Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You

by Greg Gutfeld

  Wouldn’t it be great if the seminars were called “How to Pay Off Your Student Debt” or “Make Sure You Don’t Move Back Home” or “An Apartment, a Car, a Life—In One Year.” Shit, how about “How to Join a Bar Band So You Can Pay for Beer”? That is far more practical. And better for your sex life. I wish I had done that. Of course, I have no musical talent. But that didn’t stop Adam Levine.

  But maybe “work” is the goal of Sex Week. If you look at the unemployment numbers in early 2013, it’s pretty scary—hovering around 25 percent for boys and girls in their early twenties. So perhaps these classes are honest-to-God job preparation. The way it looks these days, the only option most of these kids have will be on their backs. Hooking might be the new IT. It’s like that scene in The Graduate. Forget “plastics.” Maybe the old guy at the party is telling the new graduates, “sodomy.” Yep, when the evil Republican state senator said, “We should be teaching these children what is important to learn so they can get jobs,” he was wrong. Sorry, Senator, the way things are headed, maybe the school sees the future—and it’s lubricated.

  I do realize that by devoting time to Sex Week, I become, once again, the symbol of uncool: a white middle-aged guy railing against filthy kids. But I argue it’s the opposite. Every professor behind this is probably my age, and totally for it. If anything, rebellion against this silliness is cool. Case in point, the week was supposed to feature a poetry-reading lesbian bondage expert (which is a longer way of saying “bullshit artist”). And it’s akin to having ants at a picnic. Totally expected. It’s about as rebellious as breaking wind in a bathtub—another thing I have experience in but keep to myself. (Well, mostly. It’s amazing what goes viral on German YouTube.)

  Sex Week is really part of a bigger idea, a larger damaging, stupid trend that seeks to obliterate perhaps the greatest thing about sex: mystery. Mystery is the best part about sexual attraction, and it’s responsible for the greatest joy in life: chemistry. Chemistry between people is more about the unspoken than the spoken. The more you talk about it (whatever “it” is), the less interesting you become. (My friends remind me of this all the time.) If you don’t know this, it’s because you haven’t shut up long enough to appreciate silence and all it brings. And guess what: Not acting on chemistry is pretty awesome. For one, you avoid pregnancy, divorce, STDs, and lawyers who garnish your wages.

  Me, I am a huge fan of sexual repression, although my definition might be different. To me, not talking about sex is just doing a favor to the people who would have to listen to you. Plus, you can never do the act justice. For me, a person who talks incessantly about their sexual exploits is no different from a guy who brags about his partying. In his head, he surely is having the time of his life. But everyone else around him wants to punch him in the face. Including his partners. It’s all generally BS anyway. A waste of oxygen and energy. Sex Week personified.

  We need to abandon the idea that expressing your sexuality is brave, in-your-face, or even interesting. And so my last example hails from Pittsburgh, where during an annual art school parade at Carnegie Mellon (it’s always colleges), a female student dressed up as the pope, minus pants … or anything, for that matter, down below. She had shaved her pubic hair in the shape of a cross, and passed out condoms. The Catholic diocese asked for the college to do something, in perhaps the nicest way possible. Bishop David Zubik put it politely: “I think we all know that when we’re growing up we do stupid things, but to cross over the line in this instance shouldn’t happen with anybody.” The college said it would review the incident, but some students didn’t seem to mind, of course. “It’s all in good fun and it’s not meant to harm anyone,” Ivy Kristov told the local station, KDKA.

  Of course it is, you moron. Nothing is brave if no one seems to mind. But you know who would mind? Try pulling that in a mosque and see how far your edgy, in-your-face expressionism takes you. Shave your pubic hair into a red crescent and advocate against the hijab someplace in Lahore. Good luck with that. We’ll send flowers.

  Of course, no protester would have the balls to do that. Cowards only act brave when there are no consequences. Ridicule the pope? No problem. Try Mohammed? I think you’ll sit that one out. It’s amazing how the fear of death can bring out the prude in you.

