Greg Gutfeld, behind the scenes, buddying up to Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, on a friend’s podcast, defending Joe Rogan, it’s all pretty much pro wrestling, isn’t it?
“It was nothing like the critics predicted. They expected me, Mr. Evil Fox News, to attack Jimmy Fallon, and they were mad when I didn’t,” Gutfeld said on his Fox News show on Friday night, as the graphics folks played a roll of headlines accusing him of playing it “safe.”
Controversy sells, so you play it up – even when the controversy is, dude, you pussied out on Fallon.
Gutfeld was a guest on Fallon’s “Tonight Show” on Thursday, and the two hammed it up, with Gutfeld recalling their first meeting, in a bar, which they said included some “friendly wrestling.”
See! They’re admitting it!
“I went on the show for the same reason I started this show. Late night needs more fun,” Gutfeld said.
“I was a gracious guest to a nice guy, and if you expected me to tear into Jimmy, then you’re as clueless and boring as Stephen Colbert interviewing Kamala Harris.”
ICYMI
That dig at Colbert, in the kayfabe world of pro wrestling, would be called working.
More on that concept in a minute.
Issue here with Gutfeld digging at Colbert being, you gotta keep some heat on yourself in this business, and Colbert is the target du jour.
“Talk about this coincidence, Jimmy Fallon’s contract has just been renewed by NBC through 2028. You see that, Colbert? You should have had me on. And there’s still time, Mr. Kimmel. I’ll even bring the tissues,” Gutfeld said.
Basically, that was Gutfeld saying, alright, done with Colbert, tag, you’re it, Kimmel, who, for the moment, is busy using another person’s airwaves to defend Rogan from the attacks that he’s been getting from the left, for his babyface turn on Donald Trump and MAGA over the Epstein files and mass deportations.
ICYMI
- Should James Talarico run for president? Joe Rogan thinks so. Maybe he’s right.
- Progressives have this wonderfully dumb idea: ‘Our own Joe Rogan’
Kimmel, who surpassed Colbert as the left’s late-night darling a while back, called out, in an appearance on his ex-wife Sarah Silverman’s podcast, “repulsive” liberals who “scare people from saying what they believe and make you think twice about a joke,” which, he’s not wrong about those type people, but they’re also the people who are putting the butter on his bread.
Gotta clean that up.
“A lot of their points are valid,” Kimmel said, trying, briefly, to limit the damage, before going back on the attack, saying “a lot are also just repulsive, and I mean in that they repel people from, they go like, Oh, you’re no fun, I don’t want to be around you.”
Kimmel was making the point there that, that Joe Rogan, who famously endorsed Trump in the 2024 cycle, you know, the guy is just, you know, fun.
“Now you see like these clips of Joe Rogan saying, Why is he doing this, he shouldn’t be deporting people, and people go, Fuck you, you supported him, whatever. I don’t buy into that. I don’t believe the, Fuck you, you supported him,” Kimmel said.
ICYMI
He doesn’t believe it, because it’s all, in the language of pro wrestling, a work.
To bring those of you who aren’t steeped in the wrestling culture, the term work refers to the working agreement between two supposed competitors to make their upcoming match more interesting than it would be if it was a straight fight.
It’s not only the outcome that is predetermined, which is where everybody gets it wrong – every move, hold, break in the action, nod to the fans, is prearranged.
That way, the fans get a better show, than what would happen if the contest was a shoot, and you’d end up watching two guys largely avoid contact for as long as possible, and then when they finally do touch, it’s either a quick knockout, or endless minutes of rolling around on the mat in a series of holds and reverses.
What I’m telling you here is, these late-night guys take shots at each other every late night not because they don’t like each other – as demonstrated here, they all know each other, like each other, friendly wrestle each other – but because taking shots draws eyeballs, and its eyeballs that sell ads.
What doesn’t sell ads: these guys using their late-night airtime to say, you know, that Greg Gutfeld, who says all those idiotic things about liberals on Fox, you know, actually, super nice guy, we go bowling every Tuesday.
There’s a reason NPR and PBS need(ed) public funding: everybody there is too nice.
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Chris Graham
