Sometimes the Brass Ring is Welded to the Pole

I just saw Megyn Kelly on Youtube, and it made me think about Greg Gutfeld.

As I wrote recently, I learned that Gutfeld was doing very well in the late night wars, and it amazed me. I don’t question his talent, but I question the talent supporting him, he seems to attract guests of a very low caliber, and the only bits of the show I’ve seen were very bad. It was as if Rupert Pupkin had invited his unpopular friends to his basement.

Gutfeld seems extremely angry these days, as though he is trying not to foam at the mouth. I can picture him cheering on a rioting mob. He seems to have been ruined by success.

Megyn Kelly now has a Youtube channel, and it’s somewhat depressing. She was a big name at Fox, and she was lured away to NBC, where she lasted around 14 months. I thought she was making a gigantic mistake because there was no way she was going to avoid being sabotaged at her new workplace. I knew most of the people around her, while trying to appear supportive, would be seething over her defiling presence in the temple of Marx, and I expected her to get insufficient support. My expectations panned out when she was driven out over some harmless remarks that would never have caused a problem for a leftist.

Her ratings were bad. Someone should have told NBC that nobody who could sit through the previous show, Today, was likely to stick around and watch a woman most liberals think is on a moral par with Lene Riefenstahl.

Kelly stepped in it, and so did NBC. For some reason, they agreed to give her a $69 million contract, if sources are to be believed, and when she was driven out, they had to eat that loss. Even after paying a manager, an agent, the IRS, and state taxes, one would expect her to have maybe $30 million in hand, not to mention whatever she amassed as a highly paid Fox personality, so unless she eats diamonds and bakes her bread with gold dust instead of flour, she ought to be set for life. If her net worth isn’t at least $35 million, she has been doing something wrong. She should be in a position to fly first class wherever she goes, and she should be very confident of taking her last breath surrounded by a doting staff with nondisclosure agreements, in a home you could play golf in.

Somehow, with all that money, she still decided to start a Youtube channel. This is not what journalists with booming careers do. It’s like Russell Crowe doing Shamwow commercials, except Shamwow commercials would appear on national TV.

I can’t understand her choice. Why make a desperation move instead of retiring in comfort? Maybe she feels like a failure unless she’s on TV, and she’ll do anything to keep her face out there in order to stir up interest. That would be silly. She didn’t fail. She did great for someone with nothing special to offer. She won the lottery. Twice. Purely by chance, she beat lots of people who could do exactly what she did. Asking for a third win is highly optimistic, especially at her age, with a reputation for costing networks tons of money.

I don’t understand people who have to work or look highly successful in order to be happy. Ambition is mysterious to me, like anorexia, homosexuality, and the urge to watch the Kardashians. I feel more like my aunt, who once told me, “If I didn’t have to eat, I would lie flat of my back and just barely suck wind.”

I wouldn’t want to be inactive, but the idea of getting a job horrifies me. I don’t want to answer to ewokes and Wokandans. I don’t want to call male coworkers “she” and “her” at the point of a human resources gun. I don’t want to be spirited off to woodsy retreats and undergo humiliating group exercises intended to prove that white men, who did more to build civilization than anyone else, are parasites that need to be exterminated. I don’t want to battle sniping, conniving competitors over things they desire a lot more than I do. I’m not the guy who wets the bed because someone else got the corner office.

I don’t care what future generations think of me, or what this generation thinks of me, for that matter. I don’t want my name on buildings. I don’t want a Wikipedia page. When I wrote books and went on radio and TV shows, I only appeared because I wanted to make money doing something fun. I didn’t want to be famous. I wanted my books to be famous so they would be profitable.

As a lawyer, I never had any interest in making speeches or getting on TV. It wouldn’t mean anything to me to be admired as a lawyer, because law was a last resort for me. Becoming a lawyer was embarrassing. I did it because physics didn’t work out. For me, bragging about being a great lawyer would be like bragging about finding a really good brand of adult diapers.

