Boris Johnson, during a visit to Washington DC yesterday, said he was "appalled to discover just how many people are afraid and frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson." Over at National Review, Bobby Miller gives him high-fives:
Johnson’s concerns are justified. Because of his large viewership and ability to whip up anger against anybody who crosses swords with him, Carlson wields tremendous influence among Republicans. There’s a contingent of Republicans who are eager to get into his good graces by taking positions that will generate appearances and favorable coverage on his show. There are also those who may oppose his populist and non-interventionist vision, who nonetheless walk on egg shells when it comes to any discussion of him. Republicans should be more willing to say what they think, without fear of whether they end up in Carlson’s crosshairs.
Both Johnson and Miller act vaguely surprised about this. Maybe they could use a history lesson.
Before the late '80s, there was really no choice except print if you wanted to get a daily dollop of right-wing opinion. That meant George Will and William F. Buckley and a bunch of other hyper-educated conservative elites, none of whom really appealed to the common man.
But the demise of the fairness doctrine upended the airways, and later on cable news became a staple. When that happened, everything changed.
First up was Rush Limbaugh. Maybe no one really remembers it now, but he was completely nuts! It was all feminazis and Billary and Vince Foster—and the common man loved it.
But Limbaugh needed the Clintons as foils and lost some of his mojo when they left the White House. The 9/11 attacks opened up new opportunities, and the Fox News prime-time trio of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Bill O'Reilly seized it by upping the outrage—and the common man loved it.
Eventually 9/11 faded and Iraq turned into an unpopular debacle. Then Barack Obama took office and that demanded a whole new level of outrage. The old Fox News gang didn't seem quite suited to the era of the tea partiers, so Glenn Beck took over. He was so deranged he made the rest of them seem like Ivy League scholars—and the common man begged for more.
Glenn couldn't keep up the craziness forever, so he quit. Up stepped Andrew Breitbart, whose website was willing to go where even the lunatics hadn't dared tread before—and the common man was ecstatic.
But Breitbart died and times changed. Tucker Carlson, shrewd and calculating man that he is, decided there was a vacuum to fill. The way to fill it, as usual, was by dialing up the outrage yet again, so that's what he did—and the common man loved it even more than ever.
In other words, Boris and Bobby, this is nothing new. People like you created, nurtured, and apologized for these folks. Every few years they'd get ever louder and ever more dangerous, and you went along with it because it brought in votes. Tucker Carlson is just the latest version of this and he's your creation. So please don't look all doe-eyed while you're pretending to be shocked at the influence the lunatic fringe has. It doesn't become you.
A roadmap to Derpville, required headwear red!
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What you said, Kevin. Loudly.
It's rather like the surprise conservatives always claim at why do many people have come to distrust and lack of respect for the government. They can't imagine where that comes from.
I doubt the term "common man" is really accurate here. Fox etc appealed to older white people without much education, and those very people (there's a lot of them!) get a big affirmative action boost in the electoral college and the Senate, plus the "media" has for decades treated them as the "deciders" of the "story"... thus Fox played the lie beautifully but we shall see how it works out as those voters shuffle off this mortal coil, as they are doing in large numbers, to be replaced by a much more diverse group of voters.
Lots of working age, non-college white guys, particularly in rural areas. Check out the conversation at any construction site, truck stop, or car repair shop.
"I doubt the term 'common man' is really accurate here"
I doubt that Kevin says "common man" as a way to be denotatively accurate here. It's pretty clear that he's doing so with his usual wry wit.
Yes, but… I read Bob Somerby yesterday and even I was surprised at the lunacy of Tucker Carlson. There is a transcript at the dailyhowler.com but stuff like Michelle Obama’s thighs and Joe Biden wants to personally kill you. It’s sixty minutes of craziness everyday. Bob thinks the mainstream media needs to highlight this demented loon more often, and I tend to agree after seeing yesterday’s transcript of the show the day before. I was unaware it had degenerated so much.
