Ruthless, available to stream on all major podcast services, has garnered a cult of self-proclaimed “minions” as the clear right-leaning alternative to Pod Save America and its brethren. But is it any good?
More than 100 episodes into its run, the show has demonstrated some real strengths — two out of its three hosts being public relations professionals, they know the pressure points and hypocrisies of political media all too well, and pounce on them with righteousness — but its flaws make the overall product deeply unsatisfying.
For one thing, its very success in penetrating D.C.’s conservative halls of power reveals the immensely awkward contradiction at its core: For a podcast that stakes its brand on a bad-boy image and willingness to slander sacred cows, it’s tied inextricably to the establishment that former President Donald Trump railed against, and that its hosts almost literally embody.
But worse than that, it commits the cardinal sin of any cultural endeavor that prides itself on puffing out and beating its chest as the standard-bearer for a new, totally-in-your-face generation. It’s often simply, as the kids would say, cringe, its geriatric-millennial hosts combining a too-online, weirdly hostile digital patois with a slew of outdated cultural references — the “Fame” soundtrack, more than one reference to Milli Vanilli — leaving them sounding like the self-proclaimed “cool” teachers trying to have a “rap session” with their students.
Of course, making an unfunny podcast isn’t a sin, and those who eagerly listen to Ruthless each week will be satisfied as long as they deem the aforementioned libs owned. But more than the awkwardness of what the hosts do say, it’s ultimately revealing what they don’t say about the GOP’s uneasy post-Trump status quo.
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