Tucker Carlson: The willing degradation of the reservation conservative
Watching Tucker Carlson cover the Duke lacrosse travesty of justice brings to mind those old photographs of Geronimo riding around in a car in Florida. It took a big chunk of the U.S. Army to send the old warrior to the reservation. Carlson went willingly as the price of having his own little-watched cable show.
To his credit Carlson was an early skeptic of the political prosecution underway in Durham. For this he has been mocked by guests on his own program. The conventions of cable news allow talking heads to spew the most amazing nonsense under the pretense of presenting "both sides of the story." In the Duke case, people like Wendy Murphy have been reduced to screeching "defense spin, defense spin" when confronted with those inconvenient things called facts.
Carlson as host has to act like this lame farce is meaningful and that he and his guests are engaged in a real dialogue. Take this transcript from a recent program.
After Wendy Murphy behaves like an obnoxious LaRouchite, Tucker closes with:
Wendy Murphy, completely insane, but delightful nonetheless.
Thanks for joining us.
Where is the outrage? Why does a host have to pretend that Wendy Murphy or Georgia Goslee are honestly seeking the truth when they lie and spin? Is this news or pro wrestling?
The shame of it all is that Carlson's early instincts on this case have been proven correct. He was suspicious of the accuser, aware of the political motives of the DA, and worried about the harm done by false accusations. He could have claimed the mantle of Atticus Finch and Edward R. Murrow. Instead he chose to go along to get along and allowed other to move ahead of him on the story.
Last night ESPN aired a new episode in their 30 for 30 documentary series. “Fantastic Lies” was a searing look back at the Duke lacrosse case/hoax/scandal.
Overall, it was an outstanding piece of work. Admittedly, it skimmed over a great many points and left out others. That is inevitable when you have to cover a complex, year-long, story in 90 minutes of television.
For what it is worth, here are a few of the points about the case that deserve more attention.
Journalists were not just wrong about the case. They were arrogantly, viciously, proudly wrong.
Reporters and pundits did not just attack the members of the lacrosse team. They attacked anyone who tried to defend the team and its players. The documentary really should have included the brave stand made by the Duke women’s lacrosse team and the vitriol they received from the press for proclaiming their belief in the ‘innocence’ of the men lacrosse players.
The documentary lets the MSM off the hook. It lets the clowns and kommissars claim that failure was inevitable because the story was “a perfect storm.”
Failure was not inevitable. Some people were not caught up in the perfect storm. “Fantastic Lies” would have been much better if it had included the thoughts from someone like Stuart Taylor on the failure of the media.
“Fantastic Lies” whitewashes ESPN’s participation in the media mob that abetted Nifong.
When the documentary hid this fact it continued a long tradition of smokescreens and fig leafs. In that sense it is emblematic of the media cover-up that has gone on for ten years. The MSM cannot look in the mirror and admit its mistakes.
Which is why this happened:
None of the MSM outlets that messed up so horribly did anything to reform themselves. Nor did the Duke administration.
The Gang of 88 still rules the roost in Durham. The MSM still falls for hoaxes like the Rolling Stone story on UVa and “Hands up. Don’t shoot.”
When Evan Thomas of Newsweek tried to defend the magazine’s indefensible rush to judgment he came up with one of the most quoted lines of the whole saga.
“We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong."
And that is what ties this into the Trump phenomenon. Journalists and their lapdog media critics keep whining that millions of people ignore their rigorous fact-checking and debunking of Trump’s claims and promises. They say they are puzzled and I bet they are. If they really understood what was happening they would be terrified.
Millions of voters ignore the MSM attacks on Trump because they assume the MSM is filled with liars who prefer the Narrative (i.e. propaganda) to facts and truth. That is not entirely correct and it does not make Trump a good choice for president, but it does help explain why so many happily ignore the MSM.
If the old media has lost power, it is because they wielded it recklessly and unwisely.
One last point in Trump’s favor.
When the MSM ginned up their unthinking outrage mobs, professional conservatives and Republican politicians were slow to respond. Some happily ran with SJW pack. Most hid and hoped it would blow over.
When a Trump supporter says they like DJT because “he fights”, the background context is the craven cowardice of resercons like Tucker Carlson and gutless politicians too numerous to mention.
UPDATE: It is only fair to note that Tucker Carlson has come a long way. A long, long way and in the right direction.
who in their right mind would give Tucker Carlson yet another shot at a successful TV show?
Conservatives grumble often about Carlson, because he's rightly seen as a lightweight sought-after by liberal network executives, because he's harmless and ineffective. But he's also boring and consistently unable to generate an audience.
MSNBC wants to reach conservatives. But they want only safe, MSM-approved conservative voices. Carlson earned his stripes by flacking for McCain in the 2000 primaries and serving as a willing tackling dummy for Carville and Begala on Crossfire. What he does not possess is proven appeal in Red America.