  GUNNING FOR ATTENTION

  Hollywood knows that without gun violence, there would be no Hollywood. Guns are the fresh herbs sprinkled onto every film salad to give it that extra zest. Yet, how can they embrace something so romantically on-screen, only to reject it so dramatically in real life? Hollywood’s schizophrenia over guns is matched only by their attitude toward taxes. Ever wonder why they film in Vancouver so often? It ain’t for the beaches, I can tell you.

  Celebrities demonize guns because it instantly makes them appear compassionate. But if they did the research, they’d find that where there are more guns, there is less gun crime. I’ve done the math. It’s not hard. I’ll direct you to the research, simply google this name: John Lott Jr.

  And ask any criminal (which some actual researchers have done) and they’ll tell you: Knowing a victim might have a gun dissuades them from approaching that victim. But research on gun control is nowhere near as cool as screaming “guns kill children” and demanding action on Twitter, in between therapy sessions and Pilates. Witness the latest celebrities participating in gun control PSAs. Most at one point in their career rely on armed security to handle all their safety needs. If only we were all like Beyoncé, then we could marry a very rich man (and excriminal) who has an arsenal. Jay-Z has ninety-nine problems, but not owning a gun isn’t one. Bottom line: The argument ends with “Guns are bad. Guns kill people. End of story.” This passes as intellectual thought for Sarah Silverman. By the way, if feminism means women are now free to be as stoned as men have traditionally been, congrats, Sarah. You’re the Rosa Parks of pot.

  But we know that these asshats are living a lie. I can’t think of a single television network that is housed in a building that’s considered a “gun-free zone.” This is where the cool are really dangerous: They embrace symbolic, worthless goals like gun-free zones and banning ornamental rifle add-ons as a measure of achievement, unaware that their fact-free opinions may in fact be part of our safety problem. Those opinions are making everyone less safe.

  A “gun-free zone” is the safest place for a maniac to kill people. But cool people don’t get it. They never do. In the world of common sense, they are woefully unarmed. But it’s not like they hang out in high schools or malls anyway (unless they’re looking for their next date). As for this preoccupation with rifles dressed up like “assault rifles,” those are not the weapons killing thousands of black kids every year in every major city. But let’s not touch that—it just embarrasses the liberal mayors of every city where illegal handguns turned their streets into war zones far more dangerous than the roads of Iraq. But still not as bloody as a Quentin Tarantino flick.

  Meanwhile, as former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg went to war on gun owners, Governor Andrew Cuomo made an exemption for Hollywood—allowing them to use fake weapons in the city. (These are real weapons minus ammo.) So let me get this straight—we ban guns, but encourage movies glorifying guns? Only on the coasts does this make sense. Is there an idiot molecule in seawater?

  No issue creates more dishonest, self-promoting bullshit than gun control. I don’t even know why it’s called gun control. We don’t call automotive safety “automotive control,” do we? We are totally fine with speed limits (except for Sammy Hagar), and we buckle up. Safety assumes you have the right to make your decisions. Gun control implies gun owners don’t have the brains to handle the same responsibility (when oddly, lawful gun owners treat guns more respectfully than Hollywood actors treat their wives). This is just more received wisdom from the regulatory state. Miramax and Harvey Weinstein deciding public policy—I’m sure that’s what our founding fathers had in mind. A junta of jackasses.

  Yet, when a tragic massacre like Sandy Ho
ok hits the news, distraught and intellectually shallow emotions erupt from the usual groups—emanations that are heartily encouraged by babbling news coverage—resulting in a spasm of self-righteous sanctimony and mindless condemnation. It’s a response as guaranteed as a nonsense tweet from a celebrity.

  Following horrible events like Sandy Hook, there are sincere responses, of course. And then there are certain celebrity responses, designed to elevate the profile of the responder.

  From Hollywood, we get opportunists who choose to make noise after such violence, because it makes them appear smart and caring, which elevates their cool factor among their equally clueless peers. To these people, a tragedy is really just a fashion accessory—one that you don’t have to return Monday morning with Russell Brand’s DNA all over it.

  They’ll make a video, even, to show how much they care, and how great they look while they show you they care. It’s also just a great time to meet up with like-minded lightweights, look each other in the eye, and validate one another’s sensitive and superior persona. It’s their version of a picnic.

