On Tucker Carlson, Broken Clocks, and Media Strategy

When Fox News founder Roger Ailes passed away in 2017, I wrote a piece called "Roger Ailes and the Eristic Revival." That piece made three main points: 

1. Fox News did not originate but did magnify the worst tendencies of post-World War II news media in the United States.
2. The real significance of Fox is its revival of the ancient “eristic,” an intoxicating mode of argument rooted not in the civil exchange of ideas for the purpose of arriving at sound public policy, but in the desire to defeat and humiliate opponents.
3. The end and tragic result of Fox’s magnification of the news media’s worst tendencies and revival of the eristic has been the death of political conservatism as a force for generating new ideas or reformulating old ones.

Fox's recent termination of its most popular pundit, Tucker Carlson, gives us another opportunity to opine about the network. With the possible exceptions of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, no one exemplified the Fox formula as well as Carlson. That formula, summarized aptly some years ago by NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen as "resentment news," shows no signs of going away at Fox even though it was at the root of the shoddy "journalism" that cost the network $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems. Though released text messages and emails show conclusively that Carlson knew the Trump alternative universe claims about election fraud were utter bullshit, he continued to amplify MAGA conspiracies and resentments on air because "our viewers are good people and they believe it." When Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact checked a Trump tweet alleging voter fraud and concluded the Trump claim was inaccurate, Carlson texted Hannity and Laura Ingraham: 

“Please get her fired . . . It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Why did Fox's stock price go up during the Carlson years? A New York Times analysis of over 1,100 Tucker episodes found an "apocalyptic" world view featuring a fear instilling narrative of "they" want to control "you." "They" are the "ruling class," invoked in over 800 shows the Times analyzed from 2016-2021. It's an intoxicating narrative, one that has deep roots in what historian Richard Hofstadter famously called the "paranoid style" in American politics.  As noted in the Times analysis, Carlson "often begins segments with a grain of truth or an accurately quoted study, but then he distorts a concept to fit his narrative." Apocalyptic rhetoric made Tucker the most watched pundit on cable television. 

That Tucker Carlson uttered an occasional "grain of truth" and often mocked the mainstream punditocracy made it tempting for some with small-d democratic leanings to want to see him as something other than a white supremacist enabler. As noted by Lee Harris and Luke Goldstein in the American Prospect, some of Carlson's sensible populist rants reflected views not stated or emphasized on nightly news shows that reject toxic nativism. Thus, Carlson's show would be literally the only place on cable to hear such views. 

For example, since making his populist turn Carlson regularly says things that used to be associated with the political left, such as: "Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite.” In 2019 he even ended up endorsing Elizabeth Warren's economic policies, telling his mostly MAGA audience that the Massachusetts Senator's critique of multinational corporations was a message abandoned by the mainstream Republican party and reflected "Trump at his best." MSNBC and CNN certainly have talking heads sympathetic to the political left, but it's more of a political left as it exists within the Democratic Party. 

Carlson's populist persona even allows him to take on the National Security State, something that during the George W. Bush years was the province of mainstream Democrats. Pseudo-left, libertarian substackers and podcasters like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Briahna Joy Gray, and Jimmy Dore--all of whom make sensible critiques of how cozy mainstream media have become with security state officials--are all persona non grata at CNN and MSNBC even though their takes on the CIA/NSA/FBI attempts to infiltrate the public sphere were once common in so-called left circles. Carlson had Dore on to say something that is no longer uttered on those networks friendly to Democrats: “Your enemy is not China. Your enemy is not Russia. Your enemy is the military-industrial complex.” Even if we agree, as most people do, that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is illegal and cannot be justified on any moral grounds, do we REALLY believe that Russia is a bigger threat than the military-industrial-complex? The fact that the Russia-Ukraine war is being used by the national security state to resuscitate the images of people who gave us debacles in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places is distressing. And it's absolutely pathetic that a resentment merchant like Tucker Carlson is one of the few pundits with high visibility willing to call that out. 

Tucker Carlson is not going away any time soon, and even without the backing of Fox he will continue to command a large audience. What does that mean? Should people genuinely concerned about the abuses inflicted on society by market capitalism, or worried about the national security state inching us ever closer to World War III, or bothered by government censorship--should anyone taken with those and other issues that so-called progressives used to be outspoken about give kudos to Tucker and share his videos when he espouses a sane position? Assuming Tucker reemerges with a program on which he will have guests, should people who genuinely believe in progressive causes ever appear on his show? 

The short answer is, "it depends." It is true that when Tucker Carlson says something sane, just as when Donald Trump says something sane, the most logical response is that old quote dating back to the1700s:"Even a broken clock is right twice a day." I can certainly understand the school of thought that says appearing on Tucker or sharing his rhetoric, even if it is to promote a good cause, ends up providing cover for his brand of resentment politics. 

On the other hand, I think Nathan Robinson in 2022 made a good point that an authentic left movement should be "ruthlessly strategic" on such matters. Robinson used the example of Chris Smalls of the Amazon Labor Union, who took much criticism from the online left for appearing on Tucker even though his appearance probably reached a significant number of Amazon warehouse workers who share his critique of the corporation. As argued by Robinson: 

Carlson is indeed a truly loathsome individual, who uses white nationalist rhetoric and tries to scare white people into fearing “gypsies” and other immigrants. But in believing that Carlson’s loathsomeness should automatically preclude speaking on his show, we see a lack of attention to the kind of strategic thinking that differentiates what we might call “union organizer mentality” from “media critic mentality.” I am sure Chris Smalls is aware that Tucker Carlson and Fox News are the enemy—Smalls is a revolutionary labor organizer. The value of appearing on Fox is instrumental: there are Amazon warehouse workers who watch Fox News and listen to Tucker Carlson . . . For Smalls, the question of whether to go on Fox News is: “What does it do for the ALU?” It is not “Is Tucker Carlson a good or bad person who deserves credibility?” In other words, Smalls’ choices are outcome-driven rather than an expression of moral preferences. 

Carlson may be the ultimate broken clock, but if in his post-Fox career he continues to command large audiences, then critics of the market, labor organizers and critics of the national security state need to be reflective about the consequences of appearing or NOT appearing on his program. People on the political left--whether they call themselves liberals, radicals, progressives, or whatever--should be very angry with a mainstream "liberal" media that forces this kind of strategizing. How is it possible that critiques of capitalism, rejection of the apparatchiks who gave us Iraq and Afghanistan, and critique of the military-industrial complex are more welcome on Tucker than on traditional "liberal" platforms? It's long past time for the so-called media left to reclaim those positions so that a resentment based broken clock like Tucker Carlson cannot continue to use those positions as a shield to cover for his overall apocalyptic world view.