Just out of curiosity - how many of you have actually watched Carlson’s new show? Because I’m baffled by the attacks on him as a ‘partisan hack’. He’s explicitly NOT a Republican, and he probably spends more time on his show disagreeing with the Bush administration than agreeing with it. As I said before, he’s a Libertarian. He opposes Bush’s big spending, he opposes the war. He opposes the wiretap stuff. He opposes the war on drugs. Your opinion of him might have been skewed by his days on Crossfire, where he always found himself in the position of defending Bush because he was ‘on the right’ and that was his job. Now that he has his own show, he’s very different.
I still disagree with him on lots of things - predominantly his pro-life religious viewpoint and a few of the wacker positions he takes just to be ‘out there’. But he’s unfailingly polite to his guests, isn’t afraid to bring Liberals on to debate him, and the debates they have are more reasoned and calm than just about anything else I’m seeing on TV.
Yeah, it’s pretty gross. He was on Conan the other night, and they talked about it. Conan has the same problem with his hair - basically, they both tried something ‘different’ to stand out, and then once people started dissing them for it they realized that if they changed they’d take even more heat for giving in. Tucker kind of suggested that he personally hates the thing, but now he’s stuck with it.
My opinion is that he should dump it. It makes him look like a dweeb, and people would forget about it soon enough.
Stewart, as Sampiro and others have pointed out, has gone very easy on some of the most prominent and detestable conservatives he’s had on his show. I was hoping for him to rip 'em a new one, but he just pulled on the kid gloves and went easy.
From what I’ve seen of Jon Stewar’s interviewing style, he goes easy on politicians, and attacks writers and media people, who are basically his peers. My theory on the soft-balling politicos is the same as others have mentioned; he wants them to keep coming on his show. He has no fear of writers and media flaks getting offended and staying away.
I’d say his approach is to go hard after bullshitters, of whatever stripe. Unless, that is, the bullshit is of such a pathetic variety that it’s better to let the guy embarrass himself without Stewart becoming the story instead, as in the Santorum interview.
Jon Stewart’s only really gone after a handful of people. Only one of them that I know of was a politician: some Republican congressman (I think) who peddled the “Kerry and Edwards are the two biggest liberals in the Senate” talking point, which Stewart mercilessly shot down. I can only think of two other times he did that: once with a conservative pundit who had a book about “the most dangerous people in America,” which was largely filled with liberal celebrities, and the aforementioned Crossfire appearance, which was bipartisan, and not even on his own show. (About that: Stewart had been pretty vocal about his dislike of Crossfire and its hosts, going so far as to call Robert Novak “The Douchebag of Liberty” on multiple occasions. I have to wonder what they expected him to do when they invited him onto their show.) There was the also the time he accidentally insulted Jennifer Love Hewitt during her interview, but I don’t think that counts.
Am I missing any? Has he torn anyone else a new asshole? And if so, where can I download the segment?
He had Stephen Hayes on to promote a book on the war on terror, and he basically just attacked him for the whole segment and barely let him speak.
There have been plenty of occasions where he’s punctuated an interview with a criticism or a cheap shot, and when the interviewee got his back up and tried to respond seriously Stewart gave him the ‘Hey, I’m just a lil’ ole’ comedian’ schtick.
Again, I like John Stewart. Most of the time he’s fair, but even he has admitted that he threw nothing but softballs to John Kerry when he had him on, and that he regrets doing that. But the guy’s not a saint.
Stewart does celebrity interviews. Anyone that misses that is just letting their obsession with partisanship dominate their viewing of things.
I can’t really take too much of Tucker, not so much for his views (which are generally pretty close to mine on a lot of things) but just because I find his on-air personality grating. I think his program is pretty good, and a hell of a lot better than Crossfire, but he never seems geniune: his laughter ultimately always seems to come from some deep well of bitterness or phoniness. It just doesn’t work for me… on Tv.
