Something very weird has happened in my industry. Two things, actually. The first concerns a guy on Fox News named Greg Gutfeld, who has, for some time now, dominated the ratings in the never-ending battle for late night supremacy. His nightly show, cleverly entitled, “Gutfeld!” has been trouncing the likes of Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers, James Cordon, and Trevor Noah, (before he vanished from Comedy Central), for over a year now. That’s kind of…extraordinary. A smart-ass on Fox news who isn’t even a comedian is routinely shellacking the successors of David Letterman, Jay Leno, and John Stewart. What makes it even weirder, is the fact that the media has basically ignored the story of Gutfeld’s unlikely rise to the top. Except for his critics who have written a great deal about why they hate his show, almost no one in the media has tried to explain the Gutfeld! phenomenon, or acknowledge the undeniable fact that so many talented comedians have become, at least in the eyes of the public, so reliably unfunny. No one that is, but Greg Gutfeld himself, who has written the definitive book on the subject.
The book is called The King of Late Night, and like his show, I predict that many in the mainstream will ignore it or criticize it remorselessly – even as it becomes a #1 Bestseller. Personally, I laughed out loud on every page, and rather enjoyed the trenchant observations buried betwixt the bon mots and sardonic asides. The world, according to Greg, has been flipped upside down in every imaginable way. And his book proves the point in ways that will make any normal person laugh.
Full disclosure, I’ve known Greg for years. We’ve been friendly ever since I appeared on an episode of Redeye back in 2013, and he thought I someone else. I’ve also been a guest on his current show and will probably appear there again somewhere down the road, assuming the King of Late Night will still have me. Either way, he was an excellent guest on this podcast, and I hope you’ll listen to our chat wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode is called, “Coffee Runs the World,” because Greg drinks a LOT of coffee, and the results are self-evident.
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