“Fox and Friends” represents the professional nadir of the Fox News broadcasting day, which is a little like being the worst Italian restaurant in Kuala Lampur. Nonetheless, even that misbegotten mutation of The Today Show should maintain some minimum standards, meaning that there needs to be some unprofessional conduct up with which it will not put—like, say, a host falling asleep on the air.
Yes, that’s what conservative, forever young, over-committed and sleep-deprived Tucker Carlson did on Saturday, and if Fox News wants to send the message that it actually believes in those bedrock conservative principles it blathers on about, like the work ethic, responsibility and respect, it needs to fire him, no excuses accepted. He should have been fired already.
I, for one, am pretty sick of wealthy elites telling regular Americans who are out of work that no, a job is not a right, but a privilege, and if you can not, will not or do not do what your employer needs you to do and earn what you are paid to do it, you belong right where you are, in the unemployment check line. I don’t doubt that they are right about this for a second, mind you, just that it seems that those making six figures or more seem to have remarkable success at either holding on to their jobs, getting large bonuses or cushy golden parachute deals…or being re-elected— after they screw up spectacularly. Accountability is a diminishing value in the U.S. work culture, and firing Carlson for not only sleeping on the job, but sleeping on the job on live television, is the lowest of low hanging fruit, a cucumber, in fact.
How bad is it? Let’s see: Sleeping on camera, during a broadcast…
- ….is being absent without leave, like Mark Sanford taking off to see his little South American squeeze when he’s supposed to be governing South Carolina. Unlike Sanford, however, Carlson didn’t even have the excuse of a 7 day a week, day and night job: he just had to be awake and try to be less insipid than his co-hosts for three hours…and he couldn’t even do that.
- ….is an insult to the Fox audience, not that an argument can’t be made that anyone who voluntarily watches FAF deserves to be insulted. We invite you into our living rooms, as the metaphor used by the old TV performers used to go, and you don’t care enough about us to keep your damn eyes open???
- …shows that Carlson did not come to work prepared and in shape for his job responsibilities. Being too tired to work because of other activities (Tucker’s excuse is that he had his early morning gig on top of a late night pundit turn the night before) is just a little bit better than being drunk on the job, and if you fall asleep, I’m not sure it is. Doze off, pass out, what’s the difference?
- …is the height of unprofessional behavior. At least a newsreader who shouts “fuck” because he thinks his mic isn’t live is trying, cares, and is conscious…at least he’s doing something. If an employer can’t trust an employee to stay awake on the job, then that employee is untrustworthy.
Furthermore, the whole incident shows that Carlson is greedy. He runs a for-profit website, The Daily Caller. He is paid as a political pundit. He writes books and essays, and is compensated for that too. There are plenty of struggling actors, newsreaders, public speakers and minimally articulate and aesthetically acceptable individuals for whom co-hosting Fox and Friends would be manna from heaven. It would pay a week’s rent, buy food for the kids, and launch a career. For Carlson, it’s just a lark, a way to pick up pin money. He doesn’t need the work, and he doesn’t care very much about it. How do I know? I know because if you care about a job, you do what is necessary to stay awake for three hours to do it properly, that’s how.
And if Fox won’t fire on-air performers who snooze while America watches, we will know it doesn’t care either. Insisting that employees give a good day’s work and stay awake to give it is, I think, the most basic of standards for management of any enterprise, and certainly for a broadcast news and entertainment organization.
The best way for Fox News to honor America’s labor unions and the millions of U.S. workers who have no choice but to be sleep deprived and yet who still do their less lucrative, more demanding, boring, and unglamorous jobs without dozing off is to fire Tucker Carlson.
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Source: New York Daily News
Ethics Alarms 
The theatre critic James Agate once delivered a blistering review, after which the author pointed out that he had himself seen Agate sleeping during the performance. Agate swept that aside with the rebuttal that “sleep is also a form of criticism”, or words to that effect (I am quoting from memory here). His career continued serenely.
It could be similarly argued that sleep is also a form of on air performance.
