by Greg Gutfeld
Now, I’m assuming Dunham wants to leave because she feels Trump is a bigot because of the stuff he said about Mexicans. But could it be that she’s the real bigot? If she was offended by Trump, why didn’t Dunham say she was moving to Mexico? Why did she pick the white north over the darker-skinned south? Talk about microaggression. I guess our Mexican friends are not worthy of her lily-white coddled presence. Well, unless they’re delivering food to her doorstep.
But also her threat to move just shows how lazy entertainers become when nothing is expected of them. Dunham has coasted on these same banalities, because they’re the same banalities the media shares. The threat reveals how vapid hokum passes for edgy intellectualism, the kind that gets you into the clubhouse of the mediocre hipster.
Poor Canada, sending them Lena Dunham. That’s like a missile strike. Then again, they did send us Justin Bieber.
I feel bad about that. Bieber, for all his faults, is nowhere near as bad as Dunham. A better comparison would have been rickets. People still get rickets, right? [And Canadian rickets—that must be bad, right?]
It’s a shame that I actually have to know who Lena Dunham is. But I had no choice. Remember the bizarre, unsubstantiated accusation she made about some flight attendants, who she claimed made disparaging remarks about a transgendered kid? She tweeted an accusation, naming the airline—and the airline conducted an investigation. They realized that none of their flights were in the terminal where Lena claimed the “incident” took place. But since Dunham has appointed herself to the role of the nosy neighbor who narcs on people when she overhears their conversations, who cares about such details? And for her, if she hears that conversation in her head, that’s good enough for her. She would have been a hero in the East German Stasi—creating conversations and hauling people in for punishment. Then she moves on, weaving another tale to impress the sycophants around her. One couldn’t imagine a less positive, more pernicious influence on American public life than Lena’s Twitter feed. It’s as if every tenth-grade social justice warrior in the country who is trying to overcome braces and zits suddenly had a transcontinental megaphone. It’s the rhetoric of the student council election, on a national scale. The fact that this awful, unoriginal, hectoring jackass is tolerated puts the lie to every charge of “intolerance” this nation has ever faced. If we’ll put up with her, we’ll put up with anything.
I have to admit, though, I did like a few episodes of Girls—especially the one where she squats and pees in a train station. It’s always good to get a glimpse, from afar, of the horrible things you’re missing.
July 27, 2016
This monologue foreshadows the next chapter on terror. If you’d like to know what that is, you could skip ahead—but then you’ll miss this delightful piece of writing!
If you blinked during this Democratic National Convention, you would have missed any mention of ISIS. If you didn’t blink, you would have missed any mention of ISIS, too. Of nearly 120 speakers during the first two days, five brief hits of it were heard, a batting average that should disqualify you from the world of reason. But who’s counting? There are many more urgent things than a zombie jihad slitting the throats of priests, running over children, and blowing up families. Just like the left enabling communists, decades ago—the Dems fret over the police, big corporations, big air-conditioning, while terrorists thrive. Sorry, your greedy banker didn’t cut the throat of that priest. In a world beset by mass self-activated terror, the Dems come off as wee children, singing la, la, la, la, la, loudly to drown out the weeping victims of France, Orlando, Istanbul. Here are two self-described celebs echoing that old refrain.
AMERICA FERRERA, UGLY BETTY STAR: Let’s forcefully reject division.
LENA DUNHAM, GIRLS STAR: Let’s say with one voice that we all have worth; we are all a part of this country.
Lena: Love the sentiment, but you don’t make it easy.
FERRERA: Let’s put Hillary Clinton in the White House.
DUNHAM: And let’s declare.
BOTH: Love trumps hate.
And reality trumps Hollywood horseshit.
Love trumps hate. ISIS is quaking in their blood-soaked boots—oh, I hope they don’t come at us with love!
What a battle cry, but for what? Here’s a new pro-Hillary star-studded video. It’s so fighty. Begin video clip:
JOHN MICHAEL HIGGINS, ACTOR: My power’s turned on.
ELIZABETH BANKS, ACTRESS-TURNED-DIRECTOR: Starting right now I’ll be strong.
CROWD: I’ll play my fight song.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I don’t really care if nobody else believes.
Maybe that was the problem.
JANE FONDA, ACTRESS: Because I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me.
Poor Jane—it must be hard to devise a way to turn traitor to an enemy that would slit your throat on sight. Why can’t ISIS be more like the Viet Cong!
It’s called “Fight Song.” Why, because it’s totally okay to wage war against Americans over politics, but not ISIS—that’s too much.
How sad: Artists will be the first to die under a caliphate, and they don’t even know it!
Anyway, Obama had eight years, and ISIS is spreading like a malignant tumor. The evidence is written in the blood of innocents every day. Too bad the Democrats can’t read anything but their own horoscope.
The Democrats’ “fight song.” I’m still laughing over that one. So is al-Baghdadi, I’ll bet. When I look back at this, I realize how lucky we were that Hillary lost—because these idiots would be the people who own the conversation. Well, okay, they still do own the conversation—telling the world day in and day out in interviews that Trump is causing the end of the world.
