Copeland's Corner: May 4, 2023
Tucker Carlson made his name at Fox by demonizing anyone who wasn’t a straight white male.
Tucker Carlson January 7, 2021 — 04:18:04 PM UTC
A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?
According to the New York Times, this text message is the reason that Fox News fired its biggest star in a flash and paid Dominion Voting Systems the largest monetary settlement for defamation in United States history. The text was turned over to Dominion as part of pre-trial discovery and much of it was redacted. It was not previously released publicly as several other texts by the bigoted bloviator were. Reportedly, on the eve of trial, in which Carlson was scheduled to be the second witness following Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch, the Fox Board of Directors (which incidentally includes former House Speaker and Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan) saw the unredacted version quoted above and decided that Carlson had to go and the suit had to be settled to spare the company further embarrassment and the possibility of a larger judgement and significant punitive damages should the case have gone before a jury. There is a mountain of evidence that Fox and its personalities, producers and higher-ups knew that the conspiracy theories regarding fraud in the 2020 Presidential election were lies and they broadcast them anyway to keep the dupes who believe it from switching to farther right “news” outlets like Newsmax and OAN, who would tell them what they wanted to hear. Broadcast outlets that would provide confirmation bias.
Carlson made his name and reputation at Fox throughout the Trump presidency by demonizing people of color, women, gays, trans people and anyone else who wasn’t a straight white male. His show was called “the most racist show in the history of cable news” by the New York Times, a news organization not known for hyperbole. Fox made hundreds of millions of dollars off of Carlson’s demagoguery, night after night for years. Carlson didn’t say “the quiet part out loud” here. For him, there never was “a quiet part.” Why this text was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I don’t know. I suspect that in the days to come, we will learn that there is much more in the trove of redacted texts that we haven’t seen yet that contributed to his ouster.
While there is much in the above text to be disgusted by, from his cheering on Trump thugs beating a kid to his bloodthirsty urge for the kid to be killed to his self-serving and disingenuous self-examination at the end, the most offensive and telling part is when he decries that ganging up to beat a person is not “how white men fight.” If you know any of the history of this country that Carlson, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and their ilk are trying to bury, you also know that the notion is, for lack of a better word, bullshit.
When it comes to attacking individuals and the demonized other, there are many examples of how (some) white men fight. From the throng of white men who destroyed Tulsa’s Black Wall Street in 1921 to the racists who pulled 14-year-old Emmett Till from his bed in Money, Mississippi in 1955 and lynched him, to the 30 baseball-wielding Bensonhurst, New York thugs who beat Yusef Hawkins to death in 1989 for the crime of looking for a used car to buy in that neighborhood, these are all examples of how some white men have been known to fight. And of course, let’s not forget the January 6, 2021 insurrection, where literally hundreds of armed white men and women stormed the Capitol, maiming and killing police officers with the goal of overthrowing the United States government.
I find it ironic that Carlson would write his text on the very day after that siege.
Carlson writes as though there is some nobility in the way that “white men fight.” As though they’re gentlemen bound by a strict code of morality and rules. Part of the white entitlement that for two hundred years has whitewashed history and indoctrinated American children with tales of the chivalry and righteousness of their forefathers. Characteristics they believe have been handed down to them by virtue of pigmentation. Granted to them automatically by the lack of melanin present in their skin.
The true outrage here shouldn’t be over this text, but over how Fox owners, executives, hosts and shareholders have gotten rich spewing lies, hatred and bigotry and getting a significant portion of white America to believe them, to the detriment and the curtailing of civil liberties of everyone else.
Those are the things Tucker Carlson should have been fired for years ago. Those are the things that should make the FCC prohibit Fox from calling itself “news.” It isn’t news. It never has been. It’s racist propaganda disseminated for profit. Outrage and white grievance sell. Unfortunately, they sell “bigly.”