The Gutfeld Monologues

by Greg Gutfeld

  It’s crazy this is happening on campus, where the free flow of ideas is the whole idea. But that’s changed. As the lunatics run the asylum, all the walls must now be padded. Free speech begone, words are weapons that hurt like hurled rocks. It’s the new strategy to suppress competing ideas. And it’s working.

  But as we criticize, we must police this stuff among ourselves. A demand for lockstep exists in all places where discomfort from dissent is recast as offense. After all, the only way to strengthen an argument is to make it vulnerable to criticism. It’s called learning.

  Demanding consensus is coward’s work. And if you can’t take the heat or a joke, get out of the kitchen and go back to college.

  This was my reason for criticizing Candidate Trump regularly throughout the presidential campaign, rather than excusing his actions like others did [which I called “Trumpsplainin’ ”]. I kept referring to the “guardrails of criticism,” as my method of steering someone in the right direction. The candidate never listened to me—and he won, so maybe that was a good thing.

  I hope decades from now we will look back at safe spaces and be deeply embarrassed. But chances are that decades from now we will all be enslaved by robots, so the point is moot. The upside: Since I’ve been very supportive of robots, they will let me live comfortably while the rest of you beg for food.

  May 19, 2015

  Commencement addresses are usually garbage.

  Wow—great line, Greg. Talk about mailing it in.

  They’re for colleges seeking publicity. So you end up with star-hawking platitudes to an audience suckled on baby formula called The Daily Show. I was once asked to do one for a high school in Jersey, but I turned it down because they wouldn’t pay my cab fare.

  Crappy joke.

  So here is my advice for free.

  • Take any job, any job you can find. Work your butt off for one solid decade. That will put you ten years up on any pothead backpacking to Europe and video-game-playing drones who think success drops from the sky like a magical Kardashian.

  • Modern culture has created a warped view of achievement. Not everyone gets a reality show—so instead, be a workhorse and by 2025, you’ll surpass the famous people you see now. Hard work beats those who prefer identity over industry.

  • Also, ask dumb questions and listen quietly for the answers. That’s a wisdom stair climber.

  • Steer clear of pot. It’s an ambition zapper. Wait till you’ve made it. When you’re forty-five, buy a bong. But for now, buy a suit.

  • Move somewhere with decent public transit so you don’t drive drunk and hit somebody.

  • Scalpel your online footprint to a fly’s toe. Twitter is the contrail of life. When I’m hiring I don’t need to see your naked butt. And I’m pretty open to new things. Real experience beats web activity. Everything is being filmed. So any public rant you do to a clerk at a shoe store, that scars you eternally.

  I also think at some point we need to invent a forgiveness clause, or “online amnesty,” where for one day we can go back and erase everything we’ve ever done on social media that’s potentially embarrassing. Anyway, it’s a dream.

  Which leads me to my last point: If you’re the person doing the hiring, forgive a scar or two. Remember that when we were young, we were also idiots. There were just no cameras there to catch it.

  The advice about public transit might be most important of all. You simply do not want to drive regularly when you’re young. Because you’re young—and you’ll be drinking or drugging a fair amount. One arrest will screw you, and if you end up hurting someone, it’s far worse for you [and for your victim, obviously]. But this point may be irrelevant, once self-driving cars take over, and we can all be drunk 100 percent of the time.

  I followed the first point right out of college, taking a job in Virginia, moving from California. And I did it again a year later when I moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, the same year that USA Today voted it the worst city in the country [1990]. It was freezing cold the day I showed up in this gray, hardscrabble town, taking what few belongings I had from my mom’s home in sunny San Mateo and moving into a small apartment around the corner from a cemetery on Eleventh and Chew. It’s a decision I don’t regret, but I can’t fathom that I lived there for a decade. The point: I took a job in one of the least appealing cities at the time and made it work for me, until the city practically had to kick me out. I mean, I spent ten years in Allentown, by choice. It’s more charming than you think, Billy Joel notwithstanding [or sitting].

  September 8, 2015

  As students return to school this week, it pays to know what they’ll be returning to learn.

  According to the New York Post, a freshman English class called “The Literature of 9/11” includes the perspective of the Islamic terrorists, portraying them as freedom fighters driven by U.S. imperialism.

  I’m glad I’m too old for school.

  One of the colleges, UNC, says it isn’t advocating one viewpoint over another. But most students know that to get an A in any class these days, you just recite these four words: “It’s all our fault.”

  Fact is, most curriculum thrives under a phony guise of open-mindedness, a farce, for we often see people with competing points of view denied the chance to speak on campus. College is the only place where intellectual opposition means a duel with a grading pen, wielded by a guy with tenure and a ponytail.

  Ugh—another “ponytail” line. But maybe all these jerks really do have ponytails! Nevertheless, I’m punching myself in the butt.

  How do you counter this take on terror? You could ask these questions: By giving victim status to terrorists who are either poor or uneducated, aren’t you saying that their victims had it coming? If ISIS were to blow up this class right now, would you say we deserved it? And if it happens, is the final canceled?

