24 Comments
Apr 25, 2023·edited Apr 25, 2023

Joy Reid on MSNBC is easily as one-sided, hostile, divisive and just plain rage-based as Carlson ever was, although not nearly as popular. Rachel Maddow during the Steele Dossier/Russian collusion fever episode likely set the world’s record for televised lies and insane conspiracies. Joe Scarborough may be the stupidest and assholiest asshole ever on TV.

I’m on the political left, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone who values truth or sanity watch any of the 24-hour “news” networks — especially if you’re looking for news — but pretending Carlson was a unique evil or threat in that world is just ignorant or delusional or pure partisan spin; he was just better at mining the zeitgeist, and it struck a nerve.

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What does Don Lemon have to say about it?

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Stephen Tobolowsky in the continuing adventures of the Comissioner from Yankton would slap!

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You don’t understand Tucker Carlson, his appeal, or his audience. That’s a shame, because there’s so much that you do see clearly and without the cultural biases that warp what much of the progressive and radical left believes to be real.

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Police Squad reruns are probably the only thing that would ever get me to watch Fox News. If they ran those, I'd watch the shit out of that channel.

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I think it would be really meta for Fox to hire Stephen Colbert to replace Tucker.

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Thank you for those of you commenting on other news/ option programs. 👏 Funny how some of these posts are one sided.

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Tuckums wasn't fired for his on-air BS, he was fired, along with one of his producers, because a woman is suing the network for being a hostile, abusive environment. Tuckums was part of that, so he went. What scares me is who will replace him, and what rock will the Murdochs dig them out from under? Nick Fuentes is a rising Reich-wing star, maybe this is his time to shine. God help us all.

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Tucker pivoted from a lot of traditionally mainstream conservative talking points. Just look up his interview with the Amazon unionization leader on Staten Island or wherever in NYC.

He told knee jerk milquetoast libs to actually think about political structures and motivations-and they hated it. He was telling the HR department at work to stuff it-and their basic reaction was “You’re meeeeeeaaaaan”, not “Hmmmm, why are we unquestiongly parroting this stuff?”. His show producer, who also got fired, is gay btw. Doubt he worked for someone who was cool with him living in a National Forest, like a Portland Antifa freak on the run….

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Apr 25, 2023·edited Apr 25, 2023

>>> "... I think the extent to which media figures drive the conversation is limited."

From a starting point of zero, or completely neutral, I mostly agree. But I think this assertion ignores the longer-term effects of a media outfit regurgitating their audience's more vile instincts, and then constantly repeating, amplifying, and exaggerating those feelings. This reinforces the audience's feeling of being right, and keeps them locked in. And just like a lot of other bad drugs, the ensuing doses have to be made ever stronger (read: more hysterical, and even less truthful) to produce the same warm fuzzies.

I can't claim causation, but there certainly is a strong correlation between the launching of FoxNews™ in 1996 and the descent into madness among the GOP base, and their political leadership, in the time since.

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