I see some back and forth in the comments about the whole "Fox News" thing.... It's funny, it seems like the two exceptions, who get a pass at least from most of us and also stir up this debate, are Bongino and Tucker

I've never really heard anyone argue Bongino's credentials, of course, he was doing his "protection work" for Renegade, was he not? Just funny how people will take shots at Tucker but not him... I'm not making a point, this is just a passing observation...

For the record I don't know about Tucker and any kind of Comet Pizza connection... nor explicit CIA ties... I have heard him reference his family background and the exclusive sort of upbringing he had in interviews, he doesn't seem shy about it, although he never outright says he is from the Swanson family.

I have heard him talk about being Hunter's neighbor and say they were friendly in an acquaintance type of way. He said Paul Pelosi was a "nice man" from having met him before. Tucker is pretty famously guarded and not a socialite in Washington by all accounts.

Its difficult for me to imagine him being able to lie and cover that up were it not true. He has the most popular show on TV and is ROUTINELY blamed for any kind of violence, vigilantism etc. that even vaguely could be connected to his views or 'Great Replacement'(whatever that is supposed to be, notice they INTENTIONALLY leave it undefined)

He was doxxed multiple times by the wonderful folks at the New York Times and had people show up at his house while his wife was alone. I believe he ended up having to move from his cherished home outside D.C. because of it a couple years ago.

Glenn Greenwald said something interesting yesterday in an interview with Darren Beattie about Lex Fridman which I covered in a post earlier. I feel it strongly applies here. "You can always recognize a true dissident by how they're being treated by society."

Good thoughts, good art, originality, truth, etc. Whatever you want to call it, never comes from the middle. Anything exceptional, unique, exciting is always found on the fringes - that's where all the good music, art, TV, film, etc. that pushes the boundaries comes from. I like to think of that story about Stravinsky's Rite of Spring where people went into a frenzy upon hearing it - some were apparently disgusted, others were overcome by it. Literally it MOVED them.

Politics is no different. After all, it boils down to writing, then delivery in a spoken word framework. I think Tucker is one of a few who have a great gift, and almost as important, the proper setting and platform by which to express it.

It's kind of funny - if you go back to the bow tie days, on the now defunct libtard news, you can see it bubbling under the surface in him, but because those news shows were set up to be something else, there was little opportunity for Carlson to express himself freely. He mimicked something approaching a right-leaning Olbermann back then, almost down to the tone of voice.

The famous Crossfire episode where that most penultimate of self-unaware assholes Jon Stewart seemed to undress him, by delivering a critique of the format of the show itself (and thus how Carlson was merely a role player in the puppet show) was an accidentally accurate description of what Tucker was at that time doing in the news business - playing a character other than himself and speaking in voices other than his own.

For the record, Jon Stewart is a righteously indignant little cock, the world and I just didn't know it back then. It's so interesting to go back and hear Stewart shamelessly lambasting Tucker with all the poison and vitriol he has to give. To Stewart, he was looking at an empty vessel, nothing but an actor with no passions or dedications of his own. A canvas for the network and establishment to paintbrush its politics onto, a suit made to cross swords with who ever appeared on-air to question the orthodoxy, and best them by probing with questions and pointing out logical incongruities.

Funny then, that Tucker has proven out as a original thinker with deep philosophical underpinnings and perennially capable wit, along with a rare ability to easily discern and deliver the message of WHY it's worth feeling this way and fighting for.

Jon Stewart is dangerously close to self-parody these days as an avowed truth-teller with awfully little to say. His frothing anger and dedication to upending hypocrisy seemingly reduced to childish rants against any of the few remaining villains he still chooses to identify. His baffling decision to leave the Daily Show in 2015 before a windfall of easy laughs (not to mention potential for a career resurgence after losing his pull through the Obama years) was spun as him moving on to "bigger pursuits" but in hindsight it feels more like early retirement or extraordinarily shitty timing on his part.

He's mostly gone the Letterman route, doing nothing or weird things, and generally falling out of the celebrity-politics game he used to reign over. If he had a substantial message, it got very blurry during Obama's years and it may have disappeared entirely by now. He left an army of inferior imitators in his wake and ironically, they seem to be a part of the 'system' he so skillfully parodied once upon a time. You have to wonder in a world where young liberals share political views with former President Bush if Stewart is proud of his legacy or ashamed of it.

In the end, he was more the STYLE of rebellion than the SUBSTANCE of it. What an ironic dichotomy between Tucker and Stewart...

But what I'm trying to say with all this is that I think Tucker is a unique talent who finally had the room to express it when he got to Fox. The structure of his show allows for him to maximize rather than hinder his talent, as most of his jobs in news did before he got this one.

Like Stewart, Tucker has a gift for finding the elephant in the room and stylishly, skillfully pointing it out to everyone. They both excel at finding the humor amid the lack of common sense in Washington D.C. as seen through the eyes of everyday working men and women.

Unlike Stewart Tucker is good at finding what resonates in a person's heart. He has an almost emotional sense of justice - what feels right and wrong to the heart - what we should value most in life, and how our purest feelings and wants from life are increasingly spoiled by the powerful.

Tucker seems also to go to forbidden places at times. Telling this story tonight was resounding and powerful in part because it seems to be such a disputed zone. One wonders in part if Stewart put his career as the left's most powerful weapon in media behind him because he couldn't or wouldn't go to the same places or say the same things.

All signs of him would point to someone who rejected such inequality - but then again, when you think people are stupid and evil, maybe you DON'T want to tell them about the anvil falling above their heads.

So anyways, I hated 2020's election too and I was disturbed at how Fox and Tucker among others treated it - save Lou Dobbs, and Maria Bartiromo - but I don't believe the opinions and narratives the network sells the other 15 hours necessarily have to clash with my own at all times.

Simply stated: Tucker is a singular, unique and treasured force of nature in popular media today. In a great sense he is the last thread of credibility that the Paul Ryan-brained, neocon idolizing Fox News Network has to hang onto. 30+% of its viewers live and die with him and so they should take great care, as they seem to, NOT TO INTERFERE with his work, whatever the costs.

When they do, we'll all be gone and so will they in short order. Just like that empty building in Atlanta.

Edit: P.S. - Screw you jon Stewart. :)