The Strange Schadenfreude of Seeing People Get What You Used to Want

Someone who actually watches his show, let me know: why is Greg Gutfeld doing so well?

Once in a while, probably while scanning Drudge, I have seen references to the success of Gutfeld’s late night show. They seemed bizarre to me, as if such stories couldn’t happen on Earth. I didn’t see how it was possible for a conservative host to do well against leftists who, regardless of how toxic and deluded they may be, attract a lot of behind-the-camera talent and do a very good job. I thought he would get terrible reviews that would poison the audience, and I also assumed he would have third-rate writers.

I remembered Fox’s stomach-cramp-inducing comedy show, The Half-Hour News Hour. If that was the name. It’s what my memory tells me. I’ll Google and make a correction if necessary. Instead of reaching out to new conservative talent like Iowahawk, Frank at IMAO, Scott Ott, or Jeff Goldstein, they hired very weak writers with established connections. They hired a guy named Manny Coto, along with Mike Rowe, I believe. Mike Rowe did a very good reality show, but he’s not much of a humorist. Coto co-created the show along with 24’s Joel Surnow, and they both got credit as writers.

Yeah, I remember all those side-splitting 24 episodes.

Actually, I don’t. I tried watching 24, and I couldn’t take it. How can anyone stand a show where nearly a whole season’s episodes pass with no resolution?

As for The Half-Hour News Hour, I’ll bet it was hard for Coto and Surnow to get their sketches approved, what with them being in charge of the show. There must have been creative meetings where the other writers bit their tongues clean in half.

The show was unbelievably bad, and it tanked. No one could blame liberal network bias, because it aired on Fox. Conservatives preferred turning the TV off to leaving it on and being exposed to the show.

I dumped on the show pretty badly, as did the other conservative humor bloggers of that time. I think I hit at least one nerve. One night, I received an an angry, seemingly drunken comment posted above the name of Manny Coto. I dumped on that as well, because what entertainment professional posts crazy comments on little amateur blogs where his work is criticized? Then a person claiming to be Coto posted a nicer comment, saying he didn’t post the first one. As I recall, the both had the same IP address. I wrote all about that, too, since someone insisted on giving me the material. After that, the comments dried up.

Was it Coto? I don’t know. Maybe his housekeeper got into the cooking sherry and posted strange things from his laptop.

I always had a way of charming people who could have helped me. Inst*pundit, PJ Media, Fox’s “humor” crew…I was exactly the kind of person Dale Carnegie dedicated his life to changing. Of course, none of these people would ever have done anything for me or any other lowly blogger, so it didn’t matter, and I got to be myself, for whatever good that did me. If you’re going to try to be Cyrano, be ready to go out like Cyrano.

I’m glad I didn’t kiss the rings. I would hate to have to recall doing that, especially since it would not have done me any good.

I can’t express how glad I am I never made it. I would be right down in there with the rest of the gladiators, fighting over crumbs. I would have to associate with extremely unsavory people. I’d be battling wokiees on Twitter. People would be encouraging me to cultivate the worst aspects of my personality. I would not know God very well. I would not have my wonderful wife. I would probably be on my way to hell.

What if I had hit the big time, and someone had offered me a job in New York or LA? It’s chilling to even think of it. I’ve never been a suicidal person, but I could see myself heading in that direction after a decade or so in either of those godless, spirit-destroying places. I would probably have jumped at the chance to make money with the cool kids. I seem to have a dim memory of considering a move to LA.

People who do humor for a living are generally terrible human beings, especially when they’re put together in offices and forced to compete. They feed each other’s darkness and become more depraved. I used to be on that path, and if I had made any money, I would have kept right on going. I would have vile friends who weren’t friends at all. I would be in love with cruelty. I wouldn’t know love. I would never grow up.

When I think of it now, a sense of dread envelops me. God has been very, very good to me.

Back when I was still chasing the mechanical rabbit, the conservatives who got somewhere did nothing at all for new talent. I’ll give you an example of how they treated bloggers. Everyone loves Andrew Breitbart, so let me tell you something about him. He knew a humorist I knew. Breitbart controlled Drudge’s site, and a permanent link there could make a career for a writer. It guaranteed massive traffic. Breitbart himself used Drudge links to get traffic for his own site when it was new, and look what happened. Drudge was the stream, and Breitbart was the parasitic waterwheel.

Breitbart used to hint that he was going to give my friend a link, and he pretended to be one of this person’s closest pals. He and a sleazy buddy of his suggested putting suggestive photos up on the blog to increase traffic, which shows what he thought of this person, but he never provided that link, which would have cost him nothing and taken all of 30 seconds. He knew this person really needed a break.

