REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 TUCKER CARLSON HAS SHOWN WHY HE SHOULD BE MOCKED AND IGNORED

 

                            …Tucker Carlson of the less than accurate, Fox News

 

Carlson on Fox, continues to show his vast ignorance

 

The following is an article of mine that came from a very well written piece in The Washington Post by Michael Kranish.  Kranish is a national political investigative reporter for The Post.  He is the co-author of The Post’s biography "Trump Revealed," as well as his biographies of John Kerry and Mitt Romney. He previously was the deputy chief of the Boston Globe's Washington bureau.  The very detailed and complete article also had contributions from additional Post reporters, Alice Crites and Jeremy Barr.

In 2003, the Fox TV pundit, Tucker Carlson, who at the time was a co-host on CNN”s “Crossfire” program.  He was this time in Ghana, Africa.  The event was with some of America’s most prominent civil rights leaders such as Rev. Albert Sampson, and Rev. All Sharpton.  Rev. Sampson was a former associate of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  The issue at the time was to deal with the history and a tour of the castle and the dungeon in Ghana where back in the 1700’s, shackled Africans, who did not perish in the voyage to America, were sold as human chattel.

Rev Sampson said at the time, “When we had arrived at the castle and the dungeon, it had an emotional impact on all of us, as Africans in America.”  Sampson then said: There was then what he called “the tragedy of Carlson.”

“He did not cry,” Sampson told The Washington Post in his first interview about the encounter. “He did not have any intellectual response. He didn’t give any verbal response. It was a total detachment from the reality of the event.”

When Carlson wrote an account of the trip several months later, he sounded totally dismissive, describing how he thought a teary-eyed Sampson “was going to bite me” but instead “he put his arms on me and said with a smile, “I love you, man.”

“Sampson was trying to make me feel guilty,” Carlson wrote in an account for Esquire magazine.  “It wasn’t obvious to me at the time. The idea that I’d be responsible for the sins or, for that matter, share in the glory of the accomplishments of dead people who happened to share my skin tone.  That has always confused me. Racial solidarity wasn’t a working concept in my southern-California hometown.”

At the time, Carlson’s words were mere comments from a Washington pundit in his mid-30s with a limited following beyond daytime cable television.  His seeming dismissiveness of the emotion of the moment set him apart from many fellow conservatives.  Those who were seeking inroads with Black religious leaders and those that were looking to broaden the appeal of the Republican Party.  It was in part, by acknowledging the evils of racism. That same month that Carlson had flown to Africa, President George W. Bush had toured Gorée Island in Senegal, from which generations of enslaved people were shipped to the United States.  President Bush that day decried slavery as “one of the greatest crimes of history.”

Carlson, in his many writings and commentaries, has described resentment toward liberals as far back as his being in the first grade. He has frequently ridiculed the notion that America should celebrate diversity and has lashed out repeatedly at the idea that he, as a “White person, should bear any responsibility for racism against Black people.”

Several people who have interacted with him over the years say they don’t know what he really believes, but they say they are increasingly troubled by his influence as what one of his former mentors described as a “very talented demagogue.”

Two of the leading conservative activists battling critical race theory, an academic construct in which systemic racism is studied, credit him with the rapid rise of their movement, while Black scholars he frequently targets say he mischaracterizes and manipulates their work to suit his agenda.

Carlson’s rise has come about during a time of extraordinary political upheaval. His audience seriously increased as Donald Trump was remaking the Republican Party around “America first” appeals that embraced further restrictions on migration.  He has also turned away from America’s tradition as a land of immigrants.  And his show has thrived as the murder of George Floyd triggered a visceral debate over systemic racism, and after the pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Night after night, Carlson stokes resentment among his audience of nearly 3 million, which has given him the highest-rated cable news show in the most recent quarter.  And the millions more who absorb his viral outbursts on social media. He blasts liberals, throttles Republican leaders whom he sees as insufficiently devoted to battling the “woke” left.  He generally sets the parameters for the far-right anti-elitism that defines today’s GOP.

Carlson has used his influence to spread unfounded claims that have been embraced by many Republican leaders. He has echoed Trump’s falsehood that the election was “rigged.” He promoted the baseless notion that FBI agents were behind the storming of the Capitol. And although he has described himself as “pretty pro-vaccine,” Carlson has questioned the successfulness of vaccination against the coronavirus, saying, “maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that” leading President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, to rebut his “crazy conspiracy theory.”

But on many nights, it is Carlson’s “White Grievance” that dominates the show.

Tucker Carlson with his Fox News Team ad

He has questioned whether Floyd’s death was caused by a police officer and says “Black Lives Matter is poison for the country.” He has promoted a claim, embraced by white nationalists, that “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate with more obedient voters from the Third World.”

