Right now I'm writing something about how Tucker Carlson's career tanked in the year since he got fired from Fox News, and man, his career... it... just... truly... tanked.
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Once every few years one of Fox's anchors gets the idea that he's the ringmaster rather than the lead clown, and I suspect that the process of disabusing him of that in the most brutal way possible is the only way other than strangling kittens that Rupert Murdoch can achieve orgasm.
How dare you. He is bigger than ever. You will be hearing his rebuttal in a freewheeling 97 minute discussion on X — formerly known as Twitter — that will be viewed over 60 million times (27 humans and 59,999,973 porn bots)
The thing about it is, he'll be fine. He's heir to an industry giant, or at least close enough that he's got fat funds to fall back on. Dumping his career down the toilet for Trump never carried any real risk for him.
Everyone hates him? Still rich. He never had to care. Never real consequences.
I’ll say this for Megan Kelly: at least she was smart enough to cool her heels and claw every dime she was owed from Fox. If Tucker had just taken a vacation he’d be the likely GOP VP nominee right now instead of having to fight for his severance
Ol' No-Lips Candy-Fucker Carlson showing up in front of that goofy-ass fake log cabin background in a plaid shirt like he ain't from a family that could try to send his WASP ass to a boarding school in Geneva.
What do you mean?! He did the Russia thing where he went to a grocery store! He did.... something on the Twitter voice app thing? I can't name anything else he's done
it worked on those guys specifically, but I'm hard-pressed to say the deplatforming had much impact on the spread of their insane ideologies. and isn't that ultimately the point?
yeah don't get me wrong, I'm very glad milo and tucker's careers are dead. but it's like a hydra, we've got people like ben shapiro and matt walsh and chaya raichik ready to take their place without missing a beat. and then there's that guy who literally bought the platform...
The bigger problem is the people behind the faces, such as Dan and Farris Wilks, the ones platforming and funding them but remaining out of the limelight themselves.
As long as they stay hidden, they can always hire another failed Hollywood screenwriter/actor to be their mouthpiece.
"hydra" is giving undo credit, imo. They're more like weeds. Keeping the garden healthy means removing the weeds has to be a regular, ongoing chore. But if we make a point and a routine to quickly identify and remove them, we can minimize the damage they can cause.
I think this misses the unique degree to which Tucker was whispering poison into the ears of America’s old people. My older relatives know who Tucker is, but they have no idea who Shapiro or Walsh or Raichik are
Tucker Carlson was the lead paint of politics. Fucking everywhere and eventually incredibly destructive, but left in place through inertia because it wasn't *that* bad, yet.
Well, Tucker had decades before this to spread it and Fox is still dedicated to the same propaganda. Milo is much the same, he was a mouthpiece, not the only bearer of the fascism. So sure, it didn't stop all the crap but it stopped these two.
What it means is that much deeper work has to be done AND deplatforming, not that deplatforming doesn't work. So many of these folks are grifters, if they can't grift anywhere, it becomes less appealing to do so generally.
Don't forget Glenn Beck. Who was a BIG deal with his own primetime slot, and then fell off a cliff basically within seconds of leaving Fox News. He's so big of an afterthought that nobody thinks of him at all.
It's insane how Tucker fell considering how prevalent he was in conservative politics
He's even present in meme culture (live X reaction is still used)
its pretty interesting that newsmax/OAN etc didn't try to scoop him and put him back onto some kind of TV and he's instead stuck doing his weird Twitter show
That may be true, the only exception I was really aware of was senior executive level/policy making positions but I'm not gonna argue with any reason to love the decision more than I already do.
it seems like that time slot makes anyone a star, but i wondered if tucker would have been able to transcend it. apparently not and to that i say good riddance.
People thought he could like run for President. Really though I guess Tucker’s trajectory is consistent with like O’reilly etc before him, but what’s the deal with Fox? Like I know who Jesse Waters is but does he have anywhere the influence of his predecessors?
I contend that he was well-positioned to bounce back, but he decided to go all-in on Elon Musk. It's also worth pointing out the ongoing, widespread chaos across conservative media. He's far from the only victim of this shakeup.
The funniest thing right now is he’s going to be touring Australia for free at the behest of an Aussie billionaire who is building “Titanic 2” alongside Dinesh D’souza. I’m sure the audiences will be very normal.
Schadenfreude is a very, very bad emotion to have, but I'll forgive myself just this once.
Okay, I'll save another one for when Trump (surely he will) gets his overdue comeuppance.
I thought of him as Fox's last "good broadcaster" but I changed my mind when I had a realization watching a Chris Hayes clip. He totally stole Chris Hayes's tone and cadence. Even that part of him was a fraud.
Happy to wait if this is gonna be in the article, but I'm really curious what kind of work Tucker's even looking for. Like, he's a trust fund guy right? He was just spreading hate for the love of the game? I'm morbidly curious what goals a person like that could have
A part of me misses mocking his slack-jawed, blank-eyed camera stare, which always reminded me of barnyard livestock staring in non-comprehension at technologically advanced human activity.
But absolutely none of me misses his ill-concealed bigotry.
It's hard to think of how things could have gone worse for him given his starting position in April 2023 as one of the most powerful and influential people in the country.
Kind of hard to remember that he had the loudest, agenda-setting microphone in media. He fell off so hard, it almost seems like he was never real or all that important.
It is weird, because I remember when he was at MSNBC 20 years ago and I feel like I've been hearing about him my whole adult life. Now I don't even think about him unless I see an old reference
O Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Carlson. Has any right wing carnival barker gone on to a second act? It seems they only can perform in the hot house of that network and really aren’t individually valued. Kind of like K-pop performers. Generic. Manufactured. Used. Discarded.
