Read The Joy of Hate by Greg Gutfeld online for free (2024)

Published in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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CROWN FORUM with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gutfeld, Greg.

The joy of hate : how to triumph over whiners in the age of phony outrage / Greg Gutfeld.

p. cm.

1. Liberalism—United States—Humor. 2. Political correctness—United States—Humor. 3. United States—Politics and government—Humor. 4. Political participation—United States—Humor. 5. Patriotism—United States—Humor. I. Title.

PN6231.L47.G88 2012

808.87—dc23

2012026440

eISBN: 978-0-307-98697-9

Jacket photography: © Victoria Janashvili

v3.1

Dedicated to Andrew Breitbart

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Roll Models

The Pig Pass

Harmed Forces

The Song Remains So Lame

Fat Kids Are the Biggest Targets

The Skeptic Tank

Woolly Bullies

The Bard of Brentwood

The End of Hate

Thanks ’n’ Stuff

About the Author

AUTHOR’S NOTE

All opinions expressed in this book are my own, and nobody else’s. So don’t blame others for my churlishness. I take full responsibility for any outrage caused. And for those of you who are new to my work, and find it reprehensible, remember that I’ve done nothing to hide who I am, or what I’m about. Enjoy!

INTRODUCTION

You know what really pisses me off? People who are always pissed off. Or pretend to be pissed off. We’ve created a new, frantic world of the enraged, the phony grievance, the manufactured outrage. If you make fun of something or say something truthful, someone, somewhere will be unhappy. Or say they’re unhappy, even when they’re not. When they’re bored. When they’re lonely. When they need attention. They come for you, whining, crying, screaming. And they are coming for you—the children of the corn, with a platform.

This new rising tide of constant outrage has been fueled, no doubt, by something called the Internet (which has intensified everything, including my home business selling novelty pumpkins). It has led, along with cable news (where I currently reside), to an apology brigade, comprising shrill scolds who overpopulate both sides of the political spectrum. When Rush Limbaugh says something that thin-skinned tools define as “mean-spirited,” sundry CNN talk show guests (most of whom never listen to Rush) demand an apology. When Bill Maher says something considered repugnant toward women, conservative watchdogs organize petitions. Everyone wants everyone else fired. No one rests until they get a scalp of contrition, a symbol of victory revealing to all that you just bested someone you don’t like.

Then, of course, everyone moves on to someone else. And it doesn’t even matter whether they’re truly outraged or not. In fact, it’s just physically impossible to be this outraged all the time. You’d pull a muscle or throw your hip out. Still, it goes on—an endless game of political ping-pong—with both sides unaware that they sound almost exactly alike.

The bystanders, however, are different. The media, for the most part, tends to dismiss the “outrage” perpetrated by the left, often dismissing the slurs and smears as the product of “edgy comedy,” only because they rabidly agree with whatever’s being said. You can make ruthless fun of Michele Bachmann, for the editors of the major newsweeklies think she’s nuts, too. Remember the “wild-eyed” Newsweek cover? I do, and it still aroused me.

This liberal pass, however, is not afforded to those on the right. If Maher calls someone a slu*t, the outcry lasts a few days. When Rush says it, the outrage lasts as long as a case of herpes. It flares up and never really goes away (or so they tell me).

But I admit, as well, that there are times I seem angry when I’m really not. Oh, some things piss me off. But in a few minutes, I’ll see something fuzzy and huggable, like a cute puppy wearing a leather cap with matching chaps, and I’ll forget what I was angry about. But many times I’m angry in the same way I’m happy—it’s a biochemical commotion in some excitable part of the brain that can be triggered by anything. It’s more about me than the thing that makes me happy, or ticked. If I’m yelling at the TV, chances are it’s not the TV’s fault. It could be the fact that there isn’t a TV there at all, and I’ve been yelling at a window. I hate windows. I see right through them. (I got that joke from a Bazooka Joe wrapper.)

What I have come to realize, however, is that the people who claim to be angry or upset have a bigger agenda. First, they use the language of outrage to score points against people they don’t like, or to make themselves feel important. But manufactured outrage is also the freeway to ideological success—the quickest way to win not only an argument but also a career in academics, political activism, or modern dance. To be aggrieved means you’ve created an impenetrable wall of “feeling” around you: no one can question you, because you’re “outraged.” If this book doesn’t sell, surely I will be outraged—and I will certainly write a book about that.

I hate the outraged so much, you could say I’m outraged by their outrage. The eternally angry were born from the sixties, cultivated in the seventies, coddled in the eighties, stoked in the nineties. The politically correct didn’t die, they all just got agents.

And this new outrage came into being via one phenomenon: tolerance. The idea of tolerance—a seemingly innocuous concept—has now become something else entirely: a way to bludgeon people into shutting up, piping down, and apologizing, when the attacked are often the ones who hold the key to common sense. They speak an unspeakable truth, and they get clobbered by the Truncheon of Tolerance. Tolerance has turned normal people into sheep/parrot hybrids, followers in word and deed—bloating and squawking at everyone in a psychological torment not experienced since Dave Matthews picked up a guitar.

