Everyone wants to know what an asshole Tucker Carlson is lately.
At least that’s what my stats say.
I have updated, as I have promised in the past, all of the old clips of Tucker being an asshole. I have to constantly check those posts for dead links because Fox is very busy scrubbing embarrassing clips of their newest eight o’clock attack chihuahua from YouTube. Fortunately for us, someone reposts them and I can repair the links. You keep coming by, so I feel obliged to keep hosting these clips.
So, why is Tucker such a hot topic lately?
I confess, I do not know the details of how Tucker Carlson and Michael Avenatti began feuding-but that seems to be why we’re all gawking at their television battle from a few days ago. I think there had been some pro wrestling-grade challenges and insults being thrown about between the two of them and Tucker ostensibly wanted to have a real conversation beyond the name-calling.
But that’s not how Carlson works, you see. He’s but one in a line of professional bigmouth hosts on Fox News who make their money by distorting a guest’s position repeatedly, then talk over them while they try to explain what their actual position is until they get flustered, distracted or irritated, and then after seven or eight minutes of enervating bad faith arguing they claim victory over their unfortunate guest and end the segment.
Bill O’Reilly is the grandpoppa of this kind of garbage Fox programming. I still remember when he started out. The O’Reilly Factor, like it or not, was positively explosive in its early days. You couldn’t turn away because the wreckage was fascinating. He’d shout his guests down and then cut their mike off if they starting getting in a word over Bill’s indignant ranting. Then you had Sean Hannity, who used poor Alan Colmes as a whipping boy nightly to practice for his solo red-white-and-blue smug superiority fest. And our friend Tucker has now inherited the mantle of chief doucherino at the start of prime time since O’Reilly became radioactive after we all found out how icky the culture at Fox was. I guess if you wanted to you could trace right wing asshole TV history back to Morton Downey Jr., who screamed in the faces of “pablum-puking liberals” who were told to zip it if they tried to talk. These trailblazers are part of Tucker Carlson’s pedigree.
Anyway, Michael Avenatti, who is porn actress Stormy Daniels’ lawyer as you undoubtedly know by now, has made quite the name for himself trying to bring Donald Trump to account for his adultery, and in the process of doing so may have found a political niche as a dark horse candidate for president, believe it or not. But he’s no dummy, and he’s definitely no-bullshit. You will note that Trump has very little to say about Avenatti or Daniels and that’s interesting because Trump usually has a 7-year old Twitter taunt for nearly all of his detractors. Avenatti clearly holds a pair of scissors for which to cut down the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the liar-in-chief. But Tucker went out dutifully to try to defame the pugnacious laywer. Here’s how it went. I haven’t got any options as far as a source for this except Fox so I don’t expect this to last long.
Tucker came out the gate with a question about a metaphor Avenatti used at a rally about the Russian hack. Now Tucker, like the president, has made the case in the past that we should be friends with Russia, as long as they do things like fight ISIS. And Ralph Peters, who is normally halfway to crazy, did try to set him straight on what a bad idea that was when he appeared on Tucker’s show. He really wanted to know what Avenatti would do if 100,000 troops from Russia did indeed land on America, so a) a metaphor is a metaphor, you fucking jackass and b) it will never happen so it’s a pointless hypothetical. But that’s what Tucker chose to lead with. That pissed off Avenatti, who said that he was told by Tucker’s people that the discussion would be about the Daniels case. So the ambush and the distraction started immediately. The chyron began to refer to Avenatti as a “creepy porn lawyer“, something which the guest set as a condition that Fox not do that since that’s the childish insult that Carlson used on a regular basis before booking Avenatti. Quite simply, he wanted Tucker to grow up, and the little prick decided not to. Avenatti was interrupted within about 20 seconds of the interview, and warned Tucker right there that he was not going to participate in the usual games that Tucker plays with guests who oppose him ideologically. Yet throughout the “interview” Carlson could not stop talking over his guest as usual. He kept returning to the metaphor, saying that Avenatti’s rhetoric against Russia is heating things up recklessly. As if Vladimir Putin even knows who the fuck Michael Avenatti is.
Avenatti found that ironic, of course, getting in a jab about reckless rhetoric that Carlson has engaged in. Since my constitution will not allow me to watch Fox, I’ll take his word for it. Trumpers (et al.) routinely project their faults on others. And furthermore, if anyone is going to criticize heated-up rhetoric, shouldn’t we be looking at the president’s fucking Twitter feed first?
Anyway, Carlson spent over five minutes parsing a metaphor. Then he trotted out the Trump chestnut that Obama spied on Carter Page, and poor Avenatti had to patiently explain that was bullshit. Three times. Avenatti did his best to steer the conversation back to the topic he was there to discuss, that of Stormy Daniels’ legal plight and the possibility that campaign finance laws were violated to buy her silence. It didn’t stick, and Tucker basically started to demand that Avenatti explain what harm was done to the country if the president was a liar and a cheater, which again is an idiotic and stupefyingly ironic question coming from a Republican that the now distracted and annoyed guest had to answer. The discussion eventually devolved into cheap shots, name calling, more interruptions, sweeping pronunciamentos, untruths, a truly bizarre back and forth on morality and porn watching habits, and then Tucker abruptly shut Avenatti down, ending the segment with a final dig.
The whole 13 minute ordeal was an absolute mess. My only wish is that they were two drunks in a bar so that Michael could clean Tucker’s clock, because live TV was the only thing keeping Avenatti in his seat. It was pretty obvious that Tucker was not there to let Avenatti make his case, as he said he would. Rather, his job was to smear and embarrass his guest at the behest of his network, which is increasingly looking more and more like state-run TV for the Republican party.
His job, as always, was to be an asshole.
Here’s some of Avenatti’s CNN post-game. He says Democrats should be willing to go into the lion’s den and do these shows, but I don’t know. There’s that old proverb about not wrestling a pig, you know?
UPDATE Sep 18, 2008: Now we know why Carlson wanted to bring up Carter Page out of the blue. The president released documents about the FISA warrant on him today, lord knows why. It probably will not prove anything he has said or exculpate him in any way. Fox was clearly priming the pump for the release.