  I am intrigued by stories about students who call in bomb threats to cancel midterms and so on. Because, be honest—haven’t you once been tempted to do the same? Ever? Come on!! I’m not saying it’s right—no, it’s wrong . . . but it’s one of those thoughts you’ve entertained, no?

  Professors blame violence on previous violence, but terror as a consequence of our actions inevitably turns into a game of what causes what first, a game you can play all the way back to the Big Bang.

  So if you’re a parent paying a small fortune for Junior’s schooling, take a peek at the syllabus, if only to prepare you for the horrible opinions come Thanksgiving dinner.

  You can say that this type of class will welcome diverse points of view, but I remember in college, in order to get a decent grade, I had to mimic left-wing deconstructive analysis regurgitated by my professors. Every thesis was supposed to reveal some postmodern take on whatever novel we were discussing that semester. Example: I remember that my freshman year we were studying Stephen King’s Firestarter. Yes, that was in my college curriculum at Berkeley in 1983! And the theme conveyed by the teacher was that pyromania represented a legitimate response to patriarchal society. I remember the instructor writing on the chalkboard these two words: “phallic death.” Which I then stole as the name for my short-lived death metal band. We only recorded a handful of songs in a garage in Richmond, California. We drank canned mixed drinks purchased at a 7-Eleven and my role was strictly as the lead screamer. If we had kept at it, instead of becoming lawyers, engineers, and talk show hosts, we would have been bigger than Metallica. Or at least Poison. Or perhaps Right Said Fred.

  October 8, 2015

  A Minnesota school is spending thirty grand on recess consultants to improve the politics of the playground, making that break more inclusive by replacing terms like “you’re out” with “good job.”

  Okay—I know—this isn’t about “college,” it’s about grade school. But at this point, what is the difference? And besides, I really like this monologue, so put that in your bong and spill it all over your rug.

  Now I’d applaud this, but I fear my clapping might kill harmless bacte
ria.

  But recess is indeed a war zone cloaked in cruelty. We know tag is wrong. Calling a child “it” can only lead to future mental trauma. And freeze tag, well, that mocks paralysis. Tetherball, a brutal sport where one beats a shackled ball, implies you can pummel the defenseless, the trapped ball being the symbol of every victim of American oppression.

  • Dodgeball is simply training for life as a callous sniper. And Hide-and-Seek teaches kids the thrill of life on the lam, perhaps as serial killers.

  • Blind Man’s Bluff? What’s next, “deaf guy’s charades”? “Let’s kick the iron lung”? Please.

  • Hopscotch, that mocks those with a limp.

  • London Bridge glorifies destruction of monuments.

  • Leapfrog makes light of reptile abuse.

  • Kick the Can encourages violence against recyclables.

  • Keep Away mocks the repellent.

  • Patty-Cake encourages obesity.

  • Rock, Paper, Scissors inserts competition into hand gestures.

  • Mother May I glorifies subservience and is heteronormative.

  • And Simon Says reinforces our patriarchal culture.

  In short, recess is offensive, because everything is offensive. And as I am a self-appointed recess consultant, you owe me thirty grand.

  About this particular line: “Now I’d applaud this, but I fear my clapping might kill harmless bacteria.” One of my first articles ever published was in the Sunday Punch section of the San Francisco Chronicle [back in 1989], and it was about a fictitious concert for bacteria rights. In that satire I describe how the audience is told not to applaud the entertainment, because it would kill innocent microbes. I wrote that when I was twenty-four. I was living at my mom’s house. It was a year between jobs. It was a really weird, tough time. I was broke, and scared. My poor mother. I miss her so much. Fortunately, Peter Sussman, the editor of that section of the paper, took a chance on me and published my writing. Those pieces ended up helping me get a job at Rodale Press, where I ended up working for a decade, culminating as editor in chief of their most successful product, Men’s Health. Sussman discovered me, and for that I owe him a lot. Side note: One time I sent a batch of my Chronicle pieces to two different places: Forbes FYI and the Wall Street Journal. The editor of Forbes, Christopher Buckley [son of the great, late WFB], promptly sent me a handwritten note telling me how much he loved them. It gave me a contact high that lasted weeks. But when I called the WSJ to see if the receiver of my work had read them, the person abruptly said yes, and then hung up the phone. I will not say who that person is. So in sum: Christopher Buckley is a generous, sweet person, and the person I shall not name is a miserable creep. You’d know him by name, so ask me when you see me in person during the book tour! That shall be your incentive.

  March 29, 2016

  Imagine a place that poisons your teens’ emotional well-being, targeting their vulnerabilities, laying waste to their spine, inculcating weakness, replacing reason with hysteria. Once designed for enrichment, it’s now an ego asylum, where character is reduced to a bubbling stew of anguish.

  Guess you didn’t see that coming, did you?

  That is college.

  At Emory University, pro-Trump messages written on sidewalks in chalk have scarred coeds badly. Student organizations are offering counseling—poor things. The school president sent his sympathies.

  Now the scribbles could have been solved easily by erasing them. It is chalk, after all. But that’s something an adult would do. These are emotional toddlers. Forget about a wall on the southern border—build it around Emory.

