SERVILE / DEFERENTIAL: Greg Gutfeld is servile to President Trump!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2025

Blue elites are deferential to him: Thanksgiving came early, over the weekend, here on this sprawling campus. 

Starting with last Friday's report, we granted ourselves a brief reprise from a dispiriting task. We refer to the dismal task of discussing the sheer inanity of the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! show, not to mention such programs as The Five and even Fox & Friends Weekend.

Also, The Big Weekend Show!

It's painful and tiring to take on that assignment. In Friday's report, we merely created a list of sources for future reference.

As you can see, we posted links to six profiles of Greg Gutfeld or of the Gutfeld! show. This week, we'll conclude our depressing review of this remarkable program.

Just for the record, and as we've long noted, this program isn't "a late-night comedy show." Despite the deference to the Fox News Channel which is found all through those Gutfeld! profiles in question, Gutfeld! is actually a primetime propaganda/messaging show—a primetime propaganda/messaging aired by a "cable news" channel.

Its messaging is accomplished under cover of "comedy stylings." But this is not a comedy show, and its extremely peculiar host is not "The King of Late Night."

For the record, the sheer stupidity of this show is accomplished, right from the start, by the way it's constructed. Simply put, the Fox News Channel assembles ever-shifting four-member panels to perform in service to Gutfeld, the host. 

None of them seem to have any particular expertise regarding any particular major news topic. That said, their role on the program is obvious:

These four naifs proceed to agree with every bit of messaging offered by their highly partisan host. In this way, the public is given a given a quintet of incompetents speaking as one, often in ways which are remarkably coarse—and in ways which will strike many people as undisguisedly misogynistic.

This may be the dumbest show ever aired by any of our three major "cable news" channel. Beyond that, did we mention the apparent misogyny which seems to form a key part of its mission and its soul?

In the face of this ugly nonsense, Blue America's major news orgs have agreed to obscure the truth about this heavily watched "cable news" program. program, to the extent that they deign to acknowledge its existence at all.

On Friday, we posted links to five profiles of the Gutfeld! show which have been published this year. In our view, four of the five have worked rather hard to avoid discussing the apparent misogyny which spills from the garbage can each evening a 10 p.m. Eastern—but also at 7 p.m. out on the Pacific coast.

Starting tomorrow, we'll review the one profile, out of those five, which we haven't cited before. That profile failed to mention the apparent misogyny at all—and that's a striking fact in itself. But this one profile approached the Gutfeld! phenomenon from a unique perspective. 

This profile was different from all the rest. Here's another link to that profile, which was published by Mediaite in August of this year:

Mediaite: August 26, 2025
OPINION
How Greg Gutfeld Went From Fox’s Most Irreverent Host to Its Most Servile

This profile was written by John Daly of BernardGoldberg.com. It was explicitly listed as an Opinion piece, but it chronicles the way this program's host transitioned from his role as an aggressively anti-Trump voice to the role he plays today, in which he goes on the air, along with his circle of stooges, positioned as the president's "most servile" supporter.

Concerning his central claim, Daly came with receipts! You can peruse his profile today, or you can wait until we run throw his presentation in tomorrow's report.

For ourselves, we'll start our week with Maureen Dowd's column in yesterday's New York Times. We couldn't help thinking how much her profile of President Trump sounded like a profile of Greg Gutfeld himself.

President Trump has been on a jag of late. During this jag, he has attacked a former supporter as Marjorie Traitor Greene, and he has repeatedly suggested that six Democratic members of Congress should perhaps be slated for DEATH.

Along the way, he surprisingly set one day aside to stage an Oval Office lovefest with a former "Communist" of his loud fever dreams, mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. On Fox, they know that Mamdani is a "full-blown Communist" because he wants to run free buses in his city, the same way Stalin did.

With respect to President Trump, we've suggested that you see these behaviors as part of an ongoing medical story. But we'll set that aside for another set of days—a set of days which may come soon after this week's festive holiday.

All in all, the president's behavior has been quite erratic of late. At the start of yesterday's column, Dowd visited some ancient history—the insult the president recently threw at a highly experienced and competent journalist, Catherine Lucey of Bloomberg News. 

As of yesterday, Dowd's column was already somewhat dated. But this is the way the column started, headline included:

Piggy Gets Polite

Step by slimy step, President Trump has made us numb to his crudeness and cruelty.

The solipsistic Trump, with the parasitic tech emperors and the internet itself, is degrading American values, making honor and integrity seem anachronistic.

Still, some moments shock as beyond the pale. Whatever the pale is anymore.

On Air Force One recently, Trump cut off Catherine Lucey, a Bloomberg News journalist pressing him about the release of Epstein files that could further implicate Trump in the lurid mess. Stabbing his finger at her face, the President of the United States snapped at Lucey: “Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”

[...]

It was nauseating, if not surprising. Trump loves to call people who annoy him “pigs” and “dogs,” and in the case of his inamorata Stormy Daniels, “horseface.”

