Tucker Carlson’s downward spiral

[babylonsister]

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Tucker Carlson’s downward spiral
Once a promising young magazine writer, the bow-tied Daily Caller pundit has come to epitomize right-wing hackdom VIDEO
By Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene's annual Hack List is so popular -- and useful -- we thought we should spread it out over the year. This is the first in a regular feature taking a deeper look at our media's most pernicious hacks, which we'll rank in order at year's end.



In many ways Tucker Carlson’s a better symbol of the pathetic state of what passes for conservative journalism than even Glenn Beck or the late Andrew Breitbart, to name two of his contemporaries with a much larger following. Glenn Beck started as a no-account shock jock and is now a no-account Internet show host. Breitbart at least went from Drudge lackey to successful right-wing media mogul. Carlson, though, began his career in the most respectable fashion possible and has spent the ensuing decades gradually lowering himself into the gutter. His story illustrates why we can’t have a responsible or at least slightly less hysterical conservative media.

The Daily Caller, the site he launched with a promise to offer a new model for conservative journalism, is primarily a catalog of sleazy traffic-baiting aggregated Web garbage (“Top 10: Most beautiful ‘most beautiful’ women {SLIDESHOW}“), ancient relics of online commentary with nowhere else left to publish (Ann Coulter, Mickey Kaus), and overblown scandal-mongering headlines that promise much more than they can deliver. In other words it is like a mean-spirited parody of a conservative version of the pre-AOL Huffington Post, with a healthy dose, recently, of attention-grabbing race baiting. This is not the sort of thing Carlson used to be known for.

Raised in WASP-y boarding school privilege to a prominent Republican family (mom was heiress to a frozen-dinner fortune, dad an anchorman and eventually media executive), Carlson was never going to want for work in the conservative media world. But initially, at least, he worked hard. He began as an assistant editor at Policy Review, the sober conservative intellectual policy journal published then by the Heritage Foundation. There he wrote mostly ponderous pieces on popular intellectual conservative trends of the early 1990s: Chuck Colson’s prison fellowship program, the growing market for rent-a-cops to supplant the public police, etc.

Soon Carlson was writing long, reported pieces, many of them very good, for the Weekly Standard. More sharp magazine journalism appeared in Tina Brown’s Talk magazine, the Atlantic and Esquire. (He even won a National Magazine Award for a 2003 Esquire story in which he traveled to Liberia with the Rev. Al Sharpton, toward whom Carlson is remarkably sympathetic.) In the early 2000s, he had a political column at New York Magazine. This is the sort of career most young political journalists and would-be commentators would kill for.

His politics were undisguised, but his work was honest, and sometimes pretty funny. Carlson seemed to subscribe to a form of conservatism — moneyed and cheerfully elitist, the sort practiced by people for whom policy journals actually matter — that was gradually going out of favor in the Republican Party but that is always welcome in the “liberal media.”

There were warning signs, of course. Like every other raging asshole who goes into journalism, Carlson idolized Hunter Thompson (that piece has the classic “I did a lot of really cool drugs once and it was no biggie” anecdote beloved of sad “rebel” libertarian poseurs). He repeated the same stale stereotypes masquerading as clever observations (NPR listeners driving Volvos turn up with some frequency in his writing going back to the 1990s). But what really destroyed Tucker Carlson, respected magazine journalist, was TV. TV exposed him as glib, smug and not nearly as clever as he thought he was. (Maybe it exposed how well edited he’d been for so many years.)

more...

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/tucker_carlsons_downward_spiral/

[UTUSN]

1. R#10 & K for, may the spiral intensify faster, sooner. & his daddy was suspected of being

the leaker to Matt SLUDGE in the Sid BLUMENTHAL case.

[pacalo]

2. That was worth the read. The writer has Tucked pegged.

[malaise]

3. Fucker has been heading south since Jon Stewart

eviscerated him on CNN

[chervilant]

6. Poor, clueless wee manny

Carlson just could not get out of his resentful defensiveness. Stewart played him like a cheap violin.

[malaise]

10. I watched that live and tears of laughter stream down my face

Last edited Sat Apr 28, 2012, 02:47 PM - Edit history (1)

every time I watch it. It was a breath-taking destruction of a little man in every sense of the word. Fucker didn't even know what was going on as he continued his lame orchestrated responses. He has never recovered but there has never been any there there from day one.

add

[grasswire]

19. good times, good times

Another good time was the night that David Brock made Joseph diGenova blow up like a ball park frank. I almost wish someone would make a compilation of the greatest hits.