  This is the new life on campus. One must balance free speech with feeling safe. College must be a haven, safe from words.

  But college is supposed to challenge, not cuddle. Doing the reverse just leads to fake incidents of hate that provide spotlights to these attention gobblers.

  Attention gobblers—I feel like we’ve all become that kind of creature—more enamored of what others give us than of what we might give back. And maybe that’s the name of my next book!

  Now, while this was happening, the U.S. military was evacuating families of defense personnel from southern Turkey due to security fears.

  Maybe the Emory students can trade places and find out what a real unsafe space is all about.

  By the way, colleges have always had safe spaces—they were clubs, teams, and fraternities. Safe spaces were simply where your friends were. It’s sad that we’ve lost the sense of community and replaced it with identity. No wonder so many young people feel lost. I’d try to counsel them, but the authorities still say I’m not allowed within five hundred yards of any campus.

  August 30, 2016

  There’s so much evil in this world: war, famine, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and now team mascots.

  Yes, I hate the RHCP. If you’re a dedicated fan of Faith No More—which I am—then you have to hate the Chili Peppers. For FNM is what the RHCP tried to be, but lacked the brains, wit, and chops for it. You can’t be a fan of both bands. If you are, that’s like being a fan of both getting hit in the face and not getting hit in the face. I prefer FNM, which is “not getting hit in the face.”

  Apparently one such beast doesn’t express enough emotional diversity and must be changed. I speak of Herky the Hawk, from the University of Iowa, whose static grimace has upset one professor enough for her to write to school officials claiming Herky’s smirky traumatizes students.

  Professor Resmiye Oral believes new students need happy faces, not angry, violence-inciting ones. She writes, “I plead with you to allow Herky to be like one of us, sometimes sad, sometimes happy, sometimes angry.”

  She’s right. Look at that face. It’s not inviting, I wouldn’t want to eat that at Chick-fil-A. It seems like an Angry Bird. We should ban those, too. Imagine what that’s doing to your children.

  Fact is, these days everything is offensive, from common words to costume birds. It’s why we need trigger warnings and safe spaces to protect us from these microaggressions. The world is so scary, it seems the best thing you can do these days is not be born! So is it possible that a student might actually think Herky is a real actual monstrous hawk with a grudge and not just a classmate in a costume?

  It’s possible. All this psychological coddling is turning kids into fearful worms. Worms.

  Maybe they should be scared of birds!

  The fight over team mascots reveals a large truth about this country: We have so few problems that we need to make up some, just to pass the time. If our country had real calamities—existential terror threats, bloody gang violence, another movie by Woody Allen—we wouldn’t be spending so much of our time talking about team mascots. Wait, we do have all those looming problems. We’re doomed!

  September 7, 2016

  So if you think time travel is impossible, then you haven’t made it to Cal State L.A., where they’re now segregating students based on skin color. Amazing.

  According to CSLA, the school’s under fire for offering separate housing for black students in response to claims of racism. Apparently, this new housing was triggered by insensitive remarks and microaggressions made by professors and students. So get this: The solution to racism is segregation. You know who would agree with that? Racists.

  Somehow, I don’t think this is the unity that we all had in mind.

  So as inclusion is now seen as some kind of appeasement, the left views separatism as the answer to their grievance. The natural result of identity politics, where conflict resolution is replaced by polarization.

  After America’s grand experiment of inclusion, we now return to tribal splintering, retreating to the instinct of surrounding like with like. It indulges the worst urges. It’s based on the toxic assumption that empathy cannot exist between different pigments, genders, and orientations.

  The word on everyone’s lips is “tribalism.” Mainly because the web allows us to separate faster and cleaner. If I want to, I can easily find someone or a
group of someones who will validate me, without ever running into an opposing voice. I mean, for so long I thought I was the only fifty-three-year-old man into totally shaved unicorns. Thanks to the internet, I realized there are eleven of us!!

  So where do we go from here? As the country splits into factions, be it through separatist movements or infamy, through divisive symbolism or reparations that reward anger over achievement, it only leads in one direction. Down and then apart.

  This begs for some kind of update.

  From what I gather (“gather” is the word I use for “googling in my boxers”) this trend of separate living quarters is not only not new, but pretty common. I found a handful of examples in five minutes. Some even have a name for it, calling them “ethnic-themed dorms.” (I didn’t know dorms had themes!)

  But here’s the point: Separatism is going to end up being the ultimate ugly endpoint for identity politics, driven by the belief that different people simply cannot empathize with each other, and therefore must be kept apart. Identity politics is evil, for it diminishes the individual in favor of the group, turning communities into warring factions.

  Another thought comes to mind: Identity politics always demands virtue signaling on the part of everyone involved. [A reminder of what virtue signaling is: It’s the cloying, obvious expression of moral obedience intended only to improve your standing within a specific group, as well as protecting you from becoming a target of that group, by becoming an “ally.”] But what you realize is that the more signaling you do, the more signaling you HAVE to do. Because if everyone is expressing the same moral value, then the baseline is always going to be zero. And you have to race quickly up the signaling ladder to appear superior, in that regard, by signaling even more. The end result could be something far worse than separatism.