Granted completely.
But I was pushing back on the idea that Fox’s audience was inevitably dying of old age and over just the next couple of years so Fox needs a hard pivot and they need it right now!
BS says I. They and others are manufacturing fresh converts at a healthy clip. More than enough to sustain their baleful business model.
Here is a pretty savage takedown of Tucker’s tempestuous text…
Tucker “Chaff” Carlson
Or if you prefer video, here is Lawrence O’Donnell from MSNBC peeling the paint off the walls describing Carlson:
https://youtu.be/yZbtJpJIW4E
If Fox is the one leaking the text, then the text had nothing to do with why he was actually fired.
More and more I’m siding with Beau of the Fifth Column’s insinuation: they will try to blame it on everything else, but it was really about the Dominion lawsuit.
This is gonna be good.
For a lot of the Rabid Right they use “antifa” to mean “anyone not on our side”.
It may mean that FoxNews and its more batshit ilk are less of an issue and that the establishment GOP is struggling, but the next generation of irrationally far-right loons are already lurking in increasingly more niche corners of the internet, reinforcing their pre-existing worldviews. They will vote GOP until a new more radical right-wing party emerges from the septic tank that is the American right these days.
The latest Tucker Text is troubling but in a weird way, it’s also amazing. It’s basically an encapsulation of the gradual dulling of empathy that FOX promotes every day. He had a genuine epiphany, but his innate Tucker-ness overrode his mind.
Good article on the leaks about Tucker.
It could be the case that Carlson’s comments, which included the observation that a 3-on-1 beatdown is “not how white men fight,” was instrumental in the host’s sacking. But on inspection, the Times piece and a similar Washington Post story that followed suggest that the Carlson pile-on (which he deserves) is less about breaking news and more about crisis management by Fox. If that’s the case, the strategy is working magic. Almost nobody is talking about the shoddy journalism Fox produced to help advance the “stolen election” lie and its lack of public contrition for the role it played in helping foment the Jan. 6 insurrection. They’re talking about Carlson’s off-camera trash talk, much of which only echoes in more profane and pungent terms what he’s said on his show or in interviews.
I know the source said the assault took place in DC, but it sure sounds like the attack on DeAndre Harris in Charlottesville. Which is what I first thought of when I read the quote.
In the fighter business we have a (semi) tongue-in-cheek concept called the “designated mort”. Which name is derived from the “designated hitter” in baseball.
His job is to fly into the teeth of the enemy air defenses, be that missiles or fighters, and draw all their attention and fire so the rest of the attack group can sneak in and do their work while the enemy is busy over-killing the “designated mort.”
Sometimes it’s a legit, if nearly suicidal, part of an attack plan, and sometimes it’s more a gallows-humor label stuck on somebody who’s inadvertently or unskillfully drawing extra unnecessary enemy attention to themselves.
Carlson is Fox’s designated mort.
Fox desperately hopes the rest of their formation will survive the sacrifice of Carlson. Our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. Focus the fire on Fox, not Carlson.
This.
Tucker’s texts are less racist than most of the shit he said on his show! MSNBC et al are being played for suckers on this, going on and on about “white men don’t fight like this” and unwittingly helping FOX’s obvious attempt to rehabilitate their image.
Because, the point of this, was to make it appear that FOX fired Tucker for being racist, when in fact he was racist on a nightly basis. FOX never cared about the lies, or how it was tearing society apart.
I have no issue with the MSM reporting on the hateful texts (though I am finding them pretty wishy-washy…is this really the worst of it). But they need to put it in the right context.
There’s a similar (if nearly always intentional) role in MMORPGs, the “tank”: a character who’s built to “draw aggro” from the bad guys, and get the opponents to focus on attacking them, so that the other characters can do their jobs without getting pounded on.
“Designated mort” seems to be a good analogy for what Fox has done with Carlson; another analogy might be throwing the baby overboard to keep the wolves from attacking everyone else.
What’s so maddening is how lazy it all is. The NY Times and the Washington Post, among others, take the leaks fro Fox people, type it up and go to print with no real analysis. They know what Fox is doing, but no one cares.
Not for nothing but I also think it’s hilarious to hear Tucks comment on fighting at all. If that bow-tie trust fund pussy has ever been in a fight in his life then I’m Bruce Lee.
I can see his fighting style like this:
Stand just almost an arms length from your opponent, keep your head down and eyes shut, with arms fully extended, slap wildly with open hands and do that maniacal laugh but more like a scream.
Kinda like this, right?
(“fight” scene from Better Off Dead)
My sense would be that Carlson was hired by CNN, back in the day, because he was sufficiently centrist and reasonable representative for the right, to be able to work with the company. Somewhere in that time, he discovered that he got better numbers by leaning into certain aspects of populist rhetoric from the right, suppressed his own politics, and started setting to convince himself that he believed all the random nonsense. That meant religiously hating anything Liberal or Democratic, cheering for populism, embracing race theories, etc.
We’re basically reading the inner conflict between his personal beliefs as a guy raised in the accepting and liberal regions of California and the beliefs that he’s trying to push onto himself, so that he can rake in the big bucks.
It’s like a closeted gay guy trying to convince himself that he hates the LGBT* agenda, and writing out rants about God’s demands that they be burned at the stake, while also contending with thoughts that they’re just being the people that God made them as.
I don’t have a problem with “outing” Tucker, and that’s why I said in my first post “I don’t know how I feel about this”…
Within the correct context – Tucker hosted a show that is much more racist than these private comments, and that should carry a lot of the blame for Jan 6th, and white supremacist attacks and even killings – I wouldn’t have any unease.
Without that context, yeah, the MSM is being played for chumps. A hundred percent.
Not only helping FOX, but also watering down a lot of what Tucker is.
In fact, you know, I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but I feel like the “white guys don’t fight like that” text could almost have been leaked by Tucker himself. Inflammatory enough to get the MSM’s attention, but actually positive in the eyes of most of his conservative base, and explicitly not incitement (so no legal consequences).