Robert Weissberg • June 26, 2023 • 1,600 Words
Over two months have passed since Tucker Carlson departed Fox News, and his exit has been a disaster for the network. half of Tucker’s audience has left, and this exodus has been especially notable among young men, many of whom were Democrats (WSJ, B1, B4, June 22, 2023, print but not on-line). His replacements, an assortment of Fox regulars, have tried their best, but to no avail. I personally no longer watch that timeslot since nearly everything is just warmed-over daily news plus an added dollop of passion, as if bombast made Tucker Tucker,
What was Tucker’s “secret sauce,” particularly to young men? Let me suggest that it was his penchant for taboo topics unmentionable save on dark corners of the Internet, But, his talent was not just voicing the unspeakable, If that were the case, he never would have lasted a day, Rather, he regularly voiced heresies in ways that stopped inches short of being a thought criminal, And that he was able to get away with this “crime” and earned millions, only added to the pleasure of watching his show,
The parallel is the art of fan dancing, a routine where nude (or scantily dressed) dancer artfully manipulates multiple large fans (or boas) to permit the audience only the quickest peek at naked flesh, It was a staple in the old burlesque houses before strippers performed with pasties and G-strings, Skilled fan dancers could convince you that you actually did see a nipple or a bit of pubic hair while, in fact, they stopped short of breaking the law. For men craving the sight of off-limits female skin, it was a satisfying experience for the simple reason that an imagined glimpse of the forbidden was about all one could expect.
Tucker was a superb fan dancer in his ability to give the impression that he is explicitly confronting topics otherwise verboten in polite public discourse. A virtuoso on the dog whistle, so to speak, And, just as horny men flocked to see Sally Rand (1904-1979) delicately display her charms fully hidden behind multiple colorful boas, young men cannot get enough of someone who, ever so discreetly, violated taboos on prime time television,
Foremost was the race taboo, that is, blacks as a group are dumber than whites and Asians, and that prominent well-paid blacks owe their exalted stations only to racial preferences. In today’s world, this is the equivalent of announcing that not only is the emperor naked, but he has a small deformed penis, too. While such an utterance, no matter how cryptic, horrifies the “respectable” crowd, it delights young men, many of whom suffer personally under racial preferences. I can almost picture Bevis and Butthead on their couch screaming “Tucker said it, he said it” when Tucker did on of his periodic riffs on the comically befuddled Karine Jean-Pierre explaining President Biden’s muddled-brain policies. Who can forget his mocking reference to her “Nordstrom pipeline,” not the Nord Stream pipeline. Or his critiques of Don Lemon’s brilliance. These riffs were relentless, and while Tucker’s wisecracks stopped just short of committing a felony thoughtcrime, he was clearly intimating that the dim-witted Karine Jean-Pierre and the clueless Don Lemon owed their jobs exclusively to being black homosexuals.
The “race ladies” on ABC’s The View similar provided frequent opportunities to demonstrate that blacks, even those in the mass media earning fortunes such as Whoop Goldberg, were stupid (“mouth breathers”) and unable to resist displaying their low IQ’s. Race was similarly central in depicting urban criminality, Visual portrayals were unambiguous lacking the familiar euphemisms– “marginalized under-served youths in Democratic-run cities.” And, for good measure, Tucker would note that such crime was tolerated, if not instigated, by Democrats to seize political power. No mention of crime reflecting poverty, lack of opportunity and all the rest of the liberal claptrap. To be sure, these racially graphic segments were invariably followed by soliciting comments from black pundits, but these typically seconded Tucker’s assessment—the crime epidemic was unambiguously black.
On occasion Tucker noted how Latino’s often trash the environment or the awaiting disasters from hiring incompetent black airline pilots or affirmative action generals. Ditto for what transpired in many of today’s universities where nutcase professors insisted that two plus two equals five, Critically, as Tucker would note, such nonsense was not random—every bit of it was directed at subverting the social fabric vital to our nationals existence and thus treasonous nonsense.
