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.
We Hunted the Mammoth is independent and ad-free, and relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
@ Katamount:
My generic for this kind of “comedy” is/was Andrew “dice” Clay
The closest thing to a positive non-alt-right comment I heard on this was from Ed Brayton, who pretty much hates everything Carlson stands for:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2019/03/12/tucker-carlsons-misogynistic-comments-resurface/
Granted, that’s not exactly ‘positive’.
I prefer novelist Tim Dorsey’s fictional version of Bubba: Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit. At least the name is accurate.
Shock jocks are assholes.
Weird Mike refers to himself in the third person? Well, my days of not taking him seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
Weatherwax – I’m not quite sure about the proper definition of “zionist” myself, but I get a sense that the likes of David Duke use it vaguely to mean “Jew who’s particularly dedicated in being Jewish; Jewish supremacist; Jewish elite cabal member”.
They seem to use it like some antifeminists use “radical feminist”, trying to pretend they care about distinctions, they aren’t necessarily against all Jews/feminists, it’s just that some Jews/feminists are particularly evil in some unspecified way.
Honey try to plan a surprise party for me and you’ll find out how much I like to do what I’m told. No one in my life can surprise me because I refuse to do anything or go anywhere unless you tell me what’s going on.
@Weird Eddie: of course tucker is pulling the “oppressed” card (while also strutting out his “they’ll never beat us” and “triggered snowflake libs don’t stand a chance”. Funny how that
totally-not-fascist simultaneously strong and weak thing keeps coming up)
As I’ve said countless times, the loudest whiners are the most privileged, coddled infants.
Truth be told, I DO enjoy being told that. I also enjoy responding with “make me, little boy” ?
@ Jane Done:
(full disclosure, I’m a white guy… white, male, xian upbringing, cis, het, not skinny, but not really fat… great bleeding shit, I’m EVERYBODY’S enemy 🙁 🙁 🙁 )
Anyways, the “white male as oppressed minority” thing is growing real long in the tooth…. I’ve hit up trumpling acquaintances about it, and after I give them the straight skinny on how white guys are REALLY doing (which they already know), I get a look from them that just screams “I know, but I get away with crying about my poor lot in life, anyway”…
I’m following with glee (and popcorn) the scandal about rich folks cheating and bribing their mediocre kids’ way into high-end colleges…
https://deadspin.com/here-are-all-the-incredible-details-from-the-college-ad-1833236579
… tempered, of course, by the knowledge that people in that socio-economic class NEVER go to jail 🙁 🙁 🙁
@Rabid Rabbit
Yup, a fellow countrywoman. Not too surprised by this because Italians are notorious for being disgustingly racist. Internalized misogyny is a thing too, but the most obvious factor here is the fucking racism behind claiming that a Latina is too masculine to be considered “rapeable”.
@WeirdEddie
I’ve been semi-following the college admission scandal, and I’m torn between feeling disgusted at the parents who make the bribes, and disgusted at the universities who accept the bribes; and feeling sorry for the kids who never asked for this, and who probably assumed they were getting in on their own merits.
As I said at Kinja.com yesterday, Tucker Carlson’s very existence calls Darwin’s theory of evolution into question.
@Diego Duarte:
Ah, crap, I didn’t even consider the racist angle. It all suddenly makes (a horrible sort of) sense.
@Weatherwax:
They were gone before the Romans, but the Maccabees would probably count, in terms of people looking back to them as what had been and might be again. And the Zealots would probably have a good claim.
The real Zionists, though, were clearly the Judean People’s Front. Or possibly the People’s Front of Judea.
Compare the reaction to “rape little girls” to what happened when Milo tossed out his “pedophiles are good fun for little boys” comment. Tucker gets held up as a hero for by the worst of humanity. Milo gets shunned and abandoned by same. They’re both garbage humans.
Illuminating regarding the value placed on vulnerable humans based on their assigned sex.
Splitter!!!
@Katamount
I dunno, I quit listening to Chapo when it became clear that their entire mission in life was to be smug purity trolls and shit on everyone that isn’t living in a blue enclave and therefore has the luxury of demanding leftist perfection from their politicians.
Also, the last episode of theirs I listened to was them using transphobic “jokes” to dunk on someone, and I don’t willingly subject myself to that sort of shit.
Maybe they’ve improved since late 2017, I dunno, but for the most part they actively bother me.
