WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2026
We'd call that egregiously wrong: No, that wasn't happiness that sacred Thoreau was describing at that point in his most famous book. At the start of the chapter called Solitude, he was describing something else:
Solitude
This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore...Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath...
For a fuller chunk of that opening passage, see yesterday's report. To read the opening paragraph in full, you can just click here.
Was that Thoreau as an ecstatic? We've reported, you can decide! But as every American schoolchild knows, he was reporting from a hut he himself had assembled—a hut he'd assembled near Don Junior Pond, which was once weirdly known known as "Walden."
At any rate, he wasn't describing "happiness." We may get to that later on.
Last evening, for millions of viewers of one "cable news" channel, the congenial nature of all the elements was quickly replaced with the opening monologue on the Gutfeld! show.
The untreated mutt who fronts the show offered a joke suggesting that Barack Obama is secretly gay—a constant theme on this stone-cold nut-ball's gruesome show.
(Kat Timpf just sits there watching.)
"I don't get it," Gutfeld said, as the audience laughed and applauded. "Don't get that one at all."
Gutfeld routinely ducks behind such disclaimers as he degrades the American world with his grimy suggestions. Believe it or not, his previous joke seemed to be pushing the theme that Obama had or has some sort of problem with birth certificate matters!
His first joke dealt with the zipper on Bill Clinton's pants, which remained open on Columbus Day. Thirty years later, untreated people like Greg Gutfeld can't seem to move on from there.
This garbage can soils the American landscape every weekday night. Over the weekend, the Washington Post had offered this report on a familiar complaint by the sitting president:
Trump fumes at ‘stain’ on Norway after missing out on Nobel Peace Prize
President Donald Trump has reacted angrily to missing out on the Nobel Peace Prize, disparaging the winner and describing the decision as an “indelible stain” on Norway.
Speaking at a rally in Syracuse, New York, Friday evening, Trump described this year’s winner of the prestigious prize, leading jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, as a “mystery person” he had never heard of, and said: “We will not forget, Norway, that you didn’t give this prize.” He followed up with social media posts on Friday and Saturday that criticized the award committee’s decision.
[...]
In his Friday night tirade against the Nobel Peace Prize result, which lasted about 10 minutes, Trump said he “should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t. … This is an indelible stain on the country of Norway and those people that made such an disgraceful and embarrassing decision.”
You read that correctly! Speaking at what was supposed to be a campaign rally, the president spent roughly ten minutes complaining that he'd been snubbed again.
Judged by any conventional standard, his complaints were weirdly overwrought. As the Post's report continued, it also noted this:
In posts on Truth Social late Friday and early Saturday, Trump, who is waging war against Iran, also said he “should have won 8 Nobel Peace Prizes” because he “settled 8 Wars” and was “about to settle, or win, two more, Iran and, Russia/Ukraine.”
In reality, some of the eight conflicts Trump claims to have settled have continued. Others were ended largely by others.
All in all, whatever! He should have won eight Nobel Prizes, the overwrought person said.
And yes, he went on for ten minutes! Is something "wrong" with this powerful man?
What should we think about this sort of thing? As we noted yesterday, in a new Club Random episode, Bill Maher, who we greatly admire, chose to say this about that:
Bill Maher Is Dining With Trump Again Because He’s a Willing Dupe
Bill Maher is heading to the White House to meet with Donald Trump again partly because, in Maher’s words, “he was like, really nice.”
The last time the ostensibly liberal Maher made the pilgrimage to D.C. to meet with Trump, he indignantly lashed out at those who criticized him for doing so. Speaking on HBO’s Real Time after the summit in April 2025, Maher noted that Trump has been engaging in a “trade war and disappearing people, ruling by decree, threatening judges, gutting the government with glee.”
But despite these actions, which Maher himself said he is disturbed by, Trump still managed to impress him.
“Trump was gracious and measured,” Maher told his audience at the time. “And why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know and I can’t answer and it’s not my place to answer.”
Why does the president do the various things he does? Bill said he doesn't know.
Meanwhile, Bill Maher, please! He even said it isn't his place to answer that question. To our ear, he almost seemed to be saying that it isn't his place even to try to come up with an answer.
In our view, that was egregiously wrong.
Just a guess! We'll guess that almost everyone knows the unfortunate general answer to the question Bill posed. Beyond that, we think it's Bill's responsibility—he's a citizen, after all—to try to come up with an answer.
Tomorrow: A wide refusal to serve
