The monster is burning the village!

By Nellie Bly, Political Correspondent and
Roscoe Arbuckle, Show Business Correspondent

A few weeks ago, we opined that there were few movie climaxes as riveting as the bunker scene, when the demented madman rages against the inevitable as the walls close in upon him.

But these days our thoughts turn to classic climax of the horror movie: when the monster turns on the evil humans who created him.  Perhaps that's because of this heart-rending story in Friday's New York Times about the assault on that plucky innocent and fish-fingers heir, Tucker Carlson, after he attacked the Tangerine-Faced Loser's batsh*t crazy mouthpiece, Sidney Powell, for making wild accusations of election fraud without any evidence:

“What Powell was describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history,” Mr. Carlson said on Thursday night, his voice ringing with incredulity . . . . “Millions of votes stolen in a day. Democracy destroyed. The end of our centuries-old system of government.” But, he said, when he invited Ms. Powell on his show to share her evidence, she became “angry and told us to stop contacting her.”

The response was immediate, and hostile. The president’s allies in conservative media and their legions of devoted Trump fans quickly closed ranks behind Ms. Powell and her case on behalf of the president, accusing the Fox host of betrayal.

“How quickly we turn on our own,” said Bo Snerdley, Mr. Limbaugh’s producer, in a Twitter post that was indicative of the backlash against Mr. Carlson. “Where is the ‘evidence’ the election was fair?” [Except the unanimous testimony of election officials of both parties – Ed.]

The backlash against Mr. Carlson and Fox for daring to exert even a moment of independence underscores how little willingness exists among Republicans to challenge the president and his false narrative about the election he insists was stolen. . . .

The same fear that grips elected Republicans — getting on the wrong side of voters who adore Mr. Trump but have little affection for the Republican Party — has kept conservative media largely in line. And that has created a right-wing media bubble that has grown increasingly disconnected from the most basic facts about American government in recent weeks, including who will be inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, 2021. 

Also Russia from her house.

. . . . Roosh Valizadeh, a writer and podcast host who supports the president, summed up the anger aimed at Fox by many on the right, saying, “As long as Tucker Carlson works for Fox News, he can’t be fully trusted.”

. . . . Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review and sometimes critic of the president who called his refusal to concede “absurd and sophomoric,” said that . . . breaking the will that many Trump supporters have to believe he is the rightful winner was extremely difficult.

“They want it to be true,” Mr. Lowry said. “On top of that, there’s an enormous credibility gap and radical distrust of other sources of information. And that’s compounded by the fact that the president has no standards and is surrounded by these clownish people who will say anything. It’s a toxic stew.”

Mr. Lowry added that he thought Mr. Carlson’s words were “admirable” and had told the Fox host so himself. “It’s one thing for people who’ve been opposed to Trump all along, or mixed, to say something like that,” Mr. Lowry said. “It’s another thing for a leader of the populist wing of the conservative movement to call it out.” 

Another thing, indeed.

But to understand why Republicans provocateurs like Fish Fingers and the editors of the National Review were subject to such abuse at the hands of the Trumpublican monster, we need to be unkind and rewind.  [No one under 40 will get that reference – Ed.]

The Times piece itself sketches in the backstory:

Mr. Carlson is no ordinary Trump critic. He has been one of the president’s most aggressive defenders in prime time, especially when it came to standing up for Mr. Trump as he attacked African-American politicians, athletes and the racial justice activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. He has also generally bought into the disproved notion that voter fraud is a widespread problem — a popular position with Mr. Trump and on Mr. Carlson’s network. 

But to understand how the Trumpublican angry white supremacists have come to accept lies over truth, you'd have to look back about sixty years or so to review the diet of increasingly strident lies they have been fed – by the exact same gasbags who are shocked, shocked to discover that the base actually believed what they told him.

First, is Fish-Fingers Carlson actually a fearless crusader for truth?  If you believe that, you're probably constructing an outhouse for the neighborhood wild bears.  According to Media Matters, Carlson has been called out in hundreds of deliberate falsehoods, all of which were devoted to fanning the flames of unjustified white racist grievance:

And that's just since October 1.  

The Media Matters file on this hatemonger, like the known universe, has no observable end.

You might surmise that fed a steady diet of this crap 24/7 Trumpublicans might start to believe it.  They then might regard any deviation from these hate-ridden fictions as explicable only as a deliberate lie.

As for the National Review's Rich Lowry, let's remember his publication's greatest claim to fame, which was its consistent opposition to civil rights in the 1960's on the grounds that white goobers in the South were superior to Blacks.  For those of you just tuning in, this is a racist lie.

Here's a taste of this Southern fried bigotry: 

Consider, for example, this National Review editorial from 1957 (cited in Paul Krugman’s recent book The Conscience of a Liberal):

The central question that emerges—and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal—is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. …National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way; and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.

The equanimity in that last clause is particularly chilling when you consider that it was published only two years after Emmett Till’s murder.

But tell people, especially white racists, what they want to hear long enough and they're going to be mighty surprised and disappointed when you try to tell them you were making it up along.  So perhaps ol' Fish Fingers shouldn't have been so surprised to find out that the monster he did so much to create has come after him.  And his moneybags, the amazingly alive Rupert Murdoch, might want to consider whether he has to pay huge bucks for supposed stars like Tucker.  Anyone willing to shovel the racist lies the monster demands will do just fine.  We're sure someone will remind the old Aussie that Kayleigh McEnany will be available in 62 days and she works cheap.

In any event, Tucker and Rick and all the others who have strayed from the white supremacist party line should remember what happens when you rile up the Trumpublican monster.

It's not pretty: