Michael Kranish's must read article today in the Washington Post explores the rise of Fox demagogue and white privilege poster boy Tucker "Mothertucker" Carlson, and it's worth a read. The article paints a picture of Carlson's use of white grievance to fuel his rise, especially during the former guy's term in office.
One excerpt tells us much about Carlson's views. Eighteen years ago, he visited the infamous debarkation point in Ghana for Africans sold into slavery:
“'When we got to the castle and the dungeon, it had an emotional impact on all of us, as Africans in America,' said the Rev. Albert Sampson, a former associate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Then there was what he called 'the tragedy of Carlson.'
'He did not cry,”'Sampson told The Washington Post in his first interview about the encounter. 'He did not have any intellectual response. He didn’t give any verbal response. It was a total detachment from the reality of the event.' [snip]
'Sampson was trying to make me feel guilty,' Carlson wrote in an account for Esquire. 'It wasn’t obvious to me at the time. The idea that I’d be responsible for the sins (or, for that matter, share in the glory of the accomplishments) of dead people who happened to share my skin tone has always confused me. Racial solidarity wasn’t a working concept in my southern-California hometown.'" (our emphasis)
The snotty, sociopathic rich heir to the Swanson frozen foods family took the experience in Ghana not as a time to reflect and to mourn the enslaved people, but as an attempt to "make me feel guilty."
Carlson's latest white supremacy hobby horse is misrepresenting Critical Race Theory as a racist movement, instead of an examination of how race has influenced institutions and legal systems in the U.S. His racially outrageous commentary has caused some sponsors to drop him, while the Murdochs continue in their support. A former Fox official sums up Carlson's racist appeal in Kranish's article:
“'He has positioned himself as the presentable face of White grievance,' said Joseph M. Azam, who resigned in late 2017 as a senior vice president of News Corp., which, like Fox, was controlled by the Murdoch family, because he objected to the company’s tolerance for what he felt were Carlson’s hateful views and other commentary. 'He’s on mainstream media, he’s dressed in a suit, he speaks in a way that people see as eloquent and informed, and he’s super confident in what he’s saying.'” (our emphasis)
As one former mentor described him earlier in the article, Carlson's a "very talented demagogue."
