To hear Carlson tell it, he stumbled into television the same way he wandered into journalism, because it was quick, easy, and they’d take him. In his 2003 book Politics, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News, Carlson recounts that his first television appearance happened because he came home early from lunch.
I was heading back to my desk with a take-out hot dog one afternoon when I ran into the receptionist. She asked me what I knew about the O.J. trial. My instinct was to answer honestly (“just about nothing”), but for some reason I caught myself. I asked her why she wanted to know. Well, she explained, Dan Rather’s booker just called looking for an O.J. expert to go on 48 Hours tonight. Everyone else is still at lunch. Can you do it?
After that, Carlson was on TV regularly as a talking head. Five years later, in 2000, he was asked to go on CNN to give commentary after the Lieberman-Cheney debate. That analysis launched the CNN show The Spin Room, co-hosted by Carlson and Bill Press. It aired at 1 in the morning, then 11 and 11:30 at night, before finally coming to rest at 10:30. The show was short-lived, and little-loved: “Press is a hopeless, dithering wimp who makes Carlson’s bow-tied twit look like The Rock,” wrote a critic in Entertainment Weekly in 2001. “Between them, Carlson and Press would be hard-pressed to win a debate with network weatherman Flip Spiceland over whether or not the sun is out in Atlanta.”
But somehow, despite the cancellation of his debut show, Carlson’s career as player in political TV was on. In 2001, Carlson was asked to co-host Crossfire with Paul Begala. He also hosted a weekly public affairs show on PBS, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered. The most notable moment of Crossfire, the one everyone remembers, aired on October 15, 2004. That was the day Jon Stewart came on Crossfire and called Tucker Carlson a dick.
It’s an infamous moment in cable news history. Carlson and Begala seem to think Stewart is there to promote his book, but he immediately begins criticizing the show. Any attempt by the co-hosts to retake control comes off as weak and wheedling. They try to bait him, but Stewart won’t budge. He defends himself as saying he’s just entertainment, a defense that in hindsight feels misleading considering the way The Daily Show changed news and comedy. In response, Carlson stutters. He’s defensive. He laughs nervously, an early sign of what would become a trademark tic.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America,” Stewart begs Begala and Carlson. The conversation escalates from there, with Stewart lecturing the duo on their cable news theater which masquerades as journalism. Begala says little. It’s Carlson who tries to parry Stewart’s blows. But Stewart does what Carlson would later learn to do so well, he comes out of the gate with an impossible line of questioning and a disingenuous defense.
At one point, Carlson notes, “I do think you’re more fun on your show. Just my opinion.”
Stewart doesn’t miss a beat. “You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.”
Carlson clearly still has scars from the exchange. “Jon Stewart was far more popular than I was,” he says, “and so he was recorded as having won the argument. But I never understood what the argument was.”
The argument, of course, was that Carlson was hurting America with his rhetoric. And in some ways, that’s still the argument. The power dynamic has changed. And now, Carlson is the one making people stutter defensively.
Though Stewart has long been off the air, the parallels between the two men still resonate. Today on his show, Carlson often comes right out of the gate with impossible and leading questions, like Stewart did. … In 2004, people saw Stewart as a rogue, a truth teller, someone who skewered both sides equally. Carlson sees himself the same way. “I think you’ll find a lot of people who say I’m repugnant or expired or whatever, but I don’t think I’m fake.”
Crossfire was cancelled a few months after the Stewart appearance, and former CNN President Jon Klein tells CJR that yes, he did agree with Stewart. He canceled the show in order to change the culture at CNN. “The original premise that two intelligent people from opposite sides of the spectrum could shed some fascinating light on the issues of the day had devolved in a predictable Punch and Judy show.”
Then he goes even further. “Canceling Crossfire was one of the best decisions I made,” says Klein. In response to Klein, Carlson shot back, “I was long gone from CNN and employed at another network by the time Crossfire got canceled. But for the record Jon Klein is a small and dishonest person.”
