We have finally come to the end of Tucker Carlson’s heinous reign at Fox News Channel.
Carlson was a cancer on humanity, an immoral, soulless tumor with legs and a perpetually aggrieved attitude. It wasn’t just his hypocritical lying about nonexistent election fraud and ongoing support of all things Trump — a man he professed to hate privately while promoting him publicly. It was more the impact Carlson’s constantly frowning face and faux fury had on the viewers who turned to him to find out what fictional issue to be mad about next.
It is not hard to draw a line from Carlson’s regular racist fear-mongering (e.g. “white replacement theory” and similar bullshit) to the recent incidents in which Black people were shot just because they knocked on the wrong door or had a ball roll into the yard of someone with an itchy trigger finger.
Keep this in mind: Carlson wasn’t fired by the Murdochs for any of that. They’d have to have a conscience first. White nationalist conspiracy theories were — and will remain — the core message of Fox News Channel. His bosses never wanted him to tone down all the odious garbage he spewed. In fact, they liked it when he cranked it up, because that’s what they felt their viewers wanted — and that was all that mattered, regardless of how it degraded American society.
Carlson wasn’t fired because the company will have to pay three quarters of a billion dollars for slandering Dominion Voting Systems despite knowing its pronouncements were lies. If that were the trigger, then Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other hosts at Fox would have gotten the axe, too.
No, it appears Carlson got the axe because of a lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, a former producer of his show, in which she claims she and other women on staff were subjected to rampant harassment, sexism, bullying, and antisemitic comments from co-workers under him. She filed a lawsuit against Fox which must have the Murdochs spooked because they went down this path with Gretchen Carlson and others who exposed (sorry!) the disgusting treatment they received from the eventually-ousted Roger Ailes. You may remember that similar claims about Bill O’Reilly — and a $32 million settlement check — forced him to walk the plank, ironically opening the slot Carlson slithered into.
In addition, Carlson was caught saying some very nasty things about his colleagues (and bosses!) in texts and emails that were revealed during the Dominion v. Fox lawsuit. Those don’t include whatever is in the redacted messages that weren’t released publicly — but have been seen by the higher ups in Murdoch-land. It’s a classic case of “we’ll let him run his mouth right up until the moment we don’t.”
Bottom line: this was not a mutual parting of the ways. Carlson was flat-out fired — he did not leave of his own volition. How do I know? He didn’t get a goodbye show, nor has he announced plans to re-launch somewhere else. He already burned his bridges at CNN and MSNBC, so he can’t go to either of those, and the smaller hyper-conservative propaganda networks OAN and Newsmax can’t afford anything close to the massive salary he was being paid as Fox’s biggest star.
If you think Carlson has a big enough brand to rekindle his fame via podcasts and online video, ask yourself when was the last time anyone mentioned other stars who were ousted from Fox, namely O’Reilly or Megyn Kelly or Glenn Beck? The real question is not what Carlson will do next, but which right-wing extremist Fox will hire to replace him and continue poisoning the country.