At the beginning of the week, Tucker Carlson found himself unemployed.
The Fox News commentator and host of his own show was fired, so abruptly that his people didn’t know it until they showed up for work Monday morning.
Carlson was Fox’s first-string, pulling in not only more viewers than anyone else on Fox, but anyone else on cable television. Since his ouster, viewership of Fox’s line-up — and most significantly the Tucker Carlson Tonight time slot — plummeted.
Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch made the decision. This sort of self-sabotage is breathtaking to behold. It’s the second time in recent years that Fox News has ousted its most lucrative talent.
You may remember that Bill O’Reilly, whom Tucker replaced, was let go because of the many sexual misconduct lawsuits Fox had been forced to pay out. It was not immediately clear why Tucker Carlson got the boot.
Initial theories focused on the Dominion lawsuit, but that seemed implausible to those who followed the story closely. Most viewers believed the firing was ideological in nature. Murdoch is very establishment-oriented, and Tucker Carlson has increasingly become anti-establishment. And on his semi-penultimate show, he lectured about the dominance of Big Pharma advertising on cable TV, and
This.
Is.
Just.
Not.
Done.
As the week wore on, a more intriguing theory emerged: Rupert Murdoch did not like Tucker’s Heritage Foundation speech over the weekend, in which the Fox anchor entreated his audience to pray for the future of America. Murdoch is said to hate that sort of thing, especially since he jilted a former future Mrs. Murdoch (that is, a fiancée) for her over-religiosity.
I cannot imagine anyone praying for Fox News.
Not, it seems, even Rupert Murdoch.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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7 replies on “Pray Tell”
In a significant share of those occasions in which I’ve seen a bit of Carlson’s show, I have found his reasoning, conclusions, or rhetorical style objectionable.
But he has been very effective, and raised questions that other journalist have studiously avoided.
Being attached to Fox News had helped him to find an audience, but it had also associated him with some of the idiocies there. Now he is largely free of those associations.
If he can find a new platform upon which he can better realize his potential, then he may become a far more formidable opponent of the left than he could have been at Fox.
But finding such a new platform may be extremely difficult, in this era in which financial intermediaries deny funding based upon ideology.
This may be the reason/reasons:
“Carlson featured in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit. Yet he is also the focus of a lawsuit from his former senior booking producer, Abby Grossberg, who filed two separate suits.
Producer suing Carlson for sex discrimination celebrates his departure
In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, Grossberg accused Carlson and Fox of sexism and harassment, alleging that his show’s workplace was replete with examples of misogyny. Her lawsuit claims, among other things, that mocked-up photographic images depicted then‑U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “in a bathing suit revealing her cleavage” and that staffers were polled — on two separate occasions — on which of two female candidates for Michigan governor they would rather have sex with.
“Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying, and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client,” said Tanvir Rahman, one of Grossberg’s lawyers, in a statement Monday afternoon. “Mr. Carlson and his subordinates remain individual defendants in the S.D.N.Y. case and we look forward to taking their depositions under oath in the very near term.”
Fox also booted the senior executive producer of Carlson’s show, Justin Wells, who also is named as a defendant in that lawsuit.”
This mainstream theorizing has a few problems.
FIrst, Carlson seems not to have been fired; apparently, he has been taken off Fox News, but not released from his contract. If Fox were attempting to separate itself from legal or ethical liability, then even giving him a golden parachute would be somewhat problematic.
Second, while Carlson can be said to have featured in the Dominion lawsuit, they sought his testimony exactly because, behind the scenes, he was criticizing Fox’s embrrace of that narrative; he did not promote that narrative.
Third, virtually all of the same people who would profess to be offended or upset by images of Nancy Pelosi in a bathing suit or polls about which whom of two “progressive” women one would least like to have sex would act amused at an image of Sarah Palin in a bathing suit or in response to a poll about which of two right-wing populist women one would least like to have sex. (The reverse would also be true.) The matter here is of rôle-playing and an opportunistic lawsuit.
It’s not clear why Tucker’s speech to Heritage should have prompted Murdoch to cancel him. His show was not religious in nature. I look at what happened to the J6 tapes given to him by Speaker McCarthy. We saw them on one night and then they vanished. It’s said the order came from above (Rupert) to squelch them.
What concerns me is what will happen now. He’s under contract until late 2024 and there have been sources saying that the Murdochs want to keep him off the air until after next year’s elections. Members of the media want to silence their opposition. Rupert Murdoch will keep paying his salary to keep him quiet. He will emerge unscathed, but what about those of us who are being propagandized and censored by LSM and social media autocrats? So much for the 1st Amendment.
One source says Fox will continue to pay out his contract, which probably has a no-compete clause.
He does have his own website.
This could prove interesting.
Big Pharma controls this nation, so Tucker publicly speaking out against them would of course infuriate them. The Leftist news media is in their pocket, so they would never speak out and tell us anything negative about Big Pharma. So of course Tucker was fired because of that. After all, they can’t have truth invading Americans’ minds. That would damage them financially.
Paul, please just post comments instead of needing to read them first. If they’re offensive, then delete them. That’s real freedom.