Commander Kelly: The Joy of Hate

Gutfeld's Latest

Greg Gutfeld, the host of Fox's Red Eye and The Five, has just published a new book with the provocative title The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage (www.amzn.com/0307986969). Gutfeld is upset in a very funny way at the political correctness enforcers of our time. Gutfeld documents the aggrieved whiners in our midst. He is a Conservative Holden Caufield denouncing the phonies of our world and exposing their blatant hypocrisy.

He opens his book with "You know what really pisses me off? People who are always pissed off. Or pretend to be pissed off. We've created a new, frantic world of the enraged, the phony grievance, the manufactured outrage. If you make fun of something or say something truthful, someone, somewhere will be unhappy."

I must confess that Gutfeld and I have a few things in common. We are both Californians who attended the University of California at Berkeley where we both debated the loonies on Sproul plaza. "When I came face-to-face with the "believers," I realized that they lacked one thing that made life enjoyable: they couldn't take a joke." We both fell under beguiling influence of Bob Tyrell's The American Spectator (www.spectator.org). Gutfeld worked for that magazine out of college and then for other magazines including Men's Fitness and the UK version of Maxim; I spent many years in the television industry. We both lived for several years as expats in the UK and I still do.

Gutfeld writes, "When I first heard "military-industrial complex." I thought it was the coolest thing. How could that be seen as wrong? A country that prides itself on both the military and its industry has to be awesome. Somehow, we went from having a military-industrial complex to having a complex about our military and industry." The MIC is of course the only thing from Eisenhower that liberals ever choose to remember. It was, of course, the MIC that won World War II and the Cold War (see my earlier posts Corporations won World War II ,8/19/12 and Corporation won the Cold War 8/29/12). Have you hugged a Corporation lately?

Gutfeld has strongly libertarian sympathies. He supports, for example gay marriage AND second amendment rights. He argues that, "Guns, oddly enough, are the biggest force for real tolerance. If you're a gay cross-dressing cowboy who likes to smoke jazz cigarettes (nothing but the most up-to-date references here, folks) in the privacy of your ranch, a shotgun will protect you from anyone who might find any one of those descriptors objectionable. A gun lets your freak flag fly--provided you don't use that flag to stab to stab someone in the face at a strip mall."

He also gained a certain notoriety for responding to the proposed Mosque near ground zero (Commander Kelly notes that there is no Shinto shrine near the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor--the Japanese do not spike the ball in their opponent's end zone) with a suggestion of his own -- build a gay Muslim bar right next door (see video below). His tentative title for the business, culled from many interesting suggestions, was 'Suspicious Packages.' "I was trying to show that if the Muslim faith were truly tolerant, then they would welcome a gay bar. But the point doesn't need to be made clearer -- we know they wouldn't -- for they hate gays. In some countries they kill them. What I wanted to accomplish, I did: I revealed the fundamental hypocrisy of their "tolerance" defence."

Gutfeld skewers the mainstream media for their portrayal of anyone who sympathizes with the Tea Party or questioned the wisdom of Obama's health care overhaul. Anyone who doubted Obama-care had to be a racist! Alternatively anyone who supported the Occupy Wall Street movement was on the side of truth and justice, regardless of how many city parks they polluted, how many crimes (including rape, assault and even murder) were committed by their stalwarts. The so-called "tolerant" media can't stand it when their biases are being challenged; as Gutfeld points out the media are like Madge in the old Palmolive ads, simply soaking in their own bias.

"Faux news" or "Fair and Balanced"?

Liberals are virtually unanimous (with the exception of many who actually work there) in their condemnation of Fox News. They refer to it as "Faux news" in their dismissive t-shirts. Gutfeld has this to say about his employer, "The network where I work is evil, or so I am told by people who don't watch it. Which is why my employer is the only media enterprise exempt from the warm hug of tolerance. A half dozen media groups are devoted to tripping it up. Endless comedians, bloggers, and talking heads devote most of their mental energies to demonizing the network. And why? Because out of a media culture that is purely liberal --from newspapers, to networks, to music and entertainment--one entity rejects such easy assumptions about the world. And for the modern tolerant liberal, that simply cannot be tolerated. Everyone must be in lockstep--before we can disagree, apparently."

"Where is this feverish anti-war movement now that Obama got into power. Obama has killed more terrorists than anyone in recent memory (God bless him for that), and you don't hear much of a peep from anyone other than Michael Moore (who even Karl Marx would have termed a commie pinko). Gitmo is still open doing more business than your local Hampton Inn, but that ceases to be an issue now that their guy is in office. Remember, Gitmo was the albatross around Bush's neck--now its the puka shells around Obama's neck (a shout-out to his tiny island nation, Hawaii). As of this writing, we're still losing troops in Afghanistan, for purposes ever more attenuated from our original mission there. Where's the outrage? The 'not in our name' marches? The judging on Dancing with the Stars gets more scrutiny."

Even the disastrous financial debacle of 2008 was attributable in part to a misguided worship of overly permissive attitudes. Gutfeld writes, "people blame the banks and Wall Street for bundling high-risk loans and selling them like poisoned pancakes, nut those loans had to be approved for a reason. and the reason, was...wait of it..tolerance!"

Right now Fannie May and Freddie Mac have all but stopped encouraging loans to high-risk individual. This is all but an admission that their earlier practises were what caused this mess. It's like when I stop ordering takeout from the same place after three solid days of diarrhea. I see the link and make the connection. Those lending practices --making it really easy for high-risk borrowers to buy homes they couldn't afford--arose from a fear of looking mean and heartless."

Gutfeld has taken up the mantle of P.J. O'Rourke's spirited defence of individual liberty (who was influenced by H.L. Mencken -- see earlier post, The Sage of Baltimore,.2/29/12) in the face of a humorless tide of political correctness. He is passionate in his convictions, but never a scold. You may not always agree with him, but Gutfeld disproves the stereotype that Conservatives must be prudish and judgemental bores. He is the new clown prince of Conservatism. After Obama's re-election we Conservatives may now be facing some "wilderness years" (see earlier post Happy Birthday Winston Churchill, 11/30/12), but that doesn't mean that we can't tell tall tales by the campfire, cook up some S'mores, keep warm in our jackets from Altrec (www.altrec.com) and have some fun while we offer up our constructive criticism of the imbecilities of the current administration.

Commander Kelly says, "What could be more appropriate this holiday season than to give The Joy of Hate as a gift to any of the Conservatives on your shopping list! May all your intolerance be joyful like Gutfeld's!"