With the departure of the founded racial demagogue Megyn Kelly from Fox News Primetime to NBC News, Fox was tasked with the seemingly insurmountable task of choosing another anchor to handle the coveted 9 p.m. time slot. Speculation stirred over who Fox would put at this time.
Kelly was Fox’s final anchor in the primetime hours that was a woman, with her hour-long slot smothered on either end by long-time hypocrite Bill O’Reilly and incessant “race-baiter” Sean Hannity. With this in mind, it would only make sense for Fox, at bare minimum, to appoint an educated, well-spoken, discourse driven woman to uphold the legacy of Megyn Kelly, even if it was one of gross misplaced anger.
Instead of that educated, well-spoken woman, we get Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson is a longtime political commentator on multiple networks, from CNN to MSNBC and most recently at Fox News. Carlson, as most at Fox News, has spent his career blaming the Obama Administration for everything from trying to forcibly raise everyone’s children, to the Pulse Nightclub Massacre. But where Tucker Carlson most faults is in how he treats women, and those who disagree with him.
In a recent interview with Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca, who published a scathing piece highlighting the gas lighting done unto the people of the United States by Donald Trump, Carlson acted on his sexist intuition, unnecessarily highlighting other pieces written by Duca, which included “Ariana Grande Rocked the Most Epic Thigh-high Boots at Jingle Ball“. This foolish attempt to undermine Duca’s credibility only showed Carlson’s idea that women cannot write both about pop culture, and be involved in political discussion. For the entirety of the interview, Carlson spoke about tweets made by Duca, highlighting minute details of her sayings, which kept the discussion at a “mundane level of argument” according to Duca herself.
Duca was not the only person to receive this type of treatment from Carlson. Editor of Chicago’s South Side Weekly, and University of Chicago senior Jake Bittle was invited on the show to discuss the invitation of Trump crony Sean Spicer to speak at the school. Bittle was an avid critic of this invitation, and voiced it on his Facebook and Twitter. Throughout the whole interview, Carlson maintained conversation on a joke Bittle made which sarcastically stated that he would “start projectile vomiting five minutes into the discussion”. Of course, Carlson never allowed for the actual discussion of issues, instead choosing to berate and make a mockery of Bittle’s positions and words.
These two interviews only scratch the surface of Carlson’s incompetence as a vehicle for thoughtful discussion. Instead of looking at the issues at hand, Carlson sides with partisanship. Instead of treating his guests as intelligent people worthy of the time of day, he belittles them and twists their words to fit his agenda. Instead of capitalizing on the “rising star” phenomena that one could attribute to Carlson, Fox should have appointed a more positively pointed anchor whose goals were more for contribution to the discourse, and less about gaining partisan points with mindless jabs to the gut.
.@TuckerCarlson is an enemy of rational discourse. In this fraught moment, his bully tactics are profoundly damaging, and achieve nothing.
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) December 24, 2016
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