Note: This essay is based on Gutfeld's late-night (11 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Pacific) program. The first program tonight (July 17) an hour earlier had some bleeped out foul language and a number of not so obscure references to Gutfeld's supposed sexual depravity ("blowing" Bubbles or Buble") but certainly not as many as the "late-night" program. Still, the "libertarian" unconcern about "illegal" cocaine was made clear and the same spiritually and morally vacuous Gutfeld was on display during a show that clearly lost its comic edge after the first half hour.
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Can we speak honestly about the moral black hole known as Greg Gutfeld—an abysmal vortex that draws everyone around him into a perverse world of cultural depravity. Yes, he’s more politically astute than media’s leftist Cretins, but if politics are “downstream of culture,” what kind of political environment is being created in the witches brew of Gutfeld’s pre-pubescent potty humor? It’s certainly not a culture that exhibits any attachment to, much less reverence toward, the great achievements of Western literature, art, civic life, and morality.
Seldom does Gutfeld
manage to complete a late-night monologue that omits his obsession with
scatology, and never does he focus sustained
attention on the essential roles that intact families and religious faith play
in creating a virtuous culture. Assuming his humor bears some relationship to
the truth, Gutfeld also exhibits little affection for children and offers scant
appreciation for male-female households whose primary focus is raising their
offspring to be moral adults. Instead, when proffering remedies for our
political (not cultural) rot, his default position echoes the leftist cliché
about education. Yes, he adds an important school choice proviso but is totally
blind to the fact that schooling alone, even if academically sound, will have
little impact on cultural degradation absent a widespread moral awakening—a revolution
that spawns massive institutional changes and millions more intact families. If
Gutfeld’s show ever emphasizes the role played by overwhelmingly religious families
in shaping children’s lives, it’s up to conservative guests like Mercedes
Schlapp who, like other true conservatives, must feel the need to take a long shower
after being dunked in Gutfeld’s verbal cesspool.
Ironically, Gutfeld’s expletive-filled
program airs at 8 p.m. on the West Coast, the former “family hour.” [Now airing at 7 p.m. on the West Coast.] That irony
becomes thicker when Gutfeld passionately and regularly advocates for the
legalization of drugs—a position that coincides with his comic persona as an aficionado
of most forms of chemical intoxication and sexual deviancy. Unfortunately such
references may no longer be over the heads of South Park tweeners who
tune in looking for some early-evening SNL humor. Given his attachment
to music emitted by bands with nihilist leanings (as well as that compulsive
snicker) it’s not a stretch to think Gutfeld assuages his psychological
demons by resorting to other than over-the-counter remedies.
On this issue Gutfeld has a reliable echo
in the person of Kat Timpf, a self-proclaimed libertarian whose on-air
superficiality doubtless has Ayn Rand spinning in her grave. Kat’s a “no rules”
gal whose “live and let die” philosophy opposes laws both against and for
sexualizing young kids in school. In real life, of course, that means allowing
radicals who set the agenda for public education to continue pushing
“instruction” on six-year-olds that would have been deemed child abuse twenty
years ago. Timpf is even unwilling to oppose drag queen shows for young kids. Instead,
she comments with great passion about her friendships with practitioners of
that “profession.” The same inane preference for dogma over reality applies
whenever Timpf opines about illegal immigration. The “real” problem, she
asserts, is the welfare system, not immigration—as if there were some
possibility that the former will magically disappear before the country’s
schools, hospitals, and social services are overwhelmed with a hundred million
foreigners possessing little education or proficiency in English as well as a
clear preference for the political party that’s eager to encourage illegal border
crossings and to provide “migrants” whatever “entitlements” are needed to keep
that party in power.
If those considerations aren’t
sufficiently damning, consider Timpf’s self-congratulatory insouciance over “bump
and grind” high school entertainments. After all, she observes, kids nowadays already
have access that activity and worse—just as she herself did at high school. Never
crossing Timpf’s mind is the thought that using her own experience as a
normative rule will have the disastrous effect of producing a significant
number of self-absorbed, morally clueless adults who are unable to envision or
cherish a society in which individuals care deeply about their neighbors and
exhibit gratitude for the sacrifices and accomplishments of folks who came
before them. Anyone who thinks those words are unduly harsh should ponder
Timpf’s comment that she would only want to have a child if it were ugly, since
it would then not detract attention from herself. It’s difficult to imagine a more revolting expression
of narcissism.
I also find it hard to understand how
Timpf became a writer or blogger for National Review, but it’s clear she
has no affection for religion and only offers back of the hand “raised
Catholic” slights that would have made William F. Buckley bolt up straight in
his chair. It’s revealing that Timpf once complained bitterly about how
cold she was in the studio while wearing, as is her wont, attire suitable for a
Caribbean beach. On another occasion Timpf scoffed at the name Rand Paul (as if
he were a Libertarian) and affirmed
her political allegiance to the Senator’s eccentric dad, former Congressman Ron
Paul. To sum up, Timpf has to be squeezed to say anything remotely akin to
a moral imperative but is quick to denounce, with passion, “losers” who object
to bikini-clad baristas or guests who don’t share her affection for Beatles
music. Her fantasy society consists of human monads free to engage in depravities
that never impact anyone else—a society devoid of ruthless folks bent on
wielding absolute power for whom an assemblage of feckless party-goers who only
wish to be left alone pose no political obstacle whatsoever.
It isn’t particularly surprising that
late 20th century America has produced individuals of the Gutfeld-Timpf
stripe, personalities who put on display for an audience’s amusement lives
enmeshed in emotional turbulence, stimulants, and various degrees of
intellectual virtuosity that appear devoid of serious attachment to the West’s literary
and moral traditions—persons who also have little contact with folks in
“fly-over” country who love God, family, football, and the flag. It is, however,
depressing that FOX seems willing to subject its guests and audience to
Gutfeld’s morally debilitating influence—a pox that even infects more serious
news programs like The Five.
Sam Donaldson once defended
sensationalized news coverage with the rationalization that apart from its
ambulance-chasing exaggerations and frivolities no one would watch. It always
occurred to me that news hidden beneath so much toxic “frosting” was hardly
worth watching. The same analysis applies to the noxious effluvia that accompany
the occasional political insights on Gutfeld’s show. Bottom line: if politics is “downstream” from the culture
exhibited on that program, those politics won’t be compatible with a
Constitutional system that, as John Adams observed, “was made only for a moral
and religious people” and is “wholly inadequate to the government of any
other.”
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California
whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to
Say?" is also available on Kindle
