THE JOY OF HATE

Forced-funny bromides from yet another book-writing Fox News personality.

Gutfeld (The Bible of Unspeakable Truths, 2010, etc.) waxes outrage over the “phony outrage” of the plaintive class—by which he mostly means liberals. He counsels that the best thing to do about the “tolerati” (“those who traffic in...repressive tolerance,” said tolerance being a synonym for cultural relativism) and the “toleratic” (“a person who claims to tolerate anything until he, she, or it meets a conservative”) is not to care. This being a book full of complaints, the not-caring formula would seem to go only so far. Over the course of his argument, Gutfeld serves up a roundabout defense of racism, since “gay trumps skin color” in any event; defends Michele Bachmann; sneers at people who stop paying their mortgage once they’ve gone underwater; sneers more sneerily still at academics, who, after all, “are not even people in my book”; knocks “doe-eyed simpleton Jackson Browne” and rock-star company for daring to enjoin right-wingers from appropriating their songs; demands recognition as a pop-culture sophisticate all the same, since he was once into Gang of Four, perhaps the only band to out-Marx The Clash; wonders why Islamophobia might possibly be offensive; laughs off green energy; and sneers at Jon Stewart for japing the true patriots of the tea party. Gutfeld offers this screedy package as a species of comedy, just as Rush Limbaugh defends himself as an entertainer, but it’s the same old right-wing stuff. Either you like it or you don’t, but there’s not much you haven’t seen before, the Gang of Four business aside.

Don’t be outraged by this book. Just don’t care.