The outpouring of conservative support for Tucker Carlson is quite nauseating, and shows an unfortunate infestation of bad judgment and ethics corruption when the necessary conduct is to recognize that an ideological ally is neither trustworthy nor honest.
One report yesterday, pointing to the Fox News’ ratings crashing with Carlson’s exit, noted that younger Fox News viewers had led the stampede. Carlson is a demagogue with dubious motives, and the young are especially vulnerable to demagogues. I regard it as unethical for a news organization to put demagogues on the air for exactly that reason. (Glenn Beck is vociferously defending Carlson. Of course he is. Demagogues stick together.)
Let’s move on from the demagoguery, however, and focus on the Carlson text message published by the New York Times earlier this week (I am about two days behind in my Times spelunking). The message was sent to one of Carlson’s producers after the January. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol:
If I were a producer and received that text message, I would think immediately, “Oh-oh. I’ve got a ticking time bomb here.” What kind of person writes, without any provocation, that “jumping a guy is dishonorable” and that it isn’t “how white men fight”? That’s signature significance in my book. I don’t believe a non-racist even thinks that, much less says it, much much less puts it into print where it can be (and was) retrieved.
Carlson was the star of the network and its public face. Progressives and Democrats have used the racist label to de-legitimize all conservative news media—if you’re not a progressive you’re a racist, after all—and Fox News in particular. I have examined Carlson’s rhetoric in the instances where he has been accused of peddling white supremacy and anti-minority positions, and found the accusations unsustainable. Typical of the Left’s (and the mainstream media’s, but I repeat myself) assault is this hack job, also from the Times and typical of it, which finds racism in Carlson’s uncomplimentary (okay, deliberately inflammatory) characterizations of illegal immigrants and George Floyd protesters. Do racists enjoy Carlson’s attacks on race-hustling rioters and law-breaking immigrants because his targets are also the objects of their bigotry? Sure. Is Carlson happy to have their patronage swell his TV ratings? Naturally. Are his attacks racially motivated? I have assumed, because I don’t presume anyone is a racist until I have conclusive evidence, that they were not. “It’s not how white men fight,” however, gives me pause, and if my network relied so heavily on an an individual who carelessly and recklessly expressed racist sentiments like that, I would be eager to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
Indeed, an organization with a high profile “star” who displays Carlson’s proclivities has an ethical obligation to excise that individual, or deserves everything that happens if it doesn’t. The fact that Carlson would text such an ugly statement is an indication that he is too impulsive and convinced if his own invulnerability to keep his worst thoughts and instincts under lockdown. Didn’t the fall of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, laid low in 2008 by hundreds of text messages that proved he committed perjury and obstructed justice, serve as sufficient notice to all public figures that texting their darkest musings was courting professional suicide?
If everything else wasn’t enough to make Carlson a liability, he also isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.
Ethics Alarms 
I would not think this indicates a ticking time bomb. Reading the text of this message, and knowing my own inner dialogues, I immediately think that this is a frank admission, maybe even a minor revelation, where Carlson recognizes his first reactions were wrong. He then asserts his understanding that giving in to those reactions would make him no better than his adversaries, and having a higher standard he wants to live by, he fights against his initial thoughts. I would think that’s the kind of behavior we would want people to have.
In reality, we have unethical, even evil thoughts flit into our brains all the time. It is our reason and our consciences that then react to squash those imaginings before they can grow beyond mere fleeting thoughts. The ethical person is not someone who never has unethical thoughts; rather he is the one who recognizes when thoughts are unethical and refuses to act on them. In private, sharing with others that I had an instantaneous reaction to something that I recognized I didn’t like, and that it was revelatory how easily I could get sucked into the trap of becoming the evil I’m trying to fight, can be something both instructive and penitential.
If Carlson ended his text with something like, “I know it was wrong, but I delighted in the whole thing, through and through”, that would be far more worrisome. Instead, he recognizes the schadenfreude and confesses his guilt. From a Catholic point of view, that’s exactly what we’re called to do. If this were not a text to the producer, but a confession to a priest, I’d rank it a fairly decent confession.