It's interesting (to me and I don't know where else I'll ever mention it) to note that certain piracy release boards post rips of the fox news shows daily and didn't skip a beat posting rips of Tucker on X as TV releases. It's the only non-TV show I've seen get that treatment.
I want to write some snarky reply about him having to fall back on his vast wealth and connections, but he obviously cares about celebrity, and his subjective failure is enough to make me happy.
Same thing happened to Bill O’Reilly who had (I believe?) the same time slot. Most watched dude on cable TV, most influential, etc.Then…poof, proving once again that it’s the PLATFORM, not the messenger, in terms of who gets to most successfully fill America’s dads & uncles w/ vile, racist garbage
It’s both tho. The platform enables them but without the right messenger to capture something for the Facebook uncles, it fizzles. That’s why there’s no new Tucker, because Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Waters ain’t doing it
In our family, we yell this any time something isn’t working right. Burned toast: FUCK IT WE DO IT LIVE; flat tire: FUCK IT WE DO IT LIVE; cat throws up on your bed: (you get the picture) At least we got something good out of this man’s miserable excuse for an existence.
I've been reading The Power of Now, and using this phrase every day will definitely help. (And now I got the image of Eckhart Tolle yelling that, too, which is a definite mood booster.)
Maybe? Lord knows they marketed the hell out of them both. But i think it really just comes down to who is holding down the 8/9 EST slot on the most watched cable news net in the country. Was it promo by FOX or that they simply were ON the most watched net in the US? They were both DOA after
Who would have thought that Fox News was keeping Tucker from becoming a full on nutbar? He was never quite ok after Jon Stewart neutered him on air. Well, maybe he was never really ok.
Because he is fundamentally not compelling outside of a media machine. There are plenty of conspiracy freaks out there inciting shit, but, on a "major" network, he was the first putting garbage out there, and that's why he mattered. Now, he's behind a lot of the real weirdos, so he's redundant.
Watters took the spot and does the exact same thing, so Tucker isn't even missed by his old audience. And he didn't help himself by immediately doing content with Alex Jones, who is a far more dynamic weirdo who is already entrenched in the online space. He willingly gave his audience away.
I stopped giving money to NPR during the 2016 election because morning edition kept bringing him on as the “conservative” voice!! (Which they “balanced” with Cokie Roberts, who, whatever you think of her journalism, was absolutely NOT on the left the way he was on the right)
There are a variety of reasons I'm glad this will never happen, but I gotta say, for purely selfish reasons, I'm glad I won't have to deal with the Secret Service fucking up outdoor recreation on the lake where he is my family's nearest southerly neighbor.
It’s like a weird object permanence thing with the rightwing.
✨He’s not on the wingnut marquee anymore. [poof!] gone… Anyways, here’s Bill O’Reilly’s asshole “man-on-the-street” pest in the time slot like nothing really changed.✨
Wasn’t there even talk at one point that he could be VP pick?
I don’t count him out though for future election cycles, (in case Biden wins & we’ll still have elections in the future), these evil no good actors have a knack for comebacks.
I think a few people (Rush, Alex Jones, Roger Ailes/Murdoch) moved the needle: there's a block of people who are conservative because of them. The rest of the Fox chuds are shockingly replaceable. Put a corpse in the 8 pm slot and people will watch it.
My smarter half and I disagreed about this exact topic. She’s WAY smarter than me. She thought his firing was seismic. I thought that he was never that important. I could be on at 8 on Fox News and it would get numbers. And I’m black. As long as the base gets fed, doesn’t matter who’s feeding them.
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Everyone hates him? Still rich. He never had to care. Never real consequences.
As long as they stay hidden, they can always hire another failed Hollywood screenwriter/actor to be their mouthpiece.
He's even present in meme culture (live X reaction is still used)
Wondering if they all hated his fucking guts and with no Murdoch prodding them had no reason to make nice
Okay, I'll save another one for when Trump (surely he will) gets his overdue comeuppance.
wow.
Conservative weirdos really do have to be artificially propped up because they’re just not serious and charismatic people
But absolutely none of me misses his ill-concealed bigotry.
Uncomprehendingly
Like cows at a passing train" - Don Henley
Fox News really is just an incubator for mediocre assholes who would be nothing without it.
And I honestly think that it'll be worse under his sons, because they don't share his ruthlessly pragmatic MO
But then, I never saw Succession
I pray the same happens to every other right wing wind bag 😄
https://bsky.app/profile/parkermolloy.com/post/3kre7obevh22w
They want their outrage easily served up. As little effort as possible, please.
My new assumption Is that Tucker's audience would watch instructional colonoscopy videos if that was what was playing in the 8:00 Fox News time slot.
Most GOP star are mostly Helium
(Ok the real upshot is Tucker Carlson being irrelevant now, but why not have two?)
✨He’s not on the wingnut marquee anymore. [poof!] gone… Anyways, here’s Bill O’Reilly’s asshole “man-on-the-street” pest in the time slot like nothing really changed.✨
I look forward to reading your piece.
That’s why it’s so feared.
No one cares what he has to say on his podcast and it's delightful to see.
He's a nothing now 😁😁😁
https://twitter.com/helenrsthl/status/1673280604329197568?t=nwj4Ntl-7zHK0ZpzMt6pzg&s=19
I've been troll...warning him for years, he wouldn't listen.
The dumb, spoiled brat.
I don’t count him out though for future election cycles, (in case Biden wins & we’ll still have elections in the future), these evil no good actors have a knack for comebacks.
(Narrator: he is overcome by something. But it is the inverse of sympathy on every conceivable axis.)