For about a second, the moment marked a watershed for Carlson. He seemed to change. He got an MSNBC show and told people it would be different. He wouldn’t shout. He ditched the bow tie.
In a 2005 interview about his now-canceled MSNBC show, Carlson told Television Week, “This is not ever a show that will ever have guests debating each other. Ever. That is the form in cable news. We’re never doing that. Ever. That’s a worn-out format, and I am not going to do that…‘I’m right, you’re wrong.’ I hate that.” That same article described Carlson as saying “no” to shouting matches.
He then went on Dancing with the Stars and was immediately voted off (Lenz 6-7)
Tucker Carlson, the bow-tied conservative known best for his stint on CNN’s now-canceled “Crossfire,” returns to cable news today with a new prime-time show on rival cable channel MSNBC.
“The Situation With Tucker Carlson” features the commentator and a rotating panel -- for now, Rachel Maddow of Air America and radio talk-show host Jay Severin -- opining on up to 20 stories an hour in a rapid-fire, freewheeling format. The show will air at 9 p.m. weekdays on the East Coast, repeated at 10 p.m. PST.
Although the program will cover politics, Carlson said he will also delve into pop culture and a range of topics that he said did not fit into “Crossfire’s” right-left format.
“It will not be a stilted format,” said Carlson, who also has a weekly show on PBS that ends this month. “If someone perceived as liberal wants to say something perceived as conservative, amen” (Gold 1).
He also hosted a late-afternoon weekday wrap-up for the network during the 2006 Winter Games. He appeared live from Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and reported the aftermaths of the Virginia Tech shooting and Johnson Space Center shooting in 2007 (Wikipedia 3).
After MSNBC cancelled Carlson’s show, in 2008, he and his college roommate, former Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel, launched a media start-up, The Daily Caller. The Caller was supposed to be a new kind of conservative outlet—thoughtful, responsible, researched. They hired Megan Mulligan from The Guardian to run the day-to-day editorial operations, and for awhile at least, Carlson was hands on. He’d go to editorial meetings with note cards full of ideas.
But the site was probably doomed from the beginning. To start with, The Daily Caller was funded by conservative philanthropist Foster Friess, who is famous for telling Andrea Mitchell that in his day, “gals” used to clutchaspirin between their knees as a form of birth control. Editorially, Carlson insisted the site would be independent, and in March 2010, the Caller ran a story about RNC chair Michael Steele using party funds on a private plane and an evening at a bondage-themed nightclub. The story was poorly sourced and drew more skepticism than accolades.
When writer Mickey Kaus published an article criticizing Fox News, Carlson immediately removed it. Carlson had a contract with the network as a commentator and, according to Kaus, he said he couldn’t criticize Carlson’s employer. So much for independence. Kaus insists he respects Carlson’s decision and that it’s all “water under the bridge,” but the dream of a rogue outlet of hard-hitting, conservative journalism was never realized. And the site withered from there. Right now the site highlights sensationalist stories about “illegal aliens,” justifiable homicide, and a hit piece on Beto O’Rourke.
What The Daily Caller became, a former employee told me, was far different than what it was intended to be. “They used all the technology that told them who was reading the site and what they wanted. So, they gave the people what they wanted” (Lenz 9-14).
The Daily Caller pushed birtherism, it published [Dennis] O’Keefe’s lesser videos, it portrayed Trayvon Martin as a thug. It tried to take down Media Matters and Bob Menendez with shoddy “scoops” that quickly fell apart. The site published several figures on the alt-right, and its deputy editor was forced to resign after it emerged he had written for a white supremacist publication under a pseudonym. The site was nothing like what Carlson claimed he intended it to be. But it flourished. And it also helped resuscitate his career. After years of seeking mainstream acceptance, Carlson stopped. But he did show a knack for driving the red meat culture war stories that fed the right-wing media ecosystem. And, in an era of growing frustration with RINOs and other Republican elites, Carlson also showed a knack for biting the hand that fed him—with one exception.