Ryan Harkins, those are good points. I would be more concerned about things in tweets than anything said on TV. On TV, I take everything he says as exaggerated, provocative, and mocking. Kind of like Rachel Maddow, only funnier. It is only meant to be taken half-seriously.
-Jut
Ryan,
Thank you for expressing my thoughts, only much more eloquently. I agree with your conclusions. I really like this comment: “The ethical person is not someone who never has unethical thoughts; rather he is the one who recognizes when thoughts are unethical and refuses to act on them.” That is beautiful, profound and wonderful.
jvb
JVB,
Thanks! This might be a topic better for the open forum, but Catholic thought has analyzed Jesus saying “You have heard it said, ‘thou shalt not commit adultery,’ but I say to you that anyone who looks at a woman with lust in his heart has committed adultery with her.” Very scrupulous people have worried endlessly that upon noticing an attractive person and feeling a sexual attraction towards that person, they have committed a mortal sin. Mountains of analysis have concluded that we distinguish between the instant reaction to a stimulus, which comes to us unbidden, and our free will choice to either set that reaction aside or dwell upon it. Only when we choose to dwell upon those disorder desires do we cross the threshold into sinful behavior.
In addition, psychology has taught us that before we actually act in a disordered way, we will ruminate over that act for some time. The way we prevent acting out in an disordered fashion is to interrupt that rumination. Harder is when we have convinced ourselves so often to engage in the disordered conduct that we have habituated it, so that thinking barely enters into the picture between the stimulus and our acting. In order to break out of that, we have to interject some thinking back into the process, which is easier said than done.
But he did act on them. All the time. His show was a parade of demonization of everyone he didn’t like and justifications for right-wing violence, like his spin on the J6 rioters. Ironically, the latter part of his texts actually shows more empathy and self-reflection than he usually showed on TV. But what good is that if he went right back to his dehumanization tactics the next night?
Obviously, he was going to present views opposing left-wing actors and their policies . I didn’t see him enough to make a call on the rest of your comments, but they sound a lot like hyperbole that could have been lifted from a transcript of The View. (You do get a point for not using the word “insurrection”.)
Did you watch him regularly? If not, how can you make those claims? If so, what examples can you give of him justifying violence? How did he “dehumanize”? That’s a word too often used with careless inaccuracy.
I never could watch him live without getting nauseous in about 3 minutes. I watched many videos for his various “opening statements” and interviews. He sets off so many of my alarms I can’t list them all.
His entire January 6th narrative has been a justification for the violence. Inform yourself.
“His entire January 6th narrative has been a justification for the violence. Inform yourself.”
No, that’s just weaseling. You made a claim presumably based on some familiarity with his presentations. Now defend it.
I want to begin with the fact that I do not and have not watched any Fox evening punditry shows in three years having given up cable a long time ago. What I state below is my initial reaction to the text that was included in this post.
Call me a racist but from my experience growing up in Baltimore fights between white boys tended to be one on one while Blacks often fought by ganging up on a weaker opponent. I can remember being kicked and beaten by a group of young black kids in the late 60s. When I got home and had to face my entire extended family who happened to be there at the time I uttered that unspeakable word that whites may never use when I stood before them all crying. My father took issue with my use of the prohibited pejorative and I got another backhand across my face. I’ll never forget that day. Does that experience affect my understanding of how some people choose to fight? You are damn right. I also learned that being an unflavored one means always having to say you are to blame. I spent a lot of years being responsible for things for which I had no control and there were plenty of people ready willing and able to shift those responsibilities on me.
I put the above out for all to see to give my opinions some context. Here in the first few sentences we establish signature significance because we (want?) to attribute racism on the subject in question.
Are we to stop reading after we see something that suggests whites are somehow superior. Where in his text does he denigrate any other race unless you draw a conclusion that he is suggesting whites fight fairly while minorities do not. Can that be confirmation bias at work?
My take away from this text was that Carlson had his ethics alarms ring violently in his ears when he realized he was behaving in a manner that he abhorred.
