I’m surprised any of these publishers are signing book deals, I have to question who the market is, given these politicians and personalities cater so to “low-information” readers. Do nuns buy a lot of blow-up dolls?
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You’d think that the GOP, the party of the wealthy would understand that “Freedom of the Press,” has ALWAYS meant freedom of the people that OWN the presses. I suppose this is just another example of them being sham populists to gin up the stupid vote.
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I think the market is mostly people who want to diplay this book on their coffee tables, or just to support good ol Tucker boy. As well as conservative organizations that buy up such books by the hundreds to distribute as freebies in various venues/grifts. Virtually no one will ever read the damn thing.
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(Puts on tin foil hat)
Nah, man, it just goes to show you that Tucker Carlson is a puppet controlled by big media and government to discredit right wing voices by making them all appear to be idiots! I mean, he’s like a crisis actor! It’s like how the lame stream media was always showing all the stupid, idiotic things that Trump said and published on his web site and twitter and released in his press releases. Come on, any intelligent person can look stupid if you take their press releases and twitter account and publish their exact words in context, man!
(Note: This is satire. Unless we can use this to get Carlson’s viewers to turn on him, in which case- it won’t help anything, but boy will it feel good…)
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They use special filters that allow all these small, small¹ people to be visible.
¹ from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mal- , *(s)mel- (“small, mean, malicious”).
Evincing little worth or ability; not large-minded; paltry; mean.
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To infinity, and beyond!
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They rely on “common sense”, “gut feeling” and “gumption”.
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Ditto. I’m all Tuckered out.
Unfuck Tuck.
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Frankly, they could just fill it with drawings of the Confederate Flag and ship it with a set of red, white, and blue crayons. And maybe an orange one.
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some years ago i read that tucker mcnear swanson carlson " perpetually wears an expression as if he just walked in on his prom date giving a blow job to his best friend." which your image accurately illustrates. but i have another problem with carlson that i just can’t figure out.
while i may despise most if not all of the conservative talking heads, i can at least understand their appeal-- limbaugh was the exemplar of the pushy, loudmouth bully that most conservatives which they could be in public while peterson is the kind of intellectual snob many conservatives think might pass for intellectuals, bill o’reilly was the brash, fast-talking slugger, etc. but what does carlson appeal to?
he’s a whiny man-baby (with apologies to real babies for the comparison) who has the personal appeal of a bowl of cold oatmeal (with apologies to quaker oats). he doesn’t come across as witty, intelligent, forceful, or charismatic. he’s not even a big enough asshole to feel threatening as a bully outside of the size of his audience. what the hell is it about him that drives his numbers up so high?
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I don’t know if it’s about his persona at all. To start with, Faux News – as the network of so-called conservatism – commands the highest audience share of the cable news networks (MSNBC and CNN would match or exceed it if combined). The core audience of all cable news shows is the elderly, poorly educated type that still relies primarily on the after-dinner newscasts (as opposed to newspapers, on-line articles, social media) to stay current. A pair of novelty chattering teeth put on the anchor desk at 8PM on Faux is going to get big ratings.
As I noted above, Lachlan Murdoch – effectively an autocrat there – has decided that Carlson is what’s on offer in that slot and thinks he’s the best way to retain the network’s audience. That goal is more important than advertising dollars because Fox News is mainly a right-wing propaganda outfit that sees more benefit in ensuring its audience keeps coming back (a lot of them have the network running all day on their TVs) than in retaining reputable companies as advertisers.
The real question is what benefit Murdoch sees in keeping this Spaulding Smails clone there despite his regularly losing them advertisers. I can only guess, but I think there are a couple of factors at play. First, Carlson has a long history of being a superficially respectable front (as white conservatives define “respectable”) for spewing some very unsavoury ideas in a way that can allow for plausible deniability. Here’s a rich prep school boy and Ivy grad on a major network validating (for example) their bigotry and anti-vaxx conspiracy theories.
Second, that eternally gormless look on his face works to at least counter-balance any potential negative sentiment in the audience concerning his silver-spoon toffery. As with Dubya, as long as they don’t look too closely they will feel a certain degree of identification and sympathy with this dope who still somehow manages to succeed in “owning the libs”. It’s a somewhat aspirational outlook that ties into the greater American pathologies of anti-intellectualism and “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” syndrome.
That’s my best shot at explaining Carlson’s pseudo-appeal. The greater puzzle for me is Ben Shapiro’s on-going “appeal” to the American right. Like Carlson, the little kapo also has right-wing sugar daddies bankrolling him, but he’s not an intellectual guru like Jordaddy and I’m not yet sure how he transcends the anti-Semitism of most American conservatives.
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regarding shapiro, somehow fox and other conservative enabling institutions have managed to sell the narrative that shapiro represents the brilliance of the new generation of young conservatives. that shapiro is not particularly brilliant nor is he that young anymore seems not to matter much. part of that one’s appeal seems to stem from the youtube algorithm as much as anything else and while youtube is not in the business of “conservatism” in the same way fox is, they still have a vested interest in keeping conservative eyeballs watching their videos along with everyone else’s.
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He says outrageous, offensive [and racist] bullshit lie-crap, that everyone (according to his lawyers) knows could not possibly be true. But once it’s said, on TV, on a “news” show, on a “news” network, it there-after becomes “true”. At least true enough in their minds that they can now feel free to believe (or at least pretend to believe) the bullshit lie-crap, and repeat it continuously, and use it as justification to be total assholes to the people around them. It gives his audience permission to be racist, treat other people like crap, and repeat obvious bullshit lie-crap intended to hurt others. And that is all his audience really want to do with their lives. That is the kind of people they are.
There are a lot of really horrible people in the world, and that is his audience and who his “news” channel are catering to.
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like his fans read.
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That gif is both funny & disturbing at the same time.
It is the eyeball equivalent of an Earworm, & cannot be unseen.
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That gif has been among my favorites for more than two decades. It’s a mindfuck.
The site pip dot rubberfeet dot org is sadly kaput. Pip made many great gifs back in the 90s, and posted lots of them to B3TA (we love the web!).™©® John Wayne is one of her/his finest works.
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