I can’t relate to people who are impressed by lawyers. I have no respect for the intelligence of lawyers, including Supreme Court justices and law professors, so I don’t feel I have to prove I can do what prominent lawyers do. I’m pretty sure no one on the Supreme Court is as smart as I am, because they sometimes say stupid things, and really smart people generally don’t go to law school. Even the people who graduate summa cum laude generally aren’t great lights. Law school is where people who aren’t smart enough to be doctors end up. There is probably no task in law that requires an IQ over 130. If I’m wrong, and, say, Elena Kagan is brighter than I am, I still don’t care. I’m way smarter than I need to be, it’s fine with me if lots of people are smarter, it’s okay with me if people think I’m downright stupid, and anyway, great intelligence isn’t the colossal gift people think it is.

Intelligence is a lot like height. If you’re a man, and you’re between 6′ and 6’3″, you’re advantaged. You’re more likely to get women, jobs, and acceptance letters from good colleges. You’re less likely to be picked on than smaller men. When you start to get past 6’4″, things get worse for you. You can’t find shoes that fit. Your head will hit the headliner in many cars, and you won’t be able to push the seat back far enough. Airline seats, which are unpleasant even for short people, become torture devices. When you’re really tall, women find you less attractive because they’ll look funny standing next to you. You’re also likely to have joint problems. You’ll get injured more, your injuries will probably be worse, and you will take longer to heal.

I think the sweet spot for brains is between 115 and 140 on the IQ chart. Below 115, you’re going to have to work hard to distinguish yourself. As you go above 140, things other people can tolerate start to become boring, and this can have a big negative effect on your performance in school and at work. You may get tired of pre-editing things you say because you know other people won’t understand them. You may start to lose yourself because you get so used to tailoring your conversation for other people. Women will think you’re geeky. When you’re in school, kids will pick on you. They’ll pick you last for sports because they can’t believe smart kids can be strong and fast.

Between 115 and 140, you can be a good, solid professional. You can get into any college if you work, except for places like MIT and Cal Tech. You’re not so smart you can’t stand your schoolwork or your job. You’re gifted enough to be highly successful, but people can still relate to you, and they will be less hostile to you.

This is how I see it, but I’m just guessing based on personal observation.

Biden’s IQ is probably below 105. I see Trump as smarter, but not a great deal smarter.

When I practiced law, I did virtually nothing to promote myself. I didn’t pretend I was in it for the good of humanity, as many ambitious lawyers do. No one is in it to help mankind. I was in it for the money. Law was never exciting, challenging, or mentally stimulating to me, so I didn’t do it for the satisfaction, and I didn’t con people, claiming I wanted to fix the world. If I could have made lawyer money doing something like writing cookie recipes or designing funny greeting cards, or if someone had simply given me a big allowance, I would have quit law in a heartbeat.

I never did pro bono work, which is something ambitious lawyers do to virtue signal, excuse the rest of their mercenary and harmful activities, and raise their profiles. I thought it was insane to spend hundreds of billable hours exposing myself to malpractice liability for nothing, and aside from that, pro bono is properly the province of criminal and family law attorneys. That’s my opinion, anyway. A trained goose can oversee a plea bargain or an uncontested divorce, and criminal and family cases take very little time. My fellow litigators, on the other hand, often put in over a hundred hours on a single case. Think what that adds up to, if your hourly rate is in three figures. You’re tied to a nonpaying ball and chain, who is entitled to sue for malpractice regardless of whether you charge him, while you still have to pay for rent, food, transportation, property taxes, medical care, and so on.

Why should I donate figures like $20,000 or $60,000 in services? Do pharmacists have to do that? Do engineers? Building contractors? Teachers? Plumbers? Architects? Professors? Why lawyers? Once you represent someone, you have a duty of loyalty to that person for life, and clever attorneys have found ways to nail other attorneys for malpractice decades after representations ended and malpractice insurance was canceled. Why should I have to take on commitments like that?

I believe the main reason pro bono exists is the large body of Michael Avenattis and John Edwardses in the legal profession. There are so many slimy scavengers out there conspicuously ruining the lives of the innocent, the public hates all lawyers, so decent attorneys are supposed to play the pro bono game in order to provide PR balance. I say let the bottom feeders do their own remedial PR.

If I were a doctor, I’d be thrilled to do pro bono work. That’s because doctors, unlike lawyers, actually help people. I remember being asked to go to Haiti after the big earthquake, and I refused because, as a lawyer, I had nothing to offer. I said, “What do they need a lawyer for? Am I supposed to sue people for them?” If I had been a surgeon or engineer, I would have been on the first thing smoking. I would have loved that. As a lawyer, I would have been useless. I would have been handing out water bottles or something. There were plenty of people doing things like that already. Haiti needed medical personnel and people who could move rubble, not unskilled laborers. They had all the laborers they needed.

