THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2026
Routinely, so does Gutfeld: We don't regard it as his "fault." But the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld is almost surely the dumbest mother-frumper ever assigned to take part in a major American news program.
How dumb is this dumb mother-frumper? We don't regard it as his "fault," but he's so dumb that he went out last night and offered this braindead attempt at a joke at 10:01 p.m. Eastern—one minute into his brain-dead "cable news" program. To see him do it, click here:
GUTFELD (10/21/26): JFK Airport held a plane crash drill, complete with fake fire and screaming actors.
And to make it absolutely realistic, they even had a female pilot.
AUDIENCE: [On balance, general puzzlement]
In short, this guy is so stupid it squeaks. He's so locked into his loathing of the people he thinks of as women that he persists in presenting insulting jokes about the various things such lesser beings can't do—in this case, about the way a woman couldn't safely fly a plane.
Believe it or not, it gets dumber. The little guy is so committed to the brain-dead stereotypes of the past that he offers jokes which drive the theme that women (and people of Asian ancestry) are horrible drivers of cars! More often, though, his spectacularly stupid concept of "conservative attack comedy" moves down this uglier path:
GUTFELD (10/19/26): Greta Thunberg has found a new cause—supporting the riots in France.
Although she still hasn't succeeded in her most urgent crusade, which is to find someone who will finally [BLEEP] her.
For what it's worth, we know of no reason to say that Greta Thunberg, who's now 23, has supported the riots in France. None of that has anything to do with the ugly place the mind of Gutfeld inevitably goes when discussing the people he thinks of as women, with storebought tools like Tyrus and Timpf pathetically urging him on.
(We don't regard it as his "fault" that his mind inevitably goes there. We've long said that Greg Gutfeld, age 62, deserves and seems to need some help, and that his criminally negligent corporate employer ought to be providing it.)
In yesterday afternoon's post, we linked to Pemberton's guest essay in the New York Times. For non-subscribers, his essay is stuck behind a paywall, but it starts like this:
I Have Never Seen the Online Right So Happy
The online right has that old spring in its step. The infighting brought on by President Trump’s chaotic second-term agenda has settled down, and the anonymous accounts have been posting at a furious clip. What is the source of this newfound unity? The accusations brought by Jane Doe against seven men at Cornell have given the online right what it’s been missing most: a woman to hate on.
The social media celebrities and talking heads of the right have jumped at the chance to pick apart Jane Doe’s allegations of a gang rape—labeling it a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.” Unable to dispute the basic narrative of the assault, including a lurid fraternity group chat, they’ve elected to argue that Jane Doe is the actual aggressor, a once-willing participant in sexual debauchery now seeking vengeance against her hapless partners.
Her most hostile critics on the right have sought to portray Jane Doe as a kind of out-of-control sexual fiend or “super slut,” as the conspiracist Alex Jones has labeled her...
Sad! But Pemberton continues from there. Indeed, angry misogyny has been a feature of the angry "conservative" internet ever since the internet was born. Incel-adjacents like Gutfeld are part of this wider throwback culture—a culture which traces back to the sawn of European literature with "The Rage of Achilles" in Book I of the Iliad.
We think today of an early passage from Chekhov's famous, widely lauded story, The Lady with the Lapdog.
At its heart, Chekhov's story is about a man who is surprised by the discovery that he's capable of loving the woman he loves, a person who is "in no way remarkable."
"He thought and dreamed," Chekhov writes. It's a stunning four-word sentence, offered at the point when this discovery dawns. Early on, though, Chekhov ventures inside Gurov's previous loathing of the people he thought of as women:
The Lady with the Dog
(Constance Garnett translation)
[...]
He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago—had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them "the lower race."
It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for two days together without "the lower race." In the society of men he was bored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to say to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed them in his favor; he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him, too, to them.
Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people—always slow to move and irresolute—every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing.
That's very, very sad. He refers to them as "the lower race," can't live two days without them.
We'd rather that a different kind of care had been taken in the portrait of Gurov's wife. But Chekhov's picture of Gurov's anger at "the lesser breed" (David Magarshack translation, Penguin Classics) may take us closer to an understanding of Gutfeld's horrible conduct.
Gurov is attractive to women. His problem is that he was married, at an early age, to a woman with whom he's poorly aligned, and in the Russian society of the time divorce was not an option.
For the many boys and men in online incel culture, the problem takes a substantially different form. But for heterosexual boys and men, the ability to be happy in the world will likely be directly connected to their ability to form a union with someone from "the lesser breed."
The fury which spills from people like Gutfeld, with people like Timpf and Tyrus urging him on, will routinely come from their inability, for whatever reason or reasons, to form such pleasing connections. On his nightly "cable news" program, Gutfeld keeps instructing boys and young men in the braindead attitudes which will only extend their problem.
In Monday's report, we started the week with a simple question:
Should Shane Gillis have said what he said?
Should Gillis have gone on Saturday Night Live and said that women are dressing like whores when they go the gym? In our view, the answer is fairly obvious. More on that tomorrow.
Gurov emerges as a person in Chekhov's famous story. Can a modern America really expect to find its way in the face of the apparent misogyny which spills from unreconstructed people like Gutfeld—in the face of their endless denigration of the people who are often, simply put, much better people than they?
From the sitting president right on down, the rage of Achilles is back with a vengeance. Should full-grown American men and women accept this state of affairs?
Tomorrow: The braindead world of The Five