Privilege doesn’t automatically make someone an enemy. It does mean that that person benefits from societal hierarchies that systematically harm and oppress people who do not enjoy the same privilege, though. Which tends to make privileged folks:
1) less likely to be aware of, understand, or sympathize with people who go through struggles the privileged folks have never had to face.
2) more likely to be invested in maintaining their unfair advantage, either by claiming it doesn’t exist/isn’t as bad as it seems or by actively participating in the harmful systems rather than working to dismantle them.
Climbing out of (and staying out of) these two shitty mindsets takes effort, since they’re basically instilled in us (I’m whiter than printer paper myself) from birth. It’s something that has to be consistently maintained and improved. But it can be done, and it is worth it.
(Yeah, I know you were most likely being facetious and I’m not saying anything new, but, eh. It’s been typed out now.)
@Lainy
Honestly this just sounds like a good survival strategy. I’m the same way, folks keep getting on my case for “ruining” things.
The thing about Stifler was, he was a villain in the first American Pie movie, the douchebag jock who harasses the protagonists for the amusement of himself and his friends while pretending to be their buddy.
But, as if to prove your point, he was also many people’s favorite character in that film. A lot of the American Pie ripoffs that came out in the early ’00s featured Stifler-esque characters as unambiguous heroes, and even the sequels expanded his role and turned him into a lovable goofball.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Ha, ha, ha. Of course he doesn’t know any man who would call a woman a cunt. Of course.
Nailed it, BQS.
Because those who use these words to describe a woman are not attempting to degrade her: battleaxe, cocktease, hag, nag, slut, bimbo, bitch, harridan, dog, mattress, etc., etc., etc.
What really gets me about these people’s is the outrage is always selective. There is no consistency to their ideology other than just wanting to be as obnoxious, hateful, and generally-an-ass as possible. Whenever the topic is sexual assault and its victims, they complain, “what about he male victims”, and yet, when one of “their guys” (like Mr. Carlson here) are equally dismissive of said victims, their responses range from “don’t care” to “well, he’s right”.
I guess I should know better than to expect any kind of intellectual or moral honesty from the right, and yet here we are.
WHOOPS WRONG TAB. nothing to see here~
Weatherwax, Rapid Rabbit – the situation in Judea under Roman rule/control is both remarkably complicated and utterly dismaying. When the Maccabees seized control, they set up the Hasmonean dynasty, which some opposed because it wasn’t part of the Davidic covenant. Then the Herodians overthrew the Hasmoneans and exterminated the heirs, which added an entire layer of horror. The Zealots wanted the Romans out, the Sicarii terrorised Jews who collaborated with the Romans, and nobody liked the priestly families who were running the Temple. If the Romans *had* just pulled out, it would have been like the Thirty Years War in an area smaller than New Jersey.
It’s amazing that anyone ever got anything done.
@Weird Eddie
Personally I can’t laugh at yet another reminder that enough wealth allows people to take anything they want and that, in over a thousand years, things have barely improved.
@Weird Eddie, Catalpa
Number 2 can and does happen even without privilege, as internalised bigotry. I was homophobic as a kid. I also used to think welfare et. al, higher education was a waste of money. The craziest thing is, I grew up being always hungry because my parents couldn’t afford to feed their kids enough food as children. Not that I starved, obviously, but snacking was never an option, and meal portions were given frugally, and yet still my dad always trotted out that one time that one person tried to do something while on welfare and it went terribly, ergo all government handouts are bad, unless you’re literally starving to death and homeless. Also people with drug problems don’t count cause they did it to themselves (so he said).
Personally this is why I think society needs to stop emphasising empathy, and focus on sympathy. Everyone in the world can’t possibly experience everything. People need to be able to feel a shared humanness without sharing experiences.
Looking at the comment sections of a couple of articles about this on other sites, I think what apalls me the most is the number of people lining up to support him because “He’s our guy and we have to defend him against teh liberals.” They try to minimize it by saying it was to long ago to matter or it was on a shock jock radio show, as if those things matter. Or they defect by pointing at Bill Clinton or Robert Byrd.
They either actually support what Carlson said because it’s what they believe or they are so brainwashed it doesn’t matter to them because he’s “one of us” and there is nothing he could have said or done that they wouldn’t excuse. If there was evidence he committed a terrible crime they would probably dismiss it.
I don’t know which is worse.