What Tucker Carlson Means to Me

Tucker Carlson, corporate puppet

I’ve never watched an episode of Tucker Carlson. While we’re at it, I’ve never watched Don Lemon either, and it’s been five years since I’ve watched Rachel Maddow. Cable “news” is an intellectual wasteland that can’t tell the difference between information and knowledge. The entire business model behind the 24-hour news cycle functions by flooding audiences with an information firehose, and letting them select whatever most justifies their pre-existing beliefs.

Therefore, watching Tucker ride into the sunset again (he’s been fired by all three major cable news channels), I find myself reacting not to Tucker himself, but a gestalt being called Tucker Carlson. It’s clichéd to note how American politics have become more polarized, adversarial, and off-putting, or to blame the departed for deepening that division. Instead, I’d like to praise Tucker for making people care enough to get angry.

Tucker’s firing grabbed my imagination, while Don Lemon’s simultaneous dismissal barely creased my awareness, because Tucker’s commentary generates more outrage. People share snippets to FaceTube and InstaTwit because his rock-ribbed rhetoric and us-vs-them mindset energize friend and foe alike. Tucker’s allies feel deeply enough to go vote, while his opponents feel outraged by what they perceive as his sublimated racism, and his undisguised classism.

This means Tucker has, in essence, two audiences. While one audience gets angry at his routine targets— immigrants, college students, protesters— the other gets angry at Tucker himself. We don’t parse Tucker’s statements to discover whether they’re really racist (they are). Tucker matters because he got people to feel emotions, strong and complex ones, passion sufficient to get off their couches and do something. Not everyone can say that.

Admittedly, Tucker motivated people to do things that were frequently awful. The laundry list of Tucker’s outright lies becomes overwhelming, particularly when we know that his intended audience was more motivated to vote and participate in civic life than the broadly aggregated Left. Watching the recent news about screaming outbreaks at school boards, town halls, and Alt-Right marches, it’s impossible to ignore that we’re watching Tucker Carlson’s disembodied influence.

Rupert Murdoch, Corporate Puppetmaster

Meanwhile, as Tucker unifies the Right in outrage over some unwanted change, and unifies the Left in outrage over Tucker, America’s anemic, disorganized excuse for left-wing activism continues doing nothing. Anarchists, Communists, small-S socialists, and big-S Socialists spend more energy fighting one another than ever fighting “the system.” Despite occasional outbursts like the George Floyd protests, America’s Left seemingly can’t organize a two-car funeral.

Much as I love investigative journalists like Greg Palast or Sarah Kendzior, they don’t motivate populations the same way. People don’t finish these authors’ books with the motivation to storm the Capitol Building. The emotional fire necessary to drive the largest number of voters to the polls doesn’t come from knowledge, accuracy, and nuance. Being engaged from the Left means being informed, which, for most people— let’s not kid ourselves— is boring.

If America’s electorate is divided, as the commentariat tells us, it isn’t divided between Right and Left. It’s divided between those motivated enough to participate in politics, and those who would rather sit on their couches, with their families, watching Netflix to mollify the moment. Right and Left don’t compete with one another; they compete every day with entropy and inertia, the two forces keeping most Americans from voting.

The mere fact that Tucker Carlson lies flagrantly, that even his employers admit he lies, comes second. Because of the Dominion voting machines lawsuit, we now know that Tucker and his cohorts don’t even believe their own messages. But their lies, outrage, and slander motivate people to leave their couches and, if not storm the Bastille, at least show up to vote. The other side can’t say that.

Evaluating Tucker Carlson’s legacy (it’s likely he’ll reappear on another, skimpier network), we must reckon with a contradiction: his message was lousy, but it worked. He successfully energized one segment of America to vote, by providing a cogent narrative vilifying another segment. While the Left continues infighting and false appeals to a non-existent center, Tucker, the most popular voice on the Right, got people to actually participate.

This isn’t to excuse anything about Tucker himself. He’s been pretty effective at what he does, but what he does makes America a worse place. He trades in hatred, resentment, and vitriol, and our world is more toxic for his presence. Yet the fact that even he didn’t believe his own message, proves that doesn’t matter. He made people care enough to participate, and that’s pretty rare anymore.