In case you don’t remember, Drudge used to be conservative, his site wasn’t devoted to destroying Donald Trump, and there were permanent links to bloggers. Now his links all go to establishment people.

Next time you put on your Breitbart T-shirt, if you still have it, think about the link story. He was a real jerk. I don’t think he had any principles at all. Readers used to wonder why I didn’t like him. I didn’t like him because I knew more about him than they did, and he didn’t like me, either. He knew I was telling my friend what I thought of him, threatening his influence. For some reason, it was important to him to control a person he had no intention of helping in any way. I believe he wanted my friend to think he was always just on the verge of guaranteeing my friend recognition and an income. It’s clear that he had already made a firm decision not to do it.

Rationed reinforcement combined with insincere promises is a distinguishing tactic of certain types of abusers. They promise wonderful things in order to gain control and make their victims put up with mistreatment. I guess it makes them feel powerful and important.

My friend never got the tiny favor that would have been life-changing. My friend never got a career.

It’s remarkable that so many conservatives defend a man who was largely responsible for creating Huffpo. He knew exactly what Arianna Huffington was. They were two peas in a pod, and she was the smarter pea.

Thinking about the Surnow/Coto shipwreck, I wondered what Gutfeld’s show was like. But I didn’t care enough to watch, because I don’t watch late night TV. I don’t watch any TV unless it pops up on Youtube or I own DVD’s. I don’t have cable or anything similar to it.

Today I saw something on the web suggesting “real” comedians hated Gutfeld’s show. Of course, to liberals, “real” comedians are like “real” women, “real” black people, and “real” actors. “Real” means “leftist.” You can have a penis and be a woman, but you can’t have an AR-15 or realize that socialism is evil and stupid.

This is why Condoleezza Rice is actually a white man.

No, seriously. Try to find a black kid who has been told Condoleezza Rice is a good role model. To the left, she’s just white imperialism in drag.

Although…that would make her a woman, wouldn’t it? Aren’t transvestites women now? It’s so confusing.

I wondered what Gutfeld’s new show was like. I thought there might be something to it. I knew leftist comedians would say it was horrible no matter what. I knew Gutfeld was funny. Certainly funnier than Bill Maher, not that this is a high bar to set.

Today I looked at a Gutfeld monologue from a week or two ago, and it was really bad. There were some very good jokes in there, but overall, it made me uncomfortable. Gutfeld dropped a number of bombs, and he didn’t look confident at all. He seemed to know the material wasn’t good. I’m sure he did. How could he not? He had a group of guests with him, and occasionally, he looked around at them as though hoping for support.

Redeye was often much better, maybe because Andy Levy appeared frequently. I wonder if Gutfeld performed better because there was less pressure in the wee, unwatched hours. Jay Leno instantly became much less funny when he became the star of a big show.

I haven’t thought of Andy Levy in years. He used to comment here occasionally. There’s a guy who never should have taken the bait. He was very good at what he did, but all he ended up doing was wasting years of his life. A Daily Beast piece says Fox never supported him or Gutfeld’s other sidekick, Bill Schulz. I’m sure that’s true; they didn’t seem to knock themselves out promoting Gutfeld. Schulz never had any potential and should have been off somewhere developing a career in something like real estate or teaching, but somebody out there should have given Levy a real platform. I hope Fox and CNN paid him something. I like to think he wasn’t waiting tables and then scurrying to studios to brighten up panels full of airheads.

I also watched a little bit of the show that came after the monologue. Here’s a question: why are the guests so weak? Is it because every big star knows it would be career suicide to appear on Fox? He had a writer I’ve never heard of, a Fox News contributor, a comedian I’ve never heard of, and a former politician, and they were exactly as dull as they sound.

The other hosts banter with actual celebrities. Gutfeld was talking with a politician who had retreated to obscurity, along with three individuals he may well have recruited while standing in the hall outside his office. Isn’t that how he got guests for Redeye? Wait…hmm…it’s actually “Red Eye.”

I never forget how to spell The Jimmy Kimmel Show. Just saying.

It looks like Gutfeld is supposed to be the Bill Maher show with a different set. Is that about right? That makes it a political show, but still, Maher’s show is political, and it gets a much wider range of more-famous guests. I just looked at a list of Gutfeld’s guests (“panelists”?), and it looks a lot like a list of the people who appeared on Red Eye. Is it just Red Eye Prime Time?

Gutfeld himself seems to have gotten much angrier since the last time I saw him. That was years ago, apart from brief glimpses while channel-surfing. He said really mean-spirited things about some people. Has he been watching videos of Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes? Back during the Red Eye days, he had the bubbly jocularity of a fun wedding guest on his second bottle of Moet, but now it’s almost like he’s channeling Mel Gibson. I think he really wants to hurt people.

