Recently, FOX News’ co-host Greg Gutfeld took a fascinating video of Koko the gorilla playing bass intended to bring awareness to the Gorilla Foundation as an opportunity to diss Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was Flea’s bass that Koko was strumming, and Gutless Gutfeld just couldn’t help himself from throwing shade. “As most musicians know, this is a vast improvement over the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the worst band on the planet.”
A few days later, he doubled down on the fustian hate by “correcting” himself: “What I meant to say was the Red Hot Chili Peppers [are] the worst band in the universe. I’d like to apologize for that confusion.”
When asked about the remarks by NME, Flea kept admirably cool. He took a few clean shots at FOX, but essentially employed a laissez-faire definition attitude. “I remember seeing a poll recently that said people who watch FOX News knew less about world affairs than people who watch no news at all.” Zing “It’s clearly a funny [program].” Zap. “It doesn’t faze me, not really. I heard that. It’s funny. I don’t care. They’re all welcome to hate us. God bless ’em.”
While it’s pretty obvious Flea was politely calling the network a bunch of idiot clowns, somehow Gutfeld managed to interpret it as if the bassist were agreeing with him. On Monday’s episode of The Five, he recounted his own remarks and said Flea “responded, and he said that he didn’t mind. He said that it was great, he thought our show was funny, and it was okay to have your own opinion, and was very happy. I thought this was a really great example of how differences can be solved so easily by simply agreeing with me.”
Wait, what? Agreeing with him? Flea never “said it was great,” and when he called the show “funny,” he was mocking it as a comedy of errors instead of the news program it purports to be. When Gutfeld’s co-host Jesse Watters goaded, “You wanted a fight, come on,” Gutfeld simply rewrote everything Flea said: “He agreed that his band is terrible.”
Go ahead and re-read Flea’s comments — see if you think he “agreed.” We’ll wait.
This is yet another amazing example of how the talking heads over at FOX News possess the uncanny ability to hear or see something that means one thing and process it in a completely batshit backwards way that somehow promotes their own beliefs, even if it’s a clear-cut counterargument.
Revisit Gutfeld’s original comments about Flea:
