Why is joe machi not on gutfeld

Before we get to Greg Gutfeld and his sour hour of televised trash talk, let us first pause to remark upon the general nadir of late-night TV in which we’re living now.

OK, Boomers led us to believe in the one true king of late-night, Johnny Carson, despite the fact that TV Guide remembered him as lulling America to sleep, and even when he took over The Tonight Show from Jack Paar 60 years ago, The New York Times observed that Carson competed only with sleep for our attention.

Truth back then was, Carson’s monologues weren’t all that great, and talk was cheap.

So Generation X found salvation in “Late Night,” that additional hours after Carson’s Boomers had gone to bed, thanks to David Letterman, his wacky writers and his amiable a-hole way of ambling through segments and interviews alike. Letterman was our king. Xennials and Millennials took to his successor, Conan O’Brien, with equal fervor, eventually forming the backbone of Team Coco. But somewhere between the rise of Jimmy Fallon to Late Night and Donald Trump to the White House, the late-night comedy trains derailed on TV and lost audiences along the way. Gen Z preferred to watch and share clips on YouTube the following day. And the broadcast network hosts either turned to gimmicky games (which have gotten spun off into their own TV series) or to leading the #Resistance. I covered a bit of this back in April.

For the past year and change, Gutfeld! has soaked up ratings reports that have sometimes declared him the overall champion.

In June, the most recent month before all of the broadcast shows went into summer vacation repeats, Gutfeld! averaged 1,952,000 viewers per night at 11 p.m. Eastern. His competition?

Not quite Colbert numbers, but Gutfeld was outpacing both Jimmys, Kimmel and Fallon. However, Gutfeld not only enjoyed a half-hour head start on all of them on the East Coast — in fact, his show aired in primetime for the Western half of America (8 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Mountain). So it’s not even accurate to classify Gutfeld! as late-night TV, really.

But here’s the real long and the short of it. Gutfeld! isn’t funny. It’s not even the funniest talk show on FOX News! The Ingraham Angle in the hour leading up to Gutfeld! provides more shtick on any given night, as Laura Ingraham delivers her bitter bon mots with tongue firmly in cheek, and trolls hate-watchers via bits with Raymond Arroyo like this one:

But enough about Ingraham or Tucker Carlson or Hannity or any of these soapbox preachers, propagandists and entertainers masquerading as TV news anchors. Let’s talk about the TV preacher and propagandist masquerading as an entertainer.

As Gutfeld himself told The Washington Post earlier this year: “When I join things, it’s not to become whatever they are — it’s so that maybe they become a little bit more like me.” Gutfeld! isn’t any better or worse at spreading the GOP gospel than his FOX News colleagues. Many critics have gotten caught up in it, though. The New Republic asked “Is ‘Gutfeld!’ The Worst Show On Television?” The Atlantic called it “A Late-Night Show For Red America.” The latter’s author watched a week of the show and thought perhaps the comedy bits bombing were intentional, that libs just don’t understand, it’s “the Gutfeld vibe, and you must get used to it.”

It’s more than that. Or less than that. Much less than that.

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Gutfeld’s first late-night FOX News entry truly aired overnight, at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. Eastern, appropriately dubbed Red Eye. That show featured a freewheeling conversational style, where Gutfeld would jar with sidekick Bill Schulz, but often deferred to the rotating panel of stand-up comedians and his in-show ombudsman Andrew Levy. (Disclosure: I appeared on an episode of Red Eye in 2008). When Gutfeld decided to host a weekend show in 2015, regular guest and comedian Tom Shillue took over Red Eye, until that show’s end in 2017.

Though Gutfeld! includes occasional remote segments from Shillue (impersonating President Joe Biden), his new show shares very little DNA with Red Eye.

Gutfeld’s nightly panelists come from inside the building (FOX News anchors/personalities), inside the Trump circle (past/present staffers or actual family members), or inside Gutfeld’s inner circle. Only a couple of actual working comedians appear on the panel, and when someone like Jamie Lissow comes on, all of the jokes are on him. By design. Gutfeld’s only reliable laughs, night-in, night-out, come when he zings his FOX News co-workers or the comedians on his panel.

Which only make any sense if you’re already always watching FOX News. Gutfeld!: the ultimate inside joke.

Gutfeld puts more thought and care into his segment teases and intros than he does the rest of the show, delivering these in rhyme as if he’s Dr. Seuss. This Monday, he even name-checked Seuss. So much of the rest lands with a silent thud. Any laughter is forced. It was even more awkward last year before FOX News allowed a live studio audience back into the building. And yet, you only remember there’s an audience when they clapter a Trump talking point.

As for jokes on topics outside of FOX News, Gutfeld rolls through the narrowest slice of them: Brian Stelter is fat. Joy Behar is unattractive. Justin Trudeau donned blackface for a party when he was younger and not Canadian Prime Minister. Every once in a while, he reminds us that Hillary Clinton is evil. The thought of men having any intimacy makes him giggle. His staffers challenged him to stop telling poop jokes. And oh, yes, Hunter Biden is a drug addict.

Hilarious?!?