Gonna side with Tucker Carlson on this one; he was working late the previous night, substituting for Hannity. Assuming he wasn’t on drugs or hungover, he was clearly overworked and his body told him to shutdown.
I’ve fallen asleep at work for the same reason… Employer required me to work late for an emergency exercise into the early morning hours, then return a few hours later for a debrief; feel asleep in the meeting. Got chided and told them I’d be happy to leave and get some sleep…
People who are overworked and/or overstressed can relate to Carlson’s problem.
Jj,
Whose fault is it that TC was “clearly overworked and his body told him to shutdown?” Who is supposed to be listening to TC’s body? Who set up TC to be in that position in the first place? I suggest – TC himself. Which I think was Jack’s point.
I think Jack has this one 100% right. (Or maybe I’m just overly influenced by the hysterically funny way he wrote this one).
You notice, they don’t mention the NBC host who slept through multiple hours of his show because he was tucked in bed. Of course I’m speaking of “Mr. Accident in his pants while in the White House” himself; Al Roker. At least Tucker Carlson was helping out a colleague by standing in for him the night before (Hannity) and was on set.
Would have been nice had Camerota had his back by waking him up; however, it wasn’t a big deal, and I don’t want to get started on Camerota and the issues I have with her. I hope she and Carlson aren’t up for replacing Megyn Kelly during mid-days, otherwise I will be deleted it from my DVR. As I’m ranting on FaF cast, Kilmeade is also a fool and goof. I prefer MSNBC over him. He needs to stay away from The Five, he messes up a perfectly fine show and is no Greg Gutfeld.
If anyone wants examples, simply ask.
Regards,
Matt
Just dock his pay and issue a formal reprimand. If it happens again, he’s out.
Do you believe in firing offenses? I do. What are firing offenses, in your view? Are there any jobs where falling asleep on the job would constitute one? The Secret Service? Airline pilot? If I fall asleep while delivering an ethics seminar that 250 people have paid 175 bucks for, should I be hired again after a warning? Does a baseball pitcher who’s not sick, just sleepy, stay on the roster if he dozes off on the mound? If the ball is thrown to a wide receiver to win the game in the final seconds and the WR has fallen asleep on the field, does he keep his job? How about a school bus driver, mid-drive? If George Zimmerman’s lawyer falls asleep during his trial, should George not fire him?
Why would a sensible viewer keep watching a morning show so slovenly that its hosts are allowed to doze off? If Tucker’s sleepy act ends up costing ratings and commercial ad dollars—as it should–is not firing him the right thing to do?
The only ones who should be fired are the asshole producers that do not care what happens to the employees under their watch..
Those animals should be severed from the show.
I would pay $175 to attend an ethics seminar where you left yourself so amazingly vulnerable to public mischief. I know I can’t be the only one. You’d have the most popular seminar in the program.
Maybe he was acting…
I would fire an actor who fell asleep on stage if it wasn’t appropriate to his performance. I say this because I once had an actor who DID fall asleep on stage, in the role of an elderly attending physician at a long trial. Everyone, even me, thought he was acting. He wasn’t.
Then isn’t that just moral luck? Whose to say another actor or actress didn’t foul a line or miss cue and everyone on stage needed to be alert for a possible ad lib to cover for the hiccup?
In that show, which was a real time, recreation of a trial with audience members in the court room, there were actors who could have fallen asleep in character. That would be fine with me. An actor who fell asleep and had to be covered would be no different to me than an on-stage drunk. Gone.
As the director, I would know. I see everything. Ask any of my actors.
I’m saying if an actor other than the sleeping one fouls a line and the entire crew needed to be alert and ready to go but you discover a man asleep. It would seem to me that any member of a team asleep on the job, if the current circumstances are such that other team members complete the mission due to their alertness, is benefitting from moral luck simply because no contingency arose in which the sleeping team member was called upon to use his/her skills to complete the mission.
The point is that in a real-time recreation, which I like to do a lot, actors have leave to do anything a real person in their position would do, as long as it doesn’t disrupt the story or performance—and such actors know who they are. If that function is essentially visual, and atmospheric–old man sitting, watching—he can fall asleep without endangering anything, and his function of reacting and assisting with something else would then fall to the other actors.
