TUCKER CARLSON: TOTALLY UNAPOLOGETIC ABOUT HIS INSULTS AGAINST WOMEN

…Carlson made ‘misogynistic’ comments on statutory rape, and insults against women.

Is Carlson a prominent “mouthpiece for white supremacy.”

Ms. Madeline Peltz is a 24-year-old that has her first job as an adult working the night shift at Media Matters for America.  Media Matters is a non-profit, liberal, watch-dog organization which tracks conservative media trends.  They have engaged in a long-time effort to cast light on the ways Fox News and its host’s sidestep traditional journalistic guidelines.

Ms. Peltz main responsibility has become watching Tucker Carlson’s 8 p.m. show on Fox News, and she’s watched a lot of Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson has been in the public eye for some 20 years, and today, since he took over for Bill O’Reilly in 2018, he has a prime-time slot at Fox, and a salary in the millions.

After many Carlson-watching hours, Ms. Peltz has developed a working theory, which she recently outlined on Media Matters’ website.  Her theory is that Carlson is using his platform on Fox News to introduce white-nationalist ideas to the mainstream, making him a uniquely prominent “mouthpiece for white supremacy.”

Peltz dug into Carlson’s recent past and discovered a trove of appearances he made on a shock-jock radio show between 2006 and 2011.  In those tapes she found a series of misogynistic, racist and homophobic remarks that Carlson made.  The audio of those shows was recently offered up by Media Matters.

In response, Carlson was as usual, totally defiant.  He casts himself as the victim of, “The great American outrage machine.  Power-seeking organizations of people that are waging a political war to censor me.”

In reality, the credit for the audio tapes’ publication was due to Ms. Peltz.  Instead of it being a “power seeking organization” as stated by Carlson, this young woman with her first real job, lives in the basement of a D.C. house that she rents with five other people.  Plus a few cats and a dog named Noodles.  “I’m not like some high-power-wielding globalist,” Peltz said, using the conspiracy jargon of the far right. “I’m just a kid who’s been on the Internet my whole life and who knows how to get around in it.”

The following are some examples of what Ms. Peltz has discovered in her night-shift position of following Tucker Carlson:

• Carlson called the rape shield laws “totally unfair” and he was adamantly supportive of Warren Jeffs, the former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who is currently serving a life sentence for child rape. Carlson also said he would “love” a scenario involving young girls sexually experimenting and described most women as being “extremely primitive.”

• Media Matters released an audio file just moments after Carlson’s show began. In that audio, Carlson said that white men deserve credit for “creating civilization,” called all Iraqis a bunch of “semi-literate primitive monkeys,” and he spoke about his desire for a presidential candidate to blame the “lunatic Muslims who are behaving like animals.”

• In another audio file, Carlson could be heard joking about having sex with someone he thought was an underage beauty pageant contestant.

Please note:  Tucker Carlson is totally unapologetic over his ‘misogynistic’ comments on statutory rape, or his insults against women.

On the following night show, Carlson did not address the audios, instead he took his aim at Media Matters, calling it “a George Soros-funded lobbying organization whose sole mission is to punish critics of the Democratic Party.”

Media Matters for America is not currently funded by George Soros, and he has not donated to the organization for many years, its president, Angelo Carusone, said this in a recent interview.

While Carlson described Media Matters as being a large organization working to “bully” many corporations.

Media Matters is a fraction of the size of Fox News, whose revenue for 2018 has been estimated to be more than $3 billion.  Media Matters has about 80 employees and a budget of about $14 million, and that mostly comes from private donors.

But the results from Media Matters efforts have not gone unnoticed.  The tapes have turned up pressure on Fox, teeing off a multiple advertiser boycott and a serious protest in front of Fox News’s headquarters in New York.  This was helped to be organized by, you guessed it….Media Matters.

…The large protest in front of Fox News Headquarters that brought on a multiple advertiser boycott.

The Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi has explained how Fox News embraces controversies caused by the inflammatory comments from Fox hosts.  This is how Fox News thrives on all controversies.

It important to fully understand what is the focus of Media Matters.  This group conducts media analysis from a left-leaning perspective.  They do this by studying trends and themes of how political discussions play out in the nation’s media bubbles.  Its staff monitors some 50,000 hours of live programming on television and radio every year, and the organization tapes another million hours of audio and video.

Media Matters, has an active website that highlights some of these moments.  They drew criticism during the 2016 election campaign for what some saw as an attempt to malign coverage that was critical of Hillary Clinton.  But it has found a renewed prominence in the Trump era by turning its sights to the Trump administration.  It is focusing on the rise of conspiracy theories and all the misinformation online.  Also, on the increased visibility of right-wing websites and right-wing ideas.  In addition, focus on the energized conservative media system that helps amplifies those ideas.

Tucker Carlson has responded to all this by attacking Media Matters for America, as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose listing of hate groups is used widely by media organizations.

Carlson has also been engaged in a long-running feud with CNN and he recently called anchor Brian Stelter a “eunuch” multiple times.  Obviously, his name-calling was omitted from the text of his monologue posted on the Fox News website.

“This is what an authoritarian society looks like,” Carlson said. “It was only a matter of time before they came after Fox News.”

He also took aim at Media Matters’ designation as a tax-exempt nonprofit and urged viewers to call the Internal Revenue Service.

Peltz said there’s no doubt in her mind that Carlson has been trying to “thread the needle of mainstreaming overt white nationalism” while also avoiding the consequences for it.  She cited well-publicized instances: when Carlson said in December that immigration was making the country “dirtier,” and another segment in which Carlson claimed the South African government was seizing land from white owners, simply because they were white. Carlson has defended that story.

This comment about seizing white owners land in South Africa has been proven to be false.

However, Peltz said she believes Fox and Carlson’s extremism has been escalating.

“It’s clear in the editorial choices that he makes that he covers demographic change as basically the end of white people,” Peltz said. “As someone with one of the largest platforms in media, he frequently portrays himself as a victim. And that’s a long-time tactic of all white nationalists, going back all the way to the civil rights struggle in the South.”

“There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t think Fox News is super proud of,” Peltz said. “It just took 10 hours a day of listening to Fox to figure it all out.”

Media Matters says it has much more material and it seems clear the releases will continue.

Peltz said Carlson’s response to the audio’s publication is a sign that this has all had the appropriate effect. 

Copyright G. Ater 2019