Gutfeld’s ‘apology’, not ‘comedy’, the real black eye.
I’m a bit flummoxed, to be honest. Friday night, I cam back from a friend’s place to find my RSS reader full and a ton of e-mails in my inbox – most of them filled with capital letters, a lot of profanity, and a link to this Youtube video:
Right, everyone as seen it by now, but it’s always nice to have a refresher.
Anyway, what has me so perplexed is the fact that, unlike seemingly everyone else north of the 49th, I really wasn’t all that outraged. BlogWorld was on fire. It was all anyone on Twitter could talk about. Even after watching the video a few times, I couldn’t get my finely-tuned sense of indignation to fire. I was Outrage Impotent – a serious and embarrassing condition.
I simply couldn’t bring myself to care too much. Disturbing, because I’m usually the first one out there with the pitchfork when I pick up on a slight, real or perceived. But here…not so much.
Sure, it was ignorant. Sure, it was cheap. Sure, it was extraordinarily insensitive.
But, it’s just that it comes as absolutely no surprise. Red Eye plays on Fox News, after all. I don’t have a great opinion of most news organizations, especially in the US. But Fox is at the bottom of the barrel. Not only that, but Greg Gutfeld’s little comedy show plays at 3am. Three o’clock in the morning. How good can the guy be? They put him up against Law & Order re-runs and extended Snuggie infomercials.
So no, I wasn’t all that outraged. Gutfeld isn’t funny, he isn’t original. He’s got a show that plays like a fratboy trying to impress his friends – he has to try and be edgy. (What’s sad is that he thinks making fun of the Canadian military is ‘edgy.’ It’s not. We do it here all the time. It’s low-hanging fruit.)
Just like you can’t be outraged when an poorly-trained dog takes a shit on your front step, you can’t get mad when a second-rate funnyman tells hack-eyed jokes to get attention. It’s just his nature. We should all be proud of Greg Gutfeld for having the restraint not to have a diaper on his head when he said his little Gregalogue. (Case in point – he actually calls it that. It’s not even a pun, it’s just….hard to say.)
No. I wasn’t mad at Greg Gutfeld before. But then this happened.
“The March 17th episode of Red Eye included a segment discussing Canada’s plan for a ’synchronized break,’ which was in no way an attempt to make light of troop efforts,” host Greg Gutfeld said in a statement issued Monday.
“However, I realize that my words may have been misunderstood. It was not my intent to disrespect the brave men, women and families of the Canadian military, and for that I apologize. (emphasis mine)
Fuck you, Greg Gutfeld.
Comedy is about taking down sacred cows, by making people think by poking and prodding at convention and common sense. Comedy does it better than any other form of art.
That’s the one thing you had going for you – you weren’t funny, but at least you gave it a shot. But now you come back with this non-apology. Your “words may have been misunderstood”? Bullshit. You meant every single on of those words. When you did, maybe you thought that clips from your waste of airtime wouldn’t get back to us up here. Or maybe you didn’t think that the backlash would be as strong as it was. (Either way, you were dead wrong.) But you meant to say what you did, and now you’re too much of a coward to stand behind your own words.
That’s what outrages me – public figures that think an insincere statement is enough to fix any situation. “I’m sorry if some were offended…”, “If anyone took my words to mean…”, “I was misunderstood…” We hear it all the time from politicians, from the media, and from washed-up comedians. Those are not apologies, they are conditional statements. A real apology admits error.
A real apology comes with actual regret. A real apology doesn’t just happen to quell outrage.
A real apology isn’t followed by this:
So, Greg Gutfeld, I wasn’t outraged when you poked fun at Canada. Sometimes, I think we’re a bit to sensitive about criticism from the States, so I would welcome more of it. (Although if you could try and make your comedy monologue funny next time, extra points!)
But I’m insulted by your insincere attempts to wiggle out of things, to try and be the provocateur one night and the misunderstood everyman the next. I was okay with you when you were the loud, obnoxious, perfectly-ignorable late-night host. I’m much less down with the cowardly insult to satire.
Of course, guess there is a reason you’re on at 3am, isn’t there?
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