Jesse Watters Doesn't Add Up
Jesse Watters Doesn't Add Up
Once Again the Fox News Host Proves He’s Less Than The Sum of His Parts
This week, I was a part of the Democracy Summit at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. It was a great event, and a lot of people turned out to hear my thoughts. I’m always blown away by things like this. I never could have imagined that my life would have taken me in this direction. They didn’t want me for my jokes. They wanted me for my thoughts on democracy.
Of course they also were hoping that I sprinkled in some jokes. And I did!
People there told me that the school and the local community were excited for my presence. I also never imagined that people in small town Colorado would feel that way. The room was full of people young and old. I was interviewed on stage by the president of the university, Amy Parson, and a group of students. We talked about a variety of 2024 subjects, and at the end, one of the students named Jason asked me about the principles that I thought were most important in a person. The first answer that immediately leapt to mind was empathy. We are at such a deficit of empathy in this country. People often seem proud to have a lack of empathy. If the GOP decides to have a platform at this year's convention it could easily be “Insults over empathy!” Look at how many of them responded to the bridge collapse in Baltimore. Instead of offering their increasingly meaningless and hypocritical “thoughts and prayers,” many went with calling Brandon Scott, the Black mayor of Baltimore, “the DEI mayor.” That’s racist, even for regular old racists!
As I said in Colorado, I don’t have to like you in order to want you to have a good life. I want everyone to have everything they need because (hopefully) that means me and my community get what we need too. I want my enemies to experience lives filled with justice, equity, joy, and easy access to every necessary resource. I even want that for Fox News viewers.
And that brings us to Fox News’ number one Tucker Carlson impressionist, Jesse Watters. Jesse Watters hosts the time slot on Fox News that used to belong to Tucker Carlson before Fox let him go for apparently not drinking enough of the MAGA Kool-Aid.
If you are not familiar with Jesse, that is great for you. He is best known as a guy who went to Chinatown in 2016 to make fun of China and Chinese Americans in order to curry favor with noted bag of scum, Bill O’Reilly. It was voted “America’s Funniest Comedy Routine of the Year” in 1850.
But it was all worth it for the immediate response by The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng.
But that takedown clearly didn’t stop Jesse. He currently makes millions of dollars a year talking to millions of people on Fox News. Of course, I don’t watch Fox News, so I only hear about Jesse when something stupid he says goes viral.
Which means I hear about him a lot.
But this week he said something that was so stupid, I had to replay it multiple times to make sure I wasn’t missing something that made it make sense. I wasn’t. And the thing that makes this so notable to me is that this isn’t about me and Jesse having a political disagreement (although that is baked in here, too). Jesse was talking about California’s new law to raise wages at fast food restaurants to $20 an hour. But instead of focusing on that, I was mostly focused on this incredibly mediocre white man’s inability to do basic math. This was during his appearance on the PBD podcast. How would I describe the PBD podcast? It is basically like, “What if Joe Rogan wore a suit?”
That joke is perfect, by the way.
If you want to you can check out this breakdown of what happened on Rational National, one of my favorite YouTube news channels. But I’ll also explain what happened below.
So Jesse Watters says to the crew …
“If you’re making $20 an hour to work at a fast food restaurant… is that six figures??”
First of all, if my nine year old kid said that, I would be like, “Okay, let’s stop right there. Lemme get some paper and a pencil.”
But Patrick Bet-David quickly tells him that $20 an hour at 40 hours a week is $40,000 a year. That would be for 50 weeks. Apparently Bet-David is assuming people who work for $20 an hour also want two unpaid weeks off. At that wage, I don’t think you can afford two unpaid weeks off.
Then Jesse resets himself like an old PC computer that you won for free in a raffle in 1998, and he says…
“Okay, then if your husband or wife is also there… you’re making $100,000 as a family.”
WHEW! This pile of human goo and hair products couldn’t do the math of 40,000 + 40,000. If my nine year old daughter got that wrong I would ask for a meeting with her teacher. Seriously, I just asked her after I typed this. She immediately said, “80,000.” When I told her that I asked her because an adult couldn’t do that math she said, “Well… that’s just… something.” Like me, she starts with diplomacy.
Jesse is corrected AGAIN, and he is told that the actual number is $80,000. At that point Jesse demonstrates the only skill that he has - his inability to feel shame. He continues to make the (stupid) point that he was going to make anyway. He wants to make sure he dies on the hill that people who make $20 an hour to work at fast food restaurants are making too much money. Again, he makes this point, even though his math is literally not math-ing. All over social media I see talk of “girl math.” Well, this is MAGA math.
I posted about this on Twitter. (You can’t make me call it X.) Even though I have dialed my use of that platform way back since Elon took over, I just knew that if there was going to be an Internet dogpile on Jesse, it was going to happen there. And I wanted to be a part of it.
Jesse’s clear-eyed and open-faced stupidity is the inevitable result of the right wing regularly attacking intellectuals and vetted authorities. Here you have a dude who can’t do BASIC MATH being paid millions of dollars to talk to millions of people about the news. And he works for a “news organization” who had to pony up $787,000,000, because they employed several people to regularly lie about the 2020 election.