It was misogynistic, but Trump bullies both men and women, attacking their looks and character and hurling nasty, intensely personal epithets and nicknames. He mocked Chris Christie, once an ally, as “a fat pig,” “a slob” and “sloppy."

Dowd used the term "misogynistic" to describe this pattern of conduct. That said, no one compares liberal women to horses, cattle, pigs and "livestock" as frequently, and as directly, as Greg Gutfeld does.

Like Trump, Gutfeld also mocks some men with whom he disagrees as being way too fat, or perhaps as lacking control of their bowels. And as with the president, so too here: Chris Christie is one of the men Gutfeld likes to mock for being too fat and a slob.

To our eye and to our ear, this is one of the beards behind which Gutfeld hides his apparent loathing of women—but that's an impression for another day. Let's peruse another chunk of Dowd's column about President Trump:

When I interviewed him decades ago in his more appropriate incarnation as a flashy developer hogging attention in New York, he would rate the looks of supermodels and actresses, dropping snap judgments like, “Sadly, Heidi Klum is no longer a 10.” Sometimes, he sent me pictures of female journalists from newspapers, commenting with a Sharpie scrawl on who he thought looked good or bad.

Politicians were never insult comics before Trump. But in the 2016 primaries he learned sneering deflected from substance.

Politicians were never insult comics before the current president! That said, Gutfeld was never a comedian at all until the Fox News Channel spent years grooming him for his current role in unusual program which sometimes aired at 2 or 3 in the morning.

As far as we know, the full story of that strange development campaign hasn't yet been told. But the process produced the remarkably coarse host of a primetime "cable news" program—a person who repeatedly asked, during the 2024 campaign, if Hunter Biden had started "banging" or "[BLEEP]ing" his stepmother, the first lady, yet.

(Fox would let the word "banging" air. When he used the F-word in such contexts, they would BLEEP it out.)

Back in his developer days, did President Trump denigrate a major female model as "no longer a 10?" For better or worse—the judgment is yours—that's a game Gutfeld also plays as he keeps telling his very large viewership that Taylor Swift is actually only a 5, or possibly a 6.

That said, the problems with the Gutfeld! show extend well past its panel selection and its apparent misogyny. The problems extend to the inane arguments its host is constantly willing to make, secure in the knowledge that the stooges who surround him will offer no words of complaint.

We'll look at a few of those inane presentations as the week proceeds. As Dowd continued, she discussed the ways the sitting president has flipped in his assessments of Mamdani and of the "traitor" Greene:

That might seem to echo the way Gutfeld has flipped in his assessment of the sitting president himself.

Today, he's a fawning admirer of President Trump. Back then, as Daly recalls, he was aggressively anti-Trump.

Needless to say, people are free to change their opinion of a political figure like President Trump. But as Daly's profile seems to show, Gutfeld's flip regarding Trump has been extreme—and this earlier profile from the New York Times seems to suggest, if only timidly, how that may have happened:

The New York Times: July 2, 2023
How Fox News (Yes, Fox News) Managed to Beat ‘The Tonight Show’
Greg Gutfeld has installed his brand of insult conservatism as the institutional voice for the next generation of Fox News viewer. And it’s catching on.

No, Virginia! Gutfeld! actually isn't a late-night show, and it isn't a "comedy show." It's a propaganda messaging program aired by a flyweight corporate entity which poses as a "cable news" channel.

Blue America's major news orgs have fled in fear from such facts. Tomorrow, we'll walk you through John Daly's account of the way Greg Gutfeld became so servile to President Trump.

Gutfeld is servile to President Trump. Meanwhile, his clown show proceeds, night after night, with barely a word of comment from Blue America's high-end press.

They refuse to report or discuss what happens on this "cable news" show, or on a program like The Five. They refuse to report the misogyny which seems to function as the backbone of Gutfeld! Also, they peddle the transparently bogus claims by Fox according to which Gutfeld! is a late-night comedy show and Gutfeld himself is "The King of Late Night."

Two questions will lurk this week:

Why is Greg Gutfeld so servile to President Trump? Also, why are orgs like the New York Times so deferential to someone like him?

Tomorrow: Gutfeld, way back then

SATURDAY: A word was missing on Fox & Friends Weekend!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2025

But also, what Lincoln once said: A treasured word was (almost) completely missing from this morning's Fox & Friends Weekend. That treasured word was this:

Communist Communist Communist Communist Communist Communist Communist!

In recent weeks, it happened again and again. Rachel would call Candidate Mamdani a Communist. Charlie would then go with this:

"A full-blown Communist!"

So it would go on Fox & Friends Weekend as Charlie would make the whole thing even dumber. On various Fox News Channel shows, the personalities would tell Fox viewers how many tens of millions of people had died, during the past century, under worldwide Communist rule.

Today, the friends were pushing a newer line right from the start of the program:

Yesterday's friendly session in the Oval Office was the latest masterpiece by the infallible President Trump.