It would have cost me around $1500 to go to Haiti, I would have been of no use to anyone while I was there, and…I would have been in Haiti, living in squalor, counting the minutes until I could go home to my nice bed, kitchen, central air conditioning unit, private shower, and clean toilet. It made much more sense to send money.

I’m really digressing, but the point is that I don’t understand why any wealthy (or even comfortably retired) person would work, unless he had a vital service to provide. That rules me out. I can’t provide any services of real value. Also, I was never defined by law or, before that, physics. I did those things so I would have food and shelter. I love being able to do what I want. I love prayer and ministry. I love using my tools. I love writing. I love cooking. A job would ruin everything.

I don’t owe the world anything, and I am immune to guilt trips about it, because I can’t understand that mindset. I never think of all the sad little potential plaintiffs and defendants out there who have to do without my services. No one goes without legal representation because I retired, and even if they did, in many cases, it would be the best thing for them. I like helping the poor and people who don’t know God, not litigants.

Megyn Kelly must see things differently, unless she binged on Chanel and Prada and ran through her money. No one in the news industry will hire her, but she is still on Youtube, banging away as though she were still a big media figure with a real job. She has turned her life into a long series of auditions.

Is she hoping to become a Youtube star? That’s not going to happen. Youtube is her new NBC. Youtube promotes people who don’t endanger leftist delusions. It suppresses conservatives, and even though Kelly is a sad excuse for a conservative, she is identified with the right and will never get any algorithmic help. On Youtube, not being helped is the same as being actively opposed. The people who get help rise up around you like a flood, and you drown.

If you’re a herd creature in touch with the interests of the undiscerning, you may know who the big, wealthy Youtubers are. If you look them up, you will see why Kelly is digging her mine on the wrong lease. I don’t know much about them myself, but I have seen a few because I researched them.

1. Mrbeast. This is a college-age kid who stages games in which people humiliate themselves to get huge cash prizes. Four days back, he posted a hide-and-seek video with a $1 million prize. Youtube says he has gotten 35 million views. He has 86 million subscribers. Imagine how much Youtube pays him in order to enable him to provide prizes that big.

2. Faze Rug. This is another kid. He has 20 million subscribers. He does things like buying his parents Lamborghinis. His last video went up yesterday, and he has already gotten 1.7 million views. This isn’t that great for a big Youtuber, but it’s probably more views than Kelly has gotten for all over her videos, combined.

3. Like Nastya. This is a 7-year-old kid who posts videos about her toys and her interactions with her parents. She has 84 million subscribers, and her last video, about her Christmas calendar, has received 4.3 million views. Even with the most powerful mind-enhancing drugs known to man, I could never imagine why people would want to see that.

That’s what real Youtube success looks like, it shows how mentally and spiritually stunted the average viewer is, and it also shows how badly Kelly is doing. Let’s look at her stats. She has been around for about two years. She has about 252,000 subscribers, which sounds good, but subscribers don’t always translate to views.

She busts her butt, putting up numerous videos every week. Her last video has received 14,000 views. To provide contrast, my parrot Marvin has a video that got over 200,000. Marvin’s video has been up a while, and Kelly has videos that have beaten 14,000, but generally she appears to get under 30,000. That’s bad. You can’t live on that traffic. It would take centuries to make $69 million on that traffic. She is probably making less than a thousand dollars per month, and since her videos clearly involve the use of a staff, that can’t be profit.

People who claim to know say Youtube pays around $4 per thousand views. I wouldn’t know; I had the opportunity to monetize a video, but I didn’t try it. Too bad. That $12 would have come in mighty handy in my twilight years. One day I might not be able to say, “Supersize that.”

In September, Kelly signed a Sirius deal. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think it will do well. The only site I’ve found that lists Sirius channels by popularity has a top-40 list, and she isn’t on it. For context, I’ll add that Dusty Street and Earl Times made the list. If you have no idea who those people, are, I’m right there with you. I don’t think NBC ever gave either of them $69 million. You would think a $69 million talent would be top 40 in a week.

I see similarities between Kelly and Gutfeld, along with some important differences.

