By David Futrelle
As you no doubt have heard, Media Matters’ Madeline Peltz recently dug up a bunch of rather remarkably creepy things that white supremacist Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on the radio some years back.
Talking to noted radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge, Carlson — among other things — defended a pedophile cult leader who’d just been convicted of facilitating child rape; said he “would love [the] scenario” of 14-year-old girls having sex with each other so long as his own 14-year-old daughter weren’t involved; defended female teachers having sex — that is, raping — 13-year-old boys because he feels they’re “doing a service to all 13-year-old girls by taking the [sexual] pressure off” of them; and that women are “extremely primitive” creatures who secretly love it when men order them “to be quiet and … do what you’re told.”
Today, Media Matters posted more audio excerpts from Carlson, this time full of racist rhetoric and white supremacist talking points; among other things, the Fox News host declared Iraqis to be a bunch of “semiliterate primitive monkeys.”
So, naturally, MAGAs and their far-right fellow travelers are rallying around him, with many figures on the far right not simply minimizing his remarks — as Carlson himself has, by calling them merely “naughty” — but defending his truly repellent views on child rape and women’s alleged inferiority.
More than a few of his defenders are, unsurprisingly, blaming “the Jews” for Media Matters’ diabolical plan to smear Carlson by … accurately reporting things he said publicly to the massive audience of a radio show he regularly called in to.
So who’s lining up to support Carlson today?
Donald Trump Jr, the alt-right-adjacent son of our white supremacist president.
Then there’s the alt-lite grifter and former Pizzagate conspiracy monger Jack Posobiec, who has tweeted in defense of Tucker literally dozens of times in the past day or so. The not so-coded antisemitic insinuation in this tweet is a bonus bit of terrible:
Former Klan leader and present-day dirty old man David Duke was a little less subtle:
Daily Stormer head boy Andrew Anglin not only denounced the attacks on Tucker by “the Soros-backed organization Media Matters,” he declared that none of what Tucker said “is especially outrageous and I agree with all of it.”
Oddball right-wing grifter/conspiracist/supplement salesman Mike Cernovich — who’s had his own legal issues with rape — has thrown his support solidly behind Tucker on the grounds that all the quotes from Tucker are more than five years old and he probably didn’t really say them anyway, since “audio can be edited to say anything,” though he offers no proof that the audio was doctored and actually hasn’t even bothered to listen to it.
Racist conspiracy-slinger Paul Joseph Watson apparently remembered that the best defense is a good offense, but then forgot to make his offense even vaguely comprehensible. What is he even talking about here?
Gamergate dead-ender Ian Miles Cheong offered a similarly muddled defense of Tucker:
Meanwhile, over on the Nazi-infested Twitter alternative Gab, Tucker fans are having an extremely normal one.
Our old, er, friend Heartiste — everybody’s favorite racist narcissist “pickup artist” — not only agreed with Tucker; he suggested that Tucker stole his ideas from him. (Never mind that Carlson made many of his worst remarks before Heartiste even started the blog that later became Chateau Heartiste.)
Really swell bunch of fans you’ve got there, Tucker!
EDIT: Added tweets from Cernovich.
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James Gunn was summarily fired for less than this. This is apparently what counts for justice to the right-wing.
What…is the phrase “Yaaas kween slaaay” supposed to actually be, once the vowels get shortened to their proper length again? (And do I really want to know?)
Not to mention the “10 year old crossdressing boy who strips at a gay strip club in 2019.” What the heck is that a reference too? O.o
@Redsilkphoenix
Yes queen slay. (Oh no, how dare leftists encourage drag queens!)
Sigh…probably this kid. Apparently it’s okay for little kids to dress up in tons of makeup and hyper-feminine clothing and call it a beauty pageant, but if it’s a drag show it’s immoral.
None of this matters anymore. Words don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. Accountability is dead. The world is so upside-down that some(white man) can literally say child rape isn’t rape because *reasons I just pulled out of my ass* and then say “I got myself in a position that seems like I’m defending it” and allswell that endswell.
No consequences. No change. The alt-right white-supremacist male-supremacist nazi machine rages on with no stopping or slowing.
The right-wingers in power actively churn the extremist pot, throwing their support into barbaric, far-right conspiracy groups, and the left-wing governors just apathetically say “please, kind sir, stop that”. I don’t know if the new (democratic) socialist movement is up to the task of slowing this raging-trainwreck-in-progress before it kills us all or if it’s too little too late.
@Redsilkphoenix: IIRC there’s quite a few young drag stars with incredible talent that have made the news in the past few years. “Stripping” is just made-up bullshit because facts don’t matter anymore, all that matters is adding more fuel to the firehose.
@kupo I should not have followed that link. I am over 40 and have not accomplished nearly a tenth as much as he has. I may need to review my life choices.
On the other hand, Desmond is a truly amazing kid and I can’t wait to see how he and those inspired by him change the world.
I’m guessing Cernovich’s “5 year statute of limitations” lasts about 2 seconds if any of those he considers enemies are involved.
(I keep wanting to call him Cervixitch.)
I wonder if this Watson fellow isn’t referring to high school students doing things like wearing blackface and doing Nazi salutes on Facebook and elsewhere.
Watson was probably referring to the Covington School boys who were at the March for Life.
OT but also gross: Today in internalized misogyny, it was discovered that an Italian court of appeals overturned two men’s rape convictions on the grounds that the victim was too ugly. Based on a photo, the judges decided she looked “too masculine” for her story to be credible.
