So, Tucker Carlson has been fired by Fox. It truly couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. I’ve read all kinds of speculation about why Fox canned him, with the weight of the evidence seeming to be that he documented his hypocrisy in texts and emails, which included criticisms of Fox management for not consistently lying to its audience because, for instance, it accurately called the election for Biden. It is extremely unlikely that they are firing him for lying to their audience, since he might very well have been less of a liar than the likes of Maria Bartiromo.
It will be interesting to see where he goes from here. Will he stoop to going to OAN or one of the other fringe purveyors of right wing filth, or will he try to go back to pretending to be a responsible conservative like he played on MSNBC? There may be an opening at CNN, whose CEO has been trying to move right. I don’t think he’d have any problem condemning the filth he pushed at Fox, since, after all, he was just asking questions.
It will also be interesting to see who Fox finds to replace him. When he took over for Bill O’Reilly I actually thought he’d be unable to fill O’Reilly’s shoes. I was wrong about that, as he was both more toxic and more popular than the loofah/falafel guy. I’m sure there’s someone out there who can out-Tucker Tucker, and you can be sure Fox will find him. (My bet is that it will definitely be a him.)
Afterword: After writing the above, I heard that the likely reason for his firing is that, like Bill O’Reilly before him, he is being sued for sexual harassment, in his case by a woman who worked at Fox. One must wonder why Murdoch doesn’t get all his women employees to waive their rights to be free of sexual harassment, or perhaps they should pull out the old defense employers used against employees injured as a result of unsafe conditions before the days of worker’s compensation: assumption of the risk.
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