NYT: Tucker Carlson was fired for racist text message: "Not how white men fight" but "I really wanted them to hurt the kid"

boing
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Doc Brown GIF by Back to the Future Trilogy

He’s not dumb, or expressing remorse for his abhorrent views, or confused, or any of that. He knows precisely what he’s doing. He’s wealthy, well-educated, and understands how the media works and how it can be used to organize a fascist movement. He’s all in on this shit…

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I had the same thought. I thought at first it was fake. It’s so composed, written in full sentences, the narrative is developed—it just doesn’t seem like a text message to me. Then I remembered that I can plug my external keyboard into my phone and it becomes easy to write longer stuff. Or I can text from my laptop if I want to, and copy/paste to my heart’s content.

And, as @carrma said

I agree.

(In case you haven’t happened to see it by now) According to the NYT article:

[…] sent to one of his producers in the hours after violent Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, […]

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After I posted, I thought of voice-to-text - though I don’t think a voice-to-text would be as well composed. I’d totally forgotten about the laptop-to-phone interface!

And thanks for the recipient info!

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Isn’t “it was a confidential part of the Dominion settlement” an option? Weird not to see that speculated about in the news I’ve seen on the topic. IANAL; not sure if that’s realistic …

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This makes sense. Especially if she ascribes to all Tucker’s beliefs, and wanted Murdoch to spend part of his remaining hours on this Earth tanning his balls.

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Yeah, he seems to have been soundboarding: Testing out what phrases to use in his broadcast later that day, what will thread that narrow path, hitting all the points:

  • First and foremost, he himself was not culpable and didn’t approve of this kind of violence.
  • He wanted to demonstrate that he is at once the Common Man, like his viewers, and also a Deep Thinking Man; this would encourage his fanbase to psychologically exonerate themselves in the same way.
  • He hoped to encourage his viewers: Remember, you are better than them, and probably you should publicly denounce violence and bad stuff – because that’s what they do, those leftist scum, who hate you and your family – but, c’mon, admit it, doesn’t it feel good to acknowledge how much you hate those filthy vermin and want to see them die? I mean, gosh, I sure hate feeling this way, because it might almost lower me to their level, but God knows, it’s our right and duty to hate them!

Tucker is not a dumb guy. He has teams of people working with him to help navigate these paths, and he has managed to avoid liability through years of encouraging his fans to betray their own well-being. (I’d love to see a statistical analysis of U.S. counties’ per capita Tucker viewership correlated with COVID-19 death rates following availability of the vaccines.) And he almost weaved his way through this, too, but he was undone when he let the mask slip, allowing all to see his tragic flaw: That he is a venal, racist, woman-hating, self-serving, sociopathic turd.

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No, he’s not; Fucker is an evil opportunistic bigot, and he’s yet another hate monger whose obituary will be read with much glee and satisfaction.

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In movies and TV.

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sharing this again.

(free to read)

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JqE0

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It would seem there’s lots of reasons to have fired him. The video is at the link below.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer, it’s personal.

MAKEUP ARTIST: Mm-hmm.

CARLSON: I’m not speaking of you, but more in general with ladies, when they go to the ladies room and “powder their noses,” is there actually nose-powdering going on?

MAKEUP ARTIST: Sometimes.

CARLSON: Oooh. I like the sound of that.

MAKEUP ARTIST: Most of the time, it’s lipstick.

CARLSON: Do pillow fights ever break out? You don’t have to, you don’t have to —

MAKEUP ARTIST: Not in the bathroom.

CARLSON: OK. Not in the bathroom. That’d be more a dorm activity.

OFF-CAMERA VOICE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

CARLSON: I’m sorry, [REDACTED]. You are such a good sport. Such a good person. Thank you. I know you do, but you do not deserve that. And I mean it with great affection.

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:thinking:

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The Office Yes GIF

A better word than “stupid” is “cynical”. These are people who think the world is a game and whatever you can get away with to win is okay. If manipulating an audience through fear and anger gets you paid, then you should do that and you are stupid if you don’t. It’s the “wolves and sheep” mentality that embodies so much of America right now. It’s the libertarian cancer creeping through society.

If really pinned down on this, I imagine Tucker would say that his audience is stupid for falling for his rhetorical games and that is their problem, not his. He’s “winning” the game of life by succeeding at it. That’s the worldview on display her.

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And a zero-sum game at that.

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He doesn’t tho. The whole thing ends with “If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?”

He’s still seeing the left as lesser than him. “Being a better human” to him means being better than some “Antifa thug” he imagines the victim to be, and by extension of the “not how white people fight” being better than a person of color.

If anything it is showing how the FOX rhetoric was starting to break him. He was going to eventually do something on air they wouldn’t be able to make excuses for, so they cut him loose.

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Well sure… viz. the second part of my comment.

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Uh ohs.

The president of Media Matters said…

“Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns,”

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