… a smug, narcissistic, ethics-challenged, unprincipled, Machiavellian demagogue who helps pollute our civic discourse rather than enhance it. Of course, Tucker had already proved that, but because he was fairly articulately bloviating cherished right-wing talking points and arguments every night on his top-rated Fox News show, conservatives and Republicans were blinded to his rather obvious flaws. (Do I have to post the Cognitive Dissonance Scale again? Nah, I’ll just link to the tag this time…)
Upon the arrival of Carlson’s 100th show since Fox News fired him (one more example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons), several publications have noted that Carlson’s focus has descended into cheap tabloid territory as he desperately seeks publicity, clicks and eyeballs. Of course he has. Carlson doesn’t need the money (he’s a trust fund kid and has a net worth estimated at $30 million); he could easily maintain whatever integrity he had and present serious, useful analysis from the conservative side on whatever platform he used as he waits for his Fox contract to run out. Nah, he wants fame and power. Sooooo….(From Unherd)
According to insiders, while the absence of a traditional corporate structure has granted Carlson increased autonomy, it has also eliminated a crucial layer of editorial oversight. These sources have noted a shift towards targeting a less discerning audience, emphasising sensationalism over substantive discourse in order to keep the attention of more credulous viewers — one insider notes a current “audience minus about 10-15 IQ points from the prime-time show” — interested in space aliens and Obama’s alleged gay trysts….This mature phase of Carlson’s career reflects a clear departure from the influence he once wielded at Fox, where his voice not only reached millions nightly but also significantly influenced American political dialogue. At his peak, there were murmurs about his potential candidacy for high political office. Now, as he continues to curate and stream content tailored to the desires of his base, it’s evident that while he may hold a place of prominence on X for as long as he desires, his role will largely be that of a preacher to the converted.
Carlson has recently stooped to interviewing the likes of Alex Jones (whom he implied might be some kind of prophet) and fellow cable news exile Chris Cuomo, whom I hold in even lower esteem than I do Alex Jones, though it’s close. Blatantly left-biased Slate naturally slams Carlson beyond rational justification and calls him a racist (because he opposes open borders), but I can’t argue with its general conclusion:
In becoming an internet video guy, Carlson has emerged fully from the shadows and stepped fully into the unflattering light of his own biases. There is something to be said for self-actualization—if only so that the rest of us can see who someone’s true self was all along.
Gee, I saw who he was even before he became a star on Fox. It wasn’t hard, or shouldn’t have been. See? I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everybody says…
Ethics Alarms 
Swanson TV dinners. My mother would even serve them to us from time to time. Mostly as a novelty and, for her, a night off.
Tucker, like so many things in life, is a mixed bag. He’s foolish on some issues, but he’s willing to tell some stories that nobody else will touch. That’s not always a good thing. I was disappointed that he interviewed Alex Jones, but I watched a little and found it an interesting and important interview. It turned out that there was a government plot to torpedo Jones, run by a PR firm that was apparently a front. That was confirmed by the interview that James O’Keefe’s proxy pulled off on the guy that claims to have been responsible. I hadn’t watched Jones for 30 years or so. Although he had apparently valid information that was not being talked about by others, he did exaggerate it later, needing to be more dramatic to hold an audience.
I don’t want drama. I want reliable information.Who would tell us that this happened if these rogues didn’t find out and tell us? It’s important to know that our information is largely managed by the government. It’s a reminder that our democracy is close to being a facade, if it isn’t just a complete joke.
I appreciated Tucker interviewing Vladimir Putin. I was a bit surprised that he lost control of the interview so quickly, but Putin has a lot of important things to say and was wise for not wanting to deal with trivial things that so many use. I was much more satisfied with the interviews that Oliver Stone did. They were much lengthier, and he traveled to meet him several times. One thing important about Putin, is that he was selected by the drunken Boris Yeltsin. Putin was never a politician until the late 1990’s, and not well known. He’s highly intelligent, unlike Joe Biden. Biden was a familiar face that was packaged as a moderate. He’s been anything but. Billions of dollars have been spent on political campaigns, and background people have been doing work separate from political operatives.
One consistent disappointment has been Tucker’s fascination with UAP, or UFO’s. I tend to think that has become another distraction. I have been involved in skepticism for 35 years or so, and we brought an astronomer who investigated UFO sightings, an astronomer who has the ability to make physics calculations to match up with the reports. He calculated that some of the reports would require the UFOs, if they were spacecraft, to strip the electrons off of the atoms composing the machine. He also calculated the energy needed to accelerate a 1-ton space craft to 10% the speed of light. It was the same energy released by 17 thermonuclear warheads. Then, of course, upon arrival at the destination, it would take the same energy to decelerate. Space travel is impossible, assuming that the residents of star systems where there is intelligent life have to live with the same laws of physics that we are forced to obey.
I am retired and spend a huge number of hours exploring many different sources of information. Most people are unable to do this, and most people haven’t had the training in skepticism that I have. The people that influence us to pay for military endeavors and covert operations have also turned their particular set of skills on us. A military appropriations bill, signed by Barack Obama, gave them legal permission to do that. They probably engineered the nomination of Trump, thinking that he would be an easy beat in the election. Since Hillary had a very low approval rating, they needed an angle to get a friendly politician into the WH.
BTW, Alex Jones does make prophecies. You don’t have to be right to make silly predictions. Some of them may actually come true. Victor Davis Hanson just wrote a book called The End of Everything. He’s far more knowledgeable than Jones or Carlson. It’s worth paying attention to the outliers. Hanson points out 4 different, very powerful ancient city-states, that disappeared almost completely. He does compare their disappearance to the danger we’re in. If we value our freedom and democracy, we should pay attention.