All three judges were women.
Blargh.
At least their verdict was overturned, and there’ll be a retrial…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/men-acquitted-of-charges-because-victim-judged-too-masculine
Well I hope this leads to a loss in advertisements for Fox which would lead to them firing Tucker Carlson.
There’s no faking it when it comes to pundits like these. It’s bigotry all the way down.
The real question is how this was a news story in the first place. Hasn’t Tucker Carlson been saying shit like this on his public television show for years now?
Seconding kupo
and Ariblester
I just realised that 10 years ago was 2009. How could this kind of talk be even remotely acceptable back then? That’s the sort of stuff you could expect from a conservative pundit in the 50’s.
Sebastian Gorka, the third-creepiest man in the Trump Administration, jumped in to defend him, too.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SebGorka/status/1105091565024878592
With supporters like these, who needs detractors?
I misunderstood David Duke (which is usually a blessing as what he actually means is generally toxic), and my brain went off on a tangent…
Could there have even been Zionists at the time of the Crucifixion? Were they lobbying for the unification of Judea & Samaria?* Or could you say the anti-Roman rebellion were Zionists?
And then I realised he meant Carlson & Trump, rather than Christ, and (presumably) not literal crucifixion (unless things have taken a turn overnight, although I think that would knock the constant Brexit news off the lead even in the UK).
* Apologies to any actual experts of 1st Century CE history for errors; it’s not really my field.
Not like Tucker Carlson, with his well-thought-out, complex arguments.
This argument, for example.
I love the way Jack Posobiec feels the need to prefix that he’s an “author” onto his Twitter display name. Is “author” an honorific now? Why didn’t I get the memo?
(I suspect it’s more like the online equivalent of Rincewind embroidering “WIZZARD” onto his hat in the Discworld novels)
@Kat
Also this argument, in which he took Samantha Bee to task for using the c-word to describe Ivanka Trump:
““That one word that [Bee] used. I don’t know any man who uses that word because it is kind of the one word that is actually degrading. It’s the thing that feminists are always telling us. That word really is.”
–Tucker Carlson monologue, 5/31/18
It’s only degrading, of course, when used against white Republican women. Then you get to clutch your fake pearls and assume the standard “did I just shit myself?” right-wing pundit expression.
Words, morality, and self-awareness don’t mean a thing to this crowd, except as a means to keep score and own the libs. It doesn’t matter that kids are being kept in cages, that people are being shot, poisoned, jailed, victimized, and disenfranchised on a daily basis, that life on earth is about to be decimated by climate change. The true outrage is the people who call attention to these problems, not the problems themselves.
All that matters is making sure white men always “win” the playground debate. Talk about primitive logic.
Wasn’t Cernovich one of the ones leading the charge to get Gunn fired for tweets that were well over five years old? Not that it matters, language is just mouth sounds and squiggly lines that exist only in order to own the libs.
Junior Mint is correct about one thing in this case. I would, in fact, like to see Tucker Carlson’s media career broken and ruined. I would say I plan to stop patronizing any of his sponsors, but any lists I have seen don’t include anything I am currently using. I will double check all the same.
He sure was. And he even mentions Gunn in his other tweet on the subject, as if he wasn’t completely contradicting himself. Cernovich has never done anything in good faith in his life, though, so it’s hardly surprising.
Those are all middle-aged men. It always really makes me laugh when a bunch of middle aged men get together to pat each other on the back while agreeing they, and they alone, know what’s best for teenage girls.
“Because of course we do. I mean, it’s not coloured by what we want at all, is it Brian?”
“No, it’s a completely logical and objective analysis, like us men are good at.”
“And as for the teenage girls, well, they obviously can’t think for themselves at all, can they? Being teenage and girls. Emotions, hormones, small brains. We know best.”
“You’re brilliant, you know that? You have a brilliant mind.”
“No, YOU’RE brilliant. Best damn brain in the business. Have some more port.”
“Thanks, don’t mind if I do.”
That’s kinda the problem, Tucker. This shit is entirely consistent with the backwards attitudes you reinforce every night.
I was listening to Chapo’s take on this and they pointed out that this is the kind of sad, out of touch dad comedy that sounds awkward at best and horrific at worst to anybody under the age of 45 (or anybody with a functional empathy chip), but kills with a certain kind of throwback Boomer who embarrasses their son with stuff they heard on Stern. Apparently this kind of comedy was big in the mid 2000s. I never listened to satellite radio, but even in my late teens bouncing between Ebaumsworld and SomethingAwful days, I came across Bubba The Love Sponge clips and laughed at some of his Ned crank calls.
The problem is that this kind of “comedy” is the “stuff we all believe, but don’t say in polite society” genre. Hell, a female teacher raping her student and it being some kind of plaudit was the plot of the 2012 Adam Sandler movie That’s My Boy. It’s the kind of bro-culture bullshit that gave us Stifler from American Pie. These attitudes have been baked into the culture for a really long time and while nobody batted an eye 10-20 years ago, they’re starting to get some badly-needed re-evaluation now.
Incidentally, I think Paul Joseph Prison Planet is referring to the Covington kids getting blowback on Twitter.
Wow… it’s inspiring! (and by “inspiring, I mean “revolting”)….
No one can play the “silenced, oppressed, victim” like a white man worth $16m who hosts the third most watched opinion program, on a network that has 9 of the top 12 most watched news programs….
It’s really a wonder this story even made the papers.