Hunter Biden, shown at the top of this story, seems to be the only person Gutfeld knows of outside of the media and the White House, but that’s only because of his familial connection to the White House as the president’s surviving son. Forget for a moment the blinders-on full-hypocrisy of piling on Hunter because of his trying to make a buck off of his dad’s name, particularly when Gutfeld has Trumps on the panel. Just try to make sense of what’s supposed to be funny and mockable about addiction? Can you? The late great Richard Pryor made fun of himself for his drug addiction. But Hunter? He’s sick and suffering and needs our help. Not our mockery.

If Joe Biden hadn’t fallen off of his bicycle earlier this summer, it’s quite possible Gutfeld wouldn’t have told a new joke yet in 2022.

That’s all he has, and he cannot find a new well to draw from. “I hope they don’t take Stelter from me,” Gutfeld said last month, worrying about changes at CNN.

WATCH: Greg's latest monologue. #Gutfeld

His show’s joke template apparently comes from the same playbook as the network’s political template — hammer home the same talking points over and over again, until the audience that’s remaining has no option other than to believe them hook, line and sinker.

Cancel culture is a thing. Having progressive ideas makes you part of a woke mob. So if you’re not progressive, then you’ll get cancelled or shadow-banned. Individual news items appear to be plucked for maximum provocation. But jokes? Not so much. Instead, Gutfeld indulges in his own conspiracy theories, which more often than not lack any logic to them. In that way, he shares some talk-show DNA with Joe Rogan, except Gutfeld has no Jamie to Google things for him. Thought-provoking without bothering to think much about his ideas to investigate them first or further. Why do that when you can just throw opinions out into the airwaves, and let any doubters get bogged down fact-checking him.

And just like the most popular lines of argument from Trump, Gutfeld and his pals engage is too much projection hypocrisy, accusing their political opponents of things they certainly know they’re guilty of themselves.

On July 14, Tyrus mentioned one of my favorite phrases I ever first heard from my first city editor in a newsroom: “Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story.” He said that, mind you, while joking about coups (many of which were GOP led-and-fed) and saying that the Left is driven by fringe elements, and thanking goodness the GOP doesn’t do that because they have a big tent (Liz Cheney cough cough).

But I have to give Tyrus credit. And not merely because he brandishes that wrestling belt on his shoulder as if it could pivot from his Linus blanket to a deadly weapon at any moment. No, that wrestling belt is reminder that Tyrus has an actual talent. He’s also one of only two regulars regularly willing to stand up to and talk down Gutfeld. The other is Rob Long, a writer and co-EP on the last few years of Cheers, and who recently brought his podcast, “Martini Shot,” to The Ankler. Long brings actual jokes to the panel.

Kat Timpf, Gutfeld’s radio sidekick and only permanent panelist, appears in the show’s god-awful sketches and seems trapped in some sort of Stockholm Paycheck Syndrome, in which she has no other choice but to smile and laugh at her boss so she can keep her job.

There are other comedians and writers in the sketches, too, but it’s more than symbolic that the funniest of them — Joe Machi — abandoned Gutfeld! without even a proper send-off from the show.

What’s left looks, feels and sounds more like a podcast that’s embraced the worst parts of morning shock-jock radio and the Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. At least Maher’s old show inspired and encouraged spirited debate, and his new old show on HBO stops each week for segments with proven joke structures. Gutfeld only wants to hear one viewpoint, and will interrupt them for his non-sequiturs or pre-taped duds.

It’s a problem of tone.

Gutfeld’s monologues are slow-paced and monotone, a world removed from Dennis Miller’s energized reference-laden rants that worked so well for Miller before 9/11 turned him into an American exceptionalism patriot at all costs. The monologues lack any sense of joy. If Gutfeld’s not having fun, why should we?

Sure, Lewis Black proved two decades ago that you could get laughs and fame out of rage, but his stand-up and his monologues contained artistry and lyricism. Gutfeld only can tease you with a rhyme before the rest of the segment falls flat.

So why do so many people tune in?

Perhaps a sizable number of them merely never change the channel. Perhaps some of them love to trade in hateful rhetoric, shade and gossip.

And perhaps some tune in because they hear other people are tuning in, and they want to be where the action is. That’s why even John Waters would go on Gutfeld! to promote his new book, or Skunk Baxter to promote his new album.

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What is a gutless person? Someone with weak character. Someone who lacks courage. The conservative blowhards five years ago would call them cucks.

Gutfeld is gutless, too.

He shills for Trump, and toes the line for Trump, even when it goes against his supposedly libertarian beliefs. You’d think a proud libertarian might have jokes targeting the U.S. Supreme Court when the justices struck down abortion rights. You would be sadly mistaken. You’d think the same day witnesses testified to Congress on live TV to Kevin McCarthy’s complicity, that Gutfeld would take advantage of having the congressman (no relation) on his panel. Nope. The two of them would rather hold hearings on Hunter Biden. Naturally. Anything to change the topic. You’d think interviewing Herschel Walker, the former football player turned U.S. Senate candidate with a ton of funny flaws to his candidacy, would produce a joke at his expense. Gutfeld. Would. Never.

At this point, Gutfeld doesn’t care that neither his audiences nor his panels ever laugh at his punchlines. He’s painfully aware of the cringe fest he presides over five nights a week.

Watching Gutfeld! feels like entering a bizarro multiverse version of the movie Network.

They’re all sad as hell, and they don’t have to take this anymore. I certainly don’t.

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