Ok, I waited two days after I found out about this to see if I'd still feel the same way. I do. Tucker Carlson should be fired from MSNBC.
Two night ago, while on Dan Abrams show, Carlson related a story about how manly he was to go a beat up an implied gay guy he said "bothered" him in a park bathroom. Not just beat the guy up, but leave, come back with a friend, bash his head against the stall, and have him arrested. Abrams and Joe Scarborough laughed on.
They might have thought that it was ridiculous to hear coming from Tucker "bow tie" Carlson. But what the whole situation looked like was that Carlson bragged about beating up a gay man for bothering him and two other straight guys sat around at laughed "Ha ha, that faggot deserved it."
Carlson has since released a statement elaborating on his comments. It's so self-serving, so contradictory to what he said on the air, and so obviously trying to work into the "Gay men are all violent sexual predators" stereotype that it sounds like a blatant lie. And frankly, it doesn't matter what actually happened in that D.C. park. It doesn't matter if Carlson made the whole thing up to look butch, if he really was grabbed there, of if the guy just bothered him like he originally said. He was on air bragging about his gay panic, he was advocating hate crimes, and he definitely was strengthening the idea on national television that gay men are the appropriate recipients of violence.
Carlson's abuse of the media has gone on long enough. He made fun of trans women for merely existing, said in 2005 that he respected France's government for killing a Greenpeace worker in 1985, called Canada America's "retarded cousin", and the list goes on. All on MSNBC.
We know what Carlson's politics are at this point - he's violent, hateful, and bigoted. Whether he says these things because he believes them or because he just wants attention doesn't matter - he's saying them. We can't possibly fight violence and bigotry when we have someone like Carlson condoning it, day after day, on a national, "neutral" media outlet.
Here's the email address for viewer feedback at MSNBC: viewerservices@msnbc.com
Email a letter to the editor: letter@msnbc.com
Email the Abrams Report, the show on which he made his comments: abramsreport@msnbc.com
Email Tucker Carlson's show: tucker@msnbc.com
Email Joe Scarborough, too, and ask him why he laughed on: joe@msnbc.com
Or if you want to send snail mail, here's the address:
NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10112
Remember to be polite - here are some easy-to-follow instructions from Media Matters about how to address these situations.
This is it. Tucker Carlson should be fired. Joe Scarborough and Dan Abrams should have to explain themselves, too. And MSNBC needs to do a bit more explain why Carlson's even on the air in the first place since this isn't the first time Tucker Carlson's done something like this.
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2 Comments
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Amen to that. I was shocked. You could see the glee in the telling.
Bil Browning | August 30, 2007 9:53 PM
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Register a complaint? Yes. Decry the somewhat juvinile laughter of not only Carlson and the other two? Certaninly. Fire him? Cone on, guys. As I may have commented elsewhere (and fogotten.....again) his comments some time ago about how creepy Dr. Dobson's preoccupation was in his off-camera interview with him is a countervening factor with me. If we manage to chase everyone off the stage that we perceive to have some residual characteristics we wish they didn't have, we might be throwing out the baby with the bath water. I'll take some diaper changing to leaving on the front porch.
Don Sherfick | September 1, 2007 2:36 PM
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