Don’t get me wrong. Tolerance is a good thing. It wasn’t long ago that a lot of awful things were going on in our country. Blacks were treated as chattel, gays were seen as defective humans, and women couldn’t vote (well, that last one might be worth revisiting—just because suffragettes are so sexy). But unlike a lot of countries, America actually changed, eliminating or reducing forms of nastiness that this very young country inherited from other older, nastier places. Remember, racism has been around since there were races. And someone is still selling slaves, right now. (I just rented one off Craigslist. His name is Marco and he’s a bodybuilding Capricorn who loves Thai boxing.) Modern slavery can be found in Sudan and Mozambique, so I guess most of America’s civil rights activists don’t see the point. If it won’t get you prime real estate in
front of cameras chanting about injustice in America, then why bother.

I also realized that because of tolerance, there are no repercussions for bad behavior. And bad behavior won’t just continue, but will accelerate, because the tolerati (a name I have coined to describe those who traffic in this repressive tolerance, and hereby trademark, ensuring my comfortable retirement in Bora-Bora with a small army of half-naked manservants) provide the grease for the wheels. Think of the latest stories on teens beating the crap out of adults at movie theaters, fast food restaurants, and subway stops while people look on. No one wants to call them trash, because—well, that’s just hurtful. And hurtful often means, “painfully true.”

I believe I have identified an insidious kind of entitlement born from a false sense of victimhood. If you are identified as an offensive party dripping with intolerance, especially in this modern age, then you’re powerless. You can be accused of anything and you’re guilty. The shoe is now on the other foot, and because I’m a straight male of European descent who smokes and is on a network the left hates, that foot is firmly up my ass. And trust me, it’s a matter of time before it goes up yours for one reason or another. Permanently. With a steel-tipped toe.

Which is why I hate phony outrage and the tolerance that breeds it. Hate it with a passion. I hate the tolerati, and I hate the toleratic. The toleratic is a person who claims to tolerate anything until he, she, or it meets a conservative. Tolerati describes a group of toleratics grouped in a social setting, like a murder of annoying crows, nattering vacuous opinions and molesting the gnome in your front yard.

I see our country under attack—not by offensive people like me, but by people who claim to be offended. By people like me. See, nothing offends me more than people who are always offended.

I am referring to people who hear jokes that hurt their feelings, and instead of simply assuming the joke-teller is a jerk, they resort to letter-writing campaigns, and they never spell my name right. I am talking about people who wage war over a comment, yet would never think of addressing real behaviors that actually cause actual problems. Yep, they might yell at you for smoking or joking, but they’d never actually address the guy on the corner selling drugs. (Because then they might die. Or worse, he might be part of an ethnic group, which makes you a racist for even looking at him.) They’ll condemn the pope for the silliness of organized religion, but then later they tell us we should understand those who—in the name of religion—want to kill us. They’ll order us to “question authority,” then they’ll parrot the latest left-wing attack blog funded by George Soros. That’s the funny thing about tolerance: it’s actually an avenue for bad behavior, instead of respect for the good stuff. It’s why, in the name of tolerance, there are so many mass murderers in the world running countries. We have now made it a rule to respect those who refuse to respect us.

Right now we live in a world where if someone perceives you as “offensive,” they win. Meanwhile, the real offenders get a walk. They can wield the weapon of “tolerance” to protect real scummy behavior. Like any act committed by a radical Islamist or past member of Menudo. (Ricky Martin still has my swim trunks.)

As I have gotten older, I have come to realize how the things normally deemed offensive don’t bother me anymore. I’m speaking of sexual acts, explicit lyrics in music, garlic knots, staplers, tweed scarves.

But it’s the mundane, everyday acceptance of stupidity that I cannot tolerate. For example, I don’t find racist jokes offensive. I just find them … racist. And that’s helpful. Racist jokes help you identify racists. If you like being around racists, great. If you don’t, then leave. So what’s offensive to me instead?

Public displays of affection—gay, straight, hermaphroditic, animal. I have a rule: Anything that can be done privately does not need to be performed publicly. It’s why I love the gays but I hate their parades. Actually, I hate all parades. Marching to celebrate something you’re born as seems silly. (As I write this, St. Patrick’s Day is in full bore in Midtown. It’s delightful how celebrating a heritage requires you to pick fights with strangers and then pee in a parking garage. The upside—the sea of clover-painted drunks moving in unison—might be the only green energy I’ve ever seen work.) And what’s the point of a parade anyway? A bunch of yahoos who share some affinity, walking in one direction? Who decided this was entertainment? For previous generations, this was called a migration, or more often, refugees fleeing for their lives.

However, Super Bowl parades are warranted, because the team actually achieved something, thanks to billions of well-spent dollars on adults with an affinity for strip clubs and pit bulls. It kills me that people actually objected to parades to welcome our military home from Iraq, but wouldn’t make a peep about a parade celebrating Anti-Semitic Dwarves with Lupus. At least it was a very short parade.

