Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You

If you haven't had the Greg Gutfeld experience, you have not yet begun to live!! He is an incredible person in so many ways. Not only does he have a gift for identifying situations/circumstances in a way that would not occur to the average person, he has his phenomenal talent in communicating those ideas. Beyond his brilliance, he has the greatest sense of humor and quick wit! If there is a topic or a person who makes my blood boil, Gregory the Great can make it so laughable! After reading about his life and the various influences he encountered, I became more and more fascinated with him...or at the very least, studying how his brain is wired. "Why?", you ask. Because Greg Gutfeld did not allow anyone else design who he was destined to be. He did not fall into the "traps" (the ones you will read about in this book and his others) to become a "plastic" person molded by anyone but himself. And what a great man he is. You can tell he is incredibly authentic in everything he says and in his relaxed, comfortable mannerisms. Gregory the Great built his life through his own independent thought processes and choices. He passes his wisdom to us through his books and through his insight on his television shows. I can't tell you how much I look up to him. (And that is true because I'm 5'3".) The book is FANTASTIC! And I promise you, he is addictive. It's like he is some sort of guru filled with wisdom that you can't wait to absorb. And... if that doesn't happen... then you will find yourself laughing your "hinder" off because he is HILARIOUS! Isn't that a great combination? You can either learn or laugh...or both. One last thing I must mention. His wife is Russian, as am I. That's actually when I realized he was a genius!! I have to get a life size, cardboard cutout of Greg so we can converse at any time. That will make my life complete. Anyway, read the book and I hope you appreciate it as much as I did.

Greg Gutfeld is the right's answer to Jon Stewart, and I have to say of late just being objective, he's genuinely funnier in today's milieu. (I think that's because Stewart, despite popular apologists to the contrary, pulls his punches whenever taking on liberals, putting in a sort of pro forma appearance. Stewart has increasingly compromised himself by playing politics behind comedy nigh constantly, then retreating behind the facade "But I'm just a comedian!" if a conservative critique hits home. After his March to Restore Sanity, Stewart lost the last appearance of being anything more than a political shill. It's sad, because he is one of our generation's great talents, but has refused to puncture the titanic ineptitude of the current administration.) Gutfeld knows who the hell he is and has both the balls and the intellect to critique the absurd hypocrisies of modern liberalism. He's spot on here in his major thesis that worshiping the cool has lead to a nihilistic blind alley for both the left and our greater society. I've developed this thesis independently myself before, positing that the left's conflation of the social self with the political self is now so complete that no liberal can take a position on any issue -- from fracking to hate crimes -- that runs contrary to the peer pressure of their group. I do not think we see anything like this sort of lockstep on today's right. Gutfeld is genuinely funny, at turns slashing but then falling back to mild self-deprecation, always engaging as a writer and heads and tails smarter than the combined staff of MSNBC. Next to Charles Krauthammer, Gutfeld is the smartest person on Fox. (If I had my druthers, they'd dismiss the lackluster Eric Bowling and bring in a conservative of color like Jason Riley to balance out the panel.) But The Five works as television mainly because we are currently governed by such absurdly incompetent people, who have nothing left beyond their cool cachet and Che mystique.

Very entertaining and insightful book. Here is my list of pros and cons: Pros: - Very funny. All the good and smart comedy that you would expect from the Red Eye host. - Fast paced, easy reading. - Goes right to the point and is not afraid of offending people with different views. In his own words: "My politics are simple: Leave me the hell alone, and take your definitions of cool and BS exclusionary language with you." - Bases everything on well documented and backed-up facts. - Very insightful and opens your eyes on a lot of topics. Did you know facebook paid no taxes in 2012? - Makes a lot of sense and clearly explains conservative values. - The story in the last chapter is very insightful and a recommended reading to all young people. Cons: - Unfortunately, Gutfeld does a lot of labeling in his book. Either you are cool or uncool, there is nothing that falls in the middle. - There is also a lot of false assumptions and generalizations made on the new generation. For example, Gutfeld says that no young person would like to work for an oil company because he does not want to be labeled as uncool. I think the author has been hanging out with the wrong group of young people. - Building up on the previous two points, Gutfeld assumes that all millenials are spoiled brats. All young people don't know where money comes from. All young people rely on government and dad's credit card, etc... - Provides no recommendations to young people on how to avoid being part of the "cool" society (a big exception is in the last chapter). It would be nice if Gutfeld had included some insights or tips at the end of each chapter aimed at people that had fallen into the "cool" trends. - I must give a little criticism to the "Free Radicals" chapter near the end of the book. Although most of the people in this list deserve the kudos, Gutfeld fails to explain why exactly they deserve to be in this list. For example, he includes rock stars and band members like Ariel Pink just because he happens to be a talented musician. I think part of this chapter was unnecessary and inconsistent. Overall, a great book by Greg Gutfeld. I look forward to his future work.

