Another Reason Not to Watch MSNBC
Posted by James Wolcott
12-19-04
Using a pair of sanitized tweezers, MSNBC plucks Tucker Carlson out of a laboratory jar to host a nightly hour of noise signifying nothing. I love this blind quote about this non-exciting acquisition:
"The courting of Carlson is MSNBC president Rick Kaplan's first opportunity to create a new primetime show on MSNBC. 'It's going to surprise a lot of Kaplan's critics,' a source said recently, because conservatives have criticized Kaplan for being liberal (due in part to his relationship with former President Bill Clinton)."
Isn't just too-too perfect how a perceived liberal like Kaplan confounds his critics by hiring a conservative as a lead-in into a show hosted by another conservative? (Joe Scarborough, that is, whose back troubles have him MIA from Scarborough Country, with Pat Buchanan filling in). Media liberals almost never surprise anyone by having the balls and spinal conviction to actually do something liberal; no, they always feel obliged to do the cute counterintuitive thing. No one expects Roger Ailes to surprise his critics by hiring Al Franken to host a nightly show on Fox; he earns his plaudits by sticking to his toy guns and hiring Yellin' Zell Miller for an occasional round of hog callin'.
It's a dumb decision. Tucker Carlson is a terrible hire not only because he's a conservative yakker in a medium where there's a superabundance of conservative yakkers, but because he's a truly inept TV performer--flighty, stammering, laughing at his own lame quips and then repeating them as if repetition makes them even swiftier, waving his hands around as if trying to throw them away, slamming the table in phony indignation ("That's outRAGEous!"), tucking his little smirk in at the end of each segment...he's unbearable. He's as amateurish now as when he started....Carlson can't carry that dinky show he's doing on PBS now each week, never mind an hour a night. He's another McEnroe waiting to happen.
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