With the presidential election heating up, Moore needed to get his movie into theaters. Although Weinstein had told Eisner and Murphy that he planned to sell the film's distribution rights after it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Moore had a more expedient strategem. On the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD, Moore says he resolved to get the film seen in America "by hook or by crook." His hook was censorship.
On May 5, 2004, the New York Times ran a front-page article headlined "Disney Is Blocking Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush." The story included the sensational charge that Eisner "expressed particular concern that [choosing to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11] would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor." The source for this allegation was Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel. Two days later, Moore claimed on his Web site that Disney's board of directors rejected Fahrenheit 9/11 "last week." In fact, the Disney board had not made such a decision in 2004—the project had been vetoed in 2003.
NB: It was the NY Times, not a bunch of amateurs with blogs who got conned by Moore and thus, gave his movie millions in free publicity.
When liberals adopt you as their token conservative, kiss your credibility among conservatives goodbye and say hello to writing gigs at the Atlantic, appearances on Keith Olbermann's program, and lectures at the Kennedy School of Government. David Brooks, who serves as the house conservative to both PBS's News Hour and the New York Times op-ed page, could have told David Frum this. To be the liberals' favorite conservative is usually an indication of just how alienated from conservatism one really is.
You could toss Tucker Carlson in there to make it a trifecta.
There is only upside for Frum, though. The moment he denounced Rush Limbaugh, all his embarrassing moments went down the memory hole. No one cares anymore about the grandstanding over the "Axis of Evil" speech. Bygones. Forgotten. Only people the press dislikes are reminded of past mistakes.
The bigger question, the more honest question, is this: When was David Frum ever an important leader in the conservative movement? The "second thoughts" of a self-promoting scribbler hardly seems worthy of Newsweek's attention.
ADDED: Waste not, want not. I emailed this another blogger several days ago. It fits, so i might as well use it.
A couple of years ago i started calling Brooks old buddy Tucker Carlson a "reservation conservative." Brooks is an even better example of the breed. The Frum is bargaining for a slot.
Liberals love those kind of "conservatives". It lets them define both the liberal and conservative position on an issue. (If Brooks gets too out of line, a sharp look from MoDo will send him to his keyboard to make amends.) And if real conservatives don't get in line, resercons provide a nice club: "even David Brooks thinks that The Other McCain is crazy."
Speaking of The Other McCain, this post contains an incredible sociological analysis of Washington and the environment that produces resercons.
If National Review wanted to be interesting again, they'd make McCain their Red America correspondent in Washington.
Even better, The Atlantic should hire McCain to follow-up on this idea:
As an aside-- it would be interesting if a magazine like The Atlantic did a reverse Brooks. Send a "Red America writer" to do a red/blue comparison.
Watch the videos and it is no surprise why he is the second most hated man in Washington right now. He asks dangerous questions. And he is not prepared to take the usual BS an an answer.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
All your clicks are belong to us
In his relentless campaign to grab every reader in the blogosphere, RS McCain has started a news aggregator.
It's a pretty good site, but i fear that McCain is poaching on my territory here. Busting Tucker Carlson is this blog's job.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Tucker Carlson: Can a reservation conservative boost MSNBC?
So the bow-tied one is being wooed by MSNBC. Couple that with his PBS show and you have a perfect example of failing upward.
He hosts a floundering show on a network that is getting stomped by Fox so the best minds of the MSM decide that he is a hot property. The echo chamber inside the coastal cocoon must be deafening.
MSNBC wants to reach conservatives. But they want only safe, MSM-approved conservative voices. Carlson earned his stripes by flacking for McCain in the 2000 primaries and serving as a willing tackling dummy for Carville and Begala on Crossfire. What he does not possess is proven appeal in Red America.
If it is serious MSNBC needs a conservative host with exactly that. Matthews and Olberman repel red staters. It will take a compelling personality to bring them back at 9.00 pm. A safe choice like Carlson won't do that.
In truth, though, it is hard to think of potential hosts who could pull it off. Let's face it, the formula-a host sitting at a table with a bunch of spinners and glib reporters who rehash the headlines-is tired. It doesn't "break" news and the discussion is all heat and no light.
Instead of coming up with a "new' program using a tapped-out format and a recycled host, MSNBC should be bold-new faces, different approach.
For one thing, why does the show have to be headquartered in Washington or New York? Why not Chicago, Dallas, or Denver?
Second, why does the host have to be "TV friendly"? Charles Kuralt was the antithesis of the modern anchor. Yet he was popular with viewers at CBS, both as a reporter and the host of "Sunday Morning." You get a much deeper talent pool when you get past the idea that viewers demand that their news be read by Brian Williams-types.
Personally, I rarely watch FNC in prime time even though I live in Red America. But I'd tune in to a show on CNN or MSNBC to watch an intelligent hour of discussion hosted by Milt Rosenberg.
