BACKLASH: Like horses, cattle, "livestock" and cows!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2025

Blue America looks away: Way back in 1991, Susan Faludi believed—we'll guess correctly—that a backlash was going on.

For the record, she hadn't spotted just any backlash. She'd spotted the backlash she described in a major best-selling book:

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women is a 1991 book by Susan Faludi, in which the author presents evidence demonstrating the existence of a media-driven "backlash" against the feminist advances of the 1970s in the United States.

That's the start of Wikipedia's report on Faludi's massive best-seller. Some critics challenged the scholarship in Faludi's book. Other observers showered her work with praise.

How about it? Was some sort of "backlash" really underway at that time against the advances of feminism over the previous three decades? We'll assume that the answer is yes. 

Also, was the mainstream media somehow involved in driving this backlash forward? More than thirty years later, we can't exactly say. 

We can't really tell you about the mainstream media of that distant time. But it seems to us that the mainstream media of this day—the high-end news orgs in our own Blue America—are deeply involved in disappearing another such attempt at pushback:

We refer to the ugly backlash you can see every night on the Fox News Channel's extremely strange Gutfeld! TV program.

What sorts of conduct on that show has been ignored—has been disappeared—by the mainstream media? For today, let's refresh ourselves on that key question.

In late September, the New York Times' Amanda Hess wrote a profile of Kat Timpf, one of Greg Gutfeld's two nightly sidekicks on his primetime "cable news" program. Hess seemed to portray Timpf as a type of feminist, a framing we ourselves found strange for reasons we'll describe below.

We remain puzzled by the overall framework of Hess's portrait of Timpf. But very late in Hess's profile, readers were finally given an idea—right there in Blue America's leading newspaper!—of what viewers see and hear each night on this garbage can of a TV program.

Hess has attended a taping of a Gutfeld! show. Here's what she said she saw:

When I attended a taping last month, I sat in the back row of the studio audience and looked down upon a circle of tufted armchairs arranged around a central coffee table...

[...]

At the top of the show, Mr. Gutfeld delivered a battery of topical jokes in which he matched pieces of the day’s news with verdicts on liberal women’s bodies. Hillary Clinton is ugly. Joy Behar is old. Nancy Pelosi is old. Rosie O’Donnell is fat, Whoopi Goldberg is fat, Lizzo is fat, a professor of political science you’ve never heard of is fat...Ms. Timpf calmly waited her turn, then sarcastically congratulated Mr. Gutfeld for managing to call not just one, but multiple women fat. “What a segment,” she said.

“Greg chooses the topics,” Ms. Timpf told me. “When I host, the topics are different.”

According to Hess, that's what she saw and heard as she sat in the studio audience. She was describing extremely unusual behavior on the part of the program's host.

She also seemed to say that the sidekick Timpf had pushed back that night against Greg Gutfeld's conduct. To us, that seems like a major stretch, but the most remarkable fact is this:

Hess's description of what she saw was a welcome departure from years of total mainstream silence about the contents of this primetime show. That said, Hess's account actually understated the types of "verdicts on liberal women’s bodies" to which a viewer of this gruesome program is exposed on a nightly basis.

It's true! For reasons Gutfeld himself has weirdly explained, liberal women are persistently mocked on his show for allegedly being too fat; for allegedly being too ugly; for allegedly having had too many facelifts; or for allegedly having used too much Botox. Women who are over 80 years of age are mocked for failing to be sexually attractive in a way that's pleasing to the program's extremely peculiar host.

Quite correctly, Hess recorded the fact that these women are persistently attacked for allegedly being too fat. She didn't mention the persistent way this program's host attacks the five women of The View. 

Those particular aren't attacked for any views they might express. Instead, they're persistently mocked for allegedly being too fat—although there's one key difference in the way they get attacked.

In their case, they are repeatedly compared to horses, to cows, to cattle, to pigs, to dogs, to whales and to "livestock." Sadly, these ugly denigrations routinely occasion cheering and applause from the Gutfeld! studio audience.

For whatever reason, Hess didn't mention this astounding behavior on the part of this program's host. On the other hand, and to her credit, she did quote the author of a book on "the conservative comedy scene" who brought the eternal note of sadness in as he characterized the role Timpf plays on this garbage can TV program.

