A nagging problem we haven't yet solved!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2024

Again, you get two choices: We're glad we watched last night's Gutfeld! program—because it was so horrendous.

The professional wrestler who knows everything was there, as he typically is. He's on tour as a comedian now too. As usual, two of the other four participants panelists were "comedians" last night too.

In this spreading primetime format, Fox is forming a new, more insidious way to advance its preferred propaganda. On the whole, the sheer stupidity of what the channel airs goes unmentioned everywhere else. 

Regarding Greg Gutfeld himself, how does Serra High manage to churn out such people? 

We went to Aragon, roughly one mile up the Alameda de las Pulgas, right there in sun-swept San Mateo. How did Gutfeld end up like this? Here's a few of the things he said:

He said it must be tough for AOC to live with a guy whose balls are smaller than hers. He referred to Gretchen Whitmer as a "ho," then said he was only kidding.

There's a cartoon potato named Professor Potato which is semi-popular in Michigan. Gutfeld said it reminded him of Hunter Biden's penis. (Pretty much everything does.) 

He referred to Whitmer as an airhead. He also made his standard joke about President Biden "pooping in his pants."

This small, small boy has been selected to run a nightly primetime show on a national "cable news" channel. He brings four idiot friends on the air with him and gives it a go every night.

At Fox, this new method of message delivery has been evolving for a while. Regarding the general breakdown of the national discourse, we'd date the start of the total meltdown to the pursuit of the Whitewater pseudo-scandal, which got its start in 1992 on the front page of the New York Times.

Fox News didn't yet exist. As Gene Lyons described in the quickly disappeared Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, it started at the Times.

Whitewater turned into a 24-year press corps war, directed at Clinton, Gore, Clinton. First it sent George W. Bush to the White House, then it followed with Donald J. Trump. That war was driven by the mainstream press corps—by some of the same people we now love and trust on our blue tribe cable news shows.

Speaking of Fox's silly boys (and girls), we have our silly boys too. The silly boys who comment at Kevin Drum's site don't have the first freaking idea about the history of this era. They just know that they're supposed to get very very upset if someone makes an accurate statement which flies in the face of their childish tribal dreams.

There's no cure for human nature! With that in mind, we remind you of the choice between dueling bumper stickers we think you might want to ponder at this perilous time.

Here's your pair of choices:

We have become a nation which is incapable of solving even the smallest problem. 

The United States is one of the world’s great problem solvers.

A few days back, we affirmed the first bumper sticker / general statement. Kevin countered with the second.

We mean zero disrespect to Kevin, but we think he's playing the Candide, Pangloss and Pollyanna cards a bit too lustily here. We'll sign up for the role of Cassandra at this apparently dangerous time.

In his second post on this general question, Kevin listed Whitewater as one of the problems we haven't yet solved. Does anyone know how much longer we have? The election arrives in November! 

As of 2003, the extension of the Whitewater chase had sent us into Iraq. Fourteen years later, its continuation—through, for example, Emailgate—elected Donald J. Trump. How long will it be before we get around to solving this small nagging problem? Before we're allowed to notice the way this disaster actually worked?

Just this once, we'll be honest! It's hard not to be briefly angry about some of what Kevin wrote. Murder rates, inequality, medical costs? The southern border and its spread into overwhelmed northern cities? 

The young female medical workers we overheard this Tuesday morning talking about the ways their relatives have dealt with various carjackings? When are we going to solve the nagging problem afflicting them and their family and friends?

It can be hard to avoid being briefly angry when Pollyanna arrives on the scene, saying we just haven't managed to solve that one yet. That's especially true when the whole blue world is warning us that our democracy will be taken away if Trump returns to the White House next year, as polling suggests he may do.

We're big fans of Kevin's work, though we think he's become a bit too sure of the idea that Nothing Much Is Actually Wrong and that every question can be settled through the use of statistical measures. (Needless to say, he may be right on both points!) 

We're tired of the attitudes which emerge from the overpaid plutos who pose on TV, and we do believe that disaster could ensue if Trump returns to the White House. (For the record, tens of millions of American voters disagree with our view.)

In the face of that threat, we find it hard not to get a tiny bit angry, but also in the face of the carjacking comments we heard two days ago. By the way, when was the last time our problem-solving nation was able to craft an actual budget? We haven't even solved that yet!

We'll may look at this topic next week. We think a debate between those two bumper stickers could be highly instructive.

That said, everyone has noticed the fact that we can no longer come together to solve, or even to address, our serious national problems. Within our blue tribe, it's standard issue to make such statements, but only as long as you say the whole reason for this meltdown rests with the very, very, very bad people all of whom live Over There.

On the sunnier side of the street, it's lots of fun when you're paid big bucks by the Fox News Channel to go on TV and behave like a gaggle of fools. In this morning's New York Times, Gail Collins is also joking around today. According to Collins, a good decent person, it's going to be verrrrrrry boring this year with Biden-Trump all the way through.

Question:

Do we believe that our world is at risk, or is that just something we peddle?  In fairness, no one's required to think some such thing, and at this juncture there's no perfect way to know who's actually right.

Gretchen Whitmer is a ho! In total fairness, the angriest little boy on TV was just kidding around when he said it.

So too with AOC's big huge balls. That was just primetime "news" too!

This has been tolerated forever. It got its start in the New York Times, and only Gene Lyons complained.

Harper's published and promoted his book. Our blue stars all ignored it.