How’s that for a chapter heading? How could you not read what follows? I mean, even if the next thousand words are garbage, you still gotta get to the end, with that promise. So I’m going to do my best to fulfill your expectations.
But to draw this out, I will start with how I figured out why I mattered. Trust me, this will end in a happy, positive note that will lift your spirits—or make you vomit. For me, it often happens at the same time.
It begins with music—mainly the music that I assign to bump in my segments on The Five. My musical choices reflect genuinely the stuff I listen to at home. It’s a jarring mixed bag from ’70s punk to ’90s industrial, from 1960s surf to 1980s psychedelia. I play Turkish psyche, Australian shoegaze, Central American pop. The bands I pick are usually never ever played on what we once called “the radio.” They include, regularly, The Cramps, Tobacco, Melvins, Mr. Bungle, Power Trip, Devin Townsend, Public Image, Mike Patton, Gang of Four, X, Wire, and even super-obscure stuff like SVT, Tuxedomoon, and Snakefinger. I can safely say that the majority of my colleagues on The Five find my music barely listenable. Once in a while, their ears might perk up to some melody, hook, or beat, but it’s not interesting enough for them to write down the name of the band when I tell them who it is. I’ve had mild tiffs over this: “Why do you play stuff viewers never heard of?” Jesse asks me at least once a week.
My answer is “Because it’s stuff viewers never heard of.” You guys can play the popular stuff, the fan-favorite country hits, and I’ll stick to the stuff they’d never hear were it not for me. And maybe they’ll like it. (As it turns out, more than a few Fox viewers share my tastes, which says something terrifying about a few Fox viewers.)
But it’s way more than that. I’ve asked myself why I curate tunes every day, when I can just leave it to the producers and instead focus on my hair like Jesse does his, but I realize it’s not about music, it’s about my role not on TV, but on earth.
When I was twenty, I was a funny little punk. I drank, I fought, I listened to the Dead Kennedys, and hung out at tiny clubs and dingy record stores. But more and more I found myself put off by the reflexive liberalism of my peers, and more attracted to views that could be construed as conservative. I found myself laughing at the self-obsessed anger of the lefties on the Berkeley campus that I endured for four years, as I started reading right-leaning mags like National Review and The American Spectator. When I graduated from Cal, I ended up taking an internship in Washington, DC, at a conservative journalism outfit. There I stood out like a stocky sore thumb. I had little in common with many of my fellow interns, who were devoutly religious lifelong conservatives. They were good people, but many of them weren’t my people.
So, when acquaintances who think they know me ask me in disbelief, “Greg, why in hell did you become a conservative?” I always say, “I didn’t join conservatives to become a conservative. I joined conservatism so they would become me.”
I realized that if someone like me couldn’t stand the Left, and found the Right’s ideas persuasive but still their whole world stodgy and close-minded, I had only one choice—not to join that new world but have that new world join me. And let me, platonically, of course, rub off on them. I had to infect the right with Gutfelditis. Yep, I needed them to be more like me—looser, weirder. They should be willing to laugh, be absurd, and risk offending people. They needed to stop taking themselves seriously. I was the one to help them do that, for sure. At the very least, I need to get them to wear less khaki.
So, now you see the point of the eclectic music choices—it’s an effort to make some kind of headway into a world that could use some surprise, some oddity. I realize my role is that. To infect everyone around me with whatever I have (that isn’t legitimately contagious). It’s my way of reproducing without actually reproducing!
At one point, on The Five, Jesse looked at me and said, “Greg, you can’t force everyone to be like you.” He correctly identified my aims, but that wasn’t going to stop me.
So that’s my purpose in life… that’s why I matter.
How does that help you? Well, because I believe that my purpose is also yours. You’re here on this planet, so your good qualities rub off on other people. Every day you have the potential in front of you for leaving a mark on someone in both a good way and a bad way: the plus or the minus…
Which is the point of this book.
What you value about yourself—that plus—must be shared—if anything, to cancel out the negatives that are shared accidentally or deliberately by others. You are here on this planet to add your own positive attributes—your pluses—to the places that really need them. They need you more than you need them.
Joining a group, for example, isn’t to make your life better. It’s for you to make the others in that group better by absorbing the goodness in you. If you decide you want to join the Young Republicans, it shouldn’t be because you want to be a Young Republican—it’s that you want to make them better by knowing the cooler, funnier you. Likewise, if you’re a liberal and want to join the Young Democrats, it’s not simply to advance their cause but to bring what you have, as a forgiving person, to a group that could remember the art of forgiveness. The Right could always loosen up, but the Left needs to forgive more and cancel less. At this rate, there won’t be any liberals left to cancel.
I’ve edited magazines, written books, helmed TV shows, and I’ve met most conservative leaders from the boldfaced names on down. And I’m the same freak I was when I was twenty. I hope that through these three decades of floating in and out of the shallow pools of pop culture that my lurid presence has had some positive impact. It must be a plus!!! And if it’s not, then this book was a total waste.
Take Red Eye, which will remain the weirdest show, perhaps ever (with the possible exceptions of Fernwood 2 Night and Chris Elliot’s brilliant Get a Life), and, yes, it was on Fox News! Despite having Fox News regulars on the show, it certainly didn’t feel like Fox News. Instead it burned its own warped path, late at night even by a drug addict’s standards, attracting people who never would have turned on the channel. They found Red Eye by accident, and were repulsed, confused, and then addicted.
That show was, for me, a strategy to impact conservatism by giving it an injection of manic, surreal absurdity. We had guests ranging from GWAR’s late front man, Oderus Urangus, to John Bolton. We’re probably the only show ever to be guest-hosted by Mike Huckabee, who also featured Johnny Rotten, King Buzzo from the Melvins, and other metal titans. I still think we’re the only show to feature Black Moth Super Rainbow, and Ron Paul, while having the band Train write a song about us. Amy Schumer and Steven Crowder fought over the merits of virginity, other guests were often high, drunk, or both, and our pathetic staff once played softball against a team of strippers, where one table dancer chipped my tooth. But I am digressing into a dark hole.
Red Eye may be an obscure footnote in TV land, but I know it impacted the network, and you. Because of it, I ended up on The Five—and, yes, on that show, I cleaned myself up a little but not a lot. I still try to create chaos if the show gets too comfortable. I still say things that sound dirty but aren’t—and, yes, I still play my godforsaken music.
In that way, I feel that I matter. It’s like I am leaving a mark. And that’s all you have to do in this world, is leave a mark. Just make it a plus, not a minus. You can be remembered for both, but only one, fondly.