Read Online The Joy of Hate by Greg Gutfeld - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Greg Gutfeld
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jocularity. “Come on, man” is one way of putting this mode of persuasion. Or more precisely, “Come on, man, you really don’t believe that.” You often hear this from an easygoing liberal when you say, “Without the media, Obama would have been creamed in the election.” Or when you claim, “The constant global warming threat is exaggerated.” The “Come on, man, you don’t believe that” is their way of saying, “You’re too sane to actually believe that. Don’t you want to be one of us? Cool people don’t say what you say. After all, you live on one of the coasts. You’re in media. You’re not Amish. You can’t really believe that!”
Anything political that I ever say on TV is greeted by my liberal friends with this kind of friendly but exasperated response. They’re like a fancy waiter who can’t believe you requested ketchup.
This kind of lazy answer is a great way for the tolerant to terminate debate—because in your heart you want to be liked by your friends and peers, and they’re promising you that gift if you just stop raising questions about their cemented liberal dogma. Liberalism is the one-way ticket to backslapping approval among the cool kids, which makes it about as rebellious as a divorced dad getting an earring from the local mall’s Piercing Pagoda.
The best purveyor of this cheery semi-intolerance is the talented and funny Jon Stewart. His show is a thirty-minute stretch on the one phrase “You can’t be serious.” His targets are almost always on the right (and granted, a lot of those targets make it
really
easy for him), rarely on the left. And when he does hit someone on the left, you almost have to feel grateful for it. He’s been doing it more often, God bless him.
To understand this kind of soft condemnation of the right,let’s turn to Stewart’s Rally to Protect Liberalism. It wasn’t actually called that, but it should have been, simply for the sake of honesty. Just a few days before the 2010 midterm elections, Stewart and Stephen Colbert held the Rally to Restore Sanity—an event masquerading as an inclusive, fun rejection of all things crazy. I’m sure that having it right before the midterms (in which the Dems were about to be slaughtered) was just some bizarre coincidence!
Anyway, they called it a Million Moderate March—
moderate
being the apt word for an appropriate, hipster response to anyone who might be pissed off about health care reform, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or anything else that all the cool kids were okay with. It’s also a slap in the head to anyone who isn’t cool—and it played off the massively popular (and, according to the media, sinister) Glenn Beck rallies, which, despite the revival-like flair, were actually disarmingly calm and picnicky but still posed a threat to earnest libs, who own the right to protest. Still, the fact that first-timers were organizing made these goofy white Christians in their khakis ripe for ridicule by an acerbic, charming, media-savvy Manhattan millionaire. The longer I live, the more I’m convinced the world is just one big high school, with the cool kids always targeting the uncool.
So instead of being an innocent celebration of “Lighten up, dude—we’re all friends here just having fun,” it appeared, at least to me, to be a stunt meant to undermine the resurgent right. It’s exactly the thing that that bald, nerdy guy in glasses from the
New York Times
subscription commercial might attend and feel totally good about himself for days afterward, while lounging on a blanket in Central Park with a round of runny cheese and a bottle of light Sancerre. It’s something that attracted celebrities who wantto appear politically astute without rubbing too many people the wrong way. It was for ideological wusses, who liked dipping their toes in the pool without getting wet.
Which raises an interesting question: Would Stewart have announced his event if those Tea Party events had had a decidedly
Anything political that I ever say on TV is greeted by my liberal friends with this kind of friendly but exasperated response. They’re like a fancy waiter who can’t believe you requested ketchup.
This kind of lazy answer is a great way for the tolerant to terminate debate—because in your heart you want to be liked by your friends and peers, and they’re promising you that gift if you just stop raising questions about their cemented liberal dogma. Liberalism is the one-way ticket to backslapping approval among the cool kids, which makes it about as rebellious as a divorced dad getting an earring from the local mall’s Piercing Pagoda.
The best purveyor of this cheery semi-intolerance is the talented and funny Jon Stewart. His show is a thirty-minute stretch on the one phrase “You can’t be serious.” His targets are almost always on the right (and granted, a lot of those targets make it
really
easy for him), rarely on the left. And when he does hit someone on the left, you almost have to feel grateful for it. He’s been doing it more often, God bless him.
To understand this kind of soft condemnation of the right,let’s turn to Stewart’s Rally to Protect Liberalism. It wasn’t actually called that, but it should have been, simply for the sake of honesty. Just a few days before the 2010 midterm elections, Stewart and Stephen Colbert held the Rally to Restore Sanity—an event masquerading as an inclusive, fun rejection of all things crazy. I’m sure that having it right before the midterms (in which the Dems were about to be slaughtered) was just some bizarre coincidence!
Anyway, they called it a Million Moderate March—
moderate
being the apt word for an appropriate, hipster response to anyone who might be pissed off about health care reform, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or anything else that all the cool kids were okay with. It’s also a slap in the head to anyone who isn’t cool—and it played off the massively popular (and, according to the media, sinister) Glenn Beck rallies, which, despite the revival-like flair, were actually disarmingly calm and picnicky but still posed a threat to earnest libs, who own the right to protest. Still, the fact that first-timers were organizing made these goofy white Christians in their khakis ripe for ridicule by an acerbic, charming, media-savvy Manhattan millionaire. The longer I live, the more I’m convinced the world is just one big high school, with the cool kids always targeting the uncool.
So instead of being an innocent celebration of “Lighten up, dude—we’re all friends here just having fun,” it appeared, at least to me, to be a stunt meant to undermine the resurgent right. It’s exactly the thing that that bald, nerdy guy in glasses from the
New York Times
subscription commercial might attend and feel totally good about himself for days afterward, while lounging on a blanket in Central Park with a round of runny cheese and a bottle of light Sancerre. It’s something that attracted celebrities who wantto appear politically astute without rubbing too many people the wrong way. It was for ideological wusses, who liked dipping their toes in the pool without getting wet.
Which raises an interesting question: Would Stewart have announced his event if those Tea Party events had had a decidedly
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