Anti-intellectualism combined with a lack of empathy are two of the main ingredients that comprise Donald Trump. Clearly Jesse asked for an extra helping of anti-intellectualism. And that is why I continue to sing from the rafters that no matter who the next president is, America is in trouble. I think it was put best in this headline touting my appearance on The Last Laugh Podcast.
As many people under my tweet have pointed out, $20 an hour isn’t a lot of money. It certainly isn’t too much money to pay a fast food worker. And it really isn’t a lot of money when you find out that the CEO of McDonald’s made NINETEEN MILLION DOLLARS LAST YEAR. Seriously, who do you think works harder? Chris Kempczinski, the CEO of McDonald’s, or whoever is working the fry machine right now as I type this? How hard is it to be the CEO of McDonald’s in 2024? He didn’t invent the Big Mac. All he has to do is figure out what foods to put “Mc” in front of. And I’m sure he outsources that.
Also, as many people pointed out, the way many fast food chains and chain stores work is to have a bunch of part time employees so you don’t have to give out those delicious full-time benefits. That means many adults who work those jobs have a second and sometimes a third gig.
One of the main reasons that some people think that $20 an hour is a high wage is because the minimum wage around most of the country is $7.25 an hour. And the inconvenient truth is that if the minimum wage was tied to our nation’s growth in productivity, as smart people think it should be, it would be close to $22 per hour. For more on why 2024 might be a good year to fight for a higher minimum wage, check out former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s substack:
Those are just the facts. But in a nation that has learned to enthusiastically reject facts, all I can hope for is empathy. I would hope that empathy would wash over the puddle of wasted DNA known as Jesse Watters as he stumbled over basic math while he excitedly discussed a rich nation with embarrassing levels of poverty. But that is clearly too much to hope for. For now, I’ll just quote my nine year old’s very empathetic response, “Well… that’s just… something.”
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Here are some updates:
Upcoming Events
Stand-Up Comedy in Asheville on Wednesday 6/19
HOLY CATS! I BOOKED A REAL STAND-UP COMEDY SHOW! Am I really back to stand-up? I still don’t know. But if you are in Asheville, North Carolina in June, I’m doing stand-up at at the Orange Peel on June 19th. Tickets just went on sale. See you there.
Recent Podcast Appearances
I was invited back to Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend! This is my favorite response to the appearance. Despite what this person says, there were several laughs. Although, I do love this comment.
Available wherever you listen to podcasts, or right here:
On the Daily Beast’s “The Last Laugh” I talked with host Matt Wilstein about my ambivalence around pursuing the life of a comic right now. We also talked about comedy’s role in the Biden vs. Trump rematch, why comedians like Joe Rogan have embraced third-party spoiler RFK Jr., the fallout from my ‘We Need to Talk About Cosby’ docu-series and a lot more.
I was a guest on Stars and Stars with Isa, where I learned a whole lot of things I never knew about astrology. Apparently I have an Aquarius Sun, Scorpio Moon, and Taurus Rising. I had no idea what that meant. Listen in to hear me find out! It was a really fun time. Isa is awesome. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.
DonorsChoose
Y’all got the music projects we shared on Friday funded in RECORD TIME. It makes me feel so good. I hope it makes you feel good, too. Today, for obvious reasons, let’s work on making sure all kids get a chance to learn mathematics and empathy:
This is a big one — $1,000 — and it would be so great if we could make it happen! Ms. S from Vaughn Elementary in Aurora, CO wants to send her 3rd - 5th grade students into the summer break with FUN Math Learning Bags so they can practice what they’ve learned! Ms. S says, “Our school is a Title I school where many services, meals, aftercare, medical exams, vaccines, etc. are provided to the kids and families. Resources are limited for summer practice, and these students benefitted greatly from receiving additional math assistance with Math Intervention groups all year. Most grew to enjoy math through games with dice and cards and practicing with dry erase boards, making something difficult fun and more engaging. It would be so helpful if they could bring these tools home this summer to reinforce and continue practice of concepts and skills they strengthened this school year. Summer slide is real!”
Mrs. Dobben, the school counselor at Shelby Middle School in Michigan, wants to help her 5th graders face their fears around going to middle school. If we help fund this project, they’ll get to practice using a combination lock — one of students’ top fears about 6th grade. Mrs. Dobben’s program will also feature visits to the middle school, games they can play to become acquainted with their future teachers and subjects, and time-management lessons to help them feel less overwhelmed with an increase in workload.
Ms. Jeannette needs supplies for her social emotional learning lessons. These resources will assist her students in calming down when they are upset, as well as helping them develop social skills when interacting with others. Their school in Middletown, NJ, more than 50% of students are Black, Latino, and/or Native American, and more than 50% come from low-income households.
My only comment is that Tucker lives up here with us in Maine (altho luckily for me, on the other side of the state!) & so far he hasn't caused any trouble locally. Maybe he's cautious because we just kicked a prominent Nazi out of the state. :)
Lack of empathy is absolutely at the heart of the problem with so many on the right. Thank you for pointing that out. So many like Walters seem to wear their lack of such a thing as a badge…as if it makes them superior when in reality it makes them out to be one dimensional egoists. This is becoming a nation of narcissists. At least when it comes to many on the right. And the deal with the lack of basic math is beyond pity. It’s hard to feel sorry for people who sympathize with others who want to deprive Americans a fair or close to fair wage.