Fox News sees the cancellation of ‘Colbert’ as a dethroning by their own right-wing comedian Greg Gutfeld, but ‘Gutfeld!’ is not comedy, says Salon contributor writer and critic Sophia A. McClennen.
“If you haven’t, watch a clip of “Gutfeld!” You will immediately notice that his jokes often get nothing more than a cringey, forced laugh from his audience,” writes McClennen. “… live audience size aside, Gutfeld’s jokes don’t get laughs during tapings because, well, they just aren’t that funny.”
McClennen says Gutfeld paints himself as a right-wing satirist, “despite the fact that his comedy rarely meets the standards of actual satire, which depends on a creative use of irony.”
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“Right-wing audiences regularly confuse insult comedy with ironic satire but, as I’ve argued, saying something s————— and then laughing, isn’t comedy: It’s just being a jerk.”
Gutfeld tries to drop zingers on versions of reality that he has entirely fabricated, says McClennen. Take, for example, his line from the opening monologue of his debut episode, when Gutfeld claimed: “The only time Stephen Colbert ruffles feathers is in a pillow fight.”
That’s a hard reality to back up, says McClennen, considering Trump himself “has had his feathers ruffled plenty of times by Colbert, so much so that the president celebrated the idea that Colbert’s show would be cancelled.”
Unlike Gutfeld, Colbert actually does get under Trump’s skin because his satire redefines the president for the public, “making it easier to understand an autocrat who is at once absurd and ridiculous, but also terrifying and megalomaniacal,” said McClennen.
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In contrast, McClennen says Gutfeld’s most successful moments “have been marked by a crude, jarring style that reinforces the power elite, stokes right-wing populism and justifies social inequality.” Worse, she says his jabs are “ultimately, entirely forgettable.”
But then there’s Fox News claim of their show’s comparatively bigger audience than Colbert. ‘Gutfeld!’ claims his Nielsen ratings were higher than Colbert’s—but Nielsen ratings only apply to viewers who watch political comedy on televisions, said McClennen. It’s a different story over on YouTube, which hands ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ 10.1 million subscribers, and his opening monologues clips regularly nab around 2.5 million views.
“Meanwhile, the entire Fox News network has just over 14 million subscribers on YouTube. Clips from ‘Gutfeld!’ tend to average about 500,000 views on a good day, a consistent five times less than those watching Colbert’s monologues,” McClennen said.
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Read the full Salon report at this link.