He was explicit in his statement that he did not like that he was getting caught up in the mob mentality. He was specifically saying we should show some empathy toward our adversary no matter how much we despise them. My understanding was that he was saying that we have to rise above the anger to work things out. I understood exactly that feeling because I have had similar feelings of getting caught up in the heat of the moment only to have to jolt myself back to acting reasonably and rationally.
Chris,
Your writings and thoughts are always wonderful. I think a lot about what you write because your perspective(s) is/are well crafted and articulated. Thanks.
jvb
Was he wrong, or did he just say the quiet part out loud? I don’t know if there is much of anything in the way of statistics on group assaults, but we know that not all types of crime are evenly distributed among racial demographics. If we suppose that gang membership might be a possible corelator, then whites would indeed be less represented in that type of fight..
https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/survey-analysis/demographics
Tucker Carlson “isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.”
In other news: water is wet, dry ice is cold, and NBA centers tend to be tall.
Personally, I prefer people who are smarter than they think they are. Intelligence and wisdom with the balm of humility.
The “how white guys fight” comment was stupid, but the rest of his text doesn’t bother me and actually makes me think he has some scruples.
Living in Portland, OR and seeing Antifa day after day take over streets, block traffic, beat up civilians for no reason or make up accusations of bigotry as an excuse to walk around with weapons and masks made me want to root for their harm too. I had to battle my own personal schadenfreude often when it turned out an Antifa member got in legal trouble or beaten up by someone defending themselves. I had to remind myself these people are children of God too, on several occasions.
Carlson is admitting his weakness in his text and explains how he had to work through it. That kind of honesty and examining of his own thought process means, at least a little bit, his ethics alarms would ring upon occasion, and he wanted to move on to better thoughts and ideas. Many people can’t get past their own rage and revenge. But to process that rage and see it for what it is, in my mind, is a step towards personal discernment.
A legitimate “glass half full” analysis.
Mrs. Q,
I agree. I felt that sort of visceral urge toward violence toward the people who burned down Lake Street, especially those who were just there to break stuff. But, that was personal.
I felt the same anger on January 6, but that was not personal.
Same thing with all of the crap that went on in Portland.
That seems to be the threat of lawlessness. Riotous behavior begets disorder and chaos. Civilized behavior is more the exception than the rule. Ironically, the sense of “fair” play means that bad behavior should be met with brutal responses, in a downward spiral.
Sadly, the rationalizations would dictate that a brutally violent response would quell most lawless uprisings.
The human question is: are we better for avoiding such brutality…or just stupid?
Is one foolish to abide by the rules when the other side has abandoned them?
-Jut
I myself have never, ever seen video of young men and women of color fighting in any other manner than would make John L. Sullivan of Roxbury proud. They never “stomp” on people with their sneakers once a person is down. They never kick people in the head once they are down. They never windmill like a merry go round. They only fight one on one standing as erect as a Victorian lamp post. You could look it up.
My first thoughts were that Carlson has images stuck in his brain of months going on years of real violent mob violence, as in large *groups* of anarchists quite literally Burning, Looting, and MURDERING. Yes, they do not fight fair; they gang up on innocents and beat the living daylights out of them, and kill them.
Heck, this has been happening with disturbing frequency, even outside of mob riots. You can see it for yourself on YouTube. It is extremely sickening to watch. I have yet to see one of white gangs doing the same thing, for whatever reason. It is open season on white people and woke dems are only too happy to flame that impulse.
I am with Ryan, Chris, and Mrs. Q on this.
Megyn Kelly has been providing a lot of insider perspective on what is going on within FOX regarding Carlson. Apparently, she still has a lot friends/contacts there. FOX has a history of trying to ruin those who either leave or are fired. A swing and miss by the woman spearheading the Carlson hatchet job by leaking. A nothingburger.
I can easily interpret his “it’s not how white men fight” a few different ways that are not an indictment of his character. FOX is fucked and Carlson will evolve and grow because of this time off and return bigger, stronger, and richer. FU Rupert Murdock. You have sold your soul a hundred times more than our beloved wholesome (imperfect) warrior Tucker Carlson and that is not good karma.
