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Greg Gutfeld on the set of his late-night Fox News show. (Photo: Fox News)

The new late-night vehicle for longtime Fox News Channel contributor Greg Gutfeld, excitedly named Gutfeld!, is the ratings surprise of the year. Since debuting this spring it has routinely finished second in the ratings to Stephen Colberts Late Show and, despite being on cable instead of network, it often comes in second to Colbert among all shows inthe 25-to-54 demo hour. This is entirely appropriate, because Gutfeld! islargely an answer to the partisanship of Colberts show.

Before you reach for your keyboard: I didnt say it was like Colberts show. If youre a big fan of Colberts show, youll probably hate Gutfeld! But its arrival was inevitable. In the current politicized atmosphere of American entertainment, having a right-wing answer to Colbert was too tempting for Fox News to pass up.And Gutfeld was the obvious choice to host, since he had experience running Foxs overnight yukfest Red Eye from 2007 to 2015. On that show Gutfeld would review offbeat news stories and the foibles of Democrats with a panel that included comedians, entertainment writers, and other not-obviously-right-wing-shills. Imagine Chelsea Handler as a Republican and youd be close.

But the new Gutfeld! is less like Red Eye and more like The Five, Fox News answer to The View. There are fewer wacky news items and more harangues.The panelists all seem like they were vetted by Hannitys people. Disillusioned ex-Red Eye panelists say they hate the new show. Gossip stories portray Gutfeld as a Lonesome Rhodes type, a onetime folksy dude who let success go to his head and now specializes in alienating those around him. (If you thought Meghan McCain leaving The View was dramatic, that was a model of decorum compared with Juan Williams leaving The Five reportedly because he couldnt take any more of Gutfeld.)

All of this may be true, but I also have to admitthat I kind of like Gutfeld! The host has an appealingly weird personality. I met Robert Bork once, he offered during a recent roundtable. Best smoker I ever saw. And yes, the flashes of anger are undeniable, but every comic will tell you thats part of the package. We should start calling Jen Psaki Miss Information, Gutfeld said, archly raising his eyebrowsin the direction of radio host Lauren Chen. How do I come up with this stuff, Lauren?

And once you get beyond the tactlessopening bit unfunny cold opens are a specialty of the Colbert show as well the banter is relatively amusing. And the panelists do score some not unfair points about the usual suspects, which these days includewoke Hollywood, woke Biden, woke protestors, woke cities and woke CNN anchors. Also, I miss seeingRepublicans in late night. Theyve been almost completely shut out. Jimmy Kimmel has COVID denier Adam Carolla on his show occasionally, but that feels more like the times David Letterman would have comic George Miller on his show, not because hes funny but because you dont give up on your old friends.

Its part of a wider politicization of late-night TV that Ive bemoaned before. But this is not the national crisis that Trumpists make it out to be. Most of the people who have been canceled are still making bank. Theyre even burnishing their brands with appearances on shows like Canceled in the USA. The real problem is that entertainment is now subject to the same echo-chamber effect as news. Colbert has his anti-Trump parody videos, so it was only a matter of time before Gutfeld! came along and started doing pro-Trump parodies.

What I really miss is the sound of interesting clashes between conservatives and liberals. And there once was a show that featured that and did it well. It was called Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and it was literally canceled by ABC. Maher had carefully cultivated a following for his show featuring the likes of Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter sparring with lefty celebrity types. It graduated from Comedy Central to ABC, which paired it up with Nightline. All was going well until six days after 9/11. With the Twin Towers still smoking and Americans still reeling, one of Mahers guests, the conservative provocateur and future Trump pardonee Dinesh DSouza, pushed back against President Bushs characterization of the 9/11 attackers as cowards. Au contraire, said DSouza, they were warriors because they were willing to be slammed into concrete for their cause. Maher completely agreed, adding that Americans had been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. In the outrage that followed, sponsors and affiliates began dropping Politically Incorrect and ABC parted ways with Maher.

About a year later heemerged on HBO as host of his currentshowReal Time. I interviewed him early on (oddly at the same offices and studio hed been using for Politically Incorrect). Maher promised he would continue to have pro-Bush as well as anti-Bush viewpoints represented on his new show. He even wanted to try to balance the number of Democrats and Republicans in his studio audience. But that didnt last long. The Great Sort was underway, and soon it became clear the only people who wanted to be in his audience were Democrats. Maher, no dummy, went with the flow.

And now, all these many years later, we have Gutfeld! with a pro-Fox News studio audience, pro-Fox News panelists, pro-Fox News punchlines, and presiding over it all, the former overnight sensation turned company man, a fellow who used to fulminate at his fellow panelists for excessive Trumpsplaining who now cant Trumpsplain enough. (Why the hysteria over January 6 as opposed to the ongoing violence in Portland, Atlanta, San Francisco, L.A., New York, Seattle? he ranted the other night. Oh, I dont know, maybe because one of those types of violence is ongoing and the other is unprecedented?) It's in lockstep withthe Fox News base, just as Colbert's showiswith his liberal base. I guess we can be thankful some Fox smart-aleck didnt name itPolitically Incorrect with Greg Gutfeld!

Gutfeld! airs weeknights on Fox News at 11:00 PM ET/8:00 PM PT

Aaron Barnharthas written about television since 1994, including 15 years as TV critic for theKansas City Star.

Link:
Gutfeld! Is The Right's Inevitable Answer to Stephen Colbert - PRIMETIMER

One day in 2019 while sitting in my LA home, I received a call from a familiar voice who said Bill could meet us at the Polo Lounge on Friday after his show.

Bill, who? I asked.

Bill Maher, responded Ann Coulter. Remember our discussion earlier in the week?

I had forgotten she mentioned us having dinner with him.

As we waited for Maher to arrive, I already felt a rush of excitement from the robust conversation I knew we would have. And robust it was. If you could have been a fly on the wall and heard this conversation, you may have been shocked to learn how reasonable Maher is on some issues.

I know what you are probably thinking: Bill Maher is reasonable?

After all, this is the guy who has made a career of beating up on Republicans weekly, not to mention questioning values like faith in God.

Yet, despite all this, it appears Maher, host of HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher, has become the most prominent voice of reason on the left at a time when there doesnt seem to be many reasonable voices on the left at all.

Recently Maher spoke out against those who allege America has made no progress toward racial reconciliation. He used the term progressophobia, calling it a brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them incapable of recognizing progress. Its like situational blindness, only what you cant see is that your dorm in 2021 is better than the South before the Civil War.

Maher is absolutely correct. The notion that America has made no progress toward a more perfect union is an absurd, false narrative. Yet the left, especially the Democratic Party, continues to push this poison on the American people. It seems the Democrats would, contrary to their rhetoric, rather keep the lie going to lock in a permanent base of African-American voters than tell the truth and seek national unity.

I discuss such hypocrisy of the Democratic Party regarding race in America with NFL Super Bowl winner and Republican Rep. Burgess Owens on a recent episode of my podcast, Outloud with Gianno Caldwell.

In his important diatribe against progressivism run amok, Maher even goes after fellow comedian Kevin Hart, who is arguably the biggest star in the business.

Theres a recurrent theme on the far left that things have never been worse! Maher exclaimed. Kevin Hart expressed a view many hold when he told the New York Times, Youre witnessing white power and white privilege at an all-time high.

This is one of the big problems with wokeness, Maher continued, that what you say doesnt have to make sense or jive with the facts or even be challenged lest the challenge be conflated with racism.

This wasnt the first time Maher attacked his own side. Back in April, Maher shocked people when he defended Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, from the media and the Democratic Party. In a segment on his HBO talk show, Maher said DeSantis is a voracious consumer of the scientific literature who got it right on COVID.

And maybe thats why he protected his most vulnerable population, the elderly, way better than did the governor of New York, Maher added, knocking New Yorks Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo. Those are just facts; I know its irresponsible of me to say them.

Maher may be a staunch liberal, but hes a voice of reason on the left, unafraid to call out wokeness run amok. If the above moments dont convince you, check out his take on progressives push for free college.

I know that free college is a left-wing thing, but is it really liberal for someone who doesnt go to college and makes less money to pay for people who do go and make more? Maher asked. Especially since colleges have turned into giant luxury day care centers with overpaid babysitters anxious to indulge every student whim.

You may wonder why Maher has taken such a turn against his party and the media. Heres one answer: Hes staunchly politically incorrect. Indeed, in an interview with Jordan Peterson, Maher said political correctness is the elevation of sensitivity over truth. Hes right again.

I hope the left is listening, because Maher seems to be the only major voice on the left that still believes in common sense on several issues even in the face of cancel culture, which he rightly views as ridiculous and stupid.

Last weekend Maher made another excellent point about director Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, was slammed on Twitter because the cast of his movie, In the Heights, about the Washington Heights area of New York City, did not represent the Afro-Latinx community. After Miranda issued a long, agonized apology, Maher clapped back: Youre the guy who made the founding fathers black and Hispanic! I dont think you have to apologize to Twitter. Maher said he doesnt think Miranda really believes an apology is in order but he just wants to avoid the news cycle, and I dont blame him, adding, This is why people hate Democrats; Its cringey. Once again, Maher couldnt be more correct in his assertion.

To be clear, Maher gets it wrong plenty of times, from Russiagate to his criticism of Sen. Joe Manchin, who is apparently the only Democrat in the Senate who believes bipartisanship should be more than a talking point.

But looking at the big picture, I have concluded that Bill Maher is the only person who can save the left from itself. Whether Democrats heed Mahers warnings or continue their descent into woke madness remains an open question.

Gianno Caldwell is a Fox News Political Analyst and the author of Taken for Granted: How Conservatism Can Win Back the Americans That Liberalism Failed (Crown Forum), out now.

Original post:
Bill Maher may be the only person who can save the left from itself - New York Post

When people are feeling insecure, Bill Clinton famously said, theyd rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right. Clinton wasnt talking specifically about todays Republican primary voters, but the lesson applies. Whether Donald Trump or someone else is the Republican nominee in 2024, his stylea toxic potpourri of machismo, populism, and nationalismis here to stay.

If the nominee isnt Trump, who could fill the role? Let me begin with the man who was ahead of the curve, staking out this territory before Trump came along: Chris Christie. Now, I know progressives are rolling their eyes heavenward. What about Bridgegate? What about how Christie humiliated himself by endorsing Trump? What about the meme of him lounging on a beach while state beaches were closed to the public? In a GOP primary, those things wont hurt him, and some of them may help him.

Christie is publicly mulling a run; aside from being an authentic bully, heres what we also know about Christie: He has mad political skills. He was elected governor of New Jersey. Twice. As a Republican. The second time, he won by a landslide. Later, during a crucial New Hampshire primary debate, he single-handedly destroyed the 2016 campaign of Marco Rubio: a man many of us saw as a once-in-a-generation candidate. Christie has sharp elbows, and hes recently throwing them at Trump. Christie has been a critic of Trumps election fraud claims since November.

A former federal prosecutor, Christie ousted incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine in 2009, promising to take on the public-employee unions. And he never stopped fighting. Take for example, the special education teacher named Melissa Tomlinson who confronted him in 2013. She provoked a debate and a finger-wagging rant from Christie that ended with the line, Im sick of you people. Heres the thing. Christies supporters LOVED it. As the bus door closed, Tomlinson found herself surrounded by Christie partisans. An elderly woman turned to Tomlinson and told her, Youre in the wrong place, hon, reported NorthJersey.com. The crowd started heckling, and cheering for Christie, Tomlinson recalled. I almost have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from it. I keep seeing people looming over my head.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, said the great pugilist and philosopher, Mike Tyson. In Christies Jersey, lots of people got (rhetorically) punched in the mouth (he would later say that teachers unions deserve a punch in the face.) And, for a long time, it worked. Flawlessly!

In fact, its likely that Trump learned something from Christie, who, after all, was right next door. Christie may have been the pioneer, the guy Trump learned from, said Assemblyman John McKeon, D-Essex. He has been a frequent target of Christies wrath, dubbed a hack lawyer during a recent dispute over the management of NJ Transit. It may be no coincidence that Ann Coulter, who saw Trumps rise in 2016, saw something in Christie back in 2011.

Christie ended up leaving office as a wildly unpopular governor. But from the standpoint of winning a Republican primary in todays political environment, the biggest mistake he ever made was hugging Barack Obama after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Jersey shore. Could Christie bully his way back into GOP superstar status in 2024?

Of course, there is a catch-22. Republican voters like Trump because hes the alpha dog, but (the assumption is) anyone who succeeds Trump will have to at least be in his good graces. Therefore, they must subordinate their ambitions to Trump. See the problem?

For someone who isnt going to automatically defer to Trump, though, this could be an opportunity. If Trump freezes the field, that allows Christie to either (a) get a head start when Trump finally decides not to run, or (b) get a clean shot at a one-on-one race against Trump, with the hope that many Republicans who grudgingly supported Trump might prefer the former guy to stay former. This is a high-risk, high-reward strategy. Christie could get destroyed and humiliated by Trump wholets be honestis the clear frontrunner for the nomination.

Or it could work. Ask yourself this question: If Christie really wants to be president, and is willing to suffer the slings and arrows, is there a better strategy? By 2028, there will be a huge field of new Republicans (some of whom weve probably never even heard of). Christie missed his window when his approval numbers were through the roof in 2012 and decided to bide his time, which was a mistake. Its hard to imagine that Christie would have better odds by waiting his turn and competing in a larger field seven years from now.

For more reasons than one, Christies 2024 slogan should be Go Big or Go Home! Christie seems to understand this. Im also not going to be one of these people whos going to say, Well, Ill wait to see what President Trumps going to do. Im not going to defer to anyone if I decide thats what I want to do and that I think Im the best option for the party and for the country, Christie said on a podcast last month. I think if you say youre deferring to someone, thats a sign of both weakness and indecision, and weve already got that in the White House.

The other leading candidate to fill this role is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who came in second to Trump at the CPAC straw poll and (more recently) topped Trump in approval at the Western Conservative Summits straw poll. As HotAirs Allahpundit pointed out, DeSantiss one great advantage over Trump [and, I would argue, Christie!] is that, as a sitting governor, he can actively fight culture-war battles with skin in the game while Trump is relegated to issuing press releases. Examples include vaccine passports, a minute of silence for students in public schools, banning transgender women from womens sports, most recently offering to send Florida law enforcement to the border. Of course, the 60 Minutes attack on DeSantis might be his greatest asset, because it simultaneously casts him as victim, MSM fighter, and victor.

Like Christie, DeSantis must navigate trying to take over a party that Trump hasnt vacatedmuch like their shared state of Florida.

A post-Trump GOP headed by DeSantis or Christie wouldnt be my first choice, but would it at least be tolerable? Perhaps. Like pornography, well know it when we see it. Regardless, Im betting the partys next presidential nominee will be either Trump or a slightly less chaotic and maybe more competent version of Trump.

This should concern a whole slew of wanna-be presidential candidates, starting with Mike Pence. Pence was booed recently at a conservative confab, making him the first politician to be jeered by both fans of the Hamilton musical and attendees of the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference. The latest hissing incident is more telling. Historically, vice presidents have huge built-in advantages; however, we are talking about a political leader whose own base literally tried to kill him. Pences career is premised on playing the good cop while furtively advancing a conservative agenda that may belie his sunny aw-shucks demeanor.

Todays GOP has no room for someone who speaks softly, even if he (or she) carries a big stick. They want a real bully to fill the bully pulpit. Thats why, if anyone is to succeed Trump in the GOP, Christie and DeSantis are where the smart moneys at.

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Chris Christie Wants to Out-Trump Trump The Daily Beast - The Daily Beast

To the Editor:

As a former staff lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union who, as a civil rights lawyer since then, has concentrated on First Amendment cases, I do not take threats to free speech lightly. But restrictions on speech raise issues that are more complicated than your article implies.

Yes, hate speech is generally protected by the Constitution, but so is equality, and hate speech can often make a mockery of equal rights. What the critics call an abandonment of A.C.L.U.s principles reflects, in fact, a growing awareness of many within the A.C.L.U. that speech and equality are sometimes in conflict, and that context matters.

The point is illustrated by the recent controversy over attempts by college students to block Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopolis and Charles Murray from speaking on their campuses. While the administrators who ran the college bemoaned threats to academic freedom, and liberal critics charged the students with censorship of views they didnt like, the students recognized what it meant to vulnerable students whose lives on predominantly white, elite campuses were often a daily struggle to be targeted by such unrestrained bigotry. They understood as well that even in a place devoted to the free exchange of ideas, little was lost by not hearing Ann Coulter once again say of Muslims, We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

What students and, now, many within the A.C.L.U. have recognized is that, whether or not speech is protected by the First Amendment, there are some times and some places where it should not be heard.

Alan LevineMiami Beach

To the Editor:

The conflicts within the A.C.L.U. may help us clarify what free speech requires in the 21st century. The A.C.L.U. has supported the First Amendment rights of some very bad people for years, but it is a guardian of free speech, not a law enforcement agency. It fought for the right of far-right groups to parade in downtown Charlottesville, Va., but deserves no blame for the failure of the F.B.I. and the local Virginia authorities to stop the violence.

Still, the A.C.L.U. is and was far from perfect. Neither your news story nor Michelle Goldbergs column (The A.C.L.U. Must Defend Awful Speech, June 8) mention the organizations most egregious failures. In the name of national security, it hesitated to defend Japanese Americans during World War II and all too often refused to take cases of Communists and other controversial figures during the McCarthy era. Did its delinquency contribute to the most serious episodes of political repression in American history? Perhaps.

Its current confusion simply illustrates how complicated protecting our freedom can be. This is all the more the case in a Twitter-sphere, where nuanced arguments cannot be made. I plan to renew my membership right now.

Read the rest here:
Opinion | Conflicts Within the A.C.L.U. Over Free Speech and Racial Justice - The New York Times

Photo: Monkey Business Images (Shutterstock)

This week, a Massachusetts elementary school teacher was fired after he was exposed as an unabashed white supremacist writer who routinely published his work on white nationalist websites under multiple pseudonyms.

Hes a self-described race realist, which, as far as I can tell, only means that hes a Critical Race Theory-bashing, leftist-hating, garden-variety conservative who thinks white people are the truly oppressed racial group in a country dominated by whitenesswhich makes him no different than your average GOPropagandist legislator in office right now.

Anyway, 33-year-old Benjamin Welton was fired from Star Academy in Watertown, Ma.where he taught English, social studies and computer scienceafter he was investigated by a group of researchers called the Anonymous Comrades Collective and then exposed to his employer by HuffPost.

The researchers found out that his whiny people greatest hits collection includes work he did as a freelance writer for the American Renaissance. In case youre unfamiliar, its a white supremacist website that serves as a virtual gathering spot for mediocre white people to rant about how Black people are inferior to them while crying the saltiest of white tears over the normalization of anti-white rhetoric without smelling even a whiff of their own hypocrisy.

On this site, Welton wrote an essay titled, From Wide-Eyed Liberal to Race Realist under the name Sinclair Jenkins.

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From HuffPost:

Jenkins wrote that his radicalization began in the Navy, where it angered him to see blacks be mean to his fellow white sailors. Later, in graduate school, he grew disgusted over the ingrained culture of anti-white hatred in academia. Also, once I began paying attention to the news, I started seeing why so many people in my hometown took a dim view of blacks, wrote Jenkins, who noted that he grew up somewhere in Appalachia. After Ferguson and Baltimore, I understood that pumping money into the ghetto would never fix things. Later, he said, he discovered writers like John Derbyshire and Ann Coulter, who shared his distaste for immigrants, and websites like American Renaissance and VDare, which shared his firmly held belief in the biological foundations to race, and helped shape his white nationalist worldview.

Near the end of the article, Jenkins noted that he was a teacher, an audacious admission to make in a white supremacist publication.

If you need any more proof that Weltonwho I cant help but laugh at because, despite his extreme whiteness, he chose a Black-ass name like Sinclair Jenkins to hide behindis ideologically indistinguishable from the most prominent members of the current Republican Party. He also tweeted under a different pseudonym last August that making America great again requires defunding critical race theory.

According to the investigators, Welton also worked his neo-Nazi pen under aliases like Jake Bowyer and the second Blackest name a white supremacist could think of, Elias Kingston.

But in 2018, he wrote a piece under his real name called Against Education for a right-wing blog called the American Sun.

Your typical man on the street in America 2018 A.D. will come up with a small catalog of answers about what to do with our education system, Welton wrote, HuffPost reports. The race realist will speak of declining worldwide IQs and Americas increasing mongrelization driven by unassimilated races with below-average intelligence capacities.

He also wrote a bunch of white nonsense on how education is wasted on non-whites while bitching about how he feels American college campuses today are essentially playgrounds for far-Left agitators, anti-White elitists, and subsidized international students.

Just as abroad, if there is a rape culture on campus, it is largely being created because of the importation of Third Worlders, he wrote.

After the Anonymous Comrades Collective shared its findings with HuffPost, which then contacted Star Academy for comment, Welton was fired. He deleted all of his online activity, including a social media post from March 31, when he reportedly wrote: No mercy for our enemies. Do not weep, for they are not human. Treat those who want to abolish whiteness with the same venom if not more. They deserve medieval punishments. He wrote this seven months into his job as an elementary school teacher.

More From HuffPost:

Earlier this week, before they fired Welton, Star Academy administrators said in an emailed statement that they had not been aware of the concerning online publications allegedly made by a teacher at the school.

Star Academy, the statement continued, is committed to a diverse and inclusive community and embraces our responsibility as an educational institution to foster a safe and healthy environment for our students. We do not support, condone, or agree with white supremacism or white separatist ideologies.

After HuffPosts inquiries, Star Academy deleted the Faculty page from its website, which had included a photo of Welton and a brief description of his job.

So basically, all of these right-wingers who are suddenly hellbent on ridding the world of Critical Race Theory are worried about the wrong thing. It is teachers like Welton who should be banned from the classroom.

But Welton pretty much embodies neo-conservatism, so I wouldnt hold my breath for Republican lawmakers to have the same energy for teachers like him that they do for anyone who wishes to teach about America through a lens of Blackness.

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Massachusetts Elementary School Teacher Fired After Being Exposed as White Supremacist Writer Who Hid Behind P - The Root