Altercation: Understanding Tucker Carlson

[babylonsister]

https://prospect.org/politics/altercation-understanding-tucker-carlson/

The American Prospect
Altercation: Understanding Tucker Carlson
The only plausible explanation for his descent into racism and absurdity is that he plans to run for president.
by Eric Alterman
December 10, 2021


Tucker Carlson, easily the most popular host on cable news, has adopted a public persona that is simultaneously evil and insane. In addition to his naked racism and deliberate attempts to enable COVID to infect and kill as many people as possible, there’s his three-part documentary suggesting that the January 6 insurrection was a “false flag” operation. Not stopping there, he also has recently taken to defending Alex Jones. He said, for instance that “the truth is he [Jones] has been a far better guide to reality in recent years—in other words, a far better journalist—than, say, NBC News national-security correspondent Ken Dilanian or Margaret Brennan of CBS.” As Peter Wehner notes in The Atlantic, “Jones, the host of InfoWars, was found liable for damages in a defamation lawsuit brought by parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, whose victims included 20 young children. Jones claimed that the shooting was a ‘false flag’ operation carried out by ‘crisis actors.’ He mocked grieving parents, saying, ‘I’ve looked at it, and undoubtedly there’s a cover-up, there’s actors, they’re manipulating, they’ve been caught lying, and they were preplanning before it and rolled out with it.’”

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(4) How can what we call “polite society” continue to treat Carlson’s employers, Rupert and James Murdoch, and their top lieutenants, and the others who enable them, as solid, respectable citizens, much less as owners of a legitimate news service that is rather more conservative than most, when instead they are destroying our democracy and promoting the destruction of the planet and mass death via purposeful lies and misinformation?

(5) Finally: What, ultimately, is Tucker up to? He can’t possibly believe the things he says. He’s not that stupid or that crazy. He is, however, pretty damn cynical. So my real question is: Where is he going with all this? Carlson is already number one among his competitors and makes more money than anyone can sensibly spend. I understand that it’s nice to be the most popular anything—but the most popular pro-fascist racist hate-monger and virus spreader? King of the goons? Is this what makes a parent proud these days?

The only thing that makes sense to me is that Tucker wants to run for president and he’s figured out—long before most of the rest of us—just how stupid, selfish, malevolent, and easy to manipulate the potential Republican constituency is. He’s going to be the “clubbable” version of Trump; the one who doesn’t rape women, steal from cancer charities, and appoint his idiot children (and their spouses) to run the country. Tucker may be evil but he looks … nice. After Trump, who’s to say it can’t work? But again, what a sad (and crazy) state of affairs that this is the way to do it.