Fox News Goes the Way of the Landline

By Sasha Stone

The same network that called Tucker Carlson a “Right-wing extremist” has decided to put Donald Trump back on prime time. As their hypocrisy comes full circle, a pathetic #boycottcnn hashtag bloomed on Twitter. As if.

CNN’s ratings were in near-total collapse when Trump threw them a lifeline. By contrast, the Murdochs dumped their best ratings-getter for speaking too many uncomfortable truths.

To many on the Left, reality and truth are negotiable. They can fool themselves into believing Carlson was dumped for being a “racist” and “inciting violence.” But Fox News clearly had no idea what they had with Tucker Carlson and now they’ve taken one step closer to their own demise.

The thing about evolution – there are only two options: adapt or die. Tucker Carlson is choosing adaption, taking his chances with the free market and the energy driven by those who can readily access his videos instead of making sure they are in the right place at the right time, or finding it later on Youtube.

No, this is not an era of waiting. It’s not an era of organizing your life around scheduled programming. This is an era of on-demand media. No members of Generation-Z or any that come up after them will have any clue there was once such a thing as cable news.

They will never understand tribal warfare going to battle on the cable news networks. They will never understand the muscular champion dropping their most popular host and taking such a major hit, and why that was such a big deal. They will think it all sounds so preposterous, so silly.

They don’t remember the landline either, when one family had a phone and if you wanted to call someone you had to take your chances with whomever might answer. They have no idea what it means to say, “Is Susan there?” Or “May I please speak to Susan?”

They don’t know about writing checks for cash at the market or how to use a message machine. They don’t know beepers or ice delivery or milkmen. They can’t know life before the iPhone or GPS or Door Dash or Netflix. Their world is one of give it to me right now.

While it’s true that they will wait a week for the latest Kardashian episode, an hour of news in primetime is definitely not their bag. If they get news at all, they get it through social media – Tik Tok mainly, or Instagram, or Twitter.

Carlson had a way of cutting through the noise and somehow reaching that generation who, if they were curious at all about how censorious and oppressive thought and speech have become, would be just as excited to find the treasure trove of free thought Fox News had with their popular host.

With Carlson now on Twitter that makes it much sexier, more alive than it’s ever been, and boy, has it caused an uproar, as one might imagine. He probably isn’t going to remain permanently on Twitter but will begin to build a platform there before making his show available on his own site, TuckerCarlson.com.

Trump’s invasion of Twitter once upon a time was bad enough. It kicked the country into mass chaos because the media narrative bounced off Twitter hysteria.

One reason so many tuned into Carlson, as opposed to reading Substack, is the human face. We want to see people telling us things as opposed to reading words on a screen. That is what drives the popularity of Tik Tok now. No need for memes or emojis if you have the OG. That’s what I love about this deal – Tucker is making Twitter a more multi-media experience, and that’s a good adaptation for the app. And for us.

By now, users are learning what they always needed to know all along, at least those with a backbone sticking around instead of scurrying off to more insulated, protected spaces.

The way you adapt to dissenting voices and diverse thoughts and opinions is to learn to live with it. If you try to shut it out or silence it, you must become authoritarian, fascist even.

I wasn’t a Fox News watcher. Like everyone else on the Left, I was comfortable mocking them, sneering at them, loving every minute of HBO’s Succession. Once I began to see, though, that so much of what I thought was true about the other half of America wasn’t true at all, I was motivated to investigate Tucker Carlson. Who was he? Was he as bad as they said he was? Was he a racist?

What brought me to his show was the Summer of 2020. I was sick of being lied to and gaslighted by the media over COVID and the protests. The only voice I could find online willing to go there was Tucker Carlson.

He was willing to shake off accusations that just criticizing what we were seeing unfolding on the streets was racist. That kind of courage was in short supply back then. So much of what he said continues to resonate today because it was true.

Defund the Police was a disaster for the residents in many of the cities destroyed that Summer. And it still is. The Democrats continue to pretend like they had nothing to do with that. But because someone was willing to tell the truth back then, we have a record of it.

Tucker Carlson told the truth and spared no one in his assessment of how things went down, and he even went after Trump, which made his coverage more balanced than anyone else on cable news, especially on the Left.

From then on, I tuned in to hear what he had to say every night because I knew that no matter what else, he would give it to me straight. And he would talk about things no one on the Left dared but that the American people were genuinely worried about, like “gender affirming care,” like women’s sports.

It was always a relief to know his show had such high ratings because that meant people were watching and listening. They will still try to sideline what he talks about but at least he’s out there, still willing to speak out.

To my friends on the Left, this is high treason, but for me, at some point, I was not able to keep up the facade. I’d rather be where I am now, exiled and hated, than be living what I know now was a lie.

If the moral panic is that there are racists, racists everywhere, then one can only imagine what it would be like to be someone who watches Tucker Carlson. But I have come to see this moment as another in those regrettable eras of purges and persecutions.

Why would anyone support a political movement that tries to silence so much of what makes this country uniquely diverse, not just in terms of skin color, but in thought, and speech?

People crave honesty now, so much so that Carlson’s announcement of his new show already has 23 million views in one day. On their best night, Fox would get around 4 million views. And usually, only Carlson could get those numbers.

[…]

Via https://sashastone.substack.com/p/fox-news-goes-the-way-of-the-landline#details