He has accused Boston University Professor Ibram Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” of promoting racism. He called a top military leader a “pig” for saying he wanted to understand the role racism played in the Capitol attack. And he has said Black people and their White supporters are on a mission to spread “race hate,” devoting many of his segments over the past year to bashing the ideas behind critical race theory.

“He has positioned himself as the presentable face of White grievance,” said Joseph Azam, who resigned in late 2017 as a senior vice president of News Corp., which, like Fox, was controlled by the Murdoch family, because he objected to the company’s tolerance for what he felt were Carlson’s hateful views and other commentary. “He’s on mainstream media, he’s dressed in a suit, he speaks in a way that people see as eloquent and informed, and he’s super confident in what he’s saying.”

While Carlson has denied political aspirations, some in the party have speculated that he might one day use his platform to run for president, just as Trump used his show “The Apprentice” to promote himself in a way that eventually landed him in the White House. Regardless, critics and allies alike agree that after Trump’s defeat and the death of conservative talk-radio icon, Rush Limbaugh, Carlson now occupies a singular role in the GOP information universe

Carlson “has the rapt attention of every conservative policymaker and millions of conservative voters,” Christopher Rufo, a conservative researcher whose criticism of critical race theory during a September 2020 appearance on Carlson’s show prompted Trump to sign an executive order restricting diversity training in federal agencies.  He told The Post in an email exchange. “The reality is that ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ is the highest-rated show in cable news and, to a large extent, Tucker frames the narrative for conservative politics. Tucker doesn’t react to the news; he creates the news.”

Carlson did not grant an interview for this story. After The Post posed questions to Fox News and requested time with Carlson, a Post reporter received a text message over the weekend from a number listed in a phone records database under Carlson’s name saying, “It’s Tucker Carlson. I’d love to add comment to your piece. Let me know when you have a minute.”

Carlson did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him again. Fox News later sent a written statement from Carlson in which he said: “You want to make me shut up, so you call me a racist. I’ve seen it before.”

Fox News also released a statement to The Post standing by its star: “Tucker Carlson is an important voice in America which deeply resonates with millions of viewers via our powerful primetime lineup and two in-depth shows on FOX Nation — we fully support him.”

And the network pointed to an August 2020 article in Variety in which Carlson defends his views on race.

“I’m sure that people who hate my politics will try to discredit them by calling me names, but there is no show that I’m aware of that has made a stronger case for a color-blind meritocracy than ours has,” Carlson told the publication. “I believe that all American citizens, regardless of how they were born, should be treated equally under the law. As I say on a nightly basis, we should not impugn people for things they cannot control, for their immutable characteristics. That is an argument against racism.”

As Carlson has told it, he has spent much of his career reporting that Black people seek to blame Whites for everything and have an unfair advantage.  He claims that can feed into the narrative of “White Rage.”

“That is something that I have covered up close and personal my entire adult life,” Carlson said in a 2008 radio interview. “The Congressional Black Caucus exists to blame the White man for everything, and I’m happy to say that in public because it’s true.” He said a program designed to help African Americans was akin to Jim Crow laws. “Just because of the color of his skin, he gets an advantage over you.”

Carlson has had an elite upbringing.

Carlson’s origin story, as he told it in his 2018 book “Ship of Fools,” began when he was a mere 7 years old.

His mother had left the family. He was raised in La Jolla, in San Diego, by his wealthy father, Richard Carlson, a prominent Republican who worked in the Reagan administration, oversaw Voice of America and married an heiress to the Swanson frozen food family.

From the door of his childhood home, Tucker Carlson overlooked La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, in one of the country’s most expensive communities.

He attended the elite La Jolla Country Day School, where a woman entered his life whom he grew to detest. It was his first-grade teacher, whom he referred to in his book as Mrs. Raymond. He caricatured her as “a parody of earth-mother liberalism” who “wore long Indian-print skirts. . . . She had little interest in conventional academic topics, like reading and penmanship.” He recalled her sobbing theatrically at her desk, saying, “The world is so unfair! You don’t know that yet. But you’ll find out!”

Carlson said he just wanted liberals to “stop blubbering and teach us to read. . . . Mrs. Raymond never did teach us; my father had to hire a tutor to get me through phonics.” Thus, Carlson says, he began his sojourn as a conservative thinker, questioning the liberals who he said were all around him, exemplified by his first-grade teacher.

Which all this is rather shocking to Marianna Raymond, 77, who remembers Carlson as “very precious and very, very polite and sweet,” and said she had no idea, until contacted recently by a Washington Post reporter, that her former student had ridiculed her as a key to understanding him.

Ms. Raymond said in an interview that she never sobbed at her desk, didn’t wear an Indian skirt and didn’t advocate her political views. She said that not only did she teach Carlson reading at La Jolla Country Day School, with a student body that was “very affluent and White,” but that she also was, then the one that was hired to tutor him at his home.

“Oh my God,” she said, when informed of Carlson’s attack against her. “That is the most embellished, crazy thing I ever heard.”

