“A solvent to authority”
But wait – an article in Prospect says Carlson is a rebel guy.
Tucker, as his enormous fan following knows him, was adored by viewers and reviled by critics for his signature incredulous stare—the slack-jawed expression he wears when he simply can’t believe what he’s being told.
That look of smirking disbelief is deliberately theatrical. But Carlson’s insistent distrust of his powerful guests acts as a solvent to authority, frequently making larger-than-life figures of the political establishment defend arguments they otherwise treat as self-evident.
Tucker’s willingness to challenge and mock ruling elites went alongside an obsessively nativist message that alienated viewers who might otherwise have embraced his populist perspective.
He didn’t challenge and mock all ruling elites though did he. He worked for a ruling elite.
His popularity with a wide audience
begs[raises] the question why other nightly news shows that attacked him didn’t raise the same critiques, without the nativism.One answer is that Tucker Carlson Tonight was an outlier in corporate-owned cable news, which is typically hostile to independent critiques of executives and political elites. The show declined to play the gatekeeping role that many of Carlson’s detractors demand of mainstream media platforms. Carlson hosted heads of state in the same week as fringe characters of both the far left and far right. He tapped into populist insights, cutting through left- and right-wing echo chambers and putting hard questions to corporate executives and members of the political establishment.
NYTimes columnist Jamelle Bouie is unconvinced.
The trouble is, to investigate this question one would have to watch a lot of old Tucker Carlson shows, or at least some of them, and…I don’t want to.
People act like authority is in and of itself completely bad, and like all authority is equally bad. This isn’t so. While much of what passes for authority in our so-called democratic society tends toward corporate friendly oligarchy, the mere “dissolving” of authority is not usually a good idea. Especially when the “authority” you don’t work against is the ones that are making the most inroads into society and enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Well sure… We do need our Leviathan, just a healthy one.
The Prospect piece isn’t laudatory of Carlson, rather it is an analysis of Carlson’s shtick. As such it’s useful as you can be sure something that has worked before (the put on about elites) will continue to be done by others following Carlson’s example. Bouie’s policing of the Prospect is off-base and sadly something many on the left think is necessary, even to the point of engaging in sleazy guilt-by-association tactics. There’s a reason why Kelley-Jay Keen and Kara Dansky appeared on Carlson’s show, and it’s because media outlets have been coerced by trans-activists to not cover them and journalists like Bouie have supported that themselves.
Wellll the Prospect piece is tinged with laudatoriosity at least. “Carlson’s insistent distrust of his powerful guests acts as a solvent to authority” isn’t just analysis, it’s a nudge. There may well be some truth to it, but it’s not a neutral statement of fact.
Carlson doesn’t like diversity in marriage? Glad to see he’s come around on the gay marriage issue.