Note: These are not stupid people—they’re just sheltered, misinformed, misguided elitists. And unfortunately, they will run the conversation either way. But if Hillary had been elected, she would actually be listening to them, so she would have their cool shiny approval, and that’s the scary part—and the reason for some relief that Trump beat her.
Such celebrities know only what they prefer to know; they refuse to even tolerate the possibility that they might be wrong. It’s a combination of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. They’re looking at the world for evidence that they’re correct [confirmation bias], and when it doesn’t happen, they end up acting like idiots [the dissonance].
Again—imagine if Hillary had won. We’d have to hear from these idiots every single day. Wait. Trump won. And we still have to hear from these idiots every single day. That’s America!
Which leads me to my old refrain: All of these sore losers claim that Trump has been a threat to free speech and a free press. Yet they’ve never been more vocal. If anything, they should be grateful to Trump. He’s the best thing to happen to the media since the printing press.
November 9, 2016
Pop stars are crying. Comedians clutch their Xanax. Trump has won.
Cher says she’s moving to another planet, as if she wasn’t already living on one. Sarah Silverman mourns, making her even less funny than before, if that’s indeed possible.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, so why do I feel fine?
i.e., the election results
Because this hysteria validates last night.
The stars did everything they could to get Hillary elected. And now they’re freaking out because their entitled arrogance flopped.
SNL’s Taran Killam tweeted “Rural = stupid” about Trump’s victory. To think . . . that’s probably his best material.
By the way, how did that guy get a gig on SNL? It says a lot about that show that they’d give this guy a job—he’s about as funny as head lice, and I know how unfunny head lice can be.
Lady Gaga looked sad in a Rolls-Royce Phantom, which is hard to do, after protesting at Trump Tower. Such a woman of the people!
. . . meaning conservatives who wanted someone else . . .
And though Republicans snared the presidency, kept the Hou
se and Senate, at least the Democrats still have Katy Perry. She just threatened revolution. She’s Che in a thong.
So you can criticize Trump for lots of things. I did. (Believe me.) But you’ve got to love him for the enemies he made, because they’re our enemies, too.
It’s a fact: You may not like Trump, but you know Hillary’s fans hate you. And boy, did they make that clear.
This is the most important point to be gleaned from the election. So many of the people who hate you lost. You could have despised Trump, or like me, been very critical of his rhetoric. But the other side, the hard-left Democrats, actually think you’re morally and intellectually inferior—if you’re lucky! They also think you’re a Nazi racist who personally deports anchor babies in your free time. Now, I may have had a problem with Trump’s behavior, but he doesn’t look down on me. I don’t think he looks down on anyone. Well, except for “shithole” countries. But so do liberals. Trump’s just more honest about it. Last time I checked, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, or Joe and Mika aren’t going to spa retreats in Port-au-Prince. In fact, did you notice that not a single celebrity claimed they were moving to Haiti after the election? They only want to move where white people live! Racists!
But last night the unpopular kids told the cool kids, “Up yours.” For once, Republicans won a culture war. And it was against smug celebs who felt that you were inferior. But I guess now the feeling is mutual. To us you’re just overpaid preachers.
So thank you, Mr. Trump, for making Lena Dunham move to Canada. She’ll be the least popular Canadian export since acid rain. I’m not even sure. I think she might be worse than acid rain.
I have said this before: I had my problems with Trump—and I made them clear. But what cleared the slate for me were these things:
I despised the arrogance and entitlement of the Hillary machine.
I knew that Trump deserved more of a chance than Hillary. We knew Hillary. We didn’t know Trump—at least, as a political leader. It was a gamble. But it was a gamble based on the fact that we KNEW what Hillary already was. So we were willing to roll the political dice with this funky-haired orange Godzilla from Queens.
I was able to forgive the small things [his personality, for example] for the big things [he knows ISIS is a priority, not the caribou endangered by pipelines]. Being on top of national and domestic security makes me forgive whatever idiosyncrasies you may possess. Crush ISIS? Then eat all the well-done steak with ketchup that you want! Reduce the influx of gangs from down south? I’ll take your crass language and sick jokes and chalk it up to a different, more rough-and-tumble era. I mean, who would you rather have as president: someone who understands old truths, or one who sees the past as an encyclopedia of our sins? Who would you rather have: a skittish substitute teacher like Obama, or the scary gym coach who runs detention (Trump)?
The reaction of Hollywood Hillary cultists made me substantially relieved over the outcome of the election. Do this simple counterfactual: Imagine their sorrow in reverse. Imagine if Hillary had won. Imagine their inevitable throwing it in your face. Trump voters aren’t rubbing this in anyone’s hair. They’re too busy packing their kids’ lunches. But you know the liberals would have gone nuclear with their glee. Because when it comes to the team sport of politics, they’re petty. You can tell by the way they handled this loss. Every day that I watch Hollywood overdose in sorrow over this election is one more day I am happy he won. I may not have been on board during the primaries when there were other choices, but America made the right decision. They didn’t just elect Trump, they gave a beautiful, monumental “SCREW YOU” to all those coastal celebrities who, for so long, had it coming. If only they could stop prattling long enough to hear it. And learn something from it.