Not defending Carlson (don’t care for or about him really), but I wonder how many Dem politicians, ore lefty activists or journalists (but I’m repeating myself) had a similar realization or made a similar admission as they saw the “mostly peaceful” riots (oops I mean protests) burnt through our cities, their COVID insanity destroyed our children’s mental and scholastic wellbeing, as their wokeness purity obliterated innocent people’s careers, as their idiotic economic policies wrecked the economy and destroyed (especially) the middle class… again not defending Carlson or making excuses for him; just noting that his misdeeds pale in comparison.
Whoopsie when I wrote:
“I have yet to see one of white gangs doing the same thing, for whatever reason.”
Should read as non-Antifa white gangs. Antifa dresses in black and has a history of publicly attacking white people from behind delivering life threatening injuries. Isn’t that special.
Maybe because they studied how the Nazis did it?
But what if they didn’t fire him? I have seen some reports from Megyn Kelley and others that the reason he is staying quiet is because he is still under contract to Fox. They won’t let him out of his contract, but they won’t put him on the air or speak publicly either.
I’m glad you now acknowledge that Tucker Carlson was a racist, but in the next paragraph you say liberals were wrong to call him one based on the evidence we had at the time. What you describe in that paragraph are tells. Liberals recognized Tucker Carlson’s racism based on those tells, and you did not. This text came as no surprise to liberals who have picked up on Carlson’s racism for years. Instead of insisting their evidence wasn’t strong enough, why not consider that they were able to pick up on context clues that you missed, and that this may have been your error?
You don’t get a bunch of white nationalist followers by coincidence, and you certainly don’t keep them by accident. Tucker could have denounced these groups years ago but instead pretended he knew nothing about them. When his head writer was fired after the discovery of his racist comments on white nationalist message boards, Tucker expressed more anger at the liberal “cancel culture” that found them than on the writer himself. A tell.
Baloney. As I wrote, the Left’s mob regards anyone who doesn’t swallow progressive cant whole as a racist. Your comment is so shot through with standard false talking points that it’s useless to categorize them all. Donald Trump isn’t a racist; Rush Limbaugh wasn’t a racist…there was NO “evidence” in his broadcasts that Carlson was a racially biased, certainly not in the sections I quoted. Opposing open borders isn’t “racist.” opposing affirmative action isn’t “racist.” Those who make such unethiacl accusations are estopped from saying, “See? We were right about Tucker!”—your perspective is biased from the start.
This—-“You don’t get a bunch of white nationalist followers by coincidence”— is typical of your whole comment. Communists gravitate to the Democratic Party because it feels more comfortable to them than anywhere else: it doesn’t mean Democrats are Communists. When someone writes something like that, frankly, I no longer take the commenter seriously. It’s guilt by association, when the association isn’t even in the control of the one being called guilty.
“As I wrote, the Left’s mob regards anyone who doesn’t swallow progressive cant whole as a racist. ”
This isn’t true. But even if it were true, there WAS actual evidence to label Tucker a racist.
Second of all, the “left” weren’t the only ones who thought Tucker was racist.
Thirdly…what’s your argument then? That everyone who thought Tucker was a racist didn’t REALLY know he was a racist (even though, surprised, he was) because they think everyone is a racist, and they just got lucky?
You’re arguing there was no proof to label Tucker a racist before this.
There was.
Nope. Not what was always cited as the evidence anyway—as the examples I mentioned. The Left has a Chicken Little problem: if everyone is racist who disagrees with them or criticizes black politicians, then they lose the ability to credibly accuse anyone of being racist, even Simon Legree and George Wallace—because they clearly don’t know or don’t care what racism is. It’s just another way to denigrate and marginalize opponents,
Communists hate the Democratic party. They think we’re basically the same as Republicans. The more moderate Communists (if there is such a thing) at minimum hate us for not going far enough. That’s a very different reception than Carlson got from white nationalists. They praised him for packaging their message in a way that would appeal to the masses. Which makes sense, as his own head writer for years was a white nationalist (a fact which you ignored). It’s not guilt by association if that association is willful and done in the service of the group you’re associating with.