Religious judgment. I totally respect religious folks, and it’s your club, so you have a right to tell members how to live. But you can’t use your doctrine to tell me how to live. It can only influence how you live. If you want to argue that my promiscuity, drug use, and cross-dressing are wrong, go for it. But don’t use the Bible to do it. Not only will I not listen, but I don’t have to listen. You can make coherent moral arguments against my sordid life without religion as your tool. It’s more of a challenge—and it’s one you should embrace. But all of that that pales when compared with …

Religious extremism. People who use their religion as a framework to kill people, simply, are not nice people. Yes, that’s quite a stand I’m making, but the idea that people are systematically executed because they don’t share your God is beyond barbaric. The fact that there are people in our own country who seem to tolerate that, while being intolerant of a Christian’s biblical stance regarding gay marriage, makes me want to leave the United States and go to a more sensible place, like Texas.

There are more things I refuse to tolerate (pretentious music criticism, clove cigarettes, slow-moving ceiling fans, restaurant hostesses who pretend they own the joint, people who walk and text on a crowded sidewalk, Hostess Snowballs, people who drop subzero into their conversation when they aren’t talking about the Arctic winds, people who bring their own bedroom pillows onto flights, pharmacists who yell out your prescription in front of other customers, Time Warner Cable, Sting’s chest hair), but I’ll get into that later, in the chapter “Arguments for Capital Punishment.” I may not do that chapter, though, because I refuse to tolerate lists. They’re lazy. And listy.

At any rate, that will be a short chapter, because this book is, among other things, about how modern tolerance sucks—and how it has become a shield for some of the most loathsome behavior you will ever find. It is a fetishized tolerance that is at the root of every single major political conflict we’re experiencing now—from terrorism to climate change, from birth control to the left’s weird indifference to large-scale, destructive evil. As opposed to small, lesser evils like obesity. Wherever you go, and whatever you say, there will be somebody nearby with a tolerance meter, gauging your behavior, deeming you either acceptable or evil. And then the faux outrage is unleashed. It’s the one-two punch that governs everything we do in public life.

The definition of tolerance should be simple: Just treat people the way you like to be treated—who cares if they’re different, as long as you don’t bother me about it. My definition of tolerance is simpler: I leave you alone, you leave me alone. Works pretty much all the time. Unless I need to borrow underwear. I have such testy neighbors.

Of course, there’s that other kind of tolerance—a capacity to endure stuff, like loud music, red wine, and prescribed medications (within that meaning, I am truly the most tolerant man on earth).

But now tolerance means something much greater—and all-encompassing. It’s considered, by dictionary.com (nothing but the best research, people) to be “a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc. differ from one’s own.” That�
��s covering all the bases, right? Of course, this definition has a big smiley face all over it. Tolerance is seen as a totally positive thing—the opposite of bigotry, the kind of good behavior that every noble television character expresses in spades. It’s how you tell the good guys in a movie. They’re the ones who are nice to the gay character. It’s the gist of every after-school special, and behind every one of those old, nauseating “the more you know” public service announcements. It’s the modern nag, now hip, thanks to celebrity endorsem*nt. If a sitcom star wants to be more than a sitcom star and land a role in the next Sundance-approved flick, they can simply come out against “hate.” Even better: Paint NO HATE on your face and you’re instantly afforded extra points on the “caring scale,” even if you’re an obnoxious, selfish, no-talent jerk when the paint washes off.

Intolerance, on the other hand, is portrayed as bad. In fact, intolerance is so rotten, it cannot be tolerated.

Well, that’s not quite true. A funny thing about tolerant people? They’re really only tolerant when you agree with them. Suddenly, when they find out you disagree with just one of their assumptions, they become intolerant of you. Which kind of misses the whole point of tolerance, but I’ll tackle that later.

Here’s the curse of tolerance: the “permissive” part. In effect, the modern tolerance movement has forced millions of open-minded liberals into contortions even well-lubricated, multi-jointed circus performers wouldn’t try, no matter how many tequila shots and muscle relaxers you supply. (I have boxes.)

And so, in the following chapters, I will examine how the idea and concept of repressive tolerance and phony outrage infect all parts of life, to the detriment of said life. I will include an examination of tolerance’s polluting effect on pop culture (in both music and humor). I will show how it was used to demonize the Tea Party, and how this truly organic protest movement was met with virulent, intolerant animosity from the tolerati left. I have touched on many of these topics on my blogs and articles. Some will sound familiar to you if you watch certain shows I regularly appear on, where some began as monologues or commentary on the stories of the day. Many I will reexamine and expand upon, to show you how tolerance has screwed with our common sense, our political leaders, and our policies here and abroad. And where is tolerance often most destructive and/or annoying? The media. Or rather, the mainstream media, which regularly paints Americans as intolerant while they themselves are truly the guilty party. For they traffic in an elitist, detached bubble where everything normal is viewed as quaint and silly. They tolerate everything but the country that must tolerate their sorry and, most likely, flabby asses.