Carlson headed off at age 14 to St. George’s School in Rhode Island, where he became known for challenging people to political debates, and then he attended Trinity College in Connecticut. He applied to work for the CIA, which he has said rejected him, and he then got a job working for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

In 1995, Carlson learned Rupert Murdoch was launching a conservative magazine to be called the Weekly Standard.  Carlson convinced editor Bill Kristol to hire him. He soon came to the attention of television producers as well.

One of Carlson’s first appearances came in 1995 on “CBS This Morning,” where he took on race relations. There were two Americas, Carlson said, because it was “undeniably clear that White and Black Americans see things entirely differently, at least on some questions.”

Carlson said that the country had been having “an intense, loud and sometimes violent conversation about race since the nation began. So I’m not certain it’s a question of talking more about race. It’s a question of talking more clearly.” He then proposed that there be “less conversation about race.”

One of Carlson’s most striking but little-remembered attacks around that time occurred against Trump.

It happened during a November 1999 exchange with another writer on the website Slate about the prospect of Trump running for president on a Reform Party ticket.

“You’ve said it all: He is the single most repulsive person on the planet. . . . That said, I still plan to write about him some time. I don’t think I’ll be able to help it. Horrible as he is. Trump is interesting, or at least more so than most candidates.” Carlson wrote that Trump and the Reform Party reflected the fact “that ideology as a force in national elections is dead,” before correcting himself to say, “They’re just a bunch of wackos.”

Around the time Carlson made his disparaging remarks about Trump, he left the Weekly Standard and became a television host, leading him to write a 2003 book, “Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites” attacking those on the extremes who followed a party line.

When Carlson later wrote about the Africa trip for Esquire, the magazine’s headline said the Black leaders “took the whitest man in America with them.”

Carlson wrote that he could barely contain his anger: “I longed for the cathartic release that would come from leaping across the table and smashing his nose.”

Sampson, now 82, said in the interview that he never said the words Carlson attributed to him. “No,” Sampson said. “The other side of it is, why didn’t he embrace the words when I said, ‘I love you.’ He would rather solve a problem with violence than to embrace a man who has given his life to teaching nonviolence.”

Sampson also specifically denied Carlson’s contention that he suggested that Carlson, as a White man, had some responsibility for slavery or any other sins. “Not at all. He wasn’t there in the 1800s,” Sampson said. The Carlson television viewers see today, Sampson said, is an extension of the person he encountered in Ghana. Carlson was, and continues to be, “a proponent of detachment from the pain and suffering of our people,” Sampson said.

Sharpton said he thought at the time that Carlson was conservative, “but it was none of the hostility and none of depicting us as extremist or racist.” Like Sampson, Sharpton recalled that Carlson seemed impassive about the visit to the dungeon, but the two initially remained friendly. After the trip, Carlson gave Sharpton informal advice about attracting working-class White voters during Sharpton’s 2004 presidential campaign and brought one of his children to hear him preach, Sharpton said. The two appeared together on cable news shows.

Over the years, Carlson’s rhetoric about race has hardened, and he has ridiculed Sharpton, calling him a “race pimp.” Sharpton said Carlson “changed,” and that he can only wonder if Carlson “hid” his feelings before or is now playing for ratings.

Carlson has only gotten worse over the years, and his show has shown how bad he has become.

The rest of the article by Michael Kranish only gets worse as to how bad Carlson has become, and it is a very long article which I will not try to condense for you.

However, as an example of how bad it has gotten, on a recent program, as the screen showed a sign that said “anti-white mania,” Carlson said that the country cannot survive if people are told that some groups are “inherently oppressed.”

After having spent months criticizing critical race theory, Carlson said that phrase “doesn’t mean anything.” He said what is happening is “race hate. It is peddled by the people in charge in the hope that it will make them more powerful.” He said the teaching of “race hate” has infected the country at its highest levels.

As an example, Carlson cited a June 23 appearance by Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before a congressional committee. Milley said he wanted to understand the role that “White rage” played in the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

“I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist,” Milley said. “So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend, and I personally find it offensive” that members of the military who want to understand racial matters are accused of being “woke or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there.”

In normal times, a declaration by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he wanted to understand racism would not be controversial. But to Carlson, it was another opportunity for mockery, if not self-awareness of his own role.

After playing the clip, Carlson laughed at the military leader’s words and said: “He’s not just a pig. He’s stupid!”

What, in Carlson’s view, makes Milley stupid? Carlson, who for years has stoked the angry idea that Whites are the ones being discriminated against, told his viewers: “He reads about White rage as if it’s totally real.”

This is what Tucker Carlson and Fox News have come to.  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff just wanted to seriously understand some of the racial matters that were obviously important to the U.S. military. That is not a reason for a Fox News pundit such as Tucker Carlson to be mocking the chairman of the most powerful military in the world.

Copyright G. Ater 2021