Donald Trump once said “Jeb Bush has to like Mexican illegals because of his wife.” He stated a Mexican judge couldn’t be fair to him because he was Mexican. Rush Limbaugh told a black caller to “take the bone out of your nose.” I would consider these statements even more racist than Carlson’s statement here.
Then you’re an idiot. Neither of those statements are racist by any reasonable definition. They are accusations of bias based on conflicts of interest.
That did it—you crossed the “too dumb to participate on Ethics Alarms line. (Look it up: it’s in the policies here. You’re just an agenda with no intellect attached. You waste my time and everyone else’s.
Get lost.
ALERT! Doug has been banned.
Don’t reply to any future comments he makes if he tries to post them, They will just vanish with the comments when I catch them.
Doug,
You wrote, You don’t get a bunch of white nationalist followers by coincidence, and you certainly don’t keep them by accident.
I have no particular like for Tucker Carlson. I don’t watch him or listen to him. But suppose I did, and whole bunch of other Catholics did. Now let’s substitute Catholics into your statement:
You don’t get a bunch of Catholic followers by coincidence, and you certainly don’t keep them by accident.
From that phrasing, it would seem that Tucker would have to be doing something very specific that attracts Catholics. However, it might be that there are common things between Catholics and Tucker Carlson that attracts Catholics to listen to him, things that have nothing to do with being Catholic per se, and therefore it would be incorrect to conclude that Catholics follow Tucker because of their Catholicity. In addition, it would be incorrect to conclude that because Tucker had Catholics in his audience, he only had Catholics in his audience, or that he even liked having Catholics in his audience.
And this is where I have a problem with your logic. Not all of Tucker’s audience are white nationalists, and not everything that white nationalists believe is wrong or racist. You use the presence of white nationalists in Tucker’s audience as proof of his racism, but that presupposes that these white nationalists follow him because of his racism, so it is actually a circular argument.
That Tucker does not take the time to denounce them is reasonable; if he starts down that path, where does it end? He’d be expected at every turn to denounce whatever group of “deplorables” are uncovered, and be expected to tar them all with the same brush. Moreover, if I were an influential speaker who had white nationalists in his audience, I might not want to denounce them by name, because if they are listening to me, I might influence them to better behavior or a different mindset. If I denounce them by name, I might turn them off to my message altogether and send them to more radical sources that do not denounce them.
As for being more disgusted at cancel culture than a colleague’s racism, I think it is fair to find both bad, but to believe cancel culture is the worse evil of the two. Someone else might rank racism as worse than cancel culture (and many people do), but I don’t think it is proof of racism to believe that there are worse things than racism.
Nicely done.
jvb
In this context, believing “cancel culture is the worse evil” means believing that people finding out about racist comments from the head writer of the most watched political opinion show in history, and calling for his firing on that basis, is worse than those racist comments.
That’s ridiculous. If you think that, you at the very minimum do not care about your colleague’s racism.
Tucker was doing something very specific to appeal to white nationalists. His primary message was the same as their primary message. Again, this was obvious to those on the left. If it wasn’t obvious to you, that requires self-reflection.
Why is that ridiculous? On a macro level, is cancel culture — the culture of destroying lives and careers because of statements, comments, or opinions that the culture doesn’t like, regardless of any objective standard (and often without any objective standard) — worse than racism? I think that’s a legitimate question to debate. While I agree that racism is evil, I also believe that cancel culture is a worse evil because it consumes even well-meaning individuals who didn’t keep up with the current social trends or rewrite the past based on the present. I can avoid being a racist by refusing to ascribe a trait to an entire group of people as though every member of that group was one and the same. I can’t avoid cancel culture because the word I use today, approved by the cancel culture, might be condemned by them tomorrow. I can’t even stay silent, because refusing to speak can be seen as just as bad.
On a micro level, the question is whether firing the writer is proportional to making racist comments on a white nationalist messageboard, and whether the penalty for making such comments was increased because of the outrage from the Left. I certainly don’t know the details, but it may well have been contractually obligated to fire the writer regardless of the Left’s outcry. Then Carlson is an ass for blaming others for what was justifiably due to his colleague. But it may well have been an issue where it would have been handled with unpaid leave, retraining, and corporate probation instead of firing, if not for the outcry from the Left. Then Carlson would be right to decry the cancel culture.