I have been a fan of the Gutfeld Institute of Rational Brain Activity for several years now. Writing this review will probably be one of the hardest reviews I've written in Amazon. Taken on its surface, Greg takes on just about every form of lunacy, pop culture, crazy Hollywood "stars," crazy dictators, crazy Hollywood talking heads, all of the news networks, several crazy representatives of different cultures which make up our society, fracking, Obamacare, the American society as it stands today, and if I named everything, that would be my review! I cannot tell you how much I laughed at various phrases he uses to describe totally ridiculous things people who should know better say or do throughout his stories. The Chapter on Hugo Chavez nearly made me pass out. I know intelligence when I see it. And from the first day I saw Greg on Red Eye, I knew he was a whole lot smarter than he let on. Greg is that very rare person who has the ability to see through all the BS going on around him, ferret it out, and somehow not only make it make sense, but make sense in a way that make liberals blow flames out of their ears and leave conservatives wondering if he's on their side or not. Nevertheless, his grasp of today's youth, today's average social network surfer, today's COOLness and how upside down society is becoming because of it, is so spot on, it's like he took a million post it notes, somehow put them in order, and actually makes sense how this invasion of the quantity vs. quality social scale came to be. Then, somehow, he uses his snarky wit and crazy/sane verbiage to bring it all together and MAKE SENSE! A dry fact-filled book would sit on a shelf and collect dust. Greg reaches out to today's youngest generation whose parents are so busy working, taking part in social media, keeping the kids busy in after school activities, because THEY are as confused as their parents. Somehow they manage to find down time, Yoga, the Gym, book clubs and possibly the more necessary wine clubs, to get in their free time trying to rest up to do it all over again tomorrow. His comments and additional stories about SO MUCH STUFF COMING IN TODAY are critically relevant. The fact that EVERYTHING has become politicized, making the field much more muddy, makes his effort to let us know COOL is not (or should not be) our ultimate goal in life. As some of us watch things sag, more and more, not seeming to have an engine to run it or a rudder to guide it, it seems like everything depressingly has no direction. Sort of like algebrabraic equations no longer equal anything. He pushes back, pointing out how dumb it is that we are caught in this sad maze of who to blame, what to do, where to go, how to get it, turns it on its head and points his finger at the who, what, where, and why and in very plain and colorful language, accurately puts the blame where it belongs (on us!!! :-0 ). WE make decisions every day that affect our families, our friends, our parents, our children and buy INTO this crazy society that COOL is, indeed, COOL, and we must attain it at any price. Of course, when he says it, over and over again, it is funnier and full of biting wisdom. Greg is asking us to wake up out of our stupor, and perhaps on any Hollywood award night, maybe we should NOT be glued to the empty-headed nonsense going on in the media, and turn it BACK to where it belongs: TOWARD THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN! GET INVOLVED IN POLITICS - HELP BRING BACK ALL THAT WE'VE LOST! DO SOME RESEARCH AND SUPPORT A GOOD CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATION THAT WOULD PASS THE TEST OF THE GREG GUTFELT INSTITUTE of RATIONAL BRAIN ACTIVITY!! We can do this!!! And Greg is at the head of the line!! Our priorities are hideously twisted, Greg's entire book shouts that out. We MUST read this book carefully to find out HOW, while there is still time left, we break the hold that money, technology, fashion, peeking into other people's lives via reality TV, and ANYTHING Hollywood is trying to sell us in general, has on us, that we check out the Constitution, check out the business pages now and again, and most importantly, get educated on religions, groups of people, those living on assistance, government hand outs, and the most important thing given to us of all: FREEDOM! We live in the best country in the world and we let these false-faced nutballs in the media dictate our lives! Now he is on FOX NEWS NETWORK ON The Five (at 5:00 p.m.Monday through Friday), a brilliant addition to the team, still has his fun on Red Eye (also on FOX News Network), has written his (I think) 2nd full book (Edit: 3/21/2014 - I stand corrected - Dana said today on the Five that this is his SIXTH BOOK - my most humble apologies to the author), is winning the respect of no less than Bob Beckel (not an easy thing for a guy like Greg to do!!), is turning up on Bill O'Reilly, and is on his way to becoming one of the great thinkers of his generation (seriously!). This book has much more meat to it than the last book. I think it could have been cut into four books, with more factoids added to educate the masses to the mess this country is currently wallowing in. Greg Gutfeld is one of those writers who can, in one sentence, cut the lies out of the mouths of (fill in the blank) and tie it up in a bow so funny, you might have to go back and ponder what he said for several days. I don't like my own review, even though I've been at it for two days. I can't catch Greg's amazing ability to cut through all the BS handed to us every day and somehow have it make sense and make it edgy and funny at the same time (funny as in funny rational). So, go out and buy his book. NOW!!!!! His numbers will make him lots o' money, yes. More importantly, it will show the Hollywood COOL and the Washington D.C. COOL and the campus COOL people that we have their number. While Hillary and Obama danced, four of our best men died in Benghazi. Just this week, while they danced again, the Crimea section of the Ukraine was stolen and taken away by Putin. On the international front, things do not look good. On the National front, things don't look good. WAKE UP, AMERICA!! While the cat's been away, the mice have been carting out little pieces of what made this country the exceptional nation it WAS. NOT COOL is one of the finest relevant books on the state of our world today. Greg has the intelligence to pull it all together, the thick skin not to care who he skewers (they deserve it), a vast range of observations and knowledge to pull from, and a slightly self-deprecating way to end it. One thing I know, you will learn much you did not know when you started Not Cool. I will be keeping this one near me as a reference guide to the Not Cool and don't know it crowd!! Five stars for a book well done, Greg Gutfeld! Very, very cool book! No, having heard Greg say today (Edit - 3/21/2014) on The Five that Greg thinks cool is actually evil (in terms of its collective effect on society) - very, very, GOOD book!

