Fox News Channel’s ‘The Five’ Attacked Another Kid
The Five: Fox's new chat show
By Bob Cesca: When the programming wizards at Fox News Channel devised “The Five” it was kind of a no-brainer.
And by the way, I think “no-brainer” is actually an employment qualification at the network. The concept for The Five was simple: create a Hannity/Beck/O’Reilly chimera, multiply it times five and squeeze it through the FNC Play-dough factory and SQUISH! A show.
It makes perfect sense.
If one host, like Hannity or Beck or whoever, is a huge success, why not amplify the nearsighted simplistic hackery of those doofs times five? Perhaps it’d be, you know, five times as successful. Then call the show “The Five” because they’re are five people! Five! How many people? This many! [Holds out five fingers like a toddler.]
Of course it helps that the show includes the regularly exposed sexy-legs of no-name-female-pundit-X (a regular Fox News sexist ploy), the ignorance of former Bush staffer Dana Perino (while she was press secretary, Perino didn’t know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was), the unapologetic racism and wild conspiracy theories of Eric Bolling, the teasing fifth-grader at recess comedy of proto-human dwarf Greg Gutfeld and the token “liberal” views of a seemingly drunk old man who only reinforces the worst stereotypes of liberalism (perhaps deliberately) Bob Beckel.
It’s hugely popular. Naturally. It’s everything far-right viewers enjoy. It’s brainless chit-chat. It’s The View with racist dog whistles and nearsighted conservative antagonism and piles of Schlafy-style agitprop. No facts, no details, all crotchety grousing and puerile superficial bomb tossing.
Last week, the formerly conservative “whiz kid” Jonathan Krohn announced that he had evolved into a more liberal worldview, the conservative movement predictably flipped its shpadoinkle. Like the group of scavengers they are, The Five piled onto the heap of writhing conservative screeching — and with predictably awful form. [Watch the video here, via Mediaite.]
Gutfeld began with one of his Bruno-Kirby-as-Lieutenant-Steve from Good Morning, Vietnam versions of a comedy monologue about Krohn. Mercilessly, he suggested that perhaps Krohn should have been driven into the woods and left for dead for his trespass of — yes — changing his mind. I would have been shocked had I not been accustomed to this kind of bullying against kids, given the historical precedent of right-wing jihads against children and political noncombantants (seriously, read this).
Self-consciously, Gutfeld also theorized that liberals use children as untouchable props so they can’t be attacked by morally ambiguous ruffians like Gutfeld. Tiny human shields, they are. You know, like Trig Palin. Regardless of whether that’s the plan, it clearly has never stopped conservatives from giving childen a proverbial toilet-swirly when they dare step into the crosshairs of right-wing demagoguery. Ask Graeme Frost.
The rest of the panel chimed in following Gutfeld’s monologue with predictable results.
Bolling admitted to being totally deceived by Krohn, thus setting up the predictable conspiracy theory that Krohn was a liberal ringer who was injected into multiple CPAC speeches as a means of ultimately screwing conservatives. Credit where credit is due, Bolling and Gutfeld both admitted that Krohn’s intelligence is way beyond his years, but Bob Beckel (or Jack Daniels — it’s hard to tell with Beckel) one-upped everyone on the panel. Beckel repeatedly belched that Krohn should be reading Playboy and not talking politics. Hey, Beckel, way to be a liberal, you faker sell-out. In your defense, I can see how you might be threatened by Krohn’s newly discovered liberalism — he’s a thousand times smarter than you and, according to your worldview, teenagers should be masturbating to photos subjugated women and not totally burying failed burnouts like you with their knowledge of politics, global issues and philosophy.
But Beckel wasn’t really alone. Everyone on the panel thought that Krohn became a liberal simply as a means of impressing women, thus admitting that women are generally loathsome of conservatives. Not a shocker given how most conservatives are actively attempting to shrink government small enough to fit into a woman’s vagina — to oppress women and return them to second-class status by criminalizing their reproductive choices.
What they all failed to cover was the fact that, yes, people change their minds about politics. Smart people, specifically, often begin to analyse the world through facts and science and rationality. They realize, Gutfeld, that scientists around the world in a massive consensus believe that the Earth’s climate is dramatically and dangerously changing to the utter peril of human beings. This isn’t a scam of political ratfuckery, but rather a basic embrace of common knowledge. An abundance of knowledge leads to a more liberal worldview, while, on the other hand, a closed-minded suspicion of knowledge leads to a conservative worldview. Jonathan Krohn is a perfect example of that. Simultaneously, there are numerous others — many of whom are older than Krohn — who have gone through similar epiphanies. Personally, I went through the exact same thing at 18-years-old. There’s also Andrew Sullivan, John Cole and Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs. There’s former Bush speechwriter David Frum, who hasn’t renounced conservatism but, instead, its modern xenophobia, ignorance and self-marginalization.
Shows like The Five will only ever serve to augment the zealotry and stupidity of the people who already agree with Gutfeld, Bolling and company. They’ll never convince anyone else. Like most of Fox News Channel, they’re building a wall around the far-right conservative movement that will ultimately result in its own suffocation. Jonathan Krohn, at 15-years-old, can see it. Adult conservatives more than twice his age cannot.