  And if you’re Jim Carrey, you’ll take to Twitter to insult your average gun owner—even vowing to make a song about them.

  A tweet from him, to the world, the morning of March 24, 2013, read as follows:

  ‘Cold Dead Hand’ is abt u heartless motherf%ckers unwilling 2 bend 4 the safety of our kids. Sorry if you’re offended by the word safety! ;^}

  You can credit Twitter for a lot of things, but one thing they nailed for sure: As a celebrity-moron revealer (CMR), it is second to none. Twitter is celebutard Luminal. It reminds us that no matter how rich and famous a celebrity becomes, their success never makes them smarter. As the bank account skyrockets, their IQ sinks like a doomed soufflé. And the beauty of it is that it’s the celeb who’s actually volunteering the proof of their idiocy. (The emoticon’s a good tip too.)

  Carrey had promised to release an anti-gun song in a few days, and that he did, a painfully unfunny screed with a vaguely catchy melody and a safe, mocking tone dripping with adolescent irony. The song focused on ridiculing the memory of the late great Charlton Heston, as well as mocking American gun owners, millions of faceless people he paints as rednecks. Weird how so much gun crime has destroyed cities like Chicago and Detroit, but Carrey would never make a video about that. Gang crime? That’s just too dangerous for Jim to lampoon. Primarily because it’s not a white phenomenon. It’s much easier for this Canadian with dual citizenship to smear the target that cool kids love to hate: the South and the Midwest. It’s easy when you don’t know any people there, and the only real citizenship you have sets its perimeters within Malibu, Miami, and Manhattan. But, unlike a good Smith & Wesson, this idiocy always backfires.

  If you saw the video, Carrey apes his way through it as a cadaverous Heston impersonator, like a reject from a seventh-grade talent show. “Cold Dead Hand” has Carrey joyfully postulating that Heston liked guns because he had a tiny dick, and that he’s probably rotting in hell for his work for the NRA. Carrey also mocks and parodies the show Hee Haw, failing to realize that Hee Haw already was a parody of the South. Like everything Jim does, it comes off as old and he comes off like a douche the size of a dirigible. I mean, really, the guy’s been pulling the same face for twenty years now. Did we really need a modern Charlie Callas? One every two hundred years or so seems fine, doesn’t it?

  Now, I was never much of a gun lover. The last gun I owned was a rifle, back in 1986. Gun rights were never a core issue for me, but Carrey and self-righteous, empty-headed gasbags like him have put me there. Just looking at Carrey makes me want to buy an arsenal. I see how much they despise people like you and me, and I think, “Damn, I need to protect myself from those mindless jackasses.”

  This is Hollywood with its slip showing. Jimmy’s video is really just his diary, open to the chapter titled “What I Really Think of Flyover America: It Reeks.”

  Oh yeah, these LA pricks will take your cash any chance they get—they love your money. But God, do they hate you. They’re not just anti-South, they hate the Midwest, the Mid-north, the Northwest—any place where a drawl might peek out from a cheek.

  But the worst part for me—the thing that got me sputtering like a parrot with Tourette’s when I discussed it on TV—was the careless, vicious mockery of a dead and decent man. I get it—Carrey is a clown, and clowns clown, but at least hit someone who can hit back. Heston is dead, you pathetic coward.

  Which leads me to reiterate to my friends in Hollywood—where the hell are you? If you worked with Heston, or admired him or respected what he did for civil rights in the sixties (the guy marched with Martin Luther King, unlike all of the posers in Hollywood), you should speak up and call out Carrey for the shitbag he is. Hollywood should treat him the way Lillian Gish treated Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter: Shoot him in the ass with ridicule until he scampers into the woods screaming.

  Speaking of shooting, I’ll listen to nearly all opinions on guns, and even see value in ones I am diametrically opposed to. Bob Beckel thinks all guns could be banned, and I think it’s crazy, but I know he’s sincere and would like nothing better. (Well, I can think of a few things he would like better, but I’m not going there.) At least he doesn’t pretend to be for something just to get attention or win votes. Whatever your opinions on guns are, it’s Carrey’s methods that are the issue. They reveal how shut off Hollywood is from you and me. Carrey thought his crap would be greeted with accolades, but it was met with a vibrant flush of the national toilet. And he was the turd. He should use all the yoga he practices to pull his head out of his rectum.

