Calling the shock-jock
Surprise surprise, one of Fox News’s more famous talking heads is contemptuous of women. Who could ever have guessed that?
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, many years ago, would regularly call in and chat with the host of the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show. The idea, as it is with any shock-jock program, was to stir up a buzz by discussing some controversial topics.
Carlson didn’t disappoint.
One of those topics, according to the Media Matters website, focused on Warren Jeffs, who was on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list for his role in arranging illegal marriages between adults and underage girls.
Carlson said criminal charges against Jeffs were “bullshit” because “arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old and a 27-year-old is not the same as pulling a stranger off the street and raping her.”
Unless of course it’s a Muslim man arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old man. Tucker Carlson wouldn’t brush that off, I’m betting, but when it’s a nice white home-grown Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint then that’s another story entirely.
What else did he say?
‘I love women, but they’re extremely primitive, they’re basic, they’re not that hard to understand. And one of the things they hate more than anything is weakness in a man.’
So women are kind of like dogs then? We love them, they make great pets, but they’re useless for discussing foreign policy or poetry or quantum physics.
He didn’t stop there. Carlson called journalist Arianna Huffington a “pig,” and labeled Britney Spears and Paris Hilton “the biggest white whores in America.”
Carlson also referred to Martha Stewart’s daughter Alexis as “cunty.”
He’s explained he said it to save time.
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 11, 2019
“Naughty.” No, asshole, the objection is not that it’s a swear. It doesn’t go in the box with “shit” and “fuck,” it goes in the box with “nigger” and “faggot” and “bitch.”
Also – wait a second. What’s this we have here? It’s a statement by Tucker Carlson, reported by Business Insider last November.
“On October 13, I had dinner with two of my children and some family friends at the Farmington Country Club in Charlottesville, Virginia. Toward the end of the meal, my 19-year-old daughter went to the bathroom with a friend. On their way back through the bar, a middle aged man stopped my daughter and asked if she was sitting with Tucker Carlson. My daughter had never seen the man before. She answered: ‘That’s my dad,’ and pointed to me. The man responded, ‘Are you Tucker’s whore?’ He then called her a ‘f—— c—.’
Not a helpful place for squeamish publication. He then called her a “fucking cunt.”
“My daughter returned to the table in tears. She soon left the table and the club. My son, who is also a student, went into the bar to confront the man. I followed. My son asked the man if he’d called his sister a ‘whore’ and a ‘cunt.’ The man admitted he had, and again become profane. My son threw a glass of red wine in the man’s face and told him to leave the bar, which he soon did.
“Immediately after the incident, I described these events to the management of the Farmington Country Club. The club spent more than three weeks investigating the incident. Last week, they revoked the man’s membership and threw him out of the club.
So, wait. Let me be sure I understand this. Carlson is defiantly unapologetic today about calling Martha Stewart’s daughter “cunty” but he did not take it placidly when a different guy called his daughter a cunt. How does that work, exactly? Apart from the obvious, that Carlson is a bad human being who dislikes bad treatment aimed at him but loves it aimed at others. How does it work when he has to explain it to the world at large?
Oh I bet I know. It’s that his daughter isn’t a cunt while Martha Stewart’s daughter is a cunt. Just the facts ma’am.
By the way, the guy in the story says he never called Carlson’s daughter names. I wonder which of the two to believe.
Just kidding; no I don’t.
The stock-in-trade of the shock-jock can be summed up as “speak well of my name, speak ill of my name, but speak my name.”
Being controversial is what it is all about at the nuts and bolts level. All one needs is to be opinionated. NB: This week’s opinion does not have to be the same as last week’s. Opinions can be stored and filed in the empty cerebral spaces usually reserved for principles, logic and consistency
The gift of the gab also helps.
And another stock-in-trade of the shock jock appears to be misogyny. Speak ill of women, and get the ratings. Sad!
Oddly, in a post today PZ describes Carlson as claiming to be a left-leaning liberal. I don’t see it, myself, but PZ must be right as none of his adoring horde have called him on it yet.
In Carlson’s world, a woman has no inherent value, except perhaps for her fuckability. She is, however, entitled to be treated with a status commensurate with that of her male owner/protector.
Thus:
Any teenage girl who Warren Jeffs can get his claws on either had no male protector, or had an inadequate one, so she deserves whatever she gets. Hell, in getting her a 27-year-old husband, Jeffs is actually doing that girl a favor!
It’s ok for Carlson to insult any woman who he can get away with insulting. If a woman’s owner/protector isn’t strong enough to beat Carlson (not at anything so crude as physical fighting, of course — whining to the country club committee is Tucker’s preferred form of chivalry), then she deserves whatever insults he chooses to throw her way. This is why you won’t hear Tucker speaking ill of Ivanka — Trump is one of the few men who can hurt Carlson career-wise.
It’s hardly unique to Carlson. There’s a reason why it’s so common for a man to say something crude to a woman in public, be confronted by the woman’s husband/boyfriend/father/brother and then back down by saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know she was with you.”
Just after writing that comment, I was reminded that Carlson was one of the people who piled on Samantha Bee for calling Ivanka a “feckless cunt.”
AoS, that claim by PZ makes no sense. Not only is Carlson generally regarded as a conservative and former Libertarian, but he’s on the record with statements like this…
“I don’t know what you consider conservative, but I’m not much of a liberal, at least as the word is currently defined. For instance, I’m utterly opposed to abortion, which I think is horrible and cruel. I think affirmative action is wrong. I’d like to slow immigration pretty dramatically. I hate all nanny state regulations, such as seat belt laws and smoking bans. I’m not for big government. I think the U.S. ought to hesitate before intervening abroad. I think these are conservative impulses.“
Not a left leaning liberal by any definition I understand.
Rob, in a world where the press can easily and without irony designate Hillary Clinton as a radical leftist when she is clearly a neo-liberal (in short, not particularly left), words have no meaning.
True, Iknklast.
I note Carlson is registered in DC as a Democrat. Apparently that’s common as it allows you to vote in the primaries for various elections. He states that in Mayoral primaries and elections he always votes for the most corrupt over the most idealogical candidate. Sounds like a modus operandi of the modern Republican.