HELLO STRANGER: The Fox News prankster did it again!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2025

It may be too late to turn back: Last evening, at 10:01 sharp, the little guy with the boatload of anger started his "cable news" program in the standard way—with one of his "smart, fun" jokes.

It was still just 7:01 on the coast—"late night" in Los Angeles! The first thing he said is shown below. Could comedy ever get smarter|?

GUTFELD (7/31/25): Good evening, everyone. Well, a former high-ranking Biden aide claims that Biden "was fully capable of exercising his presidential duties."

Unfortunately, they were in his diaper.

COMPAGNO: [Laughter]

Trust us! As soon as the little guy said the word "duties," we knew where this effort was going.

Could comedy ever get smarter than that? It's hard to see how it could! As we noted yesterday, he had explored the same theme the previous night with this early deposit:

GUTFELD (7/30/25): Geese have reportedly caused a popular beach in Finland to be covered in "a shocking amount of poop."

"Define shocking amount of poop," said Joe Biden's night nurse.

[PHOTO OF PRESIDENT BIDEN]

All through 2024, the claim that President Biden was constantly "pooping his pants" or "sh*tting his pants" was a popular, well-received theme on this very smart "cable news" program. 

(Fox News censors would let the word "pooping" go out on the air, would BLEEP the less seemly locution.)

On at least three occasions during that same election year, this very same fellow had authored jokes built around an important question: 

Now that President Biden was no longer sentient, had Huner Biden started banging or f*cking Jill Biden yet?

We transcribed such queries on three separate occasions. There may well have been more.

(Fox News censors would let the word "banging" go out on the air, would BLEEP the less seemly term.)

"Everybody I met was a stranger to me?" We'll admit that we're inclined to include this highly peculiar 60-year-old man in a list of Unrecognizables. We find it hard to recognize his persistent behavior, to know how a reasonable person might best choose to describe it.

We find it hard to track his behavior to any behavior we've ever encountered in real life—even to anything we ever encountered curing decades of experience within the actual comedy world. Everybody I met was a stranger to me, the American song famously says.

Also strange is the puzzling way journalists have chosen to describe this Fox News Channel employee. Back in February, Variety's Tatiana Siegel took a major dive in her lengthy profile of the man and his TV show. Two weeks ago, a good decent person at Mediaite described this fellow as a "prankster" while assuring us of how "smart" and "fun" his comedy actually is.

In truth, Gutfeld! isn't a comedy show, nor is it "political satire." Our journalists don't seem to want to say so, but Gutfeld! is a corporate propaganda show which smuggles its intense corporate messaging onto the air under cover of comedy elements.

It also isn't a "late night" show; as noted, it airs at 7 p.m. on the coast. Having said that, so what?

The Fox News Channel calls it a "late night" show, and American journalists—Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger—seem to agree they should go ahead and say the same thing.

(This is done so they can praise the program's host as the so-called "King of Late Night.")

Is the person in question really an imp—really a harmless "Fox News prankster?" As the leading authority on the topic explains, the merry pranksters arrived on the scene long ago:

Merry Pranksters

The Merry Pranksters were followers of American author Ken Kesey. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties, and giving out LSD. During this time, they...presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, including a bit on the same epic 1964 cross-country trip on Furthur—a sojourn to Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend the novelist Larry McMurtry.

Notable members of the group include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, Lee Quarnstrom, and Neal Cassady. Stewart Brand, Dorothy Fadiman, Paul Foster, George Walker, the Warlocks (later known as the Grateful Dead), Del Close (then a lighting designer for the Grateful Dead), Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, and Kentucky Fab Five writers Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman...were associated with the group to varying degrees.

These events are also documented by one of the original pranksters, Lee Quarnstrom, in his memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter.

And so on, at length, from there. Kesey had Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia. Gutfeld has the overwrought Emily Compagno.

For what it may be worth, we were in the Bay Area ourselves at that time, though just as a high school student. At that time,  the "democratization of media" was getting one of its principal starts in the suddenly booming talk radio show of the puzzling Les Crane at San Francisco's KGO.