Tucker’ also loved saying that America’s political class deeply hated working-class whites. The Silicon Valley elite in particularly hardly cared about the drug-induced suicides in rural America nor the despair caused by deindustrialization, Tucker repeatedly made it clear that the transformation of American into a third world country by important millions of low-IQ immigrants was not of interest to Mark Zuckerberg.
Tucker had a special contempt for rich white liberal ladies of a certain age. The folks with the “Black Lives Matter, Nobody is Illegal, Follow the Science and Love is Love” signs on their front lawns. Viewers could sense his barely hidden hope that roving bands of black looters would invade their homes while these unarmed “goodthinkers” pleaded with the invaders by quoting The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. These were the same folk, Tucker constantly reminded us, who wore face masks when jogging in the woods. The mask, Tucker said, told the world “I will obey.”
There was also a parade of rather ordinary people on his show who were crushed by the federal government for offense that would not even be noticed if committed by the Antifa mob. Most notable was his extensive dwelling on the possibility that the so-called January 6th “insurrection” was an inside job whose purpose was to criminalize Trump supporters. He even hinted at parallels with the Watergate scandal where the deep state may have removed a hugely popular president.
Tucker was particularly skilled at giving credence to edgy theories all too easily dismissed as nutsy conspiracies (“disinformation”). He was way ahead of other in considering a lab accident in China to explain Covid and the government vaccine obsession both medically misguided and an infringement of personal liberty. He similarly was one of the earliest to intimate that the federal government itself was spying on Americans, even planting false information on social media. In each of these instances, he provided forums for experts otherwise shunned by the “respectable” media.
Now, given this formula for attracting millions of viewers, many of whom are young and not the usual Fox audience, can Tucker be replaced? Will he be replaced? Probably not, First, it takes considerable intelligence to know where the no-gone zone begins when dealing with taboo topics, and this trait is not exactly super-abundant among TV’s talking heads. Being overly cautious means that the audience will not get it; going too far invites outrage from the Grand Poohbaahs and sponsors might jump ship to avoid a boycott. The Sally Rand parallel is instructive—show too little flesh and the audience is not titillated; show too much and risk arrest.
And this balance must be relentlessly maintained for upwards of forty minutes, As with Sally, one must always be on guard for a slip up, accidentally revealing an actual nipple, not a vague hint of a nipple. Not easy avoiding a stray remark that will be endlessly quoted as smoking gun proof of racism, homophobia and the like. Keep in mind that fan dancing is simple in principle, but very few performed it successfully, and those that did drew adoring crowds.
Finding material with sufficient levels of taboo content, but not too much, is daunting. A graphic tale about black crime will likely pass muster but it is too risky to suggest that criminality may be partially genetic and rampant wherever blacks live. This is walking a tight rope, and it hard to imagine Jesse Water safely navigating these potential pitfalls day after day, week after week. Jesse just lacks Tucker’s smarts. Production staff is critical here, and it is said that Tucker took some of his Fox staff with him to Twitter. Employing a staff smart enough to sniff that taboo scent and smart enough to package it for prime-time cable TV will not be easy,
Finally, it is conceivable that Fox knows Tucker’s secret sauce of fan dancing the taboos but does not want another Tucker. What if the dancer accidentally dropped the fan a bit too low and inadvertently praises Charles Murray? Fox executives will not audition hosts for the 8:00PM slots by asking for riffs on black crime or the federal government’s indifference to all the fentanyl devastating rural America, Too risky. Instead, they might test for appearances, excitability, and a knack for reading a teleprompter.
Happily, however, Tucker’s ratings success suggests a market for Sally Rand-like commentary where taboo topics are only safely raised but nevertheless still voiced. One might ask, for example, why education expenditure soar in cities like Baltimore and Detroit, while test scores plummet, or why the election of black mayors fails usually only exacerbates the city’s problems? No answers need be given, just speculation on topics that have been certified as taboo. Then let others provide possible answers, and if some of these answers push the envelope on what can be broached in public, so be it. Yes, Tucker may have departed Fox, but the formula survives.
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