During the New York City mayoral campaign, President Trump had also routinely denounced Candidate Mamdani as a Communist. But now the transformed prince of peace had showered Mamdani with praise. 

(Our own reaction? Good!)

Suddenly, the magic word was missing from Fox & Friends. In this morning's first ninety minutes, it was mentioned only when Griff Jenkins brought on a guest at 6:25 a.m.:

JENKINS (11/22/25): New York Post columnist Karol Marcowicz, who fled Soviet Communism as a child, joining us now to react.

Eventually, the chyron said this as Marcowicz stated her views:

KAROL MARCOWICZ / FLED SOVIET COMMUNISM AS A CHILD

"We didn't come here to have Communism follow us," she eventually said, apparently referring to Mamdani's proposal to have free buses.

We're glad that Marcowicz and her family were able to leave the Soviet Union—and she's of course entitled to state her views. That said, we were surprised to see the "Communist" taunt disappear as three friends discussed yesterday's meeting during several chunks of the program's first ninety minutes.

Campos-Duffy seemed to have dropped her favorite word, but she continued to spill with praise for the masterful President Trump. As for Mayor-elect Mamdani, possibly not so much:

 "We still don't know if he can run a lemonade stand," she said of him at one point.

That claim struck us as technically accurate. Also, if less colorfully, we ourselves don't know how the mayor-elect will end up performing in office.

Soon, though, the friends were advancing the standard bogus statistics about the way President Trump has supposedly brought inflation down during this term in office. We had to chuckle when Campos-Duffy eventually complained about the way liberals won't spend time with people who don't share their views, not even on Thanksgiving Day.

Frankly, we had to chuckle! When did these three friends ever bring a guest on their show who was going to disagree with their infallible claims?  When one of the analysts asked that question, we could recall no such time!

The flooding of the zone now moves at the speed of light. Within a day, we moved from the president's furious response to a somewhat peculiar presentation by six congressional Democrats to yesterday's extremely friendly Oval Office session.

There is no way to keep up with this flow. We can say that because we've tried. 

That said, also this: We don't think a modern nation can prosper under current pseudo-journalistic arrangements, in which MAGA supporters are aggressively scripted by personalities like these while our own news orgs in Blue America agree to avert their gaze.

Yesterday, we had occasion to discuss President Lincoln with a lifelong friend. We recalled Sandburg's poetical account of the president-elect's last meeting with his stepmother, Sally Bush Lincoln.

In Sandburg's account, she knew what her stepson, the president-elect, would be thinking as he was cheered in vast parades in New York City or in D.C. He'd still be thinking about the ways of life on her small farm in Coles County, Illinois, where he'd partially been raised. 

That said, we also went back and reread the text shown below. Our friend was present, long ago, when we read that text for the first time, accompanied by a group of Baltimore City fifth graders on a field trip to Washington:

Lincoln's astounding second inaugural address is inscribed, opposite the text of the Gettysburg Address, on a wall inside the Lincoln Memorial. Reading this text for the first time, we instantly knew that Abraham Lincoln had plainly not been human.

This is the bulk of the text:

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

[...]

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let u

The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. 

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

For the full text, click here. When we first read that astonishing text, we were astounded to think that a human being had ever said any such thing in public here on this earth.

We did this too, the president said. We in the North are one of the parties "by whom the offense came."

(It's said that Lincoln added the line which starts with "It may seem strange" because he knew that many people in the victorious North wouldn't like his fuller assessment. We don't know if that's accurate.)

We did this too, that president said—and then he took things a great deal farther. In our own estimation, we Blues would do well to remember that astonishing judgment as we try to assess the devastating war of the worlds into which our two Americas, Red and Blue, have been so unhelpfully thrown, out in Coles County and everywhere else, over the past many years.

Monday: Greg Gutfeld RE President Trump, back then as compared to now. To read ahead, click here.

BACKLASH: Today, we have listing of profiles...

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2025

...of the "cable news" Gutfeld! show: It's a basic rule in the comedy world. The performer can't ignore what's happening there in the room.

For that reason, and with apologies, today we have listing of profiles—profiles of the Fox News Channel's primetime Gutfeld! program.

(Way back when, in a mordant anti-war poem, Henry Reed gave us "naming of parts.")

In the last few weeks, we've been trying to leave a bit of guidance for future generations. More specifically, we're writing for the 12-year-old kid who is going to fashion the "brilliant writing" of a later day. 

Our basic focus has been this:

In the present era, how has the American discourse been coming undone as our nation slides toward the sea?

As we've focused on the (extremely strange) Gutfeld! show, we've also been asking this question:

Does our own Blue America possess anything like a sexual politics at this point in time?

The task we've set ourselves is complex—and yesterday, there it was! Another fight broke out in the room as we tried to continue those tasks. 

Sure enough—the war of our worlds broke out again! This latest fight involved what we would describe as a somewhat odd, and perhaps self-defeating, video message from six Democrats. 

The president responded in a predictable way, and the war of the tribes was back on. We don't want to proceed along as if we haven't noticed.

With Thanksgiving hurrying forward, we'll offer our assessment of that latest skirmish this afternoon and/or tomorrow. For now, we're going to proceed with a listing of profiles—the six profiles of Greg Gutfeld, or of the Gutfeld! show, to which we've or already referred in the course of this year.

This will serve as a valuable resource for the 12-year-old kid who, in the future, is going help our flailing nation emerge from the current wilderness. Below, you five profiles which have emerged in the current year, along with one from 2023:

Profiles of Greg Gutfeld or of the Gutfeld! program:

The New York Times: July 2, 2023
How Fox News (Yes, Fox News) Managed to Beat ‘The Tonight Show’
Greg Gutfeld has installed his brand of insult conservatism as the institutional voice for the next generation of Fox News viewer. And it’s catching on.

Variety: February 19, 2025
How Greg Gutfeld Became the Bill Maher of Fox News—And Toppled Fallon and Colbert in the Ratings

Mediaite: July 19, 2025
Greg Gutfeld’s Disruptive Rise: How a Fox News Prankster Broke Late-Night TV

Mediaite: August 26, 2025
How Greg Gutfeld Went From Fox’s Most Irreverent Host to Its Most Servile

The New York Times: September 28, 2025
A Baby. A Double Mastectomy. Many Opinions From Fox News Viewers.
Kat Timpf got pregnant, got breast cancer, then got back to work on the political comedy show “Gutfeld!”—all as a culture war brews over ambition, motherhood and women’s health.

The New York Times: November 26, 2025
The Interview: Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure.

We don't believe we've ever cited that August 26 profile before. In part, we include the 2023 New York Times profile because that August 26 effort provides a perspective on what we were told back then.

Greg Gutfeld and the Gutfeld! show have become extremely big. This Fox News Channel "cable news" program is playing a significant role as the war of the worlds has devoured our struggling nation.

In the future, some kid who is only 12 today is going to straighten this whole thing out. According to several major oracles, he or she will provide "brilliant writing" about the questions we've posted above, including that awkward second query:

Does the Blue America of today possess anything like an actual sexual politics?

We're willing to guess that youth will be served—that today's unheralded 12-year-old kid will help us find our way back to status as an actual nation. When he or she does that, he or she will use those profiles to help us see where we've gone wrong.

As we noted in Monday's report, Susan Faludi thought she saw a backlash. Amid the chaos which rules the Fox News Channel, we think we keep seeing one too!

Tomorrow: The latest dispute in the war of the tribes

Monday: We return to this year's soft-soap profiles—and to the one which hit hard

THURSDAY: Tarlov was making a decent point!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2025

A road map for "brilliant writing:" Yesterday afternoon, on The Five, Jessica Tarlov, the designated non-MAGA co-host, was making a decent point.

That, of course, was the problem. This imitation of a discussion show isn't designed for outcomes like that. 

Inevitably, Jesse Watters knew what to do. He's one of the four pro-MAGA hosts whose job is to overtalk Tarlov.

Order was quickly restored! Applying the principles of Tarlov Interruptus, Watters broke in on what she was saying, He successfully overtalked the lady as only he and Greg Gutfeld can do.

We wish we could link you to videotape, but the invaluable Internet Archive is a bit behind on its postings today. But with respect to this week's search for those elusive examples of "brilliant writing," any such writing may have to address itself to such points as these:

1. How is it possible that a four-on-one pig-pile show of this type could possibly be this flailing nation's most-watched "cable news" program?
2. How is it possible that any such imitation of public discourse could seem like a legitimate "news show" to millions of fellow citizens?

That said, also this:

3) How is it possible that the clowning which dominates the programs ruled by Watters and Gutfeld goes unreported and undiscussed within the vast realm of Blue America? 

What explains the failure of news orgs like the New York Times to report and discuss the foolishness—and even the apparent misogyny—so widespread on these three (3) primetime "cable news" propaganda programs?

Our nation has been sliding into the sea over the past quite a few years. Over at the New York Times, they've barely said a word. 

("Wouldn't be prudent," as George H. W. Bush often said.)

We'll try to provide a link, and a fuller discussion, when the invaluable if little-used Internet Archive gets its postings back on track.

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

WEDNESDAY: "Only when we share the same facts..."

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2025

But how can we hope to do that? Given the journalistic and cultural chaos within which our nation now flounders and flails, what sorts of problems would "brilliant [political / cultural] writing" surely have to address?

It's as we've noted in the past two days. In this interview with the New York Times, Tina Brown said that there surely must be some "brilliant writing" out there. But she said it can be hard to find, given all the dreck and the dross which "comes careening at you" under current arrangements.

Under the weight of current arrangements, we're not sure that any "brilliant writing" is actually out there! Consider Clark Hoyt's new essay in The Atlantic.