[malaise]

20. Indeed - but we know these days someone is saving them so they are easy to retrieve

[longship]

9. Stewart was brilliant

Carlson keeps doubling down and Stewart ends up pwning him, ridiculing him. Bill Press tries to save the situation for Crossfire, but Stewart takes him down, too.

What is amazing about this is that they let Stewart have his say.

If you haven't seen a proper take down in action you should watch the whole thing. Three months later Crossfire was gone. It really never recovered from Jon Stewart.

R&K

[malaise]

11. That was the text book on how to destroy an idiot live on TV

I watched it live.
It was delish!!!

[tooeyeten]

4. Power of the pen--

there is power of/in the pen, likewise it can take a person over the edge, over-exposed - think "James Frey."

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. The bitter bowtie boy has grown up to be a bitter bowtie man

And I never thought he was all that honest and forthright even in his early days on The Spin Room and then on Crossfire. To fall from prominence, you first have to have been up. The only downward spiral he's undergone in my opinion is that of a turd traveling down the commode after being shitted.

[renate]

21. I have nothing to say to that except LOL

The heading

The metaphor

Thank you for brightening my day

[CTyankee]

22. His lard-ass performance on Dancing with the Stars was just the take-down he needed, IMO!

It always happens when these guys think they can do no wrong and are god's gift to whatever...

[BlancheSplanchnik]

7. the Hunter Thompson remark.... *snort, guffaw*

Like every other raging asshole who goes into journalism, Carlson idolized Hunter Thompson (that piece has the classic “I did a lot of really cool drugs once and it was no biggie” anecdote beloved of sad “rebel” libertarian poseurs).

We've got 'em here too.... the "gonzo" folks who think glib nastiness substitutes for respectful discussion.

[They_Live]

13. I'm not sure I understand

your comment or the writer's assertion. You have to be a raging asshole to appreciate Thompson's writing? Being judgmental is not being nasty? Am I "gonzo folk" if I have a Thompson avatar?

[BlancheSplanchnik]

15. I think you'd have to make that self-assessment on your own....

I haven't noticed any particular posts or patterns from you, so I can't "make any judgements" (i.e. verbalize observations) about you! YOu seem to be asking fairly and giving me space to actually answer you, so...you don't seem to "be one of those".

I was thinking of people I have seen around here who often do what I was describing..."drive-by" skewerings that just sound very glib and arrogant, with no opportunity for useful discussion.

I don't think you have to be a raging asshole at all to appreciate Thompson's writing!

I don't actually know if that's what the writer really thinks, but I do think that Thompson admirers who think they are in some way emulating their hero by relying on entertainingly wordy, hostile sarcasm that kills any attempt at two-way discussion are shallow schmucks who think themselves literary. At best.

[They_Live]

16. Thanks for the clarification.

I know the importance of losing your idols. It is necessary to discover your own voice.

"I'm not like the others."

[BlancheSplanchnik]

18. Your welkies

I wished I was literary for a long time...now, I admit I will probably never get to reading all those luminaries I missed back in college and grad schools.

I'm a good social analyst (armchair), and ...I'm good enough and smart enough


welcome to DU, too

[Lex]

8. A vapid, smug, over-privileged frat boy

who has now lost ALL credibility. Couldn't happen to a better guy. Didn't realize what a homophobe he was until I read this article. Not surprised.

[lunatica]

12. It's all Jon Stewart's fault

for telling him his journalism and the media's sucked passionately on Bush's ass.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. I used to love Crossfire.

I lived every day until 4:30 when it would come on.

Of course this was in the day before MSNBC became the outlet for progressive voices it is today, and CNN just ran boring news shows with real reporters. The only other place to hear lively discussion was Fox News where Democrats were the equivalent of an AlQaeda pro wrestling character (Colmes).

At least on Crossfire the ring gave equal footing for the left with all stars like Carville and Begala. It was the first time I had the opportunity to hear Bill Press. Of course there was a large cast of loudmouths on the right to boo and jeer from my living room couch, but it was an event me and my GF would seldom miss.

One day a friend came in and after a few minutes of watching while I ignored him, observed that the show was just four people yelling over each other. "I know, isn't it great?" was my reply. Even though Tucker Carlson was a regular, at least he often found himself pinned in a political Full Nelson from which he was unable to escape. It's taken for granted now, but that was a rare format in those Fox dominated days.

[Blue Owl]

17. The bow tie pasta prima donna?

He's cooked.