Since I don’t watch Tucker, I don’t know what his primary message is. But perhaps you could be generous enough to lay out what his primary message is, and how it aligns with only white nationalists. You may be absolutely right on that point. My earlier objection was to how your framed your logic, not necessarily your conclusions.
Yea I dont understand this line of thinking either.
Just because THIS is the proof Jack needed to confirm Tucker is a racist, doesn’t negate allllll the other racist things Tucker has said.
Doesn’t this just prove the people who knew Tucker was racist were correct and Jack was just late to the party?
Amy: show me just one “racist thing” Carlson said that can be objectively ruled as that. Not “all.” Any.
There is no “objective” definition of racism in our current society, so this is not a fair request.
Wow. What a weaselly reply. You’re the one saying he’s a racist, but you can’t define what racism is.
The definition used here is the belief that one race is superior to or inferior to others, and that being a member of that race automatically confers a rebuttable presumption of inferiority or superiority.
In that case, Tucker was clearly a racist. A major theme of his show for years was that America was being invaded by immigrants and that this was leading to a decline in the white population relative to minorities, and that this was bad. That doesn’t make sense unless you assume that whites are superior.
And now we know for a fact that he thinks whites are superior.
Again, you’re lecturing people for connecting dots that you refused to connect.
It’s called deductive reasoning Jack.
Most racists don’t come out and say “I think black people are inferior!”
Most people don’t have their private texts leaked.
You have to take the whole of Tucker’s messaging over the years and think about it.
In other words, you got nothin’. As I suspected.
And, jerk, you don’t get to be snotty to me here. I know what deduactive reasoning is; in fact, I make my living on it.
Don’t try that again.
Why do you always resort to name calling?
Is that how professors usually behave?
If you know what deductive reasoning is, then use it
Doug just gave a perfect example of Tucker’s racism.
You’re banned. Deductive reasoning had led me to strongly suspect you were a rude and trollish commenter interested in partsian combat rather than discussing anything in good faith. I waited until I had actual evidence. Now I do. The proper response here when you insult the host is :”I apologize.” You were warned.
And “jerk” is not name-calling in this instance. It is a correct and fair diagnosis. If you continue to be jerkish and try to sneak comments on here, they will be spammed in due course. I gave you every chance to be a productive participant.
Bye
ALERT! Amy has been banned. Don’t reply to any comments she tries to slip by. The replies will go when the comments do.
After reading the string of comments piled up, I was going to ask if anyone had an Over-Under for what time today Amy would get banned; Jack’s last post renders that bet a push…
I just banned Doug too. Amy was smarter: she could have stayed here if she had any manners.
Just said the same thing essentially.
I told Jack what would be the point? He wouldn’t agree that those statements are racist anyway.
It’s just odd to me that if you said Tucker was racist a month ago, you’d be in the wrong, but calling Tucker a racist now is correct.
It’s called using duductive reasoning
Ruled by YOU as a racist comment? Or ruled by the majority of other people?
What would be the point? You obviously don’t view any of his previous statements as racist.
No offense but I think it’s pretty egotistical to act like you’re the only person who gets to decide when somebody is a racist or not.
When people have been saying for years that Tucker is a racist.
Those people who you only NOW agree with were somehow wrong to label Tucker a racist in the past? But they’re correct to label Tucker a racist now.
If they labeled Tucker a racist a month ago, they’d be wrong, but if they called him a racist today, they’d be in the right.
I think you’ve just kept your head in the sand.
All you lefties have overused the racist accusation and now no one cares. Good job. You have desensitized people to something that ought to be important.
Unless and until you start applying some reasonable criteria to sort real racism from partisan insults, no one who doesn’t already agree with you is going to listen to you. Might as well go yell into space.
But in this case, we were right and you were wrong. Tucker is a racist.
Doesn’t this mean you could be wrong about other cases?
Maybe. Doesn’t matter. I don’t listen to amorphous blobs of sanctimony, virtue signals and deceitful spite, so whatever they are right about is lost.
Ha exactly.
