This week Tucker Carlson Tonight featured a discursive bit on "Joe Biden's CIA," "identity politics gone wild," and dismissal of "the white supremacist threat." Along the way, the host ridiculed David Frum, who objected:
In the extended Twitter thread, Frum suggests that
Carlson's like a one-man TV special effect, a creation of market analysis of race-baiting as a segment within an ever more fragmented infotainment industry.
He would just as happily host Jeopardy or do a cooking show with a Kardashian.
This morning Kevin Drum highlights (re a study of asymmetric polarization) "yet another demonstration of the malignant effect of Fox News." No disagreement here. More than any other institution, Fox News Channel sets the agenda for the Republican Party (grievance, not policy), nurtures polarization, amps up anger on the right, and deliberately and with malice aforethought misinforms its viewers. Tucker Carlson, Fox's biggest, baddest star, is the chief agitator.
As Frum suggests, it's clearly show business to him. He's a performer. He mugs and mocks with a volatile mixture of non-sequiturs, hyperbole, insults, and yarns, which serve to generate fury at the other. His ratings have made him a rich man. His annual income places him securely within the top 1/10 of 1-percent. He is an unimpeachable member of the elite he scorns. With the same compensation for hosting Jeopardy or doing a cooking show, I doubt that Carlson would have nearly as much fun as he does trolling the libs and promoting white supremacy.
The Monty Python crew didn't lay it on as thick as Carlson does. Frum objects in so many words that Carlson is an unprincipled, unaccountable cynic. Well, yeah, but his ratings lead the cable news business. His bits may not count as rational discourse, but his fans in the Trump base -- that is, folks (in the words of Scott Jennings) who "believe in Jesus, Trump and Tucker Carlson — and not always in that order"-- far outnumber the Republicans heeding anyone on the principled conservative team. Carlson and Frum may have started out as fellow intellectuals at the now-shuttered Weekly Standard, but that was before the former became the hottest name brand at Murdoch's FNC powerhouse. Look at him now!
It's television. The images are as critical to the performance as the sound.
May 8: post revised for clarity.
[Screen grabs from Fox News Channel video on YouTube.]