The Joy of Hate (27 page)

TO SAY I MISS ANDREW BREITBART
is an understatement. It’s like saying I miss my left arm, if I’d actually lost it. Breitbart took great joy in tying the tentacles of phony tolerance into knots. Whereas tolerance demanded that you accept everything, including crap that could destroy you, one thing the tolerance patrol could not tolerate was this wonderful thing called Andrew Breitbart.

He confused them. He was a cross between a Sudoku puzzle and anthrax—complicated and deadly—and all wrapped in a lazy California accent and projected from a set of eyes that anyone could see would not be intimidated.

He was fiercely conservative and fiercely funny—which, for the left, is simply unacceptable. He was highly moral but deeply twisted—a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup that proved poisonous to adversaries. He was a patriot and a prankster—and according to mainstream “wisdom,” only people like Michael Moore or Abbie Hoffman could be like that. He was dead serious about his mission, but funnier than most comedians who’ve worked decades on their “craft.”

It was why, with such zeal, the left tried to silence Andrew through harassment and threats. Andrew first and foremost understood the Internet, and the power of the social media, having worked on Drudge, helped launch the Huffington Post (where we
met), and then created his own media empire, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and so on. (He came up with the “big” idea as a play on the left’s constant demonization of things they did not understand or like by calling them Big this or that.) When Andrew came to Twitter, he was hammered by thousands of sordid threats, and he would often retweet them with glee, an exercise designed to show how intolerant the so-called tolerant progressives are. Breitbart found the whole thing hilarious, even if his Twitter followers didn’t. They didn’t get Andrew’s mission, which was to drive the left batty and watch the battiness express itself through sheer, bloodcurdling intolerance. For some, the anger and vitriol were sickening. For Andrew, it was pure comedy gold. Even the death threats he found delightful.

Andrew, like me, was one of the few regular targets of liberal bile who would receive two contradictory insults. Andrew could be labeled a “faggot” and a “homophobe,” sometimes by the same red-faced progressive, who could get away with such slurs because leftists excuse homophobia as long as you’re pro-gay! The reason for this dizzying slur also happened to be a high compliment: Andrew was straight and pro-gay—but more than anything he hated identity politics. For the left-wing gay activist, it undermined their reason for existing. If someone went up to Andrew and declared that he/she was proud to be a transgendered sex worker activist with dyslexia, he would say, “So?”

As Gavin McInnes has pointed out, “So” was Andrew’s simplest and most cogent retort to the angry tolerance merchant. And one that usually left the ranters in sputtering silence.

The homophobic attacks on Andrew (oftentimes from gays) proved how intolerant the left could be when faced with arguments it could not handle. Calling him a “fag” was their white flag.

When he worked at the Huffington Post, and I was writing my progressive-mocking blogs there, I had created a fictitious roommate named Scott, who was a flight attendant, and I would allude to our relationship in a way that often devolved into the mysteriously perverse. I performed this exercise to see how the armies of tolerance would deal with me, when, predictably, they didn’t like my ideas. Since many of them were clueless enough not to see that Scott was a fake, they would resort to calling me a homosexual (in varying degrees of intensity). Andrew and I loved it, for it exposed how phony their acceptance really was. If you didn’t accept that America was at the root of all that was wrong in the world, then you must be a stupid, fat faggot (their words). At the time I was fat.

Andrew was a professional at exposing hypocrisy on the left, delighting in peeling back their manufactured compassion to reveal the angry, envious types that lurked beneath. He didn’t hate them, he just found them fascinating—the way a child turns over a rock in a creek bed. In the battle against manufactured rage, Andrew was the tip of the spear. And in his death, that spear probably got sharper. Because Andrew, by inspiring so many people during his life, is all around us in his death. In a peculiar way, Andrew’s death was like the Big Bang. Through his own spectacularly sudden demise, he sent particles of life in every single direction, creating new pockets of Andrews everywhere.

After Breitbart died, there was the predictable lefty dancing on his grave—in blog posts, on Twitter, in well-paid magazine articles. These crass exercises were condemned by the right, but something tells me Breitbart would have loved it. Their loathsome behavior was exactly how a beaten foe responds when their enemy exits. Their tackiness reflected how deeply Breitbart had wounded them with his insightful humor and invective. When
that douchebag Matt Yglesias tweeted that the “world outlook is slightly improved with @andrewbreitbart dead,” he only meant it was better for Matt Yglesias. Because there was one less person on the earth who could point out what a douchebag Matt Yglesias is.

Anyway, I wanted Breitbart to write a blurb for this book, and I’m still waiting to hear back. I’m still not sure he’s dead.

I hate book conclusions—they always seem so final. But it seems wrong to rail against phony outrage and the PC police without offering ways to combat both.

The first attack against manufactured anger: discerning the difference between real injustice and trumped-up baloney so you don’t waste your time being pissed, which is time better spent thinking of ways to make your humble author happier.

The most obvious advice for everyone involved would be to lighten up. Get a thick skin. If someone says something that “offends” you, step back for a moment, and go through a mental checklist. Ask

A few months ago, I came up with something called the Mirror Jerk Effect. This is how it works: Let’s say Ed Schultz makes a
crack about Sarah Palin that I don’t like, because I like Palin and I don’t like Schultz. I create a mirror effect. I say to myself,
What if, instead of Schultz and Palin, it’s Rush and Garofalo?
If I don’t care about Rush’s opinion of a silly lefty, then I shouldn’t care about a lefty’s opinion of a conservative I like. This little mental exercise eliminates so much wasted energy that I now have time to help the poor and needy (i.e., myself).