Republicans didn't need the firebrands or right-wing media to pick up votes from white lower income people - they just needed to start dog-whistling that they would support racism. Nixon was liberal by today's Republican standards, but he signaled with his "law and order" message. Goldwater and Reagan were originally considered right-wing crackpots on many issues, but once Goldwater got the South to turn Republican with his opposition to the Civil Rights Act and Reagan followed suit, it was clear how they stood on racism. As I have often said, the big swing to Republicans during the 60's and 70's did not occur because people adopted conservative economics by reading Bill Buckley and Ludwig von Mises (or George Will), it was because the national Democratic party repudiated racism and Republicans took it up. The people who switched parties didn't have to be beaten over the head with the racist message.
The right-wing media have certainly intensified the partisanship by appealing to people's capacity for hatred, but by the time Reagan was elected the country was mostly realigned. The rise of the firebrands and intensification of partisanship is at least partly the result of individuals jumping on the bandwagon and making things more blatant for their own advancement. Trump didn't really invent racism or change the overall Republican-Democratic balance, he just went further on the racism and xenophobia than the establishment Republicans were willing to go.
I think you underestimate just how radical - and radicalizing - Fox News and RW talk radio became after the Fairness Doctrine was scuttled. Propaganda works. Always has, always will, with the right population vulnerable to its message. And that population is substantial and keeps growing as people just outside its influence slowly absorb its simplifying (always simplifying complex social and political world into heroic and evil elements) world view and drift into its orbit. Propaganda doesn't deal with truth or fact; it's entirely driven by political objective. The further it slides into role-playing fantasy and away from objective fact, the more vehement those who see it for what it is get in opposition. And now this sides are entrenched. Dog whistles might have subtly influenced voters, but it didn't radicalize and energize them. That took a large, national propaganda machine that simply didn't exist until Fox News.
What all these Nazi gasbags have in common is that it's their demeanor that's the lie more so than any particular thing they might say.
Their affected manner is offended, justified, and near speechless though talking without stop, brutal and abusive, so there will, in the end, from any point of view, be nothing left to say or hear, for anyone, from them or to them, but fuck you, fuck it all, and implying an inevitable grand cataclysm is inevitable in the face of such threat, --like country club Jehovah's Witnesses who are trying to aspire to the style of Huey Long but so basically wrong they can only manage a kind of Dick Tracy cartoon of him, and discovering that cartoon actually works perfectly.
And Russians, as you see in clips from Russian television, are exactly on the same page. That's what makes Russia great again.
Who would have guessed, in the years before the end of the "Fairness Doctrine", that so many people would fervently want authority figures to "hurt the right people"?
Or that those authority figures would unleash such ugliness?
Don't forget Matt Drudge!
Or Morton Downey, Jr. Syndicated so his reach was limited, but he was very popular right-wing outrage machine during the Reagan Era.
Ah yes, the golden age of Fairness Doctrine, when the great threat to the nation was mindless conformity and the lack of dissent.
I'm not afraid of TC. I'm not afraid of their viewers either... I find them to be despicable degenerates whose suffering I would celebrate. For example - there is a right wing pundit Rod Dreher who has apparently moved to Hungary and is now a useful idiot there. I was banned from his blog many times (Disqus). He's a self-righteous asshole. He made a mess of himself...
https://www.thebulwark.com/how-rod-dreher-caused-an-international-scandal-in-eastern-europe/
On top of all that, apparently his self-righteous hateful christian act cost him is marriage and family. And that, my friends, is hilarious.
"And that, my friends, is hilarious."
I guess. In the same way that it's hilarious when an arsonist burns down his own house in the process of burning down the houses of four others. Sure, the arsonist looks like a fool, but we're all still left with five burned-out houses.
Yah, I used to read Dreher regularly, because I try not to live in a liberal echo chamber. I'm always looking for level-headed conservative commentators, and for a couple years Dreher was my guy. (I mean, I had to filter out a lot of the specifically Christian nonsense, but he was mostly good.)