"Not Cool" is a brilliant skewering of the mindlessness that passes as intellectualism and culture on the left. I appreciate this book more than I would from other pure-GOP talking heads, as Greg is a genuine libertarian with viewpoints frequently out of lockstep from the mainstream of the right. I applaud that he isn't afraid to defend his own positions even if they are totally unique (and a few of them are.) The principle underlying this book is that liberals define themselves as cool (Greg's logic in explaining this is spot on) and that "the cool hate nothing more than when a genuinely original thinker rejects them" (p.29.) Indeed. The examples he cites are irrefutable and anyone who dares to stand up to this groupthink is deemed "intolerant" or something that ends in "-ist" immediately. Among Gutfeld's most frequent targets are the loony positions endorsed by celebrities who always claim the high ground even if they are endorsing radicals like the Weather Underground, which Robert Redford used as a basis for his "The Company You Keep," a film with great variance from the facts of the actual killings involved. I heartily approve of Gutfeld's proposal that "celebrities and activists who adore violent radicals should be forced to meet the relatives of those adorable violent radicals" (p. 67.) This is no dry book of political commentary, though: Gutfeld's somewhat random, scathing and sarcastic sense of humor comes through nearly constantly ("I made a vow years ago not to see any movie starring Robert Redford or Susan Sarandon unless they are documentaries that culminate in them being eaten alive in a vat of European congers," p.69.) A sound policy. Just because he's sarcastic and scornful doesn't mean there isn't a lot of thought and insight behind his proclamations, for example the chapter "Killer Cool" begins aptly thus: "If you're looking for the worst person in the room, find the guy wearing the "Free Mumia" button, as a show of support for a cop killer." This is a rich vein for Gutfeld to mine, as it is perhaps the biggest chink in the armor of the left, and the thought process comes to a head in the excellent chapter "How Heathens Become Hip," which begins with commentary about Hugo Chávez. When Chávez, a murderous thug, died the cool came calling: "When Chávez bit the dust, who did we see? Sean Penn. Oliver Stone. Jimmy Carter. Joe Kennedy. All decorating the corpse with wreaths of blithering blather." (Do we even need to read Michael Moore's tweets on the matter?) Gutfeld contrasts this to the death of Margaret Thatcher a few weeks later at "the National Union of Students conference in Sheffield, where some delegates actually cheered when told of Thatcher's death" (pp. 96-104.) Mind you none of these students were old enough to actually remember Thatcher, but when a British Celebrity expressed her condolences on Twitter "she was met with vile slurs (all of which rhymed with the word 'bunt.')" "Rolling Stone" putting the Boston Bomber on the cover is cited as an appalling glorification of evil in the amoral world of the cool: he explains that he'd like to read the issue with Bob Dylan on the cover ("the man loved Barry Goldwater") but he can no longer buy it and support the editorial viewpoint it furthers, concluding "Me, I'm getting a subscription to 'Cat Fancy.' When was the last time a cat blew up anything?" While I've illustrated some of Gutfeld's themes with examples (I could go on, but the review would really take a while...) but perhaps my favorite chapter in the book is "The Rise of the Free Radical" at the end which lists people who are truly cool, and who are infrequently celebrated, even though they should be due to some common elements which Gutfeld defines (p. 230) as honesty, fidelity to principle, unpredictability that starts to make sense once you realize the person has a code, and persuasive correctness. They are morally upright people who do what they genuinely believe to be the right thing even when nobody is watching, and Gutfeld provides a convincing argument for the selections. Examples include such diverse choices as black conservatives, Ambassador John Bolton, Bjorn Lomborg, Ramirez, Hirsi Ali, Iranian metal bands, legal immigrants, Truman Capote, Japan, Mike judge, Margaret Thatcher, King Buzzo, Ben Carson, and my favorite choice on the list, Skunk Baxter (former "Steely Dan" and "Doobie Brothers" guitarist, who now consults for the Pentagon as an expert in ballistic missile defense systems. Seriously.) A list like that does not spring from the mind of a party political hack, and certainly Gutfeld is no hack: he's a scary-smart, insightful, and deeply funny guy who knows how to make a point, and here his overarching point is to think for yourself. I don't agree with everything he says or believes, but that's exactly what he'd want.