But Klein didn’t want to be a lone voice lying in the wilderness. Thus, he created the now infamous JournoList, a listserv that he and other MSM types used to coordinate their misrepresentations of the news. As Tucker Carlson put it in the Daily Caller, “Again and again, we discovered members of JournoList working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians.” Klein denied this, but immediately took the listserv down and still refuses to give anyone access to any related files.
That the Post didn’t fire Klein after the JournoList scandal is a scandal in itself, but he remained and continued his crimes against journalism.
Trump “asks the question at the core of whatever the issue is that is the one question that everyone has been avoiding because they don't have the answer to it”
This reminded me of a story that organizational scholar Charles Handy used to illustrate the differences between two organizational cultures. Handy moved from a large, bureaucratic organization to an ill-defined role with an entrepreneurial investment bank. He was appalled at the slap dash way things were run.
Clearly, some serious professional project appraisal was urgently needed. Luckily, I just happened to have brought along with me from my previous organization a set of procedures and tables for project appraisal. I could readily adapt these, and then I could propose introducing a little more system nd procedure into the current craziness.
In a week I was ready. The chairman arranged for me to present my ideas to a meeting of the board. They all listened very attentively and politely. At the end, the chairman thanked me for all the work I had put into I, and then observed, “I suppose a project would have to be very marginal to justy all this analysis and procedure?”
“Well, I said, “it's obviously vital to marginal propositions, but you can't even know if it's marginal until you've done this kind of formal analysis.”
“Hmm. You see, we're probably wrong,” (in the tone of voice that Englishmen use when they know they're not), “but in this group we've always thought that we got success not by making better decisions on marginal propositions than our competitors did, but by making quicker decisions on obvious propositions.” … In the end, I realized that I had a different cast of mind and left before they threw me out.
For three decades Republicans and Democrats, neoliberals and neoconservatives, debated the proper mix of tax incentives, transfer payments, and trade concessions required to bring China into the New World Order. Trump had no time for that: he wanted to know why it was good for America to send good jobs, even vital jobs, to a potential adversary. His rude questions proved to be more popular than the conventional answers Republicans usually offered to the conventional questions.
Only Trump, a man who had spent decades leading companies with a Zeus culture would base a campaign and a presidency on asking rude questions the Acela Blob wants to bury.
It is not surprising that a Zeus president was going to clash with an Apollo bureaucracy and their media clones.
Zeus vs Apollo
Handy defines four basic organizational cultures which he names after Greek gods: Zeus, Apollo, Athena, and Dionysus.
Zeus cultures are entrepreneurial. They operate in the out-sized shadow of the leader. They excel at speed of decision and in turning decisions into action. They have little time for procedures and policy manuals. Their strength comes from a shared mindset and commitment to the leader's goals and vision.
Zeus does not write; he speaks eyeball to eyeball if possible, if not, then by phone.
As a politician Zeus tweets directly to the voters over the heads of his bureaucratic gatekeepers, media minders, and media deciders.
Apollo cultures are classic bureaucracies. They focus on rules, procedures, flow charts, and org charts. They value stability and predictability.
The Apollo style is excellent when one can assume that tomorrow will be like yesterday.
What he have seen in Washington for the past three years is more than a clash of cultures. The Apollo bureaucracy, with breath-taking arrogance, decided that Trump's style was not merely unconventional but wrong and dangerous. They want an end to the rude questions that they cannot answer.
They demand not merely independence from the president, but supremacy over the executive branch.
The irony, and maybe the tragedy is this: Trump's style, the Zeus style, is the style and culture best suited for turbulent and chaotic times.
Tomorrow is not like yesterday. Pretending that the procedures, norms and protocols based on the presumption of stability will work in the midst of an unprecedented crisis is foolish, self-serving, and futile.
The bureaucratic/media Apollos will not save us; they very well may destroy our economy and what is left of our tattered social fabric.
As i watched the "60 Minutes" piece, i was reminded again of the power of real journalism. Ed Bradley laid out the facts and told a story. This case has been a staple of the cable tabloid shows since the DNA dragnet back in March. Unfortunately those shows subscribe to the "Crossfire" model of journalism where the goal is screaming debate, not fact-finding. Tucker Carlson needs Georgia Goslee or Wendy Murphy. Ed Bradley did not. We were all better for their non-appearance.
Double standard?
After this story broke, Duke suspended the team for the remainder of the lacrosse season. The ostensible reason was the repeated bad behavior of the team with the party being the straw that broke the camels back. That seemed harsh and a little disingenuous: Duke maintained that it was the party, not the rape allegations that triggered the action. Most sportswriters accepted the action as understandable and just.
Would it be fair, then, to suspend the University of Miami (FLA) football team for the remainder of the season? The brawl/gang fight has been caught on tape. There is no doubt about what happened on the field on Saturday. Nor can anyone doubt that players at the U have had a pattern of bad behavior.