“I have two rules,” Carlson said in 2015 after he killed a piece critical of Fox News. “One is you can’t criticize the families of the people who work here. And the other rule is you can’t go after Fox. Only for one reason, not because they’re conservative or we agree with them [or] because they’re doing the Lord’s work. Nothing like that. It’s because I work there. I’m an anchor on Fox.”
In 2009, a year after his MSNBC show went up in flames, Carlson got another shot at Fox News—he began as a contributor and occasional guest host. His ascent was slow, but steady. By 2013, he was hosting Fox & Friends’ weekend hour. Three years later—eight years after his last bite at the apple—Carlson got his own show, not long after then-Fox News chief Roger Ailes brought him to the network.
During this period, Carlson’s meanness began to warp into cruelty. His racism and homophobia, long parts of his journalistic oeuvre, became even more pronounced. As he ditched the establishment GOP cloak, he leaned more and more heavily into his fratty side. Television helped it along, of course. His last award-winning magazine feature, a 2003 Esquire piece about traveling to Liberia with a group of Black preachers, prefigures the types of arguments that would appear again and again on his show. “The idea that I’d be responsible for the sins (or, for that matter, share in the glory of the accomplishments) of dead people who happened to share my skin tone has always confused me,” Carlson wrote. “I grew up feeling about as much connection to nineteenth-century slave owners as I did to bus drivers in Helsinki or astronomers in Tirana. We’re all capable of getting sunburned. That’s it.” …
...
Between 2006 and 2011, Carlson made numerous appearances on a radio show hosted by Bubba the Love Sponge, a Florida-based shock jock. Carlson repeatedly used racist and homophobic language. He lamented that “everyone’s embarrassed to be a white man” now, even though white men should get credit for “creating civilization and stuff.” Iraq, the invasion of which he had cheered on, was “a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semi-literate primitive monkeys.” He questioned Barack Obama’s Blackness because he is of mixed-race parentage. He joked with Bubba about loving him “in a faggot way.” In another call, he joked about teen girls sexually experimenting at boarding school and referred to women as “pigs” and “whores.” Many of these comments surfaced much later, but Carlson also rarely bothered to hide them: In 2007, on his MSNBC show, he boasted about beating up a gay man who made an advance on him in a public bathroom (Shephard 20-22).
After stints at CNN and MSNBC, Tucker Carlson is getting his pundit passport stamped by the third cable news network (and the most popular of the three), the Fox News Channel.
Mr. Carlson will be a paid contributor for Fox, appearing on programs to talk politics. Might the former CNN and MSNBC talk show host become a host of his own program on Fox, too?
“I’m doing whatever they want me to do,” Mr. Carlson said in an interview Friday.
Mr. Carlson, a prominent libertarian, worked at CNN for five years, mostly as a co-host of “Crossfire,” the now-defunct political debate show. In 2005 he moved to MSNBC, where he dropped his signature bow tie and anchored for three years until his program was canceled in March 2008. He was hired both times by Rick Kaplan, a former president of CNN and MSNBC who now produces the “CBS Evening News.”
During Mr. Carlson’s tenure, MSNBC’s evening programming moved gradually to the left. His former time slots, 6 and 9 p.m., are now occupied by two liberals, Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow.
“The network changed a lot,” Mr. Carlson said. “I’m not attacking it, but” — he paused — “they didn’t have a role for me.”
“It’s just a different network than it was when I joined,” he added. “Very different.” He emphasized that “they were always very nice to me.”
His slow-motion departure from MSNBC was completed in January when his contract expired. Mr. Carlson said he had long admired Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, and was excited to contribute to the network. His first appearance will be on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Saturday morning, the day he turns 40.
“This is the very first thing I’m doing in my 40s other than shaving,” he joked (Stelter 1).
Over the last four years [2017-2021], as his Fox News show adopted more and more radical positions—vaccine skepticism, white nationalism, his growing support for illiberal and anti-democratic right-wing regimes around the world—many who were once in his orbit have wondered what happened to Tucker Carlson. That question has fueled countless magazine profiles and cocktail hour conversations.
