Everyone has a Tucker Carlson story, how they met him one time and how he was really cool, etc. It’s true, he is mostly what you see. But that’s not really what this is about, nor is it really about Tucker, though he will feature throughout. It’s about media and just how horrible and, frankly stupid, it has become.
My Tucker story is fun and involved, it goes from meeting him at a party at the home of Christopher Hitchens and continues through being the first hire for the Daily Caller, long before it launched or was named that (there was talk of calling it “The Northwest Corner,” which I successfully fought), through my wedding and up until today. The details are irrelevant and private, but the basics are not uncommon. His birthday is coming up, as is mine, and texts are always exchanged to commemorate each. This is not unique.
That’s the thing about Tucker – having gotten to know a lot of “political famous” people, very few are anything like their public image. Tucker is almost exactly the same, though maybe a little shorter. He texts during commercial breaks, when there’s news about you and it gets to him, he will get to you (he reached out as soon as he heard about my father passing, for example). And he doesn’t rush you to shut up or stop, even when you should. He’s just who he is, love it or hate it.
The media storm surrounding his leaving Fox News once again exposed all those jackals as the exact opposite – a narcissistic group of credentialed phonies who will never let the absence of information slow down their speculation.
I don’t know why Tucker is no longer on Fox, and neither does anyone who’s been all over television this week talking like they do. The only difference is I admit it.
I’ve been asked, as I suspect anyone tangentially connected to him has been asked a thousand times since Monday. I do not know. And it’s not my business. I sent a text saying I hope he’s ok, but he’s not going to pick up the phone and pour his soul out to me or anyone else he isn’t related to or hasn’t known for decades, nor should he. He doesn’t owe anyone a justification for his life and the events of it, no matter how public much of it has been.
So-called journalists, however, will simply take “information” from anyone to feed the rumor mill. I swear, if I told a reporter that he once told me he’s a necrophiliac and he was fired for hanging around Grant’s tomb a little too often, it would be “reported.” Not only have the standards for what constitutes news fallen through the floor, the standards for what is able to be reported are completely gone.
The morning after the news broke I forced myself to watch Morning Joe. It’s normally a vapid echo chamber, but this week set a new marker for intellectual voidism. There was no conspiracy theory too absurd for mention, nothing too dumb to be said.
On a good day, Mika Brzezinski is lucky that breathing is a reflex because otherwise she’d forget to do it. She and her second husband, Joe Scarborough (she’s his third wife), had one of the all-time dumbest exchanges in the history of television (not just cable news, but anything ever broadcast). They talked about the security footage from January 6th Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave to Carlson as though there was only one copy and it was on a series of VHS tapes.
“I think the question about the January 6 tapes is a really big one. What exactly happens to those? Do they stay in his possession?” Mika asked from her tax haven Florida mansion as if there was a shoebox full of Betamax tapes laying around somewhere.
“Kevin McCarthy needs to get the tapes back. And he needs to get lawyers to have documents signed that they’re not going to be used anywhere else in the future, or any of its contents revealed,” dumbass Joe added from the seat beside his pancake make-up covered wife with an oddly unmovable, smooth forehead.
They work in media, are they as unaware of digital as they appear to be of high definition? (We have to be grateful Mika is too old to have kids, the offspring of this much idiocy would surely bring about the end of life as we know it.)
This is just one example of the MOJO morons this week seemingly using the career moves of someone they hate as foreplay. Just one example…from one show…on one network – it’s been a non-stop and is beyond pathetic, yet it is what news has become. Who needs the National Enquirer or the late Weekly World News when you’ve got MSNBC? Actually, we all could. At least they’d get a story right every once in a while, if only by accident. MSNBC doesn’t have that issue.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Sign up and support his work. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.