As part of a long journalistic career, Hoyt performed brilliantly in his three years as New York Times public editor, a stint which started in June 2007. As a tribute to ignoring water which has spilled over the dam, we won't revisit the long-overdue, aggressive critique he directed at one major New York Times columnist.

Hoyt is highly experienced and highly capable. That said, it seems to us that he skips a major beat in the key rumination with which he ends his new essay. The passage in question starts as shown, dual headline included:

Why Trump Gets Away With It
The institutional checks that got the country through Watergate are far weaker now.

[...]

Many explanations have been offered for how we got here, among them the hollowing-out of the middle class, which left millions of Americans angry and disillusioned with the political system and ready for a Trump to tear it down; a broad collapse of trust in virtually all institutions, including the news media; a president who stirs culture wars in an ever more polarized society, while diverting attention away from the threat he poses to democracy. For Trump, politics isn’t about principle or serious public policy. It’s entertainment—getting and holding attention through any means possible.

I’m not prescient enough to know if we will return to a healthier society with a properly functioning federal government. The most recent election results, which featured high turnout and led to Democrats sweeping into state offices in Virginia, New Jersey, and even Mississippi and Georgia, suggest that a backlash against Trumpism is under way. But one thing that my long career as a journalist tells me is that restoring civility and community will require rebuilding a trusted news system.

We need to rebuild "a trusted news system," Hoyt perhaps sensibly says. But as he continues directly, it seems to us that he blows past a very large obstacle which stands in the way of that goal:

Local media should be a particular focus. National media may have their problems with trust, but local news, where engagement with community and the larger world begins, is disappearing altogether. Over the past two decades, according to the State of Local News Project at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, nearly 40 percent of all local newspapers have shut down, leaving 50 million Americans with little or no reliable news about their communities. That includes Friday-night high-school football scores, official decisions at city-commission meetings, and data about local crime. The result is that people are disengaged from their communities. Politics is more polarized, voter turnout in local elections is lower, and fewer public officials are held accountable. Some initiatives are trying to fill the gap. The American Journalism Project, for example, gives grants to local nonprofit news organizations, helps communities start new outlets, and provides coaching for newsroom leaders.

Only when we share the same facts can we begin to have a healthy debate about what they mean and what should be done about them. And then, hopefully, we can start rebuilding the other institutions that have undergirded our democracy for nearly two and a half centuries, and that got us through the Watergate years...

We need to return to a world in which "we share the same facts," Hoyt says. But in that passage, Hoyt focuses on local media while blowing right past the enormous problem afflicting national media.

We refer to the so-called "democratization of media," and to the practice called "segregation by viewpoint." Almost surely, we will never return to a world in which Americans largely "share the same facts" as long as major media entities are devoted to the practice of preaching to one particular choir, while refusing to share the valid points being advanced by the other political tribe.

Also, Hoyt blows past the problem to which Brown herself seemed to allude:

Thanks to podcasts and web sites and blogs and the like, every nitwit and his best friend is now out there peddling content. As Brown seemed to suggest, people have a hard time knowing where to turn in the face of this blizzard of content.

Last night, at the start of The Five, the Fox News Channel's "recite-alike" hosts cranked out one factual misstatement after another. Viewers had no obvious way to know they were being misled. 

Tons of money are now being made by telling different groups of people only the things they long to hear. Misinformation is now big business, and it won't want to go away.

Brilliant writing will have to confront this huge institutional problem. Over here in Blue America, our stars tend to flee from this task.

In our view, Hoyt was superb in his stint at the Times. The leading authority on his career gives you the overview here.

BACKLASH: We shouldn't normalize this, they said!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2025

It's been normalized for the past many years: We interrupt our Backlash retrospective to report what Jim VandeHei said.

He spoke at 6:20 Eastern on today's Morning Joe. This is what he said:

"In what world is that OK?"

In what world is that [conduct] OK? VandeHei sensibly asked. He directed his question at President Trump's latest unusual conduct. 

The president had done something unusual. In this case, even the somewhat permissive New York Times has reported the conduct in question:

Trump Berates One Reporter and Tells Another, ‘Quiet Piggy’

President Trump assailed an American journalist in the Oval Office on Tuesday for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, about the violent death of a Washington Post columnist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. U.S. intelligence has said the attack was carried out on the prince’s orders.

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Mr. Trump told the journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, later referring to her query as “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.”

“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the murdered journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.” The prince has denied involvement in the killing.

It was the second time in a week that Mr. Trump had leveled a fierce insult at a woman who was covering him.

For better or worse—we'd say for worse—there he had gone again! The president had assailed Mary Bruce (ABC News) for asking a fairly obvious question about Mohammed bin Salman. 

That said, it was the "fierce insult" directed at a second female reporter which generated VandeHei's question on today's Morning Joe.

Last Friday, the president had said "Quiet, Piggy" to Catherine Lucey (Bloomberg News) during a scrum on Air Force One. As the Times report continued, it described that bit of unusual conduct on the commander's part. For Mediaite's report of that incident, you can just click here.

