#21 WORMTONGUE FIRED!  MOTHERTUCKER!

Tucker Carlson at work.

In The Lord of the Rings, Grima Wormtongue, one of its memorable villains, subjugates the king of Rohan, Théoden, through toxic use of his deceptive, manipulative speech, thus wresting away Théoden’s proper interest in the good of his kingdom, handing the reins over to his master, the malevolent wizard Saruman.  However subservient to Saruman Wormtongue seems, he has his own ambitions, expecting the king’s daughter as his reward, and quite likely the kingdom itself.

Gandalf, the heroic wizard who shows up to disentangle the king from the many layers of spells cast by Wormtongue’s words, won’t concede that he still looks human, so distorted he’s become through his machinations: ”See, Théoden, here is a snake! To slay it would be just. But it was not always as it now is. Once it was a man, and it did you service in its fashion.”

Once “it” was a man.  What did “it” become?  Something so deformed, it no longer appears to be a man.

Tolkien tends toward the heavy-handed in his depictions of evil.  He doesn’t typically leave a lot of grey middle ground, where verifiable evil can come about purely through indifference; he often sees it as a something that distorts physical features into ugliness and stoops its creatures into what’s called in Buddhism the “lower realms.”  That, at least, is how Tolkien tracks the long-term outcome of selfish thought and malicious actions.

Which, again, brings us to Fox News, who recently fired its most popular commentator, Tucker Carlson.  The media’s been sizzling with speculation as to why it would do that, including that the owner of Fox, Rupert Murdoch, doesn’t like religiosity:

The source said Carlson’s speech [at a Heritage Foundation gala] was laced with religious overtones that were too extreme even for Murdoch. During the address, Carlson called abortion “child sacrifice