Tucker Carlson took some time during Monday’s episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss the recently unearthed footage of sexist and misogynistic comments he made between 2006 and 2011 to Florida shock jock “Bubba the Love Sponge.” And by “discuss” we mean that he haughtily condemned the “outrage machine” for blowing up some “lighthearted” jokes he made defending statutory rape, calling women c*nts, and suggesting that women are “extremely primitive” and enjoy being told to “be quiet” and “do what you’re told.”
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 12, 2019
The Fox News host stated right off the bat that it was “pointless to explain how the words were spoken in jest or taken out of context” — so in other words, he wasn’t even going to try — instead laying the blame on the so-called “mob” out for his blood.
And yet, no matter how bad it gets, no matter how despised and humiliated you may be, there is one thing you can never do, one thing that is absolutely not allowed: you can never mention the comic absurdity of the whole thing. You can never laugh in the face of the mob. You must always pretend that the people yelling at you are somehow your moral superiors. You have to assume that what they say they’re mad about is what they’re actually mad about. You must take them at face value. You have to pretend that this is a debate about virtue, and not about power; that your critics are arguing on principle, and not from partisanship.
No matter what they take from you in the end, you must continue to pretend that these things are true. You are bad, they are good, the system is on the level.
Well, yeah, pretty much — although he forgot to include the hypocrisy of the whole thing since he’s called for others to lose their jobs over a lot less.
At any rate, he concluded his huffy diatribe by assuring viewers that the network stands firmly behind him and that while they’ll continue to apologize when they’re wrong, but that they’ll never bow down, “ever, no matter what.”
Cool, well we’ll see what comes of the emergency meeting Fox News has scheduled this week to plead with advertisers not to boycott the network and jump ship. But in the meantime, literally at the same time Carlson was delivering his remarks, Media Matters for America dropped another humdinger of unearthed footage — this time spotlighting some of the horribly racist things he said from around the same time period.
Among his delightful remarks, Carlson claimed that Iraq wasn’t worth invading because it was a crappy place filled with “semi-literate primitive monkeys,” that he had “zero sympathy” for Iraqis because they “don’t use toilet paper or forks” and that they should “just shut the f*ck up and obey.” He also questioned whether or not Barack Obama was black because “he has one white parent, one Black parent.”
Some transcripts of his remarks can be found below:
https://twitter.com/ositanwanevu/status/1105269955631726592
So in other words, it remains to be seen how “firmly” the network will be standing behind him. The scandal is certainly not going anywhere anytime soon, that’s for sure. Carlson has yet to comment past Monday night’s remarks, but it seems conceivable that he may be changing his tune going forward.