Where Are We Now?
Our celebrities are still here, and more unstable than ever. And thank God for that—because as you can tell, without them, I would be out of a job. Seriously, the previous seventy pages would have been blank were it not for them! And I would have to write about something else—like geopolitical issues—which would suck, because I don’t know anything about that crap. Celebrity instability is my wheelhouse, and I hope it never goes away, for my sake. And I don’t think it will.
President Trump has succeeded in triggering the entire town of Hollywood into full-blown hysteria. It’s something I haven’t seen in my lifetime, and I grew up in California during the infamously evil Reagan era. I won’t go on about Trump Derangement Syndrome, because that cliché is already overplayed. But one cannot ignore the contagious delusion that’s taken hold among our nation’s fragile entertainers. I worry about them. They need therapy llamas! I think they should pull back and take a deep breath, and realize that it’s physically impossible for Trump, or anyone, to be as evil as they claim he is. But then again, if they were to do that, I’d be without good material. So by all means, carry on!
I finished this chapter on March 5, 2018, the day after the ninetieth Oscars—an event at which political pronouncements against Trump were handicapped by their own #MeToo sins. You can’t throw stones in a glass house—especially a glass house with so many casting couches.
But watching the Oscars makes me ask: Why do people like me, who love movies so much, hate the Oscars so much?
I grew up with the 1970s Saturday matinee, where you arrive in the morning, in daylight, and leave when it’s dark.
I would watch back-to-back sci-fi double and triple features.
The Planet of the Apes trilogy, odd films like the Neptune Factor, or Food of the Gods, or that great classic with Bruce Davison about rats called Willard.
I positively lived for disaster classics—Earthquake. Poseidon Adventure. Towering Inferno. These movies were the escape for a kid in suburbia, when there wasn’t much else, other than dismal playgrounds and parks littered with pull-tab beer cans.
But times have changed. Everywhere you go, you’re now being informed, instead of entertained.
Hollywood, through the Oscars, has relegated cinematic escape to the backseat, as virtue signaling replaced shared human experience.
Traditional story lines are so old—as old as humanity. Which is why they worked.
Movies used to be about entertaining us—all of us. Yet the Oscars recast the industry as an engine for the new religion of identity politics.
But I remember the original reason for watching the Oscars on TV: to see movie stars.
There was nothing better than seeing Charlton Heston, or Jimmy Stewart, or Cary Grant—as themselves, and not the characters they played!
Now, actors simply assume another role at the Oscars: that of the caring automaton who sees the world in exactly the way you would predict. It’s crushing to see someone cool be so meek.
The Oscars are no longer a parade of creative individuals.
It’s a corporate offsite retreat for an industry adrift, something you accidentally walked into at a Marriott convention center.
So as the Oscars try to explain why movies matter, you end up hating everything about movies. It’s not fair to the movies, frankly. In short, if you hate the Oscars, it’s because you love the movies so much.
Bottom line—the only real big American “star” right now is Trump. He stole the bullhorn from Hollywood, and now he’s speaking to the world—in language they understand. And by “they,” I include our adversaries. A few pages back I said that Hollywood was how America “speaks to the world.” The message: We are sinful oppressors. Not anymore. Since Trump came in and wrestled away the megaphone, the message has dramatically changed. No longer is it “Hello, we’re America and we’re sorry,” it’s “Hello, we’re America—deal with it.”
It’s a message so potent and refreshing, no wonder Hollywood seems so irrelevant, and why Hollywood is so pissed off.
CHAPTER FOUR
ISLAMIC TERROR
It’s what caught the eye of those of us on The Five way before it interested President Obama. This pesky thing called ISIS, which he deemed t
he JV squad. Remember the quote? It was from a New Yorker profile of the president by David Remnick back in January 2014. Remnick had pointed out that the flag of al Qaeda was back up and flying in Fallujah—referring to ISIS, which wasn’t yet infamous enough to go by its own name. Obama said in response: “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”
Maybe I could cut him some slack on this . . . if heads weren’t cut off afterward. So this remains one of Obama’s big screw-ups—ignoring a new kind of terrorism that was about as far from JV as I am from playing for the Lakers.
There was something way different, more insidious, and chilling about this new kind of terrorism. It was a tech-savvy propaganda machine that delighted in revealing its atrocities to the world. The beheadings, the drownings, the immolations—this was their overwhelming message. Join or die. It was compelling, well thought out, and perfectly executed—no pun intended. How Obama missed this is beyond me. My only thought is that perhaps he didn’t miss it, but his allegiance to Islamophobia-phobia (fear of being called Islamophobic) left him paralyzed. He could not diagnose the most obvious ailment the world had seen since the Nazis, because it would just be in bad taste, and upset the global, progressive audience he so deeply preferred over us American rubes. Islamophobia was a term created to describe “what racist redneck white people feel who are scared of different religions and people,” a diagnosis used as a way to misidentify a legitimate distaste for death cults that behead and burn people alive. If that’s Islamophobia, then we all should be Islamophobic. But it’s their rhetorical diagnosis that is incorrect, not your instincts.