Don’t think Null Pointer realizing the irony in his comment
Irony? If you are talking about the dueling propaganda sides in the culture war, I see that problem quite clearly. Both sides are obnoxious.
If you are talking about something else, then you will have to be more specific.
I find it troubling that so many Carlson defenders are focusing solely on the part of the text that wasn’t remotely related to the post. Wow—he said that he questions his instincts of wanting to see people he disagrees with having the crap beat out of them by a mob. How ennobling. The post is about what the statement “white people don’t fight like that” means.
It means he thinks in terms of racial differences and stereotypes. What else can it mean? It is in the same category as “Wow,you’re articulate for a black guy!” and “I see you watch your dollars and cents—but the, you’re Jewish” and “Women are such bad drivers.” The rest of the text—I’m sorry, but concentrating on that is like seeing significance in the fact that Hitler was nice to dogs.
Of course “white people don’t fight like that” ticks—if he thinks like that and no ethics alarms go off when he does, then he is very likely to slip up and say something similar. If someone said that at my dinner table, I would be obligated to say, “WHAT?” What’s that supposed to mean?”
It is racist. The statement indicates that Carlson somehow thinks white people are inherently more likely to fight honorably than other races. Which is untrue and nonsensical.
Don’t blame me; I tried in an earlier comment.
It was a stupid thing for Carlson to say, especially without an explanation. Was it just inartful, or was it evidence of an actually “racist” attitude. So many times, just noting a statistic that disfavors some group or another is decried as bigotry to avoid discussion of a problem.
Sure, but what “statistic” covers how people of various races fight?
I don’t know; was hoping maybe someone else had a line on that. It seemed possible that gang (a group) activity could be relevant to comparisons of group attacks against an individual . Carlson must have meant something by his statement.
Yes, he meant that he thinks white people are better than black people.
Again, this was not surprising to anyone paying attention to the rhetoric on his show.
My guess is that Tucker Carlson is used to dealing with preppy upper class white people who have a bunch of “ideas” about fair fights and honorable fisticuffs bouts. Meanwhile, all white biker gangs and white cookers of crystal meth are out there dishonorably beating their enemies to death in dishonorable fights on a regular basis. It’s almost a classist bias as much as it is racism. The coastal elites like to forget about the hoards of poor white people out there in flyover country.
Jack,
Here’s the paradigm I work from, and you can poke holes as you will.
We all have a tendency to “other” people we view as different somehow. It could be based on race, but it could based on a host of other factors, protected or not: sex, religion, political affiliation, accent, etc. Carlson’s text was a list of ways that he “othered” the person getting beat up. That he saw it as dishonorable and not the way white men fight was othering the Antifa kid because Carlson’s side doesn’t do that, only the other side does. The cognitive dissonance is certainly worth further commentary, but in the context of “othering”, it is a sideshow. Carlson then “others” the Antifa kid as deserving of punishment for being on the wrong side. When he stops and tells himself that he shouldn’t be doing that, he was interrupting the whole “othering” process. Though in his text he does not refer back to the honorable or white way of doing things, he willingness to stop the “othering” by recalling the kid’s common humanity, his being loved by someone, and so forth indicates that he is capable of interrupting his initial reactions with decent thoughts and behavior. Whether he does so in the future is anyone’s guess. Whether he even realized he was saying something racist is anyone’s guess. Whether his producer asked the question of “what the hell do you mean by the way white men fight?” is anyone’s guess. But given that in regards to the fighting Carlson allowed himself to be corrected, there is good reason to believe he could be so corrected regarding the other matters. Therefore, I do not think Carlson comes across, even with his racially insensitive remarks, as a ticking time bomb.
Who among us can honestly say their prejudice bone was not tickled *even a little* by the BLM riots?
Then, gasp, made a prejudicial comment to someone followed by catching the error and subsequently putting it all in context.
As a society, we will not progress in undoing the rising racial divide by reducing comments like Tuckers to convenient cancelling labels. I think Tucker would be open to discussing his comment with everyone on this thread except Doug and Amy. People automatically shut down when labeled as racist etc. What good is that unless one’s goal is to do damage, defame, and marginalize.