By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Generator
One of the brightest stars in the Fox “News” firmament and friend of the common man who just happened to inherit millions from the Swanson TV dinner fortune Tucker Carlson has run into some rough seas, as his fellow rich douchebags would say.
Some of his recent ravings about the immigrant threat have caught the attention of captious critics who have noticed the parallels between Salisbury Steak Carlson's views on the imminent peril of “white replacement” and the views of other distinguished commentators from our recent and more distant past.
Here's Trevor Noah pointing out the similarity between Turkey Breast and Peas Carlson and, um, white mass shooters:
We need to talk about plagiarism at Fox News pic.twitter.com/XFdzYA8ao7
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 9, 2021
In response, other Twitterers have pointed out it may be unfair to blame the deranged views of these vicious murderers on Fish Fingers Carlson. It might be the reverse, or it might be simply that the racist theory of “white replacement” has been with us for a long time.
At least that's the view of Prof. Jared Sexton on Substack [Hey you mean you can get paid for this s**t? – Ed.]
What Tucker espoused was not just racist or white supremacist in nature, it was the very stuff of white supremacist terrorism and active neo-fascism in the modern world. . . .
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| Before cable TV, white supremacists had to show their faces in public |
One of the great misunderstandings of this moment is that any of this is new. Donald Trump obviously represented a degeneration of what we call the “status quo,” but he was representative of a larger systemic rot in American culture and politics. That he is no longer president is not proof that that disease has been cured or even particularly stalled. That disease has infected the body of America since its founding and has flared up, in new and different ways, whether it was the uprising by slaveholders in the 19th century, the paranoid, oppressive actions of the Cold War, or in the horrific development of American fascism in the 20th century, a development that serves as a prescient precursor to this crisis we find ourselves in now.
Prof. Sexton cites infamous fascists from our past, like Col. Charles “I 💕 Nazis” Lindbergh:
The America First Committee was incredibly popular and national hero Charles Lindbergh came to represent its public face and flirted with a run at the presidency. Lindbergh openly advocated for not just neutrality in the nascent war, but a partnership with Hitler to defend “the treasures of the white race.”
“It is time to turn from our quarrels,” he wrote, “and to build our White ramparts again…a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood.”
Lindbergh gained traction as he highlighted the struggle against people of color and the threat of losing the white world, painting a portrait of a major conspiracy being perpetrated by Jewish puppetmasters who controlled the media, liberal traitors who destroyed the country from the inside out, and people of color who were sources of potential violence wherever they might be found. It was the same conspiracy theory we’re still dealing with today under a different name.
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| Hey Rupert he's tanned, rested, and ready for prime time |
Lest you think that pointing out the obvious linkage between the hateful views expressed by Whipped Potatoes and Apple Cobbler Carlson and generations of white racism is an exotic specialty of the intellectual left and late-night satirists, let's welcome Max Boot, former Republican apologist for the Iraq War and flack and bag carrier for the campaigns of noted lefties John McCain, Wilfred M. Romney and Marco Rubio.
Max, is it unfair to connect Fried Chicken and Peas Carlson to white supremacist hate speech then and now? According to the Bootmeister:
Carlson knows exactly how toxic the word “replacement” is when used in the context of immigration, but he nevertheless put his imprimatur on it: “Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening actually. Let’s just say it: That’s true.”
Now no one has ever accused Hungry Man Sized Carlson of original, or indeed, any thought. Until July of last year the white supremacist scripts were written for him nightly by an Ivy League grad (well, Dartmouth) and unapologetic neo-Nazi, Blake Neff, until his bigoted hate speech was made public, whereupon he was shuffled off to Argentina:
Neff worked at Fox News for nearly four years and was Carlson's top writer. Previously, he was a reporter at The Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet that Carlson co-founded. In a recent article in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Neff said, "Anything [Carlson is] reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me." He also acknowledged the show's influence, telling the magazine, "We're very aware that we do have that power to sway the conversation, so we try to use it responsibly."
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| Carlson's writers room is an exciting place to work |
Now they are written by hatemongers with better hidden social media accounts, proving that you can take the peas and carrots out of the TV dinner but it's still pure Carlson. And you still wonder who can stomach it.
But that's not really Boot's main point. He proceeds to point out the hypocrisy of Fox “News” coining millions from fomenting anti-immigrant hatred when the entire enterprise is controlled by, wait for it, immigrants:
The founder and co-chairman of Fox Corp. is, of course, Rupert Murdoch, a mogul who was born in Australia and now spends a lot of time in both the United States and the United Kingdom [and is a naturalized US citizen – Ed.]. The co-chairman and CEO is his son, Lachlan Murdoch, who was born in London and now lives in Australia. The person who is often said to be the most powerful day-to-day executive at Fox is Viet Dinh, a Vietnamese refugee born in Ho Chi Minh City who is now the corporation’s chief legal and policy officer. The lead outside director is Jacques Nasser, a former Ford CEO who was born in Lebanon and grew up in Australia. Another Fox director is Anne Dias-Griffin, the founder and chief executive of Aragon Global Holdings, who was born and educated in France.
Viet Dinh? The superstar lawyer who fled Vietnam as a child and sought asylum in the United States? And who made $24,000,000 in 2019 overseeing the nonstop production of hot steaming lies and bigotry at Fox “News?”
Nice work if you can get it.
No one doubts his legal acumen, as proven by his Supreme Court Clerkship, a job for which we ourselves were turned down. Hey, maybe they are replacing us! Next thing you know, Tucker's family will be making their famous Salisbury Steak dinners out of fake meat.
The undeniable linkage between Roast Beef with Gravy and Tater Tots Carlson's extreme racist and white supremacist rants and 100 years or more of American racism and neo-Nazi extremism has led some to wonder if he really believes this crap or whether it's just a cynical ploy to justify the $10,000,000 he trousers from aged Australian immigrant Rupert Murdoch.
To which we say: it makes no difference. First, which is more loathsome: that he is a white supremacist or that he isn't but is spewing hate just to make millions?
Second, as our old friend Kurt Vonnegut said in Mother Night,
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
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| Are illegal alien child terrorists coming for your golf clubs? We're just asking questions here. |
It makes you wonder whether thrifty immigrants like Viet Dinh could save serious money here. Over the past five years, Fox “News” shed two hours of high priced “talent:” Loofah-lovin' Bill O'Reilly and Mammy Megan Kelly, but their ratings suffered not a whit.
Could it be that the loyal consumers of Fox “News” come not for the personalities, but for the hate speech simpliciter? If so, why not fire the current stooges and replace them with a computer avatar that generates the same bigotry but costs only pennies? It's our willingness to give away our genius ideas for free that separates us from $25 million a year savants like Dinh.
Making $10 million a year for spewing garbage may seem like easy money, at least for those who are not burdened by either shame or guilt. But to the pride of Yale Law School, professional ex-hillbilly J.D. Vance, it really takes courage:
Tucker Carlson is the only powerful figure who consistently challenges elite dogma—on both cultural and economic questions. That is why they try to destroy him. Don’t fall for it this time, or any other.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) April 9, 2021
We'll just say that if you think that white supremacist hate speech is a brave challenge to elite dogma, then you are a veggie and a dessert short of a Swanson 3-course dinner.
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