Tucker Carlson: Superstar or Something Else?
Carlson was fired (his third such firing from media companies) a week after Fox settled with Dominion Voting System for $787 million. I intended to post the following before any of that happened, but now that it has, maybe consider this a eulogy of his Fox career and a preface to his new platform on Twitter and Youtube. Eulogy actually means to speak well of someone after they’ve died. But I couldn’t think of anything nice to say, so I just stuck with the truth.
If you’re a fan of Tucker Carlson and what he’s selling, you probably won’t love this post and might not even finish reading it for that matter. But, don’t you think we should give time to sources and opinions not a part of our echo chambers? To be honest, TC isn’t part of mine, though I’ve spent some time listening to him over the years. What I’ve seen and heard first hand is even more despicable, and increasingly so, than I expected. If you’re not yet convinced that he and his ilk peddle half-truths, outright lies, and unfounded accusations against anyone with whom he takes issue, then maybe what I have to say will nudge you enough for you to slip off the fence and land on terra firma.
IMHO, swallowing the stuff he and others like him spew is like taking a daily small dose of a slow acting poison. It accumulates in one’s system and can eventually do irreparable damage to the conscience.
Accuracy isn’t the point for TC. He piles up falsehoods and misleading statements like the cow manure I shoveled as a teenager on a cattle ranch in Northern California. You name it, he can lie about it––George Floyd’s murder, the Jan. 6 riot, Covid vaccines, and Donald Trump’s many foibles. Speaking of Trump, the question is he or is TC the most egregious liar?
To be fair, TC didn’t invent his crass and abusive presentation on the airwaves. He follows in a long line of shock jocks and talking heads that punch way above their weight. It doesn’t take a genius to observe that there’s an enormous market for his brand of “news commentary” and conspiracy theories lined up like the crowds at a World Cup soccer game. Accuracy and truth mean zilch to him as long as he can get cheers from his fawning fans.
What grieves me most are the millions of people who identify as “Christians,” that will consume just about anything, as long as it scratches their itch for vitriol and controversy. They hang on his every word, more so than they hang on to the words of Jesus, Paul, Peter, or John. They remind me of the rabid fans on those daytime tv shows that they blare in doctors’ offices like Maury Povich where they maul each other over who slept with each other’s boyfriend!
After listening to him and combing through articles about him, I thought I’d share some of the most egregious examples of his mendacity and audacity. [FYI, I didn’t take the extra time to record and cite the sources these quotes come from. Some from old Fox News shows itself, others from articles, his Twitter feed, and YouTube. You either trust that I didn’t make this stuff up or you don’t…]
His method
TC peddles loathing and fear, and people buy it at full price. But instead of doing it directly, you’ll notice that he usually uses leading questions as a tactic to keep him from being liable. “Is it possible that Anthony Fauci has a secret lab in China that concocted Covid…?” Then he can say, “I didn’t say that was the way it is, I was just posing the question.” Could it be that he knows that many in his audience score zero on the discernment meter and wouldn’t recognize a falsehood if it bit them in the gluteus maximus? (See how that works?)
On women
“I mean, I love women, but they’re extremely primitive, they’re basic, they’re not that hard to understand.”“How did we wind up with a country in which feminists do science?”“Most of the time, you can beat a woman in an argument.”Need I say more?
On the “Left”
Have you noticed how he addresses his audience directly: “You are decent, generous, and deserving of better.” But about those he seems to disdain it’s, “They on the left hate America along with its Constitution and are all anti-American ruling class. They literally don’t care about you and are out to get you.”
Contemptuous name calling is his bread and butter. Everyone who disagrees with him is out to get you! Anyone who disagrees with him are contemptible scum.
If you’re a follower of Jesus, a Bible reader, or simply a critical thinking person, you’ll know how debasing and destructive is this kind of speech and how it appeals to the basest part of ourselves.
On race
“We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor they tell us. Even if it makes America poorer and dirtier.” They’re “making America dirty.”“I don’t know how black he (Obama) is, but I’m sure he’s a good basketball player, he says he is, anyway.”When a groupof Trump supporters beat a protester TC said it was “not how white men fight.”Then he has the audacity to claim that “White supremacy is a hoax.”
On the pandemic…
“The vaccine makes it more likely that you are going to get COVID. That would be a pandemic of the vaccinated.”
“30 people every day are dying from vaccines.” (Not true.)
“Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately, contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives.”
You might say, “Well he doesn’t really mean it.” Then he shouldn’t say it to his sycophantic audience. Because, someday someone will do just that, if they haven’t already.
On other countries
“Iran deserves to be annihilated. I think they’re lunatics. I think they’re evil.”“Iraq is a crappy place, filled with a bunch of semi-literate primitive monkeys.”“Canadians are our retarded cousins.”“Unless Vladimir Putin has personally had you or one of your family members murdered, you really don’t have any right to criticize the guy.”On Immigration and the “Great Replacement”
Remember during the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, the alt-right crowd chanted, “You will not replace us; Jews will not replace us”? These white supremacists were espousing the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that the influx of immigrants, people of color more specifically, will lead to the extinction of the white race.
“I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ says Carlson, “if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”
He claimed that Democrats are “importing” new citizens “to replace the disobedient ones” and likened the Biden administration’s immigration policy to “eugenics” against white people.
He’s like a reverse Statue of Liberty telling everyone to get their tired, huddle masses the hell outa here!
On January 6th
“Just to be clear on terms, an insurrection is when people with guns try to overthrow the government. Not a single person in the crowd on January 6 was found to be carrying a firearm. Not one.” (Look it up for yourself. Not true.)
“There’s no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on Jan. 6.”
“Whatever happened to [U.S. Capitol Police Officer] Brian Sicknick was very obviously not the result of violence he suffered at the entrance to the Capitol. . . The footage overturns the single most powerful and politically useful lie that Democrats have told us about Jan. 6.”
I guess the fact that he was assaulted with pepper spray and died a day later were unrelated events? And that the day after the riot, Capitol Police issued a statement that Sicknick had “passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty while physically engaging with protesters.”
On stupid street…
“The Bidens’ love for each other is as real as climate change.”“There was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop.”“We’re the real victims here. America is the real victim of the conflict in Ukraine.”“Our civilization (America) is superior and we need to defend it.”I could go on and on. Carlson has sickened a vast swath of Americans with his poisonous words. And people keep coming back for more. What he wants in return are the usual suspects: money, power, and adulation.
If you are a fan of his brazen lies and condescending name calling then I guess go at it. But if you have a smidge of conscience and care about the truth that democracy requires, then I hope you’ll tune out Carlson and any other of our modern media false prophets and conspiracists, and find a better outlet for the news.
Lastly, whether you love or hate Tucker Carlson’s approach, you can still pray for him as a fellow human, created in God’s image. I try to remember to do so when he comes to mind.