For reasons which so make obvious sense, the Times report had stressed the fact that this insult had been directed at a female reporter. Mediaite filed several reports describing pushback within the mainstream press against this cutting remark. Headline included, one such report started like this:

‘I Just Don’t Understand How Somebody Acts Like This’: Anderson Cooper at a Loss After Trump’s ‘Piggy’ Insult

CNN’s Anderson Cooper expressed bafflement at how President Donald Trump can keep lobbing juvenile insults at others, only for “everyone” to essentially shrug in response.

On Friday night, Trump took questions from reporters aboard Air Force One, where Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey asked the president about the Epstein files. When Lucey tried to ask a follow-up, Trump grew irritated and said, “Quiet, quiet, piggy!”

"I know diversity and actually treating people with decency and human kindness is not, you know, what’s popular today in some quarters," Cooper was quoted saying. "But I just don’t understand how somebody acts like this time after time, and everyone just pretends like, 'Oh, that’s just what this guy does.' ”

In response, Navarro was quoted saying this: "We’ve grown numb to it. And I think we have to fight that urge to normalize it and get numb to it."

Lucey has long been a highly regarded Washington reporter. She has worked an array of high-end news orgs, including the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press.

Fellow reporters were pushing back against the latest bit of unusual behavior by President Trump. But in fact, this type of conduct has been widely "normalized" in recent years, in part with respect to President Trump, but also on a nightly basis by the Fox News Channel.

We've noted it here again and again, and then again and again. In a late September profile of the Fox News Channel's Kat Timpf, Amanda Hess of the New York Times finally had the courage to report what she saw and heard when she sat in the studio audience watching a taping of the nightly Fox program, Gutfeld!

In last Friday's report, we posted what Hess said about the Gutfeld! show in question. What did Hess see as she sat in the studio audience? We refresh you with these excerpts:

Mr. Gutfeld’s style mixes anti-liberal insult comedy with relentless punchlines about women’s bodies—their age, their weight, their sexual attractiveness. Each night, Ms. Timpf sits at his right-hand side, playfully challenging him while staking out an alternate style of physical humor—one that centers her own experience inhabiting a woman’s body.

I met Ms. Timpf on a Tuesday morning in August, on her second day back at “Gutfeld!” after a reconstructive surgery in which the tissue expanders inserted behind her chest muscle during the mastectomy she underwent in March were replaced with permanent breast implants.

[...]

The night before, Ms. Timpf had made her return to “Gutfeld!” just as the backlash to the backlash to Sydney Sweeney’s campaign for American Eagle jeans was fomenting on the right. A former heavyweight pro wrestler known as Tyrus offered his take on [Sidney] Sweeney’s female critics: “They look like a bag of oatmeal and they’re ugly and mean,” he said.

[...]

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...

Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat, but also ugly and old. Last Friday, we offered links through which you could watch this stream of insults yourself. 

That said, this sort of thing takes place, night after night after night after night, on the primetime "cable news" program. Over here in Blue America, our news orgs have agreed to help normalize this.

In the final passage we've posted, Hess offered an explicit account of what she saw in the Gutfeld! show she attended. In the half dozen profiles of Gutfeld and the Gutfeld! show which have appeared this year, it was the most explicit account of the program's persistent insult culture as directed at "women's bodies." 

That said, even this account understated the extent to which the primetime program feeds on insults of this type. And Hess's account came very late in her lengthy profile of the Gutfeld sidekick, Timpf. 

To her credit, Hess reported this building-block of this braindead show in a way which exceeded the accounts offered by other profiles. But even Hess, we'd have to say, under-reported the extent of the misogyny-adjacent insult culture which is one of the principal building blocks of this highly unusual program.

Quite sensibly, Cooper and Navarro voiced concern about the way the president's insulting treatment of female reporters has perhaps been normalized. But as we've been noting for years, no one within the Blue American cultural sphere has ever chosen to report what Greg Gutfeld actually does, on a nightly basis, on his heavily watched Fox News Channel program.

On Gutfeld!, he insults directed at liberal women go on and on, on a nightly basis, as Timpf just sits there and watches. The program's large "cable news" viewership is told that these liberal women are too old and too ugly, but mainly that they're just too fat fat fat fat fat.

This braindead conduct goes on and on, and then it goes on some more. Over here in Blue America, no one says a word. 

In Hess's profile of Timpf, she described this conduct in a way other profiles haven't done. Indeed, other journalists who have profiled Greg Gutfeld and his braindead show have possibly seemed to go out of their way to misdescribe, or to disappear, this highly unusual conduct. 

Based on appearances, it looks like no one really wants to report or discuss this unusual conduct. Thinking back to Susan Faludi's Backlash, we repeat our question:

Why not?

VandeHei asked an excellent question on today's Morning Joe. "In what world is that [conduct] OK?" the gentleman sensibly asked.