In the passage shown below, Hess acknowledges the limited pushback which comes from Timpf in the face of Greg Gutfeld's conduct. Hess then quotes the academic, and he employs a key word:

Ms. Timpf is not a Trump supporter, or a tradwife, or a typical conservative, but she is also not a scold...In the place of outrage, she offers neurotic self-deprecation, which has earned her a fan base of her own. “Her problems are problems like: ‘Oh, I farted in the office of Greg Gutfeld. What if he finds out?’” said Gerd Buurmann, a German fan who streams the show from the Fox News International app on his phone. (“I have never farted in Greg’s office,” Ms. Timpf clarified.)

Even as she provides an alternate perspective or a polite rebuke, she radiates an air of relaxed tolerance for whatever invective is currently being flung across the set. “I think she’s there to soften the base line misogyny of that show and that universe,” said Nick Marx, an academic who studies the conservative comedy scene. Mr. Gutfeld characterized that criticism itself as “deeply sexist and inaccurate,” adding, “Kat is on the show because of her fearless humor, intelligence and connection with the ‘Gutfeld!’ audience.”

We apologize for the dumbness which floats around in that passage. On the other hand, Hess (gently) notes the fact we've long observed about Timpf:

Timpf sits on the set, night after night, failing to push back against the ugly conduct of the program's host.

Other women of the Fox News Channel also seem to see no evil in Gutfeld's behavior when they serve as panelists on this show. As for Marx, he was allowed by Hess to voice a fairly obvious judgment:

Misogyny is the base line of the Gutfeld! show! 

That's what Marx is quoted saying—and it's very hard to disagree with that assessment. Beyond that, it's hard to avoid seeing this garbage can of a "cable news" show as part of the latest backlash of the kind Faludi described.

In our view, it's astounding to see the extent to which this show seems to run on "woman hatred." At one point, Timpf herself is quoted saying this about members of the Gutfeld! audience who are dissatisfied with her role on this throwback program:

Ms. Timpf has a theory about the women who come for her. “I am not ladylike,” she said. “I’m a little rough around the edges. I think that a lot of women are told that they should be ladylike. And I’m successful, career-wise, not being ladylike. I also have a man who loves me, and a baby, not being ladylike.” As for the men, she said: “I think sometimes men just hate women.”

“I think sometimes men just hate women," Timpf instructively said. (For our money, we think Hitchcock masterfully explores that theme in Notorious, his extremely well-constructed 1946 thriller.)

That's only true of some men, of course. But night after night, we're puzzled by the source of the apparent loathing which bubbles up from this program's host as the studio audience cheers and as Timpf politely looks on.

We're puzzled (and saddened) by Greg Gutfeld's apparent loathing of women. We're struck by the way the various women of the Fox News Channel seem to find nothing strange about the host's bizarre behavior when they serve as panelists on this heavily watched cable show. 

Possibly more than anything else, we're saddened by the way the Blue American press corps has agreed to avoid reporting or discussing this ugly, unusual conduct. At this point, we've barely begun to describe the coarseness of this appalling show—but the major news orgs of our own Blue America have chosen, in the past many years, to avert their gaze from the ugly conduct which does in fact form the base line of this show.

Within the past year, we've perused five major profiles of the Gutfeld! show. Hess is the only writer who had even seemed to notice the ugly woman hatred which lies at the heart of this program. 

Even she made a very limited attempt to wonder why a person like Timpf sits on the panel, night after night, and "radiates an air of relaxed tolerance for whatever invective is currently being flung across the set."

The monkeys fling their poo all around. We've never seen Timpf push back.

What explains that insouciance in the face of this ugly, dim-witted conduct? It seems that Hess didn't bother to ask, and Timpf wasn't forced to tell.

As you may have noticed by now, we ourselves are overwhelmed by the challenge of describing this "cable news" program. It isn't just the apparent woman hatred. It's also the astonishing dumbness—the sheer stupidity—put on display each night.

Rising above this spectacle is the massive indifference of Blue America's eternally deferential mainstream press. Can a modern society function this way? We'll guess that the answer is no—and we Blues continue to play a key role in this fairly obvious problem. 

Tomorrow: We try to wrap this up