FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2025
...of the "cable news" Gutfeld! show: It's a basic rule in the comedy world. The performer can't ignore what's happening there in the room.
For that reason, and with apologies, today we have listing of profiles—profiles of the Fox News Channel's primetime Gutfeld! program.
(Way back when, in a mordant anti-war poem, Henry Reed gave us "naming of parts.")
In the last few weeks, we've been trying to leave a bit of guidance for future generations. More specifically, we're writing for the 12-year-old kid who is going to fashion the "brilliant writing" of a later day.
Our basic focus has been this:
In the present era, how has the American discourse been coming undone as our nation slides toward the sea?
As we've focused on the (extremely strange) Gutfeld! show, we've also been asking this question:
Does our own Blue America possess anything like a sexual politics at this point in time?
The task we've set ourselves is complex—and yesterday, there it was! Another fight broke out in the room as we tried to continue those tasks.
Sure enough—the war of our worlds broke out again! This latest fight involved what we would describe as a somewhat odd, and perhaps self-defeating, video message from six Democrats.
The president responded in a predictable way, and the war of the tribes was back on. We don't want to proceed along as if we haven't noticed.
With Thanksgiving hurrying forward, we'll offer our assessment of that latest skirmish this afternoon and/or tomorrow. For now, we're going to proceed with a listing of profiles—the six profiles of Greg Gutfeld, or of the Gutfeld! show, to which we've or already referred in the course of this year.
This will serve as a valuable resource for the 12-year-old kid who, in the future, is going help our flailing nation emerge from the current wilderness. Below, you five profiles which have emerged in the current year, along with one from 2023:
Profiles of Greg Gutfeld or of the Gutfeld! program:
The New York Times: July 2, 2023
How Fox News (Yes, Fox News) Managed to Beat ‘The Tonight Show’
Greg Gutfeld has installed his brand of insult conservatism as the institutional voice for the next generation of Fox News viewer. And it’s catching on.
Variety: February 19, 2025
How Greg Gutfeld Became the Bill Maher of Fox News—And Toppled Fallon and Colbert in the Ratings
Mediaite: July 19, 2025
Greg Gutfeld’s Disruptive Rise: How a Fox News Prankster Broke Late-Night TV
Mediaite: August 26, 2025
How Greg Gutfeld Went From Fox’s Most Irreverent Host to Its Most Servile
The New York Times: September 28, 2025
A Baby. A Double Mastectomy. Many Opinions From Fox News Viewers.
Kat Timpf got pregnant, got breast cancer, then got back to work on the political comedy show “Gutfeld!”—all as a culture war brews over ambition, motherhood and women’s health.
The New York Times: November 26, 2025
The Interview: Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure.
We don't believe we've ever cited that August 26 profile before. In part, we include the 2023 New York Times profile because that August 26 effort provides a perspective on what we were told back then.
Greg Gutfeld and the Gutfeld! show have become extremely big. This Fox News Channel "cable news" program is playing a significant role as the war of the worlds has devoured our struggling nation.
In the future, some kid who is only 12 today is going to straighten this whole thing out. According to several major oracles, he or she will provide "brilliant writing" about the questions we've posted above, including that awkward second query:
Does the Blue America of today possess anything like an actual sexual politics?
We're willing to guess that youth will be served—that today's unheralded 12-year-old kid will help us find our way back to status as an actual nation. When he or she does that, he or she will use those profiles to help us see where we've gone wrong.
As we noted in Monday's report, Susan Faludi thought she saw a backlash. Amid the chaos which rules the Fox News Channel, we think we keep seeing one too!
Tomorrow: The latest dispute in the war of the tribes
Monday: We return to this year's soft-soap profiles—and to the one which hit hard
Kate Manne today explains why the mainstream media did not cover Katie Johnson's accusations against Trump back in 2016.