(You can read a brief account of that pre-Limbaugh history here. "Helping to pioneer talk radio, he was outspoken and outraged some callers by hanging up on them," Variety said. We well recall the puzzlement surrounding this new behavior. For the New York Times obituary, you can just click this.)

At any rate, those were the merry pranksters. As pranksters go, the subject of today's narration is—at least as judged by traditional norms—angry, coarse, vulgar, perhaps one might even say vile.

Angry, coarse, ugly and vile, but also unbelievably stupid. Last night, as this apparent idiot delivered his alleged issues monologue, he detoured to pleasure his fans with two of his favorite characterizations:

GUTFELD: This whole ["Democrat"} party has lost its mind. What's next?

Will Cory Bookey want me to engage in a tug of war?

Will Rashida Tlaib want me to engage in a beard-growing contest? Will Jerry Nadler threaten me with a turd-off?

COMPAGNO: [Laughter]

Just so you'll know, because Tlaib's ancestry is Palestinian, this Fox star is constantly mocking her for her (imagined) mustache and beard. Meanwhile, as with President Biden, so too with Rep. Nadler:

Gutfeld's presentations are constantly spiked with talk about Nadler's poops and farts, and even with talk of his turds. Indeed, when we turned to YouTube this morning, we found an official tape from the Fox News Channel—the official videotape of last night's imitation of an "issue monologue."

There it was, the official video. As you can see, the official title is this:

Gutfeld: Thanks for the offer, fartman

For the record, the "fartman" of this imitation of an issue monologue actually isn't Nadler. But this is who and what these idiots are as, night after night after night after night, they churn out the "cable news" propaganda product—product which has somehow struck one journalist as being "smart" and "fun."

Actually, no—it isn't comedy. Also, it isn't "cable news." It's corporate propaganda messaging, delivered each night by an apparent idiot and four hand-picked enablers. 

Nor can anything about it be thought of as "smart." Or at least, that's true within the cultural framework which is currently being taken down as this collection of strangers keep coming over the walls.

Last night, this is who these dumbbells were as Master Gutfeld, 60 years old, clued us in about fartman:

Gutfeld!, July 31, 2025
Jamie Lissow: comedian
Brooke Goldstein: "human rights attorney"
Andrew Gruel: chef and restaurant owner
Emily Compagno: former Oakland Raiders cheerleader

The chef and the comedian had been flown in to explore the day's news topics.

At one point, after ten long years, the Achaeans finally came over the walls and took down sacred Troy in a murderous night assault. Ten years into this Age of Trump, Gutfeld!'s ship of fools sets sail each night to the cheers of a studio audience.

After a few minutes of human waste-infested jokes, the angry prankster proceeds to offers his nightly issues monologue. Last Thursday evening, he could no longer hold it in. 

He explained Barack Obama's participation in that "treasonous conspiracy." Over here in Blue America, the finer people all looked away as this strange person told his tale.  

Tomorrow—we keep pushing it back!—we'll show you what he said. For today, we'll offer a spoiler alert:

It was corporate propaganda all the way down. To a truly amazing extent, the fellow seemed to have no idea what he was talking about.

When the Carter Family debuted the song, its mysterious, elusive lyrics started out like this:

Hello, stranger, put your loving hand in mine
Hello, stranger, put your loving hand in mine
You are a stranger and you're a pal of mine.

The Carter Family went with "pal." Later, other performers said "friend."

As the song continues, it emerges that someone is headed to prison. A mournful air takes over the song. Soon, the lyrics say this:

Oh, I'll see you when your troubles are like mine
I'll see you when your troubles are like mine
I'll see you when you haven't got a dime.

Weeping like a willow, mourning like a dove
Weeping like a willow, I'm mourning like a dove
There's a man up the country that I really love.

There's a desire to return to a better place. As those of us in Blue America keep averting our gaze from the onslaught, we may already have created a world in which it's too late for that.

Don't cheat yourself out of hearing what Emmylou Harris teased out of Hello Stranger. Way back in 1976, she recorded this version of the old song with the late Nicolette Larson.

Tomorrow: What the strange fellow crazily said