April 3, 2015

So Real Clear Politics has some kind of feature, presumably to appeal to millennials, where they interview someone while driving a car. Why the hell not? This week's subject was Tucker Carlson, who was offered the opportunity to explain why he spiked Mickey Kaus' article critical of Fox News.

His explanation was what you might expect. He has two rules. One, you can't bash family members of other Daily Caller employees; and two, you can't bash Fox News because Tucker works there.

On its face, that explanation appears reasonable, mostly because Tucker has an assurance: He may be an ass, but he's no bullshitter.

So fine. He has editorial rules, and those editorial rules mean Kaus cannot publish an article on the Daily Caller that is in any way critical of Fox News and this is just fine because he's been transparent about it.

Well, no, not so fine. If ethics were a concern, Tucker would restructure his arrangement with Fox News in such a way as not to serve as their online shill. But they're not, so no worries there.

Here's my question. Tucker Carlson, as an employee of Fox News, allowed his editors to bully Amy Spitalnick and tolerated a "Reply All" vile email from his brother, whose reaction to the entire sequence of events between the Daily Caller and Spitalnick was vile, sexist, and violent.

One might expect an employee of a major national news organization to at least suggest that his brother's disgusting remarks do not reflect the views of Fox News and/or the Daily Caller, but instead he behaved like a frat boy and actually justified them by saying his brother meant them in the "nicest way."

Here's a reminder of Bucky/Buckley Carlson wrote about the public spokeswoman for Mayor Bill DeBlasio:

Great response. Whiny little self-righteous bitch. “Appalling?” And with such an ironic name, too… Spitalnick? Ironic because you just know she has extreme dick-fright; no chance has this girl ever had a pearl necklace. Spoogeneck? I don’t think so. More like LabiaFace.

I don't expect Tucker Carlson to be his brother's keeper, but I do expect him to have a more serious response than to parrot Bucky's bullshit, particularly since he is an employee of Fox News who hosts their weekend show and is therefore the face of Fox News for the hours he's on the air. I expect that he would, at the very least, separate himself from his brother's sexism as a way to keep it from sullying his employer.

But he hasn't. He has instead treated the whole thing as a big joke and in the process, treated Amy Spitalnick as an object for his brother and anyone else who is so inclined to ridicule, belittle, humiliate, and bully. There isn't an ounce of respect for her as a human being from Tucker and when his brother escalated, he couldn't be bothered to do anything other than agree with him.

So my question is this: Why is Tucker Carlson allowed to remain on the air and sully the reputation of Fox News this way? Fox News viewers are generally over age 65, and I doubt they'd approve of that kind of behavior the way Tucker apparently has.

Imagine if anyone related to an MSNBC on-air personality had done that. The outcry would have been deafening, with twitchy Michelle Malkin likely leading the charge and Tucker's outfit expressing all sorts of fake outrage over it, everyone calling for the head of whoever dared to say That Thing with the blessing of whatever MSNBC personality blessed it. Ultimately they would have been forced to resign by Phil Griffin because he doesn't want that behavior associated with MSNBC.

Evidently Fox News has no such concerns.This is why Fox is not news and Tucker Carlson's online rag is just that -- an online, disrespectful, disingenuous rag.

He should apologize for allowing that language to stand without an apology, since he's the guy who sent the email exchange over to his brother in the first place.

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