July 22, 2025

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On Gutfeld tonight (21 July 2025), talking about Hunter Biden's recent comments about George Clooney and others, Tyrus said, "Cocaine is a hell of a drug.... When someone's on cocaine, they don't let you finish sentences." He was joking about Hunter, but his words apply very widely.

Because even though I enjoy a lot of programs on Fox News, there are some things that really stick in my craw. And one of the biggest ones is the way the token Democrat on The Five gets treated. When Jessica's turn comes, I know she's going to spin things to fit the party line, and I'll probably disagree with her.

But Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters don't trust me and the other viewers to decide for ourselves. They invariably shout her down. She never gets to complete a point, because they jump all over her, never letting her finish sentences. Per Tyrus's point, are they on cocaine?

No. They're just rude and contemptuous -- not only of her, but also of us, the viewers, the audience. They don't trust us to make up our own minds. They feel a need to silence her immediately so no one can hear her.

Isn't that just what President Biden's White House was doing to conservatives on social media, getting the owners to censor conservative voices? I mean, we did have fascistic censorship under Biden. But on The Five, we see that same mindset.

Now, partly it's genuinely sexist. When Democrat Harold Ford, Jr., speaks, being male, he almost always gets to finish his sentences. Now, partly that's because he's smarter and more of an independent thinker than Jessica, so he expresses viewpoints that are not necessarily right down the party line. However, I think it's obvious that to Gutfeld and Watters, it's OK to talk over a woman, silencing her, but they have to be much more courteous with a man.

That's an ugly look for the Five. They should be setting an example for The View, showing what it looks like to be tolerant of variant opinions. Instead, they're actually uglier than The View in how they treat different opinions.

Please, guys, clean up your act. Set a good example. Show what tolerance and generosity look like. Let us see that the Right can be more open-minded than the Left. Refute Jessica -- but only after she has had her say, uninterrupted.

After all, Jessica doesn't interrupt you.

Which brings me back to Gutfeld. Greg Gutfeld and his guests have been so excited about Stephen Colbert getting fired -- six months from now! Their constant refrain has been, "He's not getting fired for saying stupid things about Donald Trump. He's being fired because his show is losing millions of dollars a year. Why? Because nobody's watching his show. They're watching Gutfeld instead!"

And that's because (says the consensus of Gutfeld's guests) Colbert has long since stopped being funny.

So now I have to ask: Is that the standard we should hold all late-night talk shows to? Because I might have a few suggestions for Gutfeld about what it means to be funny.

Now, before he had his own show, I got introduced to Greg Gutfeld by reading a book of his. He was funny, even though he cussed a lot, and it was so refreshing to have an actual conservative be funny instead of angry.

But Gutfeld was then, and is now, a complete novice and amateur at comedy. He's in a learn-as-you-go comedy school, and it's time for him to get a report card.

Gutfeld's shtick is to make fun of other Fox celebrities. His primary target is Brian Kilmeade. So here we have Greg, the top guy on Fox News's top late-night program, and he's mocking Kilmeade, whose career is still far from being dominant.

Now, I've watched Kilmeade and he's a decent guy, doing a good job. He even comes on Gutfeld, where, to Greg's credit, Greg says the same mean stuff about Kilmeade to his face that he constantly says behind his back.

But Greg, please take note of this: Some jokes stop being funny after you've repeated them enough. Even David Letterman, the idiot who thought "Oprah, meet Uma. Uma, meet Oprah" was funny on the Oscars, knew that you don't just repeat the same joke over and over, night after night.

Yes, your studio audience still laughs. But not really. Not at all the way we laugh at a new joke, a good joke, a genuinely funny joke.

Sure, throwing a picture of The View on the screen and making comments about how cowlike and hippolike they all are, that still gets laughs in the studio. But I'm an overweight American citizen and I look at the people on The View and I wish I were as close to a healthy weight as they are.

It's just mean to keep using The View as a punchline. Sure, when they do something funny or absurd, which is often, by all means show clips and ridicule the ridiculous. But what are all these fat jokes about? I feel like you despise fat people (including me and a good number of your own guests), but the women on The View are not fat.

I recently saw a Whoopi Goldberg performance from early in her career, and that woman was brilliant. She was performing monologues by various female characters, and her acting and writing were honest and, yes, genuinely funny. Greg, I wish you were ever as funny and truthful as Whoopi was for that whole hour.

Now, on The View, Whoopi's job is not to be funny, not to be a comedian. She's saying her honest opinions, and in my opinion, she often shows herself to be tragically undereducated and misinformed. But she has earned our respect, and your blanket ridicule of her, not as a commentator, but as a human being -- that's just out of line.

