Tucker Carlson- An A$$hole For The Ages
Because "truth" isn't always "truth"
TODAY’S WINNER OF THE INAUGURAL “TUCKER CARLSON GOLDEN FLAMING ASSHOLE AWARD”:
TUCKER CARLSON
The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.
Adolf Hitler
The above quote should be required at the beginning of every Fox News program segment. It would acknowledge the truth about the network, that it’s as much about news and objective journalism as I am a Premier League goalkeeper.
Is the truth paramount? Not if Fox News is paying you millions to advance an alternate narrative. And Tucker Carlson isn’t making bank off the truth.
It’s been almost 22 years since I started my first blog, The People’s Republic of Seabrook, on September 3, 2001. I was a bored contract technical writer playing out the string at Enron in downtown Houston. My firm’s contract at Enron (which represented 95% of our business) was about to end (we’d go belly-up soon afterward), and Enron was days away from a spectacular flame-out of its own.
I had to do something to look busy, so when I read about a then-new thing called “weblogs,” I figured I’d found my answer. Little did I know that I’d still be at it, lo, these many years later. What started with me hand-coding everything- and I do mean EVERYTHING- in HTML has progressed to Substack doing the heavy lifting for me. All I have to do is write.
It’s a beautiful thing.
One of the things I’ve done over the years under different names (the most prominent one was The Dumbass Awards) was to recognize the depth and breadth of human stupidity, greed, avarice, meanspiritedness, and corruption. Now and again, I’d stop when it began to seem a bit tiresome and careworn. Then I’d revive it for a while, only to let it die again after a short run. And then it faded away permanently when I wondered if I might be becoming the dumbass.
Yeah, I still wonder sometimes, but that’s another story for another time, eh?
A few days ago, longtime reader David Flanders, who, over the years, has done a lot of graphic work for my sites- all of it gratis- sent me something he did that he called the “Golden Flaming Asshole Award.” As David wrote in his email,
[G]iven that the HOUSE SPEAKER gave OVER 40,000 HOURS of unvetted security footage from January 6th to (ahem, highly respected and unbiased journalist) TUCKER CARLSON, AND given the comical shitshow that was CPAC, I think it's time for you to bring back your old awards... Worst-Person-In-The-World (yes, I know that's originally a Keith Olbermann thing,) Wingnut, Horse's Ass (and any I might be forgetting.)
It's been a while since I designed anything for your blog, but this thought got the ol' creative juices flowing. I present for your consideration the GOLDEN FLAMING ASSHOLE award[.]
The caricature of the "asshole" itself is from a drawing by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in his novel BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS. I'm sure he'd have approved of its use here.
You can tell David’s been hanging around and reading my work for several years. I don’t know; maybe he’s got too much time on his hands. And I suspect this is the ONLY time anyone will ever mention my work and that of Kurt Vonnegut together.
That said, I can’t argue with David’s assessment of Tucker Carlson, and not using his award seems almost criminal.
And so I’m going to adopt his “Golden Flaming Asshole Award,” to be awarded on an as-earned basis, without prejudice, favor, or partisanship. The criteria will be mine, though I’ll endeavor to be fair and refrain from meanspiritedness, which is more than most will be able to say about the recipients.
This isn’t going to be Miss Congeniality Lite if you know what I mean.
As the inaugural recipient, Tucker Carlson has demonstrated his worthiness through his willingness to lie, cheat, twist reality, and engage in all manner of conscious propaganda. For him, it’s all about advancing the demonstrably false narrative of the moment. Because, in the closed Fox News “We Report, You Comply” ecosystem, facts and reality quickly perish from lack of oxygen.
Or, as the bard Rudolph Giuliani once said, “Truth is not truth.”
Seldom has that truth been more effectively illustrated than by Tucker Carlson’s (mis)use of the more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the January 6th insurrection. The footage, provided to Carlson by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has been heavily cherry-picked and selectively edited to portray January 6th as “just another normal tourist visit.
The footage has been so thoroughly cherry-picked it should contain a warning to viewers who may be allergic to cherries.
If your first exposure to that day was the footage Carlson aired, you’d think that January 6th was a day that several thousand dorky tourists milled aimlessly about the Capitol in search of the House gift shop.
With over 40k hours of security camera footage and the willingness to advance a pre-defined narrative, Carlson’s team probably could’ve found footage of Mike Pence buggering a goat if they’d looked hard enough.
Given what happened on January 6th, Carlson’s transparently dishonest travesty of a narrative is blindingly obvious. I don’t know about you, but that day was burned into my memory. Like many Americans, I was glued to my television as what appeared to be a putative revolution unfolded on the screen before me. I know what I saw, and news channels don’t spend an entire day broadcasting “normal tourist visits.”
When even GOP Senators condemn Carlson’s blatant misuse of the security camera footage, you understand that his propaganda gambit was terribly unsubtle. Carlson could’ve taken the subtle route, and perhaps he might’ve had a chance of convincing some folks who, for whatever reason(s), might’ve been on the fence.
Instead, he decided to demonstrate to his viewers that January 6th was not a violent day- no guns, no insurrection, and- most importantly- no attempt to steal the election. How does he explain the deaths, injuries, and wounded police officers? How does he rationalize the damage done to the Capitol, the feces smeared on the walls, the broken windows and doors?
And what about the “HANG MIKE PENCE!” chants, bear spray, and rioters invading the House and Senate chambers and offices? And the “QAnon Shaman” baying like an over-caffeinated wolf on the House floor? That’s “just another normal tourist visit?” I’ve been to the Capitol and stood in the House gallery on “a normal tourist visit.” What happened on January 6th was anything but “normal.”
My guess is that Carlson will continue pretending the insurrection was a myth, and so millions of his viewers will accept his propaganda as Gospel. They’ll swallow his lies and bullshit before even considering getting news and information from another (unbiased) news and information source.
The problem with Carlson’s attempt at rewriting history is that there’s too much video evidence contradicting the narrative he’s trying to advance. January 6th wasn’t “just a normal tourist visit.” It wasn’t a day when thousands of misguided tourists milled aimlessly around the Capitol looking for the House gift shop.
No, January 6th was a day when America came damned close to losing its democracy (and its mind). And Carlson is part of an effort to deny the seriousness of what took place to keep senior officials- up to and including those in the White House- from being held accountable.
We must remember why so many on the Far-Right are heavily invested in pushing a sanitized version of what happened on January 6th. And that the folks screaming “STOP THE STEAL!!” were themselves trying to steal a freely, objectively, and fairly conducted Presidential election from the American people.
And we should never forget what Voltaire once said- “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
I believe it was John Dewey who said, "you will sooner pry a miser from his hoard than ween a man of his most cherished beliefs." My variation is Herstein's First Law: Never underestimate human capacity for denial. And so the lies at Fox will continue unabated, because to stop now, to yield to the reality-based community, would undermine their entire raison d'etre, and drive away the base that is only interested in having the lies they want to believe repeated to them.