  And given Carrey’s career’s downward trajectory, I wonder if his activism will just “naturally” go away. A few months after his attack on Heston and gun owners, he issued a seemingly sincere apology on Twitter. Did the apology come from his heart? Or his wallet? Was he apologizing simply because no one is going to his movies and his attacks on law-abiding citizens didn’t help? He tweeted:

  Asslt rifle fans, I do not agree wth u, nor do i fear u but i do love u and I’m sorry tht in my outrage I called you names. That was wrong.

  It’s amazing what a nervous agent can get you to do.

  HOMAGES TO HOMICIDES

  Sorry, I’m not done with guns.

  So, why is it that when a gun massacre occurs, it’s the NRA that’s vilified? But when gun murders reach scary proportions in places like Chicago, DC, or Detroit, no one says a thing?

  Let’s dissect it. Chicago crime is “just gangs.” And gangs are minorities, using illegal weapons. That’s a hairier situation for the cool to address. One, the shooters are nonwhites, and no one wants to appear racist condemning them. Add to that that the guns used are illegal. Cities with the toughest gun control are, like Chicago, awash in gun crime. “If you outlaw guns, then only outlaws will have guns” might be the only bumper sticker that is 100 percent true (besides “I Brake for Renaissance Fairs”). Last, the majority of this crime occurs in towns run by liberals. You can’t condemn Rahm Emanuel’s horrible handiwork in Chicago if his brother, Ari, is your TV agent. You need to get the cameo in Two and a Half Men, so mock Texans instead.

  Which is why the cool choose to vilify the redneck, and not the insane or the criminal, despite reams of evidence revealing that most killers involved in the massacres of innocents are resentful oddballs or mentally ill. Instead of trying to do something about getting guns away from them, the well-protected liberal elite would rather denigrate Americans who believe in the Second Amendment. Safety for me, but not for thee. (I took Latin in high school.)

  The stance that guns are responsible for only horrible events requires that the cool ignore stories that upset their assumptions. They cannot explain incidents where guns make you safer, so they choose to avoid them completely. Like the abundance of polar bears or Al Gore’s madness, it’s a reality the left can’t see.

  My favorite story took place in Springtown, Texas. On a Tuesday night around midni
ght, a 911 operator got a call from a distressed male. But the guy wasn’t a victim, he was the suspect, a burglar reporting that he was being held captive at gunpoint by the owner of the home he had just invaded. When the home owner, James Gerow, and his son confronted the career thug (with the requisite three names), Christopher Lance Moore, and asked him why he was lurking in their house, he said, “Just unlucky, I guess.” A loaded gun tends to elicit the truth.

  He was outgunned because the house he picked was not one of those vaunted “gun-free zones.” Yep, Christopher Moore was unlucky because the family he picked was protected. It was a good thing for the family, as even Lance admits he went to the house with “bad intentions.” He certainly wasn’t there to wax the floors. Very few burglars actually perform household chores. Studies prove it.

  Gerow and his son cornered the thief in his own truck, and the dad told his kid to shoot Moore in the legs if he tried to escape. Which in Texas is what people call compassion. I probably would have aimed for the balls (and hit a window, or a widow).

  Now, in the cool world the Gerows are uncool. They are white people with guns, which, to libs, is about as cool as debt limits or church on Sunday. If only they’d listened to celebrities spreading the gospel of gun control (who have no idea what the average citizen must deal with), who knows how things would have turned out. Bad intentions might have become a bad reality. But luckily, the words of Piers Morgan hold no sway in Springtown.

  And celebrity gun-foolery doesn’t hold any sway with criminals either. The fact is, most thugs see things the Gerow way—that what’s unlucky for a criminal is way lucky for the rest of us. A US Department of Justice survey of two thousand felons found that 40 percent of the convicted slimeballs said they had been deterred from committing a felonious act out of fear that their intended victim might be armed. Those are statistics every human being would understand, and want in their favor. Unless, of course, you’re Piers Morgan, whose head was recently designated a “brain-free” zone.