the obese and the easily triggered" when he cranks out this nightly fare.

Last night, it was what happened during his subsequent 'issue monologue" which defined the evening's disorder. President Trump had made some strange remarks during Wednesday's cabinet meeting. We refer to such unusual statements as these:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (2/26/26): Now, I love the countries of Europe. I guess I'm from there at some point a long time ago, right? But indirectly, pretty directly too, I guess. 

But I love the countries of Europe. I love all countries, frankly, all different. But the European Union's been—it was formed in order to screw the United States. 

I mean, look, let's be honest, the European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That's the purpose of it. And they've done a good job of it, but now I'm president.

Really? The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States? 

Stating the obvious, nether Gutfeld himself, nor any of the TV / radio personalities who sat in last night's panelist chairs, are qualified, in any imaginable way, to evaluate such an unusual remark.

Having said that, so what! This is the way this very strange person reacted after playing the videotape of those surprising remarks:

GUTFELD: Ha ha ha ha ha! 

[Shouting] Yeah, in your face, European Union! You guys suck!

[Chanting] USA! USA! USA!

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! 

[SUSTAINED APPLAUSE]

It was now 10:04 p.m. This is the sort of peculiar behavior this "news channel" broadcasts in the ten o'clock hour each night. In fairness, to fully appreciate the sheer insanity of last night's program, you have to listen to the crazy remarks authored by the program's guests.

It's always possible that Tatania Siegel didn't understand such facts when she composed her lengthy profile of Variety's current cover boy. In fairness to Siegel, we do agree with one part of her lengthy profile of "the cable news star who has zero fucks to give." 

We agree with the highlighted assessment at the end of this passage. This is the way her profile begins:

How Greg Gutfeld Became the Bill Maher of Fox News—And Toppled Fallon and Colbert in the Ratings

On a Tuesday in February, Hollywood is in the throes of a “Bonfire of the Vanities” moment. Karla Sofía Gascón’s old social media posts, with shocking takes on George Floyd (“a drug addict swindler”) and Islam (“an infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured”), are roiling awards season and have turned the actress into a pariah. But the “Emilia Pérez” star, the first openly trans person nominated for an acting Oscar, is also a tricky subject to satirize.

Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have ignored the conflagration that has engulfed this year’s standard-bearing #Resistance film. The task is left to Greg Gutfeld, whose eponymous Fox News show has made him the most-watched man in late night.

During a taping of his top-rated “Gutfeld!,” he scrolls through the offending tweets and booms dramatically, “The more I read of these, the more I’m starting to like this broad.” The actress may have caught a stray here, but the real target of his monologue is Hollywood.

...Hollywood may be ripe for parody, but this is the kind of humor that, were it taking place anywhere on TV other than Fox News, would be a national scandal. The crowd—which skews slightly more female than male—roars with laughter. And I realize that I’ve crossed into an alternate universe.

In that opening passage, Siegel stresses the fact that the targets of Gutfeld's ribbing tend to differ from those of Fallon, Kimmel and Colbert. When she sees the audience roar with laughter as Gutfeld says he's "starting to like this broad," she says she realizes that has crossed "into an alternate universe."

(As part of his throwback gender politics, Gutfeld routinely refers to women as "broads." In the case of liberal women, he also routinely says they're way too fat; routinely compares them to horses, cows, elephants and whales; routinely complains that they aren't sexually attractive; and routinely says that the skin across their unattractive faces doesn't seem quite right.) 

On balance, we think the journalist protested too little about this alternate universe. To our own eye and ear, this is a vastly alternate universe—one in which an assortment of obvious flyweights join a weirdly angry "Little Scamp" in pushing a remarkably throwback gender politics, while aggressively pushing the mandated political messaging of the Little Scamp's corporate owners—of the Fox News Channel.

We agree—this truly is "an alternate universe." To this day, we don't think that Blue America has been able to see what's actually "happening here" as this fellow's angry messaging is churned very night. 

