(3 Minutes Read)The dismissal by some conservative leaders (presumably in good faith) that Fuentes is simply a controversial voice in the conservative movement is confounding. Are they not hearing the vile, predominantly antiemetic and misogynist, ranting of Fuentes?
It’s like that “Rubin’s vase or Rubin’s face illusion” where “the illustration is an ambiguous two-dimensional image that can be perceived in two different, mutually exclusive ways.” Some people see the image as a vase and some see the profiles of two faces – both seeing what they are seeing clear as day. And then some people see nothing until they kind of squint their eyes.
If you squint your eyes at Fuentes, he kind of looks like a comedian on a late-night talk show delivering lines in front of a mic: not an off-the-cuff gifted political communicator as attributed to him by his fans like the very politically serious comedian Dave Smith and laugh-along- Carlson.
No, Fuentes appears to be delivering a largely crafted, beer buddy bar routine with good comedic timing, and even sometimes delivering a literal punch line to his desk or the air for emphasis. He appears to have a genuine talent at riffing at times, but to say that his communication delivery is an unrehearsed hour or so is disingenuous at best.
And Fuentes is not just delivering his vile, largely antisemitic and misogynist, content in the medium of a comedy routine performance. He appears to be mimicking a toned-down version of a very particular comedian, namely Gilbert Gottfried – a Jewish comedian. (Above photo credit: Vulture)
Gottfried was a comedian with unique characteristics. Fuentes’ persona has Gottfried’s squinty face which appears most strikingly performative when compared to his “resting face”, e.g. if he stops the routine to pause and think. Thumbs up with open hands appears to be used by many comedians and in Fuentes’ case it’s highly exaggerated due to his “Hitchhiker Thumbs”, a trait found in about 26% of the population. Gottfried was also well known for his Brooklyn accent while Fuents’ appearing to have a Boston sounding accent despite growing up in Chicago.
Most notably, Fuentes maintains the same uniquely high-pitched voice of Gottfried. It doesn’t have Gottfried’s grate, but it matches the high pitch. Here’s the comedian Ethan Trace impersonating Gottfried.
The similarities on the comedic front doesn’t end there.
“What Gottfried didn’t believe was that there were any lines you couldn’t cross. The quickest way to get him to riff on a topic that was considered off-limits was to tell him he couldn’t joke about it. Sometimes that cost him dearly, as with all the money he lost when he was fired as Aflac’s spokesduck in 2011 after tweeting zingers about the Japan tsunami, but usually it somehow came across as endearing. His heart, always searching for the next laugh, was in the right place, his longtime pals say.” Vulture, Gilbert Gottfried, Remembered by Those Who Knew Him, By Dan Reilly,
It’s possible some free speech conservative leaders who like a good comedy routine may be hearing and seeing an image of Fuentes as a psychological construct of a seemingly familiar Jewish comedian and friend, and someone merely crossing historical controversial comedic lines – and they are not about to cancel someone because of a knee jerk call by some people to cancel Fuentes and laugh-along-Carlson to remove the distressing irritants.
That’s not it. If you squint your eyes back at Fuentes, you will see a simulacrum of a comedian and conservative – mimicry being a device of dark forces to fool the unwary – espousing views that led to a life of fear for Jews and ultimately the Holocaust. The Holocaust that Fuentes joked about where Jews were incinerated in ovens like cookies. This is a line that must be forever “too soon.”
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