ReplyDeletehttps://katemanne.substack.com/p/they-tried-to-bury-the-katie-johnson
"Ronan Farrow’s justly famous 2019 book, Catch and Kill, is a powerful exposé of a common practice in American corporate media: paying for stories only to bury them. And it contains a telling detail toward the end that many of us, me included, missed the first time around: AMI, American Media Inc., attempted to do just that with Katie Johnson’s 2016 allegations that Donald Trump raped her when she was a thirteen-year-old child, at Jeffrey Epstein’s residence.
AMI (now rebranded A360 Media) is the notoriously scummy parent company of The National Enquirer, among other magazines and supermarket tabloids. And its ties to Donald Trump are now very well-established. During the first week of November 2016, just before the election, The Wall Street Journal contacted the Enquirer for comment about a story involving then CEO of AMI, David Pecker, and then editor-in-chief of The National Enquirer, Dylan Howard. The story alleged that AMI had, at Trump’s behest, chased a lead with the aim not of publishing it but burying it. Howard reportedly flew into a panic. He ordered a member of his staff to destroy everything in a safe by putting it through a paper shredder, including documents that related to the soon-to-be president. A long-time former editor at the Enquirer, Jerry George, estimated that Pecker—a close friend of Trump’s, who regularly flew on his private jet—killed around ten fully reported stories about him, and squashed many more potential leads, in exchange for various perks and privileges. Farrow quotes Pecker’s response to a reporter who said, after the 2016 election, that criticism of Trump and criticism of AMI were surely not synonymous. “To me it is. The guy’s a personal friend of mine.” Howard, too, was firmly in Trump’s orbit, and played an important role in the Stormy Daniels scandal.
Image: Dylan Howard with Trump at the oval office
AMI and The National Enquirer are notoriously unscrupulous: often essentially blackmailing celebrities, including with illegally obtained medical records, in order to get exclusives. But, as Farrow writes, in the run-up to the 2016 election, there was something even more nefarious afoot. The Enquirer became Trump’s rag, and Pecker and Howard were frequently in close contact with Trump’s fixer at the time: his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Farrow describes an aspect of their dealings that had never previously been made public. Shortly after Katie Johnson filed her lawsuit, Pecker learned about it, and Howard got on the phone with Cohen, “assuring him that they would track down the woman with the rape allegations and see what they could do about her.” An AMI employee recalled to Farrow that the conversations about it happened at all hours, and became a top priority in the office. A reporter was dispatched to do what AMI did for Trump routinely: to buy Katie Johnson’s story, in order to ensure that it would never be made public. And although they apparently never managed to track down Katie and do what they had planned, they went on the offensive: one of the company’s headlines on the lawsuit described it as “bogus”; another as “disgusting.”
And readers, I’m afraid that many of us bought it—hook, line, and sinker."
She continues:
Delete"I’ve written before about not knowing what to make of the Katie Johnson story back in 2016, even as someone who was writing from the beginning about the misogyny of the president, and my grim belief that Clinton would lose to Trump, because of the misogynistic smear campaign against her. (AMI was central in this campaign, publishing headlines like SOCIOPATHY: HILLARY CLINTON’S SECRET PSYCH FILES EXPOSED! and HILLARY: CORRUPT! RACIST! CRIMINAL! as Farrow details. They also loved to speculate that she was about to die—a veritable goner, in contrast to the now-president.) But even for someone as dark on Trump as I was, the Katie Johnson story felt difficult to believe, in part because it seemed so shocking. Now, as I’ve argued, our priors should be very different: every detail of Katie’s account seems ominously plausible. It is full of information about Epstein that wasn’t publicly available in 2016, two years before Julie K. Brown’s brilliant exposé of him was published. And Katie’s portrait of Trump—as getting off on total control, and spewing racist anti-immigrant vitriol even in his sexual fantasies—is all too believable. Trump’s germophobia, his attraction toward his own daughter, Ivanka, and his desire to disempower and humiliate, are all completely consistent with the character of the man we’ve come to know as our president.
Most importantly, however, many women have now testified in ways that back up Katie’s account—including two contemporaneous witnesses who produced sworn affidavits, and two Epstein victims who allege misconduct on the part of the president at around the same time. There would have to have been an effective conspiracy of multiple ostensibly unrelated women aiming to impugn the president in order for Katie’s story to merit wholesale dismissal. Yet that was and has continued to be its fate in many quarters.
And we now know that the sources of some of the original skepticism about the court case were bogus—coming straight from Trump’s media lackeys and fixers. Does the flap around the story increase the likelihood it is true? Arguably not, or only marginally so. But it does answer a question many good-faith people have about Katie’s story: if it were true, or even credible, why hasn’t the mainstream media covered it? Because this is the kind of story that is routinely subject to catch-and-kill burial.
There’s a remaining source of skepticism about Katie Johnson’s story that I’ve addressed before only to say it is not definitive: the fact that her original representative, Norm Lubow, was undoubtedly a charlatan (a former producer on the Jerry Springer show, of all things). According to Katie, she met him at a party, and he offered to get her story out there, under the pseudonym “Al Taylor.” Her lawsuit was incompetently filed in California, before another suit was filed in New York with different legal counsel."
Somerby should be asking why the mainstream press has suppressed the stories of Epstein's victims for so long. Gutfeld doesn't matter. He is just another shill for Trump, making ugly jokes about fat women. Guys have been doing that on their podcasts since podcasting became a thing. It is what misogynists do.
DeleteThe much more important issue is why Somerby ignores the whole Epstein sex scandal. Trump hurt women and we knew that before the 2016 election, yet Republicans and too many non-Hillary male voters put him into office. Now we find out how badly he hurt women in his association with Epstein. That adds to the 27 women who came forward to tell their stories about how Trump treated them (excluding Stormy Daniels whose voice was suppressed). How many times do men need to hear this stuff before they believe that Trump is a criminal who hurts women? And why do they tolerate this behavior? Because they think some of Trump's wealth might rub off on themselves? Why?
Somerby stays far far away from real questions involving misogyny, such as why Hillary didn't win in 2016. There is a lot more to this, including Russian interference, but misogyny played a role, as it did for Kamala Harris. Yet Somerby cannot see beyond Gutfeld. Why is that?
Perhaps because that is his job as a right wing influencer. To misdirect the focus from Trump's crimes against women onto the trivial jokes told by Gutfeld. Or maybe Somerby is not paid and does this out of his own personal motives, complex issues involving his dislike of his mother generalized to all women, who he suspects lie a lot and are out to get men with false accusations. Somerby is a screwed up guy, that is obvious, but his he has kept his Nazi-adjacent worship of sacred Greeks and My Antonia on the downlow, except when hinting and throwing out dog whistles to his Nazi bros and Tucker.
Somerby's affected concern for women's feelings about their weight has nothing to do with misogyny and everything to do with avoiding Epstein. But Somerby is understandably afraid to say that teens should be fair game. And that fear shows that at some level he understands that such girls are off limits for older men and he knows that Epstein's sex ring was not just illegal but wrong.
I asked Chris Cuomo at the time why CNN was not reporting on this matter. He gave me a bunch of bullshit insisting they couldn't report on it until there actually was a trial.
Delete"Somerby is a screwed up guy, that is obvious, but his he has kept his Nazi-adjacent worship of sacred Greeks and My Antonia on the downlow, except when hinting and throwing out dog whistles to his Nazi bros and Tucker."
DeleteThat's excessive, even for Slabby. Calm tf down.
Well said.
DeleteAgree, 11:47 is spot on.
DeleteYes, I am 2:45 and I was referring to the original comment, not Quaker's silly moral panic.
Delete
ReplyDeleteWhat the fuck is "sexual politics"?
And what is "the war of the worlds" that "has devoured our struggling nation"? The idiot-"message" from six idiot-Democrats?
