The New York Times interviewed Fox News’ resident jerk Greg Gutfeld whose late night show is apparently getting higher ratings than any of the other late night hosts. This is seen as a great triumph except for the fact that the others combined are far bigger. He gets all the wingnuts, just as Fox does.
In this excerpt he’s talking about them and why they are allegedly miserable failures compared to him:
You described their shows as being therapy sessions for people who are mad at the world. Is there not a way in which your show functions similarly? Oh, no. Our show is fun.
You can be fun and mad at the same time. You can. But generally, I like to be part of the punching bag, and I encourage that among the guests. The teasing makes it fun. And also I genuinely like people that I tease. In fact, if you want to know the people I don’t like, it’s the people that I don’t tease.
So you must love the women of “The View.” Yes! I love Whoopi.
You must be a big fan of Rosie O’Donnell? I put the people I don’t know in a different kind of room, but I make fun of everybody that I love, and relentlessly. … I say that “Trump derangement syndrome” is now an addiction. It’s creating a filter in which everything you look at, the people that you know, your relationships are all seen through this. “If you don’t see this my way, we’re gonna have a problem.” My reflex, no matter what the story is, is to always put it back in its box so it doesn’t become something that changes the way I view people.
You don’t think there’s a way in which your show also sits behind the Trump filter? It’s as if you’re saying it only works one way. Yeah, but there’s a key difference here. I may think you’re wrong; you might think I’m evil. The teasing and the ridicule is not “You’re Hitler” or “You’re a fascist.” If I insult you over the top, it’s obviously a joke. I don’t put a target on your back.
I think you’re being a little disingenuous. Am I really?
I read all your books. The most blatant counterexample to what you’re talking about is, you literally use the phrase: “The left are dumb fascist mothereffers.” What book was that?
Your most recent one, “The King of Late Night.” I’ll have to look back at that. What was the context?
The left. Who was I talking about?
The left. It was a blanket statement. I don’t remember the specific context. Was it part of some kind of amplifying narrative — where it’s like, “These people are a threat to democracy,” “It’s gonna lead to World War III”? This is the most damaging thing that has happened in the United States, I believe, because if you look at everything from the Palisades fire to Charlie Kirk getting shot, these are all the product of amplified narratives. The repetition, the brainwash, the persuasion of being told over and over again. I’d have to look at that and see what I said. I imagine that it was in some kind of paragraph of hyperbole where I was having fun, if it was in all caps especially. Or I could have been mocking the actual language. I don’t know, I’d have to trust you on that. You seem like a nice guy — for now, anyway.
He’s clearly an idiot who doesn’t even know what’s in his own book. And the “we’re just having fun joking around and you people are a bunch of dry sticks” is a very boring old trope. But this whining about how the cruel left is name-calling is just too much:
I could go on but why bother? They are convinced that they are decent, God-fearing people who never have an unkind thing to say about anyone and yet are being called fascists and their feelings are very, very hurt.
But sure, they’re just fun-loving jokesters.