Ridicule is your go-to shtick, Greg, but it's not the best thing you do. It's not a good thing at all. After years of watching your show, I have to conclude that you enjoy being mean to people who can't hit back.

The other night, you had Kilmeade on and he did hit back, getting off some really funny lines at your expense. Maybe your writers even helped him come up with some of that stuff. Maybe you thought it was time to even things up a little.

But you are in debt to Kilmeade for years of abuse that he never deserved. Likewise, the joke that Watters is bald and wears a toupee is obviously false, and it's also old. I watch your show and see you ridiculing good people and I think ... What year is this? Didn't Gutfeld make this joke in 2023? 2021? Hasn't he or his staff thought of anything new?

Man, I miss Johnny Carson. He had political clout, and even though he rarely used it, he destroyed Jerry Brown's presidential hopes singlehandedly, calling him Governor Moonbeam. The things Carson ridiculed about Brown were some of his best traits -- his rejection of the trappings of wealth and power. But Carson didn't cut him a break, ever -- and Jerry Brown was out of serious consideration. (Though he did come back and govern California again, doing a far better job than, say, Gavin Newsom.)

Here's my point, Gutfeld. I love ya. I'm a fan. I wish you well.

I just want you to stop using ridicule as your go-to source of humor, and concentrate on actual funny stuff. Putting up a picture of Kilmeade or The View isn't a gag, it isn't a joke, it's just mean, it makes you look like you have a venomous heart.

And I don't think you do.

I think you're damaging yourself even more than you damage your "comic" targets. I think you're lying about who you are by relying so heavily on nastiness toward individuals who, by and large, are doing their best and, in many cases, doing rather well.

I guess what I'm saying is, make us laugh but make us proud to be laughing instead of, as at present, embarrassed. I'm ashamed of your mean-spirited jokes, because I want you to be better than that. I want you to be genuinely funny, because there are so many stupid, awful things happening in America right now, and you can get amazing mileage out of jokes about those things without being cruel to people because of their looks or because they are safe targets for you within the Fox News organization.

What if you never ridiculed Jesse Watters again? What if you never said a bad thing about Brian Kilmeade? What if you went a whole week without ever getting a cheap laugh out of putting up a picture of the cast of The View?

Would you even have a show?

I think you could, if you tried.

Because right now, I'm kind of ashamed to admit to people that I record your show and watch it every night (or the next morning). Because I'm embarrassed by how often you go for the low, empty gag, the ad hominem slur, instead of doing actual humor.

Yeah, Greg. I'm asking you to grow up. To be a good guy all the time. To be polite to Jessica even though she's a woman and a Democrat. To stop ridiculing Kilmeade, who's doing a good job and making an honest living. To cease your reliance on cheap repeat gags.

I remember watching an episode of Rush Limbaugh's short-lived television show. In that episode, he put up a picture of a black Democratic Congresswoman and his studio audience laughed. That's all he had, a picture of her, and that was his punch line. The racism and sexism were offensive, not because they were politically incorrect, but because they were mean and without any substance. She was black, a Democrat, and not pretty. That was all he had.

I never watched another episode of Rush Limbaugh on television again. I didn't like his audience, and I didn't want to be part of it. On radio, he was funny and clever -- and he couldn't get cheap laughs by putting up a picture of an ill-favored person.

I knew a writer who had contributed gags and songs to Limbaugh over the years, and it was good stuff. It was genuine humor.

But on TV, Limbaugh did what you habitually do, Greg. He got cheap, empty laughs by ridiculing people for things they couldn't help -- their looks, their race, their sex.

Limbaugh's show got canceled. And someday, instead of putting up dumb guys like Colbert against your show, some other network is going to put up somebody who's funny like Carson was funny. Or even like Leno, who also relied on gags, not hostile, relentless ridicule. When that happens, Greg Gutfeld, are you going to be able to compete?

Your sidekicks, Kat Timpf and Tyrus, are usually funny the right way. Wry, smart jokes, often self-deprecating. But substantial and not ad hominem.

Don't you understand that when you're away on vacation, and they guest-host for you, the shows are better?

Please, Greg. Grow with your show. Earn your place as king of late-night news-comedy. Make us happier, not meaner, people for having watched your show. Ridicule people for things they choose to do, not for how they look or for being your rivals on Fox News. You're better than that. And we, your audience, we're better than that.

When you get the hang of grown-up comedy, you'll discover that you can appeal to viewers who don't always agree with your politics, but who like a good laugh at a well-earned joke.