In print, though, it’s another matter. I generally like him as a writer, where that sort of voice sounds more satirical. And in that, Tucker will always have a place in my heart for the passage in which he describes the bizarre interaction with Bush’s own K Hughes where she not only lies to his face, but lies knownig that he knows that she is lying in a way he describes as being beyond the mere pathological but almost transcendent. That’s little anecdote is even more powerful than the “reality-based community” stuff.
I’m no fan of Carlson’s. I’ve only seen the show a couple times, and that was a long time ago. However, it doesn’t suprise me to see people attacking him. It seems to me that any punidt meeting the following criteria gets piled on by the left:
A. Successful and popular.
B. Not liberal.
Bill O’Reilly is far from being a conservative, yet he gets attacked by the left more than Limbaugh or Hannity who are basically parrots for the republican party talking points. I think the reason is his popularity, not anything he says or does.
I beleive Sam when he says that Carlson is more libertarian than conservative. However, he’s still not a liberal, and that’s all it takes to get liberals hating you.
Another pundit to watch out for is Jay Severin. He’s a libertarian with a radio show in Boston. He’s been off the air for a couple months because he’s got a new nationwide show called “Jay Severin Has Issues” which will start in January. This guy bashes Bush often and has strong libertarian views. However, he bashes liberals also. Oh, how they will hate him. Entire websites will spring up devoted full time to demonizing him. The BBQ pit will fill with threads. Meanwhile, conservatives will either listen to his show, or not.
The recent trend is clear. If you become popular and have views that aren’t liberal, no matter what those views are, you will be attacked by the left.
Does anyone take Tucker Carlson seriously? I guess there are some people who might, but he’s not meant to be taken seriously. He’s a television pundit, which is really a form of entertainment. His statement about Canada shows that he doesn’t even take himself seriously. He’s really just trying to be a nerdier version of Jon Stewart.
I disagree with most of his opinions, I suppose, and I don’t consider him an exceptional analyist or a serious journalist. And he is one of the people ruining America, but he’s relatively small fry. There are far worse than him around, and sometimes he’s slightly entertaining.
Sure, he looks really dweeby, but I see nothing wrong with his costume. It’s kind of cute.
If you had said “the partisan hack left”, you’d be right. But there are plenty of left leaning pundits who are not surgically tied to the Democratic party, and who will speak highly of their non-partisan counterparts on the right-- like George Will, David Brooks, W.F. Buckley, or Charles Krauthammer. Those guys have the intellectual heft to command the respect of the other side of the aisle, and do not simply support the Republicans no matter what.
Bill gets bashed everytime he opens his mouth, but it’s more than his just being popular that sets off his critics. He too often distorts the truth, and too often attacks the other side personally (calling them “insane” or “pinheads” or the like). But the folks around here who think of his as a shill for Bush, have never seen his program when he goes off on Bush- or, even worse, Rumsfeld.
Sure. I shouldn’t have simply said “left”. Most people, even this day and age, on both the left and right are reasonable and rational even about politics and pundits.
However, there is a large and growing “partisan hack left” which feeds off of the left wing blogs and loves to pile on to anybody who disagrees with them. Since most people do, that makes for a large amount of targets for thier wrath.
Agreed. However, you don’t see the right getting all worked up about O’Reilly, even when he bashes their side. It’s generally only the partisan crazies on the left side of the aisle who get worked up to a frenzy about his latest column or program.
The best Daily Show interview of all time wasn’t when Stewart was the host, IMHO. Craig Kilborn was great on that show. He had on Mark Wahlberg (sp?)when he was first breaking out as a movie star. This was shortly after his music career as “Marky Mark”.
Kilborn refused to call him Mark, or Mark Wahlberg, or Mr. Wahlberg. He called him “Marky”, “Marky Mark”, or “Mr. Mark” the entire time. Mark was pissed, but Kilborn managed to difuse his anger long enough to keep the interview going, then he’d insult him again. It was great.
I like the Daily Show nowadays, but it’s not nearly as funny as it was back in the days of Kilborn.