There are few people on cable news as loathsome as Greg Gutfeld. The most flattering assessment of his role on Fox News Channel is that he’s a professional troll. As the host of the late-night program Red Eye, as well as one of the talking dumbstupids on The Five, Gutfeld is a less funny Dennis Miller, mixing what can be generously referred to as jokes along with sniping viral dollops of indignation perfectly targeted for the angry, deranged, bumper-sticker craving viewers who desperately cling to Fox News like Linus clings to his wooby.
Meanwhile, in predictable form, the far-right has launched into its April version of the War On Christmas routine, wheeling out the myopic, zombie gripe about how horrifying it is that roughly half of all Americans don’t pay federal income taxes — as if it’s a choice or a nefarious loophole in the system, you know, like the ones exploited by many of the corporate “people” who enjoy a tax rate of zero.
So of course Gutfeld jumped in forehead-first and went off on a rant about this obvious injustice during Tuesday’s edition of The Five. Here’s the video, but don’t worry — you don’t have to watch it. I’ll dig into it below so you don’t have to.
Gutfeld begins:
“Yay! It’s tax day or for 70 million households, Tuesday.”
Now there’s an original joke. He could’ve replaced “Tuesday” with a well-timed “NOT!” and it would’ve been roughly the same caliber of Lieutenant-Steve-From-Good-Morning-Vietnam comedy. Substance-wise, and right off the bat, he’s wrong. Dead wrong. Every American adult is required by law to file tax returns on tax day. Federal returns, state returns, local returns. It’s tax day for everyone. Just because some people don’t end up paying federal taxes doesn’t mean it’s not tax day.
He goes on to describe how those 70 million Americans wonder why everyone else is at the post office on tax day… READ MORE