For the most part you gotta think like one of those lions on the Serengeti, which I believe is in Canada. Conserve energy and then expend it when you need it most. Responding to every stupid remark or caustic joke will wear you down. That’s why bitter people look decades older than they really are. I’m told Ed Schultz is actually twenty-six.

When does getting angry matter most? Well, when whatever is said is a threat to you, your family, your career. If someone says he’s going to burn down your house, I think you have every reason to be concerned.

Also, when what the person says is not an opinion, but a lie. And it’s a lie about someone you actually know. It could be about someone you admire, but I’d still hold back on that. Rush is better at defending Rush than I am. And he can do it in a twenty-million-dollar home in Florida. I have other things to worry about in my tiny Manhattan apartment. (The fumigation didn’t take.)

But how about if what the person says is not a joke but a vicious attack. Look, I can disagree with Maher about his opinions on Palin, but I won’t get angry about it. If, however, some weirdo starts getting creepy—imagining a person raped or whatever—then that’s different. If you can’t see the difference, then you are hopeless. But maybe it’s better just to condemn them and move on. I hate that Mike Tyson is now a cuddly character. But what can I do about that? Nothing—other than to point it out.

Bottom line: 98 percent of the crap floating around in this world is not worth your time. What’s worth your time? Your family, your friends, your work, my books. Sadly the world wide web has robbed major time from our lives, preventing us from actual conversation with people—actual people! Instead we allow perverse comments on a blog to cloud our minds, as if they actually mean something (and they don’t, ever).

And another thing: Even if left-wing “watchdog” bozos like Media Matters do it, that doesn’t mean you have to do it. Meaning, stop demanding that people shut up or get fired. We live in a country where you can say what you want. If you get fired, so be it. That’s the call of the boss. But demanding that someone get fired because they hurt your feelings says more about you than them. You should not care. Generally, over time, creepy people end up creeping off into the sunset. See Olbermann. His bitter diatribes finally became his “thing,” and it was a thing no one needed anymore. There is justice in the world, and for Olbermann, it’s called obscurity.

So, forget about it. All of it. You are on this planet, if you are lucky, for seventy to ninety years. You won’t be on your death bed remembering those things Maher said about whomever. They certainly won’t be thinking of you when they start walking toward that bright light. Nope, you remember only the experiences with real people, not the fleeting emotional orgasm that is momentary outrage. You won’t be lying there, thinking, “If only I crafted a better comment on that
HotAir
blog about Alec Baldwin. I really let myself down.”

No, you’ll be thinking of your kids. Your grandkids. My chiseled abs.

So there is no joy in hate. It’s not worth it. Get out of the outrage pool, and into the party. It’s more fun, and you won’t get an infection.

Writing a book while holding down a full-time job doing two one-hour shows is impossible without support from family, friends, alcohol, and prescription medications: So I’d like to thank all of them. Of course, I must thank my wife, again, who was very patient to put up with my mood swings, driven by bouts of combination editing/writing/drinking that would leave me dazed on the couch spouting gibberish. Thanks to my mom, as always, for producing me. Now, work-wise—a special thanks to the
Red Eye
crew and the malcontents at
The Five
. On both shows, I’ve been exploring the themes, rants, and ideas found in this book, and some of these chapters began as fifty-second monologues, often proofread by Dana Perino before the show. And I owe her so much. Despite what you hear, she’s really a swell person. So is her husband, Peter. Everyone on
The Five
—Bob, Eric, Kimberly, Juan, and Andrea—have been a pleasure to be around, as well as all the producers (John, Porter, and the rest of the supportive crew). As for
Red Eye
, I thank them for putting up with me during a crazy period of work. It’s the funnest job and a great crew (Andy, Bill, Todd, Ben, Tom, etc.) to work with.

Also thanks to Roger Ailes and everyone else at the evil Death
Star known as Fox News. It’s the most exciting, interesting place to work, filled with great people and ridiculously hard workers. I thank, in no order: Sean Desmond, Jay Mandel, Paul Mauro, Gavin McInnes, Penn Jilette, Larry Gatlin, the ghost of Andrew Breitbart, Ann Coulter, Woody Fraser, Joanne McNaughton, and Wes. Also John Rich, Dennis Miller, Billy Zoom, Andrew Wu, Jack Wright, Gary Sinise, Robert Davi, Skunk Baxter, Bob Tyrell, Andy Ferguson, Matt Labash, Fabio, Carrot Top, Ginger Wildheart, John Moody, Jim Norton, Tom Shillue, and Dana Vachon. Also thanks to Dianne Brandi for her invaluable advice. Thanks to Aric Webb, who offered great insight into this book’s concept. Mauro read it twice, killing my lame jokes, and adding some that were lamer. Thanks to all the local bars in my area who allowed me a corner in their taverns to slog through my piles of words—primarily Amarone, the West Side Steakhouse, Hallo Berlin—in order to carve out this book. Thanks to the local massage parlor. Thanks to Dr. Siegel. Thanks to Tobacco—the band and the substance. Also Torche and Tilts. Thanks to President Barack Obama for loaning me his collection of poetry when times got tough. And most of all, thank you, precious reader, for taking the time to indulge in my silly thoughts and mutant meanderings. I hope you are happy with your decision. Or drunk.

Greg Gutfeld is the author of five books and the host and cohost of two Fox News shows,
The Five
and
Red Eye
. He is married and lives in New York with his dwarf unicorn, Captain Hornface. He is triple-jointed and can bench press twice his own weight.