It makes sense. God has released a spirit of murder on the world, so lots of people are revving up for a bloody purge.

Maybe Gutfeld’s show isn’t always this bad, but I have a feeling it is, and I’m not willing to suffer enough to find out.

The comments on the video are complimentary. Gutfeld’s viewers appear to be solidly on board.

I saw all this and wondered what the explanation was. The show seems depressing, as if no one on the set wants to be there. How can so many people like it?

My best guess is that Gutfeld is a success simply because there is nothing else for normal people to watch after the news. The other hosts spend much of their time insulting about half of Americans, driving them away. Gutfeld’s show isn’t much, but for some people, it’s all there is. And Americans love late night TV. There are probably millions of people who still remember Johnny Carson and are glad to see another show which isn’t a string of attacks on common sense.

Sometimes a great time slot is all the help a bad show needs. Look at Tucker Carlson.

If Gutfeld’s weak show is doing well because he appeals to an alienated audience, why didn’t The Half-Hour News Hour survive? Maybe because Americans weren’t trained to watch TV late on Sunday nights. That’s when it aired.

Gutfeld should get some better writers and do something about his four-person laugh gallery. The thin, insincere-sounding laughter makes it sound like he got desperate and forced people who owe him money to sit in the studio. It would be nice to see a conservative continue to win at this game. Not what I will actually see it. That will never happen. I don’t watch late night shows that are actually funny, so why would I stay up late to watch this one?

This stuff isn’t important to me, because politics is a waste of time, but it’s satisfying when a tree grows in Brooklyn.

I don’t know why I would like to see the show do well. I’m wishing Gutfeld a fate I wouldn’t wish on myself. I think he is in deep trouble because he got what he wanted. I guess I don’t care enough about him to worry about it. I have one set of hopes for Christians and another for people I consider lost. That’s something for me to think about.

In other news, some wonderful things happened in my life over the last couple of days. I started asking God to give me more authority. I have had countless prayers answered, I have cast demons out, and I have received a bunch of miracles. I prayed for my wife, and heat went through her, and she got a miracle healing. Still, I was not satisfied. Too many prayers and other supernatural efforts have failed. I have failed to help people who really needed it. I blame that on authority issues.

Jesus had complete authority over everything; demons, matter…everything. When he cast demons out, they left instantly. He raised a dead man simply by commanding him to come to him. When he received supernatural knowledge, he was never wrong.

I already knew that if I wanted the kind of submission Jesus got, I would have to submit to God. But in order to do that, I needed to hear his voice more clearly. You can’t submit if you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, so you need to hear God. I try to submit, but a lot of the time, I’m guessing. Yesterday, I started praying God would teach me how to be Spirit-led. I prayed for very clear guidance along with help in trusting and obeying. It’s not easy to commit to obey someone else.

Of course, as a Christian, I had prayed for such things in the past, but somehow things seemed clearer yesterday. I felt I had new revelation. I felt I had to learn how and when to ask God for guidance, and I needed to be reminded throughout the day, every day, for the rest of my life.

Today I talked to my wife, and she had had a dream. She told me about it before I mentioned my prayers. In the dream, two of us traveled to another country. Someone from that country asked us to make a choice about how we wanted to spend our lives. We could go through life doing what we thought was best and asking God to bless our efforts, or we could do what the Holy Spirit told us to do. Simultaneously, we both said we wanted to be commanded by the Holy Spirit.

Her dream and my prayers were about the same thing. I believe the other country was the kingdom of heaven. Not heaven. The kingdom of heaven. We are supposed to live in the kingdom while we’re still on this planet.

She said she also saw two snakes coiled around her ankles. She pulled them off and flung them on the ground, and I threw fire at them.

I have often told God I would love to go out and do what Jesus did. I would love to heal people. I would love to make missing body parts grow back and work other miracles that would shame medical science. I would love to prophesy accurately and give people helpful information. I would love to cast spirits out quickly and easily. I can’t imagine anything better to do with the rest of my life. I wouldn’t accept money. I would just go where I could be useful, show people God’s power, love, and generosity, and go home. Maybe I would allow people to pay my expenses sometimes, but nothing more.

Maybe God is listening. If he is, it must have been his idea in the first place.

Today we prayed and asked God to help us to be truly Spirit-led. This world has already seen Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the apostles, so there is no reason to think God won’t enable people to do amazing things today. I have seen a number of impressive Christians who did remarkable things, but none of them begin to measure up to the people I just listed, so we must not be living up to our potential.

I thought I would put the testimony about the dreams and my prayers here so people would be encouraged. I hope I can come back later to tell you how God has followed through.