Fox News’ Red Eye has established numerous firsts for a cable news program: First talking newspaper, first intergalactic correspondent, first openly gay host.
But the show’s most ground-breaking achievement, the one that will rank it right up there with The Cosby Show, Ellen, and Joanie Loves Chachi, is that Red Eye is the first genuinely funny conservative show. (Albeit more libertarian than traditional conservative.)
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Never heard of Red Eye? Maybe because it’s on at 3 AM EST. Whether you’re an early-bird or an insomniac hooked on Poker After Dark, Red Eye will make you thank Al Gore for inventing the DVR.
Astonishingly, despite the witching-hour time slot, Red Eye has more viewers than any show on CNN, including its primetime lineup.
Red Eye’s affable host, Greg Gutfeld, was a longtime magazine editor whose posts included popular “lad” mags like Stuff, Maxim UK, and Blueboy. He made the normally rocky transition from hard-bitten, ink-stained wretch to pixel-dusted, blow-dried blowhard without breaking a sweat (or a nail).
Full disclosure: I knew Greg recently out of college, when we were both just starting to break into journalism (Greg had a skeleton key).
I remember those halycon days well: whiling away the evenings in smoky cafes on the left bank of the Potomac, sipping absinthe and watching Crossfire. I wrote an expressionistic novel called The Tropic of C-SPAN; Greg tried his hand at painting, until he ran out of space on his palm.
Greg interned at the American Spectator, a somewhat gonzo conservative publication featuring hilarious writers Ben Stein and P.J. O’Rourke, whom we all looked up to in awe (Greg, literally).
Greg served as the assistant to R. Emmett Tyrell Jr., the magazine’s flamboyant editor, picking up editing tips and herpes along with Tyrell’s dry cleaning.
We thought the biggest problem the right faced was the “cool” deficit. You know the drill — the right is Dean Wormer in Animal House, the left is John Belushi pouring mustard on his shirt. (Of course, the right is also Belushi smashing the peacenik’s guitar, but I digress.)
Like most stereotypes popularized in the ’60s, it’s wrong. Today’s right is all about expanding freedom, while the left has devolved into the scolding buzz-kill — “Don’t eat meat! Don’t drive SUVs! Stop killing people!”
Much of Greg’s career has aimed to overturn, through example, this hoary shibboleth (whatever that means) that the left refuses to let go (because it’s really all they’ve got).
One weekend, Greg and I headed down to the Washington Mall for the annual Earth Day concert, headlined by Sting (naturally). Greg had a huge stack of bumper stickers that Tyrell had printed up. They read, “I [heart] baby seals” – only in lieu of the typical heart, there was the symbol of a playing-card club.
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Greg and I wandered around the Mall which was literally blanketed with bong-hitting, tie-dyed hippies squatting cross-legged across the expansive lawn, like so many smoke-wreathed, rainbow-colored toads, grooving to the jazzy stylings of the ex-Police man. And we proceeded to hand out those bumper stickers to every hippie in reach.
Funny thing is, people see what they want to see (especially liberals). So their first reaction was usually a delighted squeal, hippie chicks exclaiming, “Oh, how cute! I love baby seals!”
Then they’d look a little closer, and it would gradually dawn on their dope-and-ideology-befuddled brains what the sticker really meant. But by the time their squeals of delight turned into howls of outrage, we were 20 yards away, handing out still more stickers.
Greg went on to an editing gig at Prevention magazine. (He thought it was a trade publication for the condom industry.) And I returned to my pa’s farm, giving up on my dreams of becoming the next Ann Coulter. (The operation was just too expensive.)
Over the years, Greg’s star rose as he slept his way to the top. No, he didn’t have sex with anyone, but he literally slept on Roger Ailes’ doorstep every night until Ailes hired Greg just to get him off his lawn. (Fox News has long been a proud supporter of the homeless. Hello, Glenn Beck!)
Greg has a talented supporting cast, whom he rewards with merciless teasing, insults, and tickle fights. (These are the names of actual currencies circulated in certain parts of New York.)
Bill Shulz, who lists to the left, is Greg’s perky sidekick and comic foil. He’s Alan Colmes to Greg’s Sean Hannity, Keith Richards to his Roger Daltrey, Tonto to his Don Quixote.
Then there’s “TV’s own Andy Levy” (don’t ask), who serves as the show’s quick-witted ombudsman, popping up at half-time and the end to correct its many mistakes (a truly Augean task).
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Two seats at the hallowed Red Eye table are reserved for a rotating cast of distinguished guests, ranging from the aforementioned Ann Coulter, to a puppet version of the New York Times called Pinch, to Oderus Urungus, the show’s costumed “intergalactic correspondent,” who moonlights as the front man for “shock rock” band GWAR.
You never know what you’ll get what you watch Red Eye:
– Animated robots in a sauna room discussing Media Matters and lotion.
– Greg “drawing the news,” usually in the form of unicorns, griffins, and other mythical beasts (like Obama’s leadership skills).
– Frequent references to houseboys, underground bunkers, and Vermont Teddy Bears (that last one may have been a commercial).
– Greg’s now-trademark double-entendre introductions. (E.g.: “If intelligence were a border fence, illegals would jump him daily.”)
Funny? Of course not. But for a right-leaning show made by uptight, humorless Brahmins wearing bow ties and spats, not half-bad. And since the other contenders are so lame (tops until now was Keith Olbermann, deliriously subverting the left a la Colbert), it will have to do.
DVRs are gradually rendering time slots meaningless. But come on, FNC, Red Eye deserves to be shown earlier.
Just imagine if it went head-to-head with Jay Leno and David Letterman… well, I’d still watch World Poker Tour reruns on ESPN2. But I would continue to TiVo Red Eye.
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