This weekend, Media Matters
released a compendium of old Tucker Carlson quotes from the period 2006 to 2011
– a period during which Carlson routinely called into the shock-jock show Bubba
The Love Sponge. Carlson, among other things, called Martha Stewart’s
daughter a “c***,” joked about fourteen-year-old girls sexually experimenting,
and defended rape facilitator Warren Jeffs. It’s not good material. It also
appeared on a show called Bubba The Love Sponge. A decade ago.
his was, from the first, an
obvious political hit. Media Matters, contrary to media descriptions, isn’t a “media watchdog organization.” It is a political smear factory designed to
perform precisely that function against anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton.
The organization was founded by professional smear artist David Brock, in
conjunction with the Center for American Progress, an organization itself
founded by John Podesta, the Clinton White House Chief of Staff.
Hillary Clinton herself advised Brock on the creation of the organization. Mega-donor Leftist George Soros has
poured money into the organization, announcing in 2010, “Media Matters is one
of the few groups that attempts to hold Fox News accountable for the false and
misleading information they so often broadcast. I am supporting Media Matters
in an effort to more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and
informed discourse in our democracy.” Media Matters had regular strategy calls
with the Obama White House.
For years, Media Matters has
operated as an aggressive wing of Clintonworld, going so far as to
suggest hiring private investigators to dig up dirt on Fox News hosts. Media
Matters consistently attempts to tear down conservative hosts by either ripping
them out of context or by digging up old Bad Things™, then astroturfing public pressure against advertisers. In reality, no real grassroots
pressure exists in the vast majority of cases; the data show that secondary
boycotts actually don’t materialize. But Media Matters simply contacts its list of
activists, then has them contact advertisers, saying that they’ll stop using a
product if that advertiser doesn’t pull its advertising. A few tweets or
well-placed phone calls can knock an advertiser off a show.
This last tactic, the
launching of secondary boycotts, has been successfully used against advertisers
across a broad range of conservative programming; advertisers are,
understandably, risk averse, and so take any sign of discontent as a rationale
for pulling their money. This leads, eventually, to the complete abandonment of
advertisers support on political shows – at least from the right.
The tactic works across the
aisle. My business partner, Jeremy Boreing, and I, launched a direct counter to
Media Matters to achieve a sort of mutually assured destruction with Truth Revolt. It worked. We helped
take Martin Bashir and Alec Baldwin off of MSNBC. It's not difficult. A
motivated group of politically-oriented people can remove the advertiser base
of nearly any show.
We openly stated our goals at
the time – and we acknowledged that we wanted to end this sort of weaponization
of astroturfed boycotts. And I’ve consistently taken the position that digging
up Bad Things™ is generally bad faith and immoral. Media Matters isn’t on a
quest to purify the public space. They’re on a quest to destroy their political
opponents, which is why they defended MSNBC’s Joy Reid.
But those boycotts continue
apace. This time, Tucker Carlson is the target. In the past, Media Matters has
targeted Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Megyn Kelly, and pretty
much anyone remotely associated with the right.
This time, Media Matters has
seized on Carlson’s old comments. That's the worst form of this nonsense,
because it isn't even a critique of something happening in the here and now
(bad current comments are more obviously indefensible than older comments,
which often have context ignored in bad faith). And the media, who largely
mirror Media Matters’ political angle, treated all of this as a shocking
revelation: conservative Fox News host said Bad Things™ a while ago! And
granted, he said some actual bad things.
Now, let’s remember a few
things. First, this was shock jock radio. For those who have not listened to
shock jock radio, there is a reason it is not called comfort radio – it’s about
saying deliberately shocking and provocative things to elicit a response.
Pretending to be appalled by comments on shock jock radio a decade ago –
comments that were made when Carlson worked for MSNBC, and said this stuff on a
very popular New York-based radio show – is obviously silly.
Second, there’s no evidence
Carlson clings to these views. If he does, it shouldn’t be difficult to ask him
about them. This would be the good faith way of raising the issue: asking
Carlson about his views. After all, he is alive right now, while he
doesn’t actually have access to a time machine that would allow him to erase
his old comments. And we are also alive right now! How
convenient!
But Media Matters and the media
more generally don’t want Carlson asked about his views. That might allow him
to explain himself. They would prefer to flash freeze his views a decade ago,
without reference to his subsequent career, the context in which he made those
statements, or the societal context that valued shock jock stupidity. That
allows everyone to schoolmarm Carlson over stuff they ignored when he said
them.
Finally, literally everyone can
be subjected to their Fifteen Minutes Hate over Bad Things™ they’ve said.
Hell, I have an entire list, updated routinely, of stuff I regret saying. So do
we all.
The attack strategy on Carlson
is dangerous because it applies to anyone who has been public, and offers no
chance of explanation or redemption. The chances that public figures haven’t
said something problematic over the course of years is
effectively zero. So, here’s the deal: if you wanted James Gunn not to lose his
job -- or Joy Reid, or Sarah Jeong, or Kevin Hart, or Ralph Northam, or a bevy
of others who have had old comments “resurfaced” by the scolds of social media
– then you shouldn’t be standing with this career assassination attempt against
Carlson.
This sort of stuff makes for a
worse country. It’s not meant to purify our public discourse. It’s meant to
club to death opponents using the convenience of a Google search. The use of
the tactic means that only the shameless (people who will never apologize for
anything) or neophytes (people who have never said anything) or radical
Leftists who will be let off the hook for anything (see Reid, Joy) will be
tolerated. That’s the goal. So let’s not pretend Media Matters is making the
world a better place. They’re making it a worse one, one fishing expedition at
a time.
Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire, 11-3-2019
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