Gutfeld is similar to Kelly in that a Fox time slot and thirsty Fox viewers made him successful in spite of a product that wasn’t particularly good. This is true, although the reasons for their shows’ lack of exceptional quality are different.

Kelly is a commodity. Her work for Fox was fine, but it was crazy to think she deserved $69 million, because she could have been replaced in a few days. There are lots of nice-looking female talking heads who can do what she can does, as well or better. Many are much prettier than she is; she’s 51. If a meteor hit her in the head tomorrow, another woman could step in the day after, and no viewer would miss her.

She reminds me of a former college friend of mine. He went to Columbia to be an engineer, but it turned out he was not smart enough to handle the math and physics. He graduated with a degree in economics. An economics degree, like an English degree or a history degree, is a tacit confession that you couldn’t think of any marketable skills to acquire in college. It’s a way of admitting you’re fungible and that you wasted your mom and dad’s massive investment, which you could have used to start a business.

After he graduated, he wandered the streets looking for work, and he saw an advertisement for a bookkeeping position. He applied in desperation, and he found himself working at an oil-trading firm. He was eventually promoted to a trading job, which amounted to sitting at a computer directing petroleum-product shipments this way and that. Oil traders received gigantic commissions for doing something a third-grader could do, and he became rich. If he had offended his employers and contacts, he would have had to go back to walking the streets, because anyone could do what he did. Nobody needed him per se. They just needed a person who could answer a phone and enter data.

To prove my point, he helped another friend of mine, another engineering defector who was using his Far Eastern studies degree to move furniture, get a job, and that friend got blackballed after a number of years because of his sexual orientation. That friend went from making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to struggling, and he never recovered. He didn’t save or invest, so he was ruined. He spent money on things like polo ponies.

Megyn Kelly is like an oil trader, or, now that I think about it, like Jane Pauley. Remember her? She was a Today anchor, making big money. Debra Norville showed up at her workplace when she was at the top, and Norville allegedly said she was going to take her job, referring to her as “the midget.” Norville was younger and prettier, and before long, she got what she wanted. When Norville didn’t work out, Pauley’s former job went to Katie Couric, not Pauley.

Gutfeld is not a commodity. He has a talent that makes him harder to replace, but his show still stinks because of the writing, guests, and lack of a real studio audience.

The big similarity between Kelly and Gutfeld is that either would almost certainly fail anywhere but Fox. Gutfeld would fail even though he’s capable and more talented than Kelly. He would fail because good writers and guests would still run from him, he would no longer have Fox viewers fed to him, and he would also be undermined by his left-leaning coworkers. It would also be hard to find conservative studio audiences for him in New York.

I wonder if the executives at Fox have figured these things out and used them when negotiating Gutfeld’s compensation. He would be hard to replace, but on the other hand, he has nowhere else to go.

It’s sad to see a person who has gotten his dream job, glowing with animosity, reading mean-spirited material, and pretending to enjoy the company of desperate, entry-level guests who seem to be tolerating him. What is a job worth, if you lose yourself?

I was talking to my wife today. We were discussing unhappy, ambitious people. This scripture came to mind: “Better the little a righteous man hath than the riches of many wicked.” Some people would quote it insincerely as a way of saying “sour grapes,” but it’s completely true. People go after things they want because they think they’ll make them happy, but often, their happiness is the price.

People often end up settling for the appearance of happiness, not happiness itself. For example, I’ve known miserable couples that posted dishonest things on Facebook. “Here we are at Disney World with the kids! So blessed!” “What did I ever do to deserve my precious, godly wife?” A tormented wife who posted nonsense like that sent a friend of mine a text saying her life was hell and that she had to get away from her husband. Another called me to tell me her husband was staying with another woman. What’s the point of lying to people? You just make it harder to fix your situation. You give yourself motivation to stay trapped so people won’t know what a hypocrite you are.

Billy Crystal’s Fernando used to say, “It is better to look good than to feel good.” A lot of people really believe that.

If I say my wife and I are having a great time, you can bet your life on it. I don’t feel motivated to lie.

It’s a huge blessing to be separated from worldly people and the filthy, bruising environment they create. I hope God sees fit to keep me and my wife out of it. It has to be terrible to be a slave to a many-eyed monster that doesn’t care whether you live or die as long as you keep it entertained.