The best explanation yet for what afflicts Tucker Carlson. (Besides demonic possession)
"O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!" (Hamlet)
You know what I’m talking about vis a vis Carlson, right? I don’t have to recite all that backstory, right? It’s the talk of the town. And this is more than just fun-with-gossip laced with schadenfreude. There are Larger Trends at work here (which I, ace larger-trend spotter, may get to later…or maybe not, depending on the length of this substack.)
The big question is why Carlson went from not-implausible-candidate-for president to, as President Trump put it, a “kook,” railing in his newsletter a week ago that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities “would inevitably lead to Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the American military to step in and fight on his country’s behalf.”
“Inevitably”? That’s quite a prediction.
And could Netanyahu issue “orders to the American military’’? (I guess if we accept that the U.S. government is a slave to da Jooooooos.)
I have stumbled upon the best way to explain how this once noble mind is now o’erthrown. It appeared in the comments section of a post on the Powerline blog where one Larry4 proposed that since being fired by Fox and starting The Tucker Carlson Show on X:
Tucker Carlson's business model has changed.
Tucker needs to monetize his piece of social media in a different way. Times have changed. People as using Social Media without filters. Opinion Shapers are a dying breed.
That said, the easiest way to monetize eyeballs is to say something stupid and "edgy". Think pro wrestling caricatures. (My italics)
Tucker doesn't draw the audience he once did.
The MSM have their opinion makers argue amongst themselves in the hopes of drawing eyeballs. Nobody does any serious thinking. That is left to the unfiltered social media.
That rings really true. Sure, Carlson is probably swimming in opportunities even if The Tucker Carlson Show and its related spin-offs don’t monetize properly, but he’s got four kids, a wife, and a house in the DC area. Need I say more?
Meanwhile, there is nothing like having a regular paycheck and the excellent benefits a company like NewsCorp can bestow, as he did while he worked for Fox. Sure, if you work for a tv network you’re only as good as your ratings, but going freelance carries a special kind of anxiety. Believe me, I’ve experienced both states.
I submit that even if you’re drowning in opportunities (book deals, speech-writing offers, consulting…especially to the Qataris) there’s something about being cradled in the bosom of a monolith like News Corp, going in to work everyday at that yuge hive on 6th Avenue in Manhattan, to make a member of the punditocracy feel secure…or as secure as anyone in the opinion spouter game can feel.
So now Tucker is dependent on the clicks and there is no click bait like insinuating about da Joos—always via the subject of Israel, of course.
In a recent interview on the Moynihan Report, Douglas Murray summed up: People outside the opinionator industry “don’t realize the extent to which, if you’re making money on clicks, there are certain things that will always work and one of them is ramping it up about the Jews.”
You could also do “secret pedophile pizzerias in Washington,” Murray added.
On the day after Israel began Operation Rising Lion, Carlson histrionically declared “This Could Be the Final Newsletter Before All-Out War.”
“On Thursday, Iran’s president threatened to ‘destroy’ any country that eliminates his government’s nuclear facilities. Now, the world will learn what that looks like.”
Um, as I write this that prediction is not even close. After just one week, Iran is in no shape to “show the world” what their might looks like. In fact, since last October Iran has looked like the little old man behind the curtain running the Great And Powerful Wizard of Oz display, a consummate paper tiger. Has Carlson even been following the Gaza War developments?
I suppose the mullahs could still activate a sleeper cell somewhere, but that looks increasingly unlikely, especially since they can expect no help from former allies like Russia and Syria.
Never mind, Tucker got some clicks out of the headline and his new attention-disordered audience won’t remember if he was right or not.
I go for demonic possession.
At least Hamlet was a warrior. Tucker is by most accounts of those who know him a good person, so, for the moment, let's set aside the proposition that he's posing merely for filthy lucre (I don't know him, but for the sake of argument and fairness ... ). It's more likely that's he's at the centrifugal extreme of a dialectic pendulum swing from his Weekly Standard Neo-Con days of the GWOT (he admits to it, so give him that). And he was way out there back then. Like, Bill Kristol 'out there.' ("Saddam will go up with the first puff of smoke." Loony tunes). The G-forces in transiting that distance would squash anyone's melon. And he feels he has a lot to atone for. (That's a subjective matter; I'm not weighing in). Thus every conflict, real or imagined, now becomes "a forever war" and all projections of military force, for national interest or moral imperative, are just so many hallucinatory distortions ginned up by "Atlanticist" conspirators. Tulsi suffers from the same simplistic reductionism (not a virtue in a DNI). Bannon is more the shrewd political tactician; he'll take a hit to score two. Right now, the Middle East and Ukraine are the chess pieces he's willing to take off the board. I disagree (vehemently), but he's a smart guy. The other two however ... (again, good people, but ... )
I can't remember who coined the phrase "the prison of binary thinking" but I'd happily buy him dinner. Sadly, it fits the current moment.