HELLO STRANGER: Everyone seemed to be a rank stranger?

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 2025

So too with Fox News Channel shows: "Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger."

That's what the evocative lyrics say. As we start today, we'll let the Library of Congress flesh out the background to the song:

Rank Stranger—The Stanley Brothers (1960)
Added to the National Registry: 2008
Essay by Cary O'Dell

Though dozens of artists have recorded the song “Rank Stranger” over the years, the Stanley Brothers’ simple, effective treatment remains its definitive version and it was this recording that was named to the National Recording Registry in 2008.

Though strongly associated with the legendary Stanleys, “Rank Stranger” was not authored by them. Instead, it was the work of prolific gospel songwriter Albert E. Brumley, Sr., the composer of such other seminal gospel classics as “Turn Your Radio On” and “I’ll Fly Away.” 

Composed in 1942, “Stranger” would not be popularized until the Stanley Brothers committed it to vinyl at the somewhat late date of 1960...

The Stanleys were, at the time, headlining a live, weekly radio show, the Suwannee River Jamboree, from Live Oak, Florida. The recording was released later that year on their “Sacred Songs from the Hill” album over the Starday label. 

The overview rolls on from there. For the lyrics to Rank Stranger, you can just click here.

As noted, the song was added to the National Recording Registry back in 2008. It involves a persistent theme of southern (white) traditional music—the loss of connection to hearth and home suffered when the individual has been forced to move on:

In my hand I hold a picture of the old home far away.
In the other one my sweetheart I'm thinking of today...

That, once again, is The Original and Great Carter Family, in this case in My Old Clinch Mountain Home. To hear their recording, click here.

In Rank Stranger, the singer returns to his childhood home. When he does, he finds that every recognizable face is gone. 

With that, let's return to our own present-day encounters with a substantial array of strangers, perhaps rank strangers at that.

We often think, as we watch shows on the Fox News Channel, that its performers are drawn from a population we're inclined to call "Unrecognizables." A bit like the people described in Rank Stranger, they almost seem to come from a race we've never encountered in actual life. 

(We're speaking about performers on Fox, not about Trump voters.)

The same could perhaps be said about the rank strangers so numerous among the elites of our own Blue America—the strangers who agree to avert their gaze from what is occurring, day after day and then night after night, on Fox News Channel TV shows as a certain civilization, for better or worse, is being unceremoniously overcome and undone.

As in the Iliad, so too here. A furiously angry population is once again coming over the walls. In the current circumstance, we find it hard to recognize the furiously angry people in question. We also find it (somewhat) hard to recognize their willing enablers within our lazy and indulgent Blue American world.

This week, we're trying to create an historical record—a record of the opening segment on last Thursday's Gutfeld! show. 

During that opening segment, the host of the show offered an astonishing monologue about Director Gabbard's recent claim—her exciting claim that Barack Obama engaged in a "treasonous conspiracy" near the end of his second term as president.

As a simple objective matter, the little guy's furious statements that night were astounding. These tools then played their assigned role in the nightly drama:

Gutfeld!: Thursday, July 24, 2025
Joe Germanotta: owner, Joanne's Trattoria
Kennedy: former VJ
Guy Benson: Fox News contributor
Michael Loftus: comedian

Three of the panelists rushed to agree with every word their employer had said. One of the tools, at least to our eye, found a way to avoid commenting on a series of claims he probably knew to be clownishly bogus.

In yesterday's report, we offered you some of the background to the topic under "discussion" that night. In the days which remain this week, we want to show you the following:

We want to show you what Greg Gutfeld said in his opening "monologue" that evening. Also, we want to show you what the tools then said in support of his claims.

Finally, want to show you what was said in the opening segment of last night's Gutfeld! show. We even want to do that!

By our lights, a mob of Unrecognizables were coming over the walls in last evening's opening segment. Over here, in Blue America, a separate group of strangers were adopting their normal stance:

They were averting their gaze from this cultural onslaught, as they do each day and each night! They were choosing not to report or discuss what happens on the Fox News Channel.

We're going to leave it right there for today. Tomorrow, we'll show you what Gutfeld said at the start of last Thursday's program. If you want to look ahead for yourself, you can watch his presentation simply by clicking here. 

(Needless to say, he had started the program with some jokes about the unbelievable girth of the women on The View. They need to be "rounded up and equipped with cowbells," the angry little guy said.)

We're going to visit those topics. Along the way, we also want you to ponder the strangers who seem to think that Gutfeld! is a comedy show—who even seem to be able to think that Gutfeld and his ever-changing panel of guests are providing something resembling "smart comedy."

Variety took a dive for this TV show earlier this year. Last week, Colby Hall—a good, decent person—almost seemed to follow suit. Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger, the Stanley Brothers once said.

At present, the Fox News Channel is playing an active role in the task of bringing down a certain civilization, such as that civilization has been. Different people have different views about the value of that ongoing war. 

We'll guess that the war has already been won—that we self-impressed Blues have already managed to lose it.

We Blues tend to be self-defeatingly dumb, but also perhaps a bit uncaring. As this warfare is staged every day and then each night, our Blues elites—not unlike a group of strangers—agree to look away from what's occurring, agree to avert their gaze.

Tomorrow: What the angry "cable news" star very angrily said