It hasn't devoured anything. Idiot-Democrats are sitting in their swamp, nervously waiting for the swamp to be drained. That's all.
sexual politics definition: "the principles determining the relationship of the sexes; relations between the sexes regarded in terms of power."
DeleteAI Overview:
"Sexual politics refers to the power dynamics and social relations shaped by gender and sexuality, examining how they influence personal relationships, societal norms, and political structures. The concept, popularized by Kate Millett's 1970 book, analyzes how systems of power, such as patriarchy, are maintained and challenged through various institutions and cultural practices, linking personal experiences to broader social and political struggles for equality. "
Somerby uses the term incorrectly.
So, in other words: meaningless liberal claptrap.
DeleteThought so.
Anonymouse 12:06pm, and goodness knows young men watching a highly rated five nights a week cultural phenomenon such as Gutfeld! is meaningless as to fostering adherents to these “power systems”.
DeleteThe only "woman" Somerby has appeal with, is our resident man pretending to be a woman.
Delete"As we noted in Monday's report, Susan Faludi thought she saw a backlash. Amid the chaos which rules the Fox News Channel, we think we keep seeing one too!"
ReplyDeleteThe Dobbs decision rolling back women's abortion rights is backlash. Gutfeld making stupid fat jokes is not, because men never stopped making such jokes. Throwing women out of top jobs in govt and military is backlash (Somerby has never talked about it), an executive order repealing the civil rights laws of the 1960s and 1970s (listed here yesterday) would be backlash. Trump has eliminated enforcement of those laws but not the laws themselves.
Perhaps Somerby thinks women will join him in hating Gutfeld if he points out the fat jokes, but that is not anywhere close to an important issue for women. Health care and the inability of pregnant women to get appropriate treatment of ectopic preganancies and miscarriages, resulting in increased deaths in states that have banned abortion -- that's an important issue for women. It is why so many younger women want to leave the USA. They don't feel like it is safe to get pregnant in much of the country.
Somerby is an asshole. His stunted view of women's rights shows that. His dainty refusal to talk about wrongs done by the right wing against women since Trump arrived on the scene shows that he is not serious when he talks about misogyny or sexual politics or women's rights, much less their needs, concerns and issues. Somerby has to be the most clueless man on earth, or he is doing this deliberately to trivialize women's needs.
ReplyDeleteI have millions of of long, delicious word-salads.
Somerby is an ass. And I sniff my fingers. And I sniff my fingers. Mm-mmm.
I am Corby.
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ReplyDeleteThe major media haven’t covered much of anything mentioned in these rambling posts, but Bob was going after the NYT, WP, MSNBC, CNN, news columnists, movie makers, writers, for years and it meant nothing to anonymices. Then Fox News was the problem according to anonymices. Now this anonymouse whips out her riff and writes as though Bob has been on Fox News and Gutfeld’s case for 30 years and that the guys watching Gutfeld! and his ironic sidekick aren’t soaking up the same culture among the same XY people that she condemns and accuses Bob of ignoring. You have to admit though that she can certainly lay on the breathless dramatic denouement thing per every post
ReplyDeleteI don’t know what point you're trying to make.
DeleteSomerby: "This latest fight involved what we would describe as a somewhat odd, and perhaps self-defeating, video message from six Democrats."
ReplyDeleteLordy is Somerby out of touch. There is nothing odd about noting aspects of our constitution and the rules our military abides by, particularly as Trump is engaging in war crimes, and the only self-defeat here was on the part of Trump - the Dems triggered Trump into yet another misstep (calling for their death) in a series of Dem-triggered missteps that has resulted in Trump being the lowest rated president in modern history.
"Greg Gutfeld and the Gutfeld! show have become extremely big. This Fox News Channel "cable news" program is playing a significant role as the war of the worlds has devoured our struggling nation."
ReplyDeleteWhat??? What drug is Somerby on? This is a wildly inaccurate claim.
Nice try to distract from the real issues, but the only result is that people will worry about Somerby's mental state and general circumstances.