Is Shepard Smith (Fox News anchor) a comedian or performance artist?

Cafe Society
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I stopped watching television news sometime in the 1980s, so I’m not always up on TV news personalities.

This weekend, I watched Saturday Night Live and saw Bill Hader’s impersonation of a Fox News anchor called Shepard Smith.

Hader’s performance was weirdly intense and creepy but I really had no reference for the impression. So I went on Youtube and searched for Shepard Smith videos.

I can’t say that Hader’s impression really captured him. Smith doesn’t seem to be quite as creepy as Hader brings him off.

However, there seems to be something odd and strange about Smith. On the surface, he seems like your standard handsome newsman with a golden voice. But there is something strange about him.

Here are the first few videos that popped up on Youtube:

Smith interrupted a political analysis of Mitt Romney’s campaign to talk about the height of the waistband Romney’s pants. Smith gaped in open-mouth horror when he realized Romney was wearing mom jeans! and he decried punditry for not addressing the issue.

Watching Smith in that clip, it seems like he’s completely lost his newsreader composure. I feel like I’m watching a sitcom instead of the news. No wonder Hader has to stretch to parody this guy, because he already seems like he’s pulling my leg.

Here, he refers to a Fox News analyst as “Jonathan Cunt”.

In this clip, Smith again loses his shit and pounds the newsdesk as he screams “We do not fucking torture!” I’m on board with his outrage (I think), but he seems to switch it on and off so suddenly again I feel like I’m watching a performance.

In this clip, Smith is promoting a Glenn Beck event and kind of making fun of it at the same time. At 1:42 he fakes suppressing a sob when he’s criticized by Chris Wallace.

Here, he pulls a total comedy straight man act.

Here, he tells viewers not to watch Chris Wallace’s show after Wallace teases him about Ole Miss’s football performance.

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Not sure how relevant it is, but he’s widely rumored to be one of the highest ranking conservative closet cases. (Personally I’d argue that anybody that flaming is closeted.)

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I haven’t seen a lot of Shep Smith, but what I have seen suggests that he’s one of the very few sane voices at Fox News, he recognizes that he is, and he seems determined to dance as close to the line of unemployability (as defined by Fox) as possible.

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He has a weird intensity about him, but a couple of screwups or goofy moments on air don’t make him unique.

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I kind of like Shep, but yeah, he does have that “the joke’s on all yawl cuz I’m barely holdin’ it together, man” look …not to mention being as Gay as a cabaret dancer which, in his case, makes him all the more potentially asplodey. :slight_smile:

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His mocking Glenn Beck’s “Terror Chamber” is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on TV.

I keep hoping he’ll marry Anderson Cooper and they can be the premier power couple of semi-closeted cable TV media elites.

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Is he gay? The intensity with which he went after Santorum on the question of gay marriage made me wonder about that. That’s not the kind of handling I expect social conservatives to be subject to on Fox.

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It’s his eyes. Check out his freaky fucking eyes. They twinkle unnaturally. It’s like he has little disco balls inside his cornea of something.

I’m not sure I trust a man with that sort of twinkle in his eye.

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Shep (seems like he) lives to push the envelope. I expect hilarity to ensue and names to be named over at FOX headquarters if he ever gets the axe. :smiley:

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Was it Smith that accidentally said something about a blowjob when doing a Jennifer Lopez story (can’t search YouTube at work).

I don’t watch Fox very often anymore (when I worked out of the house I’d go through periods of it during the day time (he was on at noon then). I liked him well enough. At least then his show had slots for lighthearted stuff, bantering stuff, and sometimes just kind of silly (though not to morning show levels) which I imagine would have be odd to see taken out of context.

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Shep is one of the saner voices on Fox. He’s usually very courteous. Occasionally he’ll bore into someone but thats not his normal style.

He’s also more open to banter and humor on his shows.

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He is really the closest thing that Fox News has to a voice of reason and his “we don’t fucking torture…oops,” moment is one of the rare moments of decency for Fox. He also tried to reign in some of the Obama is a secret Muslim Kenyan craziness.

I’ve heard that he is gay, I don’t know if he’s open about it or not.

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I’ll never forget his complete bitch-slapping of Sean Hannity during Katrina. It was one of live TV’s great unscripted moments, although Geraldo Rivera tried to ruin it.

The best part starts at 5:20, but the whole thing is great.

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Ha!

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His on-scene coverage of Hurricane Katrina was riveting. He lambasted the Bush administration’s feet of clay in providing relief, contrary to the other Fox talking heads who declined to report the failure of the Republican White House.

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Another zingerfrom Shep – calls Chik-Fil-A Appreciation Day the “National Day of Intolerance.” And on Fox!

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I have always said I think he is a mannequin who gained sentience and is now a news anchor.

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Stephen Colbert had a segment on him not long ago:

“He’s Like A Combination Of Murrow, Cronkite, And Gary Busey”

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Was Lance Armstrong on “The V”? Priceless.

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I came in here to say just this. I am in no way, shape or form a fan of Fox News, but I consider Smith’s work during Katrina to be outstanding.