Tomorrow: "Misogynist," one observer said, midway through Hess's profile. But this fraudulent, stupid "cable news" program is also remarkably coarse.

TUESDAY: Further thoughts about "brilliant writing"...

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2025

...in the wake of the flood: With apologies, connectivity was gone for a good part of the day. This interrupted our ability to continue contemplating what Tina Brown recently said.

In yesterday afternoon's report, we posted her comment. In an interview with the New York Times' Lulu Garcia-Navarro, her comment went like this:

Garcia-Navarro: I have a theory for why there is so much nostalgia: Even as the internet has democratized the way that people get information and who gives information, people are craving a bit more authority. People want a guide through the muck.

Brown: Of course they do. I mean, the gatekeepers have gone. Everyone goes, Yes! As if the gatekeepers were some kind of terrible inhibition to doing anything good. The gatekeepers were also the tastemakers. Lacking those gatekeepers now, it’s just this big blob of stuff and dross that comes careening at you, and you don’t know where to find the good stuff. I think that’s the biggest problem of our time. There is brilliant writing out there. But finding it is like the needle in the haystack. 

We've long regarded Tina Brown as sensible and sharp, but is the highlighted comment accurate? Given the strangeness of the times, is there really any "brilliant writing out there?" And given the strangeness of the times, what sorts of phenomena would any such writing have to identify and try to wrestle with?

We've long regarded Tina Brown as highly sensible and thoroughly sharp. But we're not sure that she was right in what seems like a sensible thought.

That said, we want to take a bit of time to ponder this as a topic for a week-long review. Much as Macbeth once murdered sleep, it seems to us that President Trump has put an end to "brilliant writing," if we're prepared to assume that there was ever some such critter within our American discourse.

Given the damage which has been caused by the flooding of the zone, what sorts of problems would brilliant writing have to address at this point? For ourselves, we can think of no one who is addressing the sweep of the catastrophe into which we've all slid in the past fourteen years. 

For that matter, was there ever any such thing as "brilliant writing" within our public discourse? Did any such creature ever exist in the decades before the flood?

BACKLASH: Hall said he doesn't like Gutfeld's work!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2025

But he never said why: Who the heck is Colby Hall? We thought you'd never ask!

Hall is the founding editor of Mediaite.com, a news site which records the types of (significant) nonsense the New York Times may choose to disappear. In the past few months, we've read a lot of sensible opinion pieces by Hall right there at Mediaite.

We were less familiar with Hall's work back in July, when he published a profile of the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld and his primetime Gutfeld! show. 

The headline referred to Gutfeld as a "prankster." Hall's profile started like this:

Opinion
Greg Gutfeld’s Disruptive Rise: How a Fox News Prankster Broke Late-Night TV

Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is over, and while the official reason has yet to be confirmed, reports suggest CBS was hemorrhaging money to the tune of $40 million a year. The show reportedly employed more than 220 staffers and cost an eye-popping $100 million annually to produce. Yes, there is the whole corporate fealty to Trump at play, which I went into great detail on Friday, but this blockbuster-movie money for a nightly talk show. In an age of media belt-tightening and digital fragmentation, that model may simply no longer be sustainable.

Which brings us to Greg Gutfeld.

Yes, Gutfeld—the often smirking, occasionally cringeworthy Fox News host who somehow emerged as a legit force in late-night-style comedy. And while I’ve personally called his brand of humor “witless” (and stand by that), it’s impossible to deny: Gutfeld has cracked the code, disrupting a TV genre once defined by Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and yes, Colbert himself.

Let’s be clear: Gutfeld! airs at 10 p.m. ET, which technically makes it a primetime show. But in tone, structure, and format, it’s a late-night show—monologue, roundtable, recurring gags, rotating co-hosts with semi-celebrity status, and alt-right bona fides, with a wink toward absurdist commentary on the day’s news almost always at the expense of libturds and lamestream media.

[NOTE: As of this morning, the Mediaite site seems to be down. For that reason, we can't provide a link to Hall's essay.]

As the profile started, Hall engaged in a bit of the standard sleight-of-hand according to which the Fox News Channel has branded Gutfeld as "the king of late night" comedy. Because he knew that Gutfeld! actually isn't a late night" show, Hall began by describing the show as "a force in late-night-style comedy" (our emphasis).

Hall then acknowledged the fact that Gutfeld! isn't a "late night" show at all. Even there, an obvious corner was cut—he noted the fact that Gutfeld! airs at 10 p.m., failing to say that it airs at that time only in the Eastern time zone.

(We're assuming he would have known that.)

In fact, the show airs at 9 p.m. in the Central time zone, at 7 p.m. out on the coast. For whatever reason, it's been standard behavior for mainstream journalists to fuzz those facts as profiles of Gutfeld have appeared this year. This misrepresentation helps Fox extend the claim that Gutfeld's viewership numbers have established him as "the king of late night"—as the reigning monarch of the late-night comedy wars.