But then he wrote a column praising Viktor Orban, and that's when I gave up on him. That was three years ago or so. Since then it has become clear that the #1 thing in Dreher's life is hatred of gays. Everything else is negotiable except that. Which is sad.
In 1964, the John Birchers managed to hijack the GOP and nominate Barry Goldwater. After that debacle, the GOP establishment managed to regain control of the party and they locked the loons in the attic. Newt Gingrich let them loose in the 1990s.
Then there was Joe McCarthy in the late '40s and early '50s. The media loved him because he was always good for a spicy soundbite.
The rot in the GOP has been accumulating for at least 70 years.
Don't forget the pro Nazi Republican wing in the 30's.
Tucker Carlson, and several other Fox celebrities, is clearly a significant force on the right. Remove ratings for a moment, is not someone like Rachel Maddow (when she had a regular schedule), and a couple other MSNBC hosts, also a meaningful force on the left?
Yes, you will say that Fox and MSNBC are not equal. Rather, my point, today opinion journalism, on both sides, has political weight/can influence policy: contrast that to the pre 1990 world....
Apropos of nothing, when Rachel Maddow was on nightly, the "Daily Howler" (Bob Somerby) carped at her daily. If he's coming to realize that *cker Carlson is a whole different animal, it's about time.
Well, here's the thing, or rather, two things. First, removing Tucker Carlson wouldn't in any meaningful way change the dynamic; someone else would immediately rush in to fil the void of that guy with the vast influence. It's not as if it isn't a lucrative gig. Second, ever notice how, well, dumb the audience is for this sort of thing? By which I mean to say that they simply can't hold a large cast of characters in their head and it will always be 'that guy with vast influence', never 'those guys with vast influence.' In that regard they don't even rise to the level the audience for pro wrestling.
This audience is also made up of the people who will pay the big bucks for "brain pills" and other "supplements." Who fell for *cker's "ball blistering" health light. Who beieve in miracle gasoline additives that "Detroit doesn't want you to know about!" Who are the perennial suckers, shills, marks, and rubes for every scam.
Accompanying the political end, the con men and scammers prey upon the Fox audience. If only there were some communication strategies that could enable Democrats to turn these ignorant sheep against their exploiters!
"If only there were some communication strategies that could enable Democrats to turn these ignorant sheep against their exploiters!"
I have often thought I'd settle for just having some department of the Democratic party focusing on getting some idiots to vote for us. Its nice to have all of the people who tend to think at all about any particular issue, but the moron voting bloc turned out to be larger than I thought.
ScentofViolets - I agree with your point.
Its not Tucker. Rather, the audience exists and would follow their new disciple/Tucker's repalcement: think of the transition from Glenn Beck to Tucker as the example...
Without the Fox legal team, TC is just the next Alex Jones, pushing it past the limits of legality and not getting away with it. With the Fox legal team, OTOH, there's nothing to restrain him until Fox abandons him.
"But the demise of the fairness doctrine upended the airways, and later on cable news became a staple. When that happened, everything changed. First up was Rush Limbaugh."
People today would be shocked to know what talk radio was in the days before Limbaugh. It was not right-wing and it was not insane (despite a few kooks like Bob Grant). In NY we had "Rambling with Gambling," a show my dad listened to and his dad had listened to through generations of John Gamblings. They often talked about the news, inc. politics. The show was informative and often entertaining. When I moved to L.A. in the '80s, it was Michael Jackson on KABC, the "most listened-to station in the nation." Jackson was mild-mannered and moderate and his call-in show featured guests from both parties every day. The rest of the daily lineup featured sports talk and other things nonpolitical. In the early '90s, the station shifted to the right, hiring Dennis Prager and Larry Elder as counter-programming to Limbaugh. It was the end of KABC's dominance, the end of balance, and the end of an era when moderate voices, inc. liberals, could be heard on AM radio.