This Sunday, Bob Dylan may suddenly be very hot all over again. Observing Blue America's possible incomprehension, we think of what the prophet said in the summer of 65:

Ballad of a Thin Man
You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard but you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say when you get home

Because something is happening here
And you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Back then, Dylan may have been discussing himself and the entertainment press. Today, we're talking about an ongoing "night assault" coming at us from many directions—the type of assault which occasioned the death of Hector's "sacred Troy."

When something very unusual happens, it can be hard for us humans to see it for what it is. So it went, we'd be inclined to say, when Siegel profiled, or possibly pretended to profile, the very strange star of the Gutfeld! show—a man who seems to hide a remarkable rage behind a pose as a type of imp.

For the record, the gent wasn't always like this! In this passage, Siegel skims across the surface of the change:

Though Gutfeld says he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, he did so reluctantly in 2020 and enthusiastically in 2024. “This time I went in person, like the day the freaking place opened,” he says. “I was there at 9 a.m. down in the Village, and I couldn’t wait.” Still, he will (occasionally) skewer the reality TV star-turned-politician. After the presidential debate in September, Gutfeld mocked the orange-hued candidate as the “pumpkin painted pet protector” over Trump’s “They’re eating the dogs” claim. 

During the 2016 election cycle, Trump sat down with Fallon and Colbert. He even hosted “Saturday Night Live.” This time around, he skipped those shows—likely a mutual decision—but dropped by “Gutfeld!” two months after the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt. The ratings soared, with 4.9 million tuning in to hear Trump boast that even the brother of Harris running mate Tim Walz was voting for him. Gutfeld’s sidekick Tyrus, a former professional wrestler who is Black, retorted: “Well, to be fair, a lot of brothers are supporting President Trump.”

For the record, Gutfeld never "skewers" Trump, except in a friendly way. 

Meanwhile, strange! The fellow was anti-Trump at the start. Today, no one fawns over Trump more obsessively. (In our view, Tyrus completely embarrassed himself with his fawning when Trump showed up on the show.)

At any rate, ever so fully he turned! In this profile from July 2023, the New York Times almost seems to describe a meeting in which Suzanne Scott, Gutfeld's corporate owner at Fox, almost seemed to give him the word—when it came to his stance on Trump, he needed to get in line. 

Today, Gutfeld is paid $9 million for telling Europe that it sucks—for dumbly leading Red America's cheers for everything Trump ever says. Climate change is still a "hoax," the fellow occasionally says.

Along the way, he lives the good life with his Russkie wife. Siegel says the $9 million qualifies as a bargain.

There's much, much more that remains to be said about Siegel's remarkably clueless profile of this astonishing "cable news" show and its angry and furious host. Next week, we may be able to visit such realms as we (likely) extend our account of the ongoing "night assault"—the assault we (defeated?) Blue Americans still can't quite seem to see for what it actually is.

In The Plague, Camus described the way we regular human beings can fail to see such disasters—such plagues—even after they're plainly underway. 

If you watched last night's Gutfeld! show—s program which went on the air in prime time—you might have been able to see the madness of the current assault as the modern equivalent of the Achaeans start to breach the safety of Blue America's crumbling walls.

After ten years of dying, the Achaeans who breached Troy's towering walls were filled with an overpowering rage—with a rage which bordered on madness.

They threw Hector's baby son to his death from Troy's towering walls. After that, they performed the rapes, they lit the fires, and they took Hector's wife as a slave. 

They proceeded to murder the kindly King Priam, right there at the altar. According to Greek tradition, the fury was general that night.

Last night, we watched the nightly "ribbing" which takes place on the Gutfeld! show. As this remarkable conduct unfolds, the New York Times and the gang at Mediaite agree to avert their gaze. 

Siegel went those orgs one better, offering an absurd account of what takes place on this show. 

"Who are those guys?" That's what Paul Newman once famously asked in a famous Hollywood film. Watching people like Kennedy—watching the very strange Gutfeld himself—we find ourselves asking that question pretty much every night.

As we Blues insist on averting our gaze, the same question might well arise about us. Overall, our best guess would go like this:

A night assault is underway, and we'll guess that it can't be turned back.