The answer is perhaps less exciting than the question seems. Carlson is, in many ways, the same as he has ever been. He is whiny and petulant. He insists that he is a rebel, shucking elites of both parties and decrying phonies and partisans. But he advocates again and again only on behalf of whites, particularly well-heeled ones. He contradicts himself constantly and seems to have no fixed ideology at all, beyond a sense of racial solidarity. “Ultimately, I’m just not a guilty white person,” Carlson wrote for Esquire in 2003. Over the ensuing two decades, he has only gotten angrier and angrier at the suggestion he should feel guilty for being white and more insistent that groups advocating for Blacks or homosexuals or anyone who isn’t white exist solely to take what is rightfully his and—as he insists frequently on his television show—yours (Shephard 23).
When Bret Baier took over Fox News 'Special Report from Brit Hume in 2009, he told the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that “Fox has a conservative reputation 'because of our opinion shows,' but that 'Special Report' and Shepard Smith's 7 p.m. newscast feature 'a straight-down-the-middle presentation.'” Similarly, Baier told the Fresno Bee that his show is “about being true to our motto which is 'being fair and balanced.'”
“Straight-down-the-middle” and “fair and balanced” certainly don't apply to the guest make-up of Special Report's “all-star” panel. A review of the last three months of programming (April 12 to July 12, 66 editions) shows that 67.5% of Baier's panel guests are conservative. Just 10% are progressive. …
The Weekly Standard is prominently represented among the “all-stars.” 65.5% of all appearances are composed of people (Charles Krauthammer, Steve Hayes, Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson and Fred Barnes) who appear on the masthead for the conservative publication.
Last October, the Los Angeles Times' James Rainey noted that Special Report frequently pits two conservatives against a third panelist that's less ideological, and that he “asked a Fox spokeswoman how this represented balance, and she said I seemed so set in my disapproval that it wasn't worth offering a rebuttal.” Howard Kurtz noted on Monday that another “fair and balanced” Fox News broadcast, America's Newsroom, has bookings that “tilt markedly to the right” (Hananoki 1).
The Obama administration, which would seem to have its hands full with a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan, opened up a third front last week, this time with Fox News.
Until this point, the conflict had been mostly a one-sided affair, with Fox News hosts promoting tax day “tea parties” that focused protest on the new president, and more recently bringing down the presidential adviser Van Jones through rugged coverage that caught the administration, and other news organizations, off guard. During the health care debate, Fox News has put a megaphone to opponents, some of whom have advanced far-fetched theories about the impact of reform. And even farther out on the edge, the network’s most visible star of the moment, Glenn Beck, has said the president has “a deep-seated hatred for white people.”
Administration officials seemed to have decided that they had had enough.
…
… So far, the only winner in this latest dispute seems to be Fox News. Ratings are up 20 percent this year, and the network basked for a week in the antagonism of a sitting president (Carr 1-2).
Works cited:
Carr, David. “The Battle between the White House and Fox News.” New York Times, October 17, 2009. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/weekinreview/18davidcarr.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer
Gold, Matea. “Tucker Carlson, Take 2.” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2005. Net. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jun-13-et-weekaheadtv13-story.html
Hananoki, Eric. “Special Report's “All-Star” Panel Is Overwhelmingly Conservative: 67% over Past 3 Months.” Media Matters, July 13, 2010. Net. https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/special-reports-all-star-panel-overwhelmingly-conservative-67-over-past-3-months
Lenz, Lyz. “The Mystery of Tucker Carlson.” Columbia Journalism Review, September 5, 2018. Net. https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php
Shephard, Alex. “How Tucker Carlson Lost it.” New Republic, September 16, 2021. Net https://newrepublic.com/article/163567/tucker-carlson-profile-lost-mind
Stelter, Brian. “Tucker Carlson Turns 40, Moves to Fox News.” New York Times, May 15, 2009. Net. https://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/tucker-carlson-turns-40-moves-to-fox-news/
“Tucker Carlson.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson
