It's A Moronic Argument, But With Greg

I've seen x-rays of terminal cancer patients that were funnier than Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld on Fox News and if you haven't, you should pay more attention. There's a reason the show's on at three in the goddamned morning. I guess that's not totally fair. Andy Levy is a good humorist, but he's only on the show for ten minutes a night and is in a different room than the unfunny master of ceremonies, most probably out of shame. Also, Red Eye regularly features attractive female guests with their titties half out.

But I'm constantly astounded that the asshole bloggers who go apeshit every time Jon Stewart says something remotely controversial are usually the biggest fans of Gutfeld. This despite the fact that Stewart is among the greatest comedians of his generation and Gutfeld is a failed magazine editor.

Moreover, the entire premise of Red Eye is flawed. It's supposed to be a "conservative comedy show." The only problem is that conservatism isn't funny, at least not intentionally, because it isn't supposed to be. I think it's hilarious, but that's only because it stopped being serious years ago. But the point is that you can't build a comedy show around something that isn't supposed to be funny and expect it to succeed. Red Eye is what making a comedy about a child pornography would look like if anyone was dumb enough to try.

As a failed magazine editor with no background in comedy, Greg misses the point about as regularly as you would expect him to, but without the wit that would allow you to overlook it. Gutfeld excels at nothing more than snide backbiting, and he doesn't even do it as well as I do.

Take the recent Red Eye discussion of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and Hollywood as just one example.

For the record, I always thought that DADT was staggeringly stupid, especially after 9/11 when America was plunged into eternal war. In previous multi-front, large-scale land wars, the United States could rely on the draft. Such a large pool of servicemen could allow you weed out "moral undesirables." But that isn't necessarily the case with a smaller volunteer force.

More importantly, you need to know who was discharged from the military under DADT. Among the 14,000, there were several Arabic and Farsi translators, who would otherwise seem sort of important in the current climate. In at least one case, an Air Force Lt. Colonel that the United States had spent nearly twenty million dollars training was booted.

The arguments for DADT are weak at best and ridiculous at worst. Take for example the premise that it would affect unit cohesion. That argues that the troops are really bad at following orders and little else. Also, if you look at the armies on the ground in Afghanistan, there are exactly two that don't allow openly homosexual combatants: The United States and the jihadis.

Perhaps knowing that, Gutfeld brought Hollywood and, of all fucking people, Richard Chamberlain into the debate.

In an interview with the Advocate, actor Richard Chamberlain recently discussed the danger for young leading male actors to come out of the closet and advised that in today’s culture it’s still better for their career to keep their sexuality a secret. This got Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld wondering “how hilarious is it, that as the military now dumps [Don't Ask, Don't Tell] a Hollywood icon is imploring actors to embrace it. Anyway, why don’t we demand from Hollywood what Hollywood demands from the military?”

You're shittin' me, right? Richard Chamberlain hasn't been relevant to anything in over thirty years, but Red Eye is trotting him out as an authority on something? Christ, couldn't Fox News find a slightly more recent example of everybody in Hollywood being hypocritical assholes? There are plenty of them out there.

But in connecting Hollywood with the military, Gutfeld merely demonstrates that he doesn't know very much about either. The American people, for example, don't ask their celebrities to do anything of consequence. To my knowledge, not a single death has resulted from Shit My Dad Says, although it often feels otherwise. When was the last time you heard about the heroism of Tony Danza or the valor of Ray Romano?

The military is also different from Hollywood in that they are driven by different factors. Celebrities are a product of capitalist enterprise in ways that standing armies never can be. Sandra Bullock lives and dies by the whims of the market. The military, on the other hand, is taxpayer financed and its deployments are not subject to cancellation or revision by focus groups or test screenings.

Yes, you can argue that the market discriminates against gay actors. But it doesn't necessarily follow that this means that the government should be allowed to discriminate against gay soldiers, sailors and airmen, particularly if their service is desperately needed in a time of national crisis, and it's silly to suggest otherwise.

The market is democratic and national security policy is not. If it were, the United States would have withdrawn from Iraq in the summer of 2005, when a majority of the country disapproved of the war. But there are still ten of thousands of combat troops still there.

Gutfeld does, however, have a point. The market can dictate that Hollywood embrace what Hollywood demands of Hollywood. The only problem is that the market doesn't want to, which is why actors are closeted in the first fucking place.

The market has spoken on Red Eye, which is why it is where it is, competing with infomercials and MSNBC's prison rape shows.