It wasn't just the demise of the fairness doctrine that led to the right-wing takeover or AM radio. It was the change of ownership rules. Pre-Reagan, a company could only own 5 or 10 radio station in the nation. Afterward, as many as they want. Companies like Clear Channel bought up stations and soon had more than a thousand. The right-wing propaganda machine now owned the airwaves. It's been like that the past 30-odd years.
There is no liberal radio when it comes to politics. No, NPR is not liberal. It may have a progressive bent to some coverage of cultural issues, but its coverage of politics is typically biased within a moderate Republican frame. Plenty of reasons for that, but that's the way it is. (NYT is the same. Progressive on some cultural coverage, moderate Republican on politics.)
The demise of talk radio is a national tragedy. People today have no idea what it used to be like. Now, the right-wing nuts have a monopoly on what many people listen to in their cars, their homes, their workplaces.
Like +25.
+1. Great point on the consolidation also being a very important factor here. It brought the same Limbaugh bile to every market in the country.
"No, NPR is not liberal. It may have a progressive bent to some coverage of cultural issues, but its coverage of politics is typically biased within a moderate Republican frame"
It's right their in the acronym! NPR stands for Nice, Polite Republicans. Although sometimes less nice than others--I recall all the relentless speculating commentary by Cokie Roberts about how Obama was doing this or that thing because he was "desperate not to look weak."
I am SOOO glad you wrote this, because I feel that I've been a lone voice among my circle of friends. All the way back in the '90s, it already appeared that the so-called "base" of the Republican Party had transformed almost overnight from the upper-class elites into "Limbaugh's dittoheads." And since Limbaugh and his imitators had suddenly become the source of all truth to voters in what we now refer to as "red states," they had become indispensable to the GOP.
In essence, even though most mainstream or left-of-center pundits refer to the right-wing media (RWM) as media "allies" of the GOP, they've got it exactly backwards. In reality, the GOP is merely the political subsidiary of the RWM.
And when you hear those mainstream pundits talk about how Republicans fear trump because of his "base," that "base" is not really the voters -- it's the RWM personalities that can turn their votes on and off at will.
Limbaugh --> Hannity/Ingraham/O'Reilly --> Beck --> Breitbart --> Carlson is pretty close to the mark.
Between Republicans being afraid to anger Carlson because he might say something mean about them and a similar story I read about how Republican pols are afraid to get in the primary because Trump may coin a mean nickname for them, Republican's, those tough rugged individuals, sure are profiles in cowering cowardice.
Was the topic of Ezra Klein's podcast recently.
>>>"And they invite Roger Ailes, who would later become one of the founders of Fox News — they invite Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh to the White House [in '92] to have a night at the Kennedy Center with George and Barbara Bush, to stay over at the Lincoln bedroom and really to court him.
And there is this one moment that Rush Limbaugh will talk about for the next 30 years where President Bush picks up his bag and carries it in. And in many ways, Limbaugh latches onto that moment not as Bush being this generous blue-blooded WASP from New England, but as the president carried my bags. I have the power in this situation. The president waits on me."
Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes shared the Lincoln Bedroom!?!? That would have been a great story.
I swear, if we didn't give these fools oxygen, they would die in the arms of their repulsive readers, or maybe I should say listeners, since none of them likely read. Ditto for t-Rump, his gang of takers, and Santos. Just quite giving them the front page!
"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" and "Do as I say, not as I do" are two mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive concepts.
The Republican party is the "Do as I say, not as I do" party. The Democratic party is on the fence because "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is the ultimate inconvenient truth. It is a lot easier to be outraged about bad behavior than it is to try to understand. The latter is wisdom and the former is hypocrisy.
Or as Bob Dylan put it, "Don't criticize what you can't understand." And that's the double truth, Ruth!
Glenn Beck's greatest accomplishment:
https://www.cc.com/video/h0li6z/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-the-manchurian-lunatic