1. If you want reliable information, you can’t trust unreliable sources like Carlson and Jones.
2. Exaggerate? Jones claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax! Then he testified under oath that he makes stuff up to get ratings. He has disqualified himself as any kind of source at all.
3. ‘He’s far more knowledgeable than Jones or Carlson.” Ya THINK???
4. No, Biden was always a standard issue Democrat liberal, by 2024 standards a moderate, indeed a conservative. He has always been a dummy, though, and dummies are easy to manipulate.
5. Almost anyone with a pulse is smarter than Biden; Putin is a lot smarter than Tucker Carlson, who was too much of an egotist to realize that.
6. The theory that the Left orchestrated Trump’s nomination is way too far out there. People voted for the guy. He won the primaries fair and square. Yes, the news media gave him cheap publicity, but if Republicans had reacted to him the way the “pros” did, it wouldn’t have mattered. I remember how Charles Krauthammer, a smart and perceptive guy, reacted to the first GOP debate by saying in essence, “Well, that’s it for Trump!” And all the polls said Trump won the debate. He could have and should have been taken down early, but the stupoid competition didn’t take him seriously because they didn’t understand their own voters. Trump surprised himself: he didn’t expect to be nominated, much less elected. He stumbled into a cultural tipping point and became a symbol. Gene McCarthy had the same thing happen to him.
I don’t trust anybody 100%. I don’t trust the corporate media. They still pretend that the Russia hoax was not a hoax. They keep telling us that the Ukraine War started when Russian troops went in. It started when Victoria Nuland engineered a bloody coup. She was bragging out in the open about spending $5 billion to make Ukraine a part of Europe. 8,000-12,000 people died before Putin felt forced to intervene.
As people who value a democracy, I think we should let the Ukrainians decide, mot the pagan Banderites that took pleasure in killing and torturing the people that objected to the coup. Several oblasts did decide and voted to join the Russian Federation. There elections are a lot more transparent than ours are. There were foreign observers and transparent ballot boxes.
The news media won’t tell you that Biden and Hillary committed crimes worse than what Trump is accused of, and they will say that 91 indictments means Trump is guilty. If you follow the trials, as I do with the aid of a criminal defense attorney, you can see that the truth is very hard to come by from any news source. Allen Dershowitz is one of the few Democrats that will speak out against the outrages perpetrated against Trump. Other lawyers do as well.
I told you I don’t follow Alex Jones, but when Tucker interviewed him he gave a plausible explanation of who came after him and why. According to him It wasn’t the people of Sandy Hook, initially. There was a PR firm that set him up in order to take all of his money and put him out of business.
I wrote, after that verdict, that he should be sent out to west Texas to blow at the windmills and make himself useful. As a news source he had become worthless to me, but I don’t want my government putting any broadcasters out of business. That’s not their job. There is still a 1st Amendment. I would much rather people be taught to think logically and skeptically from grade school on. Jones wouldn’t be able to cope with that, and our government couldn’t perpetrate the lies that they do.
As I said, when I saw the video recording that James O’Keefe obtained from a government contractor, that confirmed what Jones said, because this guy claimed he set Jones up.
The CIA tried to change O’Keefe’s story, with a spokesperson, but she wasn’t helpful. She gave no information.
It was estimated by more than one media observer, in 2016, that the media gave Trump over $2 billion of free airtime. That sucked the attention away from the other candidates. I think they knew what they were doing. The fact that Hillary won the popular vote tends to confirm that. The electoral college system was the source of blowback. It would have worked otherwise. The Russians’ IRA spent less than 1% of what Hillary campaign spent. The IRA drivel had no meaningful effect, but they exaggerated like Alex Jones, and convinced lots of people. The cultural connection was zero. The ads were crude.
The media were always on Hillary’s side, even when she broke the law with personal email server handling top secret information from her closet. They won’t refresh people’s memories about the Arab Spring happening not long after the State Department was tapped for a huge trove of diplomatic cables. The timing was more than curious. That’s when people started dying in Syria and Tunisia and Bahrain, etc. Egypt went to the Muslim Brotherhood, proving Israel’s prediction correct. One person, one vote, one time; that’s how democracy works in the Arab world. Hillary’s blunder had far-reaching effects, as did the takedown of Libya.
“… a smug, narcissistic, ethics-challenged, unprincipled, Machiavellian demagogue who helps pollute our civic discourse rather than enhance it.”
I can’t argue with that description, but, as the closest thing to a lefty among the regular commenters here, I should note that I don’t think he’s at all stupid… and is a bigger problem because he isn’t. When he was starting out, he did indeed “present serious, useful analysis from the conservative side.” But, being narcissistic and reasonably intelligent, he saw that fame and fortune favored partisan hackery over thoughtful analysis, and he became less interested in searching for the truth and more interested in pretending to have found it.
The same phenomenon has played out frequently–I used to think that Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, and even Rush Limbaugh had things to say, but the siren song of celebrity captured them all. This is not, of course, a phenomenon only of the right. Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Chris Hayes also used to be a lot more valuable than they are now.
Giving the audience–whether that audience watches only Fox or only MSNBC or whatever–what they want instead of what they need to hear is largely responsible for a lot of the problems we now face as a nation, including the fact that our next President, whichever one wins, will be an unscrupulous geriatric who wasn’t all that bright before his faculties began to wane.
Back in the Dark Ages when I taught Public Speaking courses, I talked a lot about how important it was to acknowledge the weaknesses of your argument so your audience can see that you’ve actually given the matter some thought and that you’re not insulting their intelligence if they disagree. I rather think I was spitting into wind.
Yes, I rather think you were, and sadder words of tongue or pen have seldom been composed.
Perhaps he’s trying to outdo himself?
Tucker Carlson Launches Show on Russian State TV
https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-launches-show-russian-state-tv-russia-24-1903045