Maybe so. I’m still meditating on it bit it still seems like ultimately an acceptance of a certain level of moral luck. Which I have no problem with allowing some level of moral luck to slide, just like identifying what it is.
I* just like identifying what it is.
Just by reading these comments I can tell who has worked shift work in their lives and those who have no clue… Nuclear Power PLant Operators were infamous for falling asleep at the console, when, you know, they should be paying attention to the status of the nuclear core. Whose fault is that? Well the NRC tried to curb this repeat problem by limiting the length of shift, the number of shifts and the minimum time between shifts.
Guess what? It worked! What a shock.
Different issue, as you know. Workers forced to work outrageous schedules and shifts without breaks are a management problem, and sleeping on the job is inevitable. I also don’t blame the Alamo defenders for falling asleep the night of the final siege after 12 days of bombardment. Comparing Carlson’s inability to stay conscious on a couch for three hours to these situations is intellectually dishonest.
I am giving Carlson and Fox News the King’s Pass, plus extra credit to Carlson for not using too many keep-awake drugs – FINALLY, an honestly drug-free TV personality, and supportive, non-backstabbing coworkers!
Ha!
Isn’t this all going a bit overboard? Carlson had a long, hard night. Then he shows up for his scheduled guest spot on F & F- early morning- and manages to do one of the most embarrassing things you can do during a station break. I wonder how many times that’s happened before? It would seem that it’s easy enough to do! His two hosts, in keeping with that show’s reputation for light-heartedness, created a lot of humor at his expense while he dozed peacefully. Actually, they should have been more attentive and given him a nudge before the break ended.
I can understand that Jack sees things in a hard-nosed professional manner, given his background. However, these occasional, non-profane on-air lapses only expose that TV personalities as just flesh and blood people like the rest of us. Carlson will know better about how far he can push himself after this… without a pot of Mrs. Olsen in his gullet immediately before the cameras go on.
No. If he was not in shape to work, he shouldn’t come to work. This just reflects your bias and low regard for the profession and the job—that shouldn’t matter. It IS a job, and some rules are the same for all jobs. “Stay awake” is one of them.
I didn’t deal with this issue, but if his two hosts could have awakened him before airtime and didn’t, they also breached their duties. Once he was caught on camera, the co-hosts were doing what they could to salvage a bad situation. Would you make the same defense if Tucker was smashed? Why not? I see no difference at all.
Guess you don’t like him much, huh?
Why would you assume that? That presumes that my position is based on bias or personal animus, which it is not. As it happens, I do like Tucker. He’s seems like a nice guy; he’s smart, he seems principled and gutsy. The Daily Caller is an interesting site. Are you suggesting that I would excuse a host who fell asleep if I really loved his work? Because I would not. This whole site is about avoiding allowing biases and rationalization to warp ethical reasoning.
I don’t care who the sleeper is in this situation. I’d fire my mother.
Sorry, Jack, just tweaking your chain a little. Should have added an LOL to let you know I was teasing. On a more serious note, however, at least no one was harmed or in danger of being harmed by Tucker falling asleep. Car/truck drivers, engineers, equipment operators, etc. and pilots are another story. And overworked, tired pilots are not a rarity. If your cockpit coworker falls asleep, though, and you log in a complaint, chances are either nothing happens or you don’t work in the airline industry anymore.
I don’t think the comparison to a pilot holds water, because a pilot could make the world a lot worse by dozing off at the wrong moment. In contrast, if all hosts and pundits at FOX and MSNBC dozed off instead of talking, that would be a large net improvement for the world.
Haha.
Just like it would be a net improvement if every leftist/leftist beneficiary fell asleep for the next 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
Humor noted.
Logic fail.
Touche! There’s just no way I can argue with that. It would be a little like the Yule Log.
Well played.
NOW, oldgraymary, your question applies to Ampersand and Jack.
Tucker was tuckered out. Oh, the irony.
I wondered who would be the first to make that joke here. Congratulations.
Just doing what I do best: pointing out the obvious. 🙂