As a regular viewer of The Five, I anticipated what and how this book would communicate. However, in the words of Ms. Perino's former boss, I "misunderestimated". This was better than just a syntactically challenging adventure in social and political criticism. It was Hayek with lots of uncharacteristic humor and no characteristic humility. Age appropriately, at first read, I understood perhaps 50% of Greg's allusions/metaphors/similes. By the third read, I understood about half of them. (Thanks, Yogi) Yet, I understood fully his point(s). This book is about Hayek's book called The Fatal Conceit, only Gutfeld calls it elitism. With topical organization (chapters) in a table of "Dis-Contents", he satirizes the group think foundation of the modern "Progressive" worldview. They know the unknowable and they talk to each other often, thus firming the foundation. Dissent is disconcerting, deleterious. My favorite line in the book, among dozens, is his plea to his relatives that "when I turn sixty, kill my Twitter account". This work requires reflection. It does not read like a novel. It takes time to work through his thought process. If you watch the show, there are those moments/pauses when Greg finishes his diatribes, and his partners' furrowed brows reveal a pensive hoped-for understanding of what he just said. Yeah, well the book is full of those delayed onset rewards. The only really bothersome part of the book, and this is again for regular viewers, is you will hear this book in his harsh theatrical voice. His (I think theatrically) contorted face shows up also. It is a great book and an enlightening read. Buy it. I await now the release of Ms. Guilfoyle's book to finish The Five trilogy.

Gutfield writes with passion and spares no words. The points that he makes is not only the truth but categorizes the far left quite accurately. His wit as well as guiltless humor about himself is refreshing. Those that lean to or practicing leftist will hate this book because it is a clear reflection of who they are. We right wingers feel quite comfortable with this book and are in full agreement with most of his arguments. I really think that the TRUE COOL people need no pangs of rage, anger, or hate because we are quite comfortable with ourselves and WILL fight to protect our "coolness". If I must offer any criticism it would be about the profane and swear words I occasionally read. A truly great film or novel does not need to dishonor God or themselves with such unnecessary language.

I used to think Greg Gutfeld was an idiot. That just goes to show you that you should never form an opinion about anything based on friends' comments without learning about the subject on your own. My first real introduction to him occurred when The Five replaced Glenn Beck in Fox's early evening lineup. Gutfeld's participation in The Five proves him to be among the most insightful pundits on the planet. His unique brand of 'punditry' (especially as evidenced through the pages of 'Not Cool') is down-to-earth, common-sense-based observation, often of those people and events that are simply accepted as being 'the norm'. Gutfeld teaches us that 'the norm' is too often imposed upon us rather than being a part of a natural 'evolutionary' process. Greg's commentary is courageous in its refusal to acknowledge politics' sacred cows, and his demeanor in informing us lacks the pomposity of so many others on the right. He has the depth of a Bill Buckley without the verbosity. He talks with us as if he were sitting in our livingroom discussing the sorry state of the world, over a beer. And his candid irreverence is endearing. When I was reading Not Cool in our study (the 'cool' term for what used to be called a 'den'), Gutfeld's quick, dry, sarcastic wit, in virtually every paragraph, had me consistently laughing out loud to the point where my husband yelled in from the living room, 'Are you reading Dave Barry again???' I am tired of being talked down to by both liberals and conservatives alike. Tired of their condescension and arrogance. Gutfeld isn't arrogant. He's frank. And his microscope is accurate and unforgiving ... exactly what the American public needs at this watershed moment in history.