Gutfeld! actually is a heavily watched "cable news" show; it has the third highest viewership in all of cable news. On its face, that's a striking achievement—but the Fox News Channel likes to claim a higher glory, and one mainstream journalist after another has seemed to play along with this channel's vastly misleading claim, to greater or lesser degree.

As he continued, Hall continued to fuzz the claim that Gutfeld! actually is a "late night comedy" show. We would dispute both parts of that description, but here's what Hall's profile says:

(Continuing directly from above)
What sets it apart isn’t just that it’s on Fox News, but that it’s doing all this with a staff reportedly no bigger than maybe twenty people? Gutfeld’s creative team is small, tight, and far from bloated.

That lends something to his show that late-night hasn’t had in a long time: authenticity. You might not like the jokes (I usually don’t), but the DIY spirit is palpable. Gutfeld honed his voice back in the Maxim and Stuff magazine days, where the “laddie” culture prioritized irreverence, irrelevance, and low-fi swagger. He sharpened his satirical chops further hosting Fox’s cult-classic Red Eye, a weird, smart, surreal show that quietly built him a following among insomniac media nerds and libertarian night owls.

The result is a show that, while not for everyone, clearly resonates with a large audience—an audience that often feels condescended to or outright ignored by mainstream comedy. Much of that can be attributed to Fox News’ built-in viewership who, judging by the network's dominant ratings, seem eager to watch every hour of programming on the network 

Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO, deserves credit for greenlighting the 10 p.m. shift that let Gutfeld own a bold new time slot—a gamble that paid off big. Launching a late-night show on a cable news network was risky, but she recognized the post-pandemic appetite for smart, fun, non-lecturey comedy.

By the end of that passage, Gutfeld! is being described as "a late-night show" all over again—but a second point of curiosity has now appeared:

Hall has started saying that he himself doesn't especially like Gutfeld's humor. ("You might not like the jokes," he says. "I usually don't.")

Hall doesn't care for Gutfeld's comedy—but he has twice described Gutfeld's work as "smart!" For reasons we'll discuss as the week proceeds, we're amazed to think that he would have selected that particular term as he describes Gutfeld's work.

We're amazed to think that Hall would describe Gutfeld's work as "smart!" But then, there's also this:

in the course of the profile, Hall says or suggests, again and again, that he himself isn't a fan of Gutfeld's "smart, fun" comedy. Beyond that, he suggests that you, the reader of Mediaite, may not care for this "smart, fun comedy" either. 

Here's how the profile ends:

It’s ironic, maybe even darkly comedic, that Fox News—once seen as antithetical to comedy—now produces the most-watched “late-night” show on cable. While the other networks trim costs or shut down completely, Gutfeld’s frugally produced, stripped-down format thrives. The jokes might be cheap—but so is the overhead.

To be fair, there’s room for everyone. Comedy is subjective. Gutfeld’s not for me, just as Colbert was never going to win over the Hannity crowd. But TV is a business, and in the end, the audience decides. And right now, more viewers are tuning into the scrappy, sarcastic conservative guy—notorious for his ill-advised bit in trying to reclaim “nazi” for conservatives—on Fox with a dozen writers and a former pro wrestler.

Restaurants have menus for a reason. You may not want what Gutfeld’s serving—but a whole lot of people clearly do.

Once again, Hall is fashioning Gutfeld! as "a late-night show," even though he knows that isn't accurate. Having said that, it's true:

A whole lot of people do seem to like Gutfeld's "comedy stylings." But Hall has said, again and again, that he himself isn't one of those people—and he closes his profile by saying that his readers may not like Gutfeld's "smart, fun" comedy either.

Colby Hall doesn't like Gutfeld's "smart, fun comedy!" Along the way, he has offered hints as to why that might be the case, but he never explicitly unravels this conundrum. Nor does he ever quote the sort of "smart, fun" material a reader might encounter if he or she decides to tune in to this primetime show.

Why doesn't Colby Hall enjoy Greg Gutfeld's "smart, fun" comedy? We can easily guess at the answer to that, but the answer is never spelled out.

In our view, Hall's failure to unpack this riddle raises a set of questions about the prevailing values of our own Blue American world:

In yesterday morning's report, we refreshed you as to the claims made in Backlash, Susan Faludi's 1991 "feminist classic." As almost anyone should be able to see, an obvious type of angry backlash seems to be involved in Greg Gutfeld's "smart, fun" comedy—an angry, extremely coarse backlash which has long struck us as the swill which might emerge from an overturned garbage can.

That said, mainstream profiles of the Gutfeld! show have persistently failed to describe the essence of his angry, coarse offerings. Routinely, journalists have refused to quote samples of Gutfeld's comedy stylings, just as Hall has done.

We've seen a lot of good work by Hall. Back in July, we were puzzled by this profile.

Our questions go like this:

Does Blue America have a sexual politics at this point in time? Did we ever have a sexual politics? We'll ponder such questions all week.

Tomorrow: A smart, fun start to the show