On Tuesday night, the New York Times revealed a text message that reportedly played some role in Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News. And, on the surface, it simply doesn’t seem much worse than the things he said on air.
In the text, Carlson describes watching a video of several Trump supporters beating up an (alleged) antifa member on the streets of Washington, DC. His reaction is nuanced: He confesses to feeling a certain vicious bloodlust while watching the video — “I really wanted them to hurt the kid” — but realizes that this is a horrific impulse that ought to concern him. “I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed,” Carlson writes.
But the most important line is one where he describes the attack in racial terms: “Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.”
Tucker’s obvious implication is that non-white men gang up on defenseless opponents all the time, whereas whites only commit violence honorably.
It’s certainly a terrible sentiment (and a false one), but is it any worse than mainstreaming the “great replacement” conspiracy theory developed by white supremacists? Is it more offensive than saying immigrants make America “poorer, and dirtier, and more divided?” Is it more racist than downplaying the killings of unarmed Black men by the police, or accusing Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson (who is Black) of putting on a fake “sharecropper” accent?
Tucker has done all of these things on the air, out in the open. As a result, the general reaction from the commentariat to the New York Times’ reporting on the text is: Really?
“Gotta say all the Tucker leaks seem like post-hoc face saving nonsense that make the … suits at Fox look worse than him,” the Bulwark’s Tim Miller wrote in a representative tweet. “There’s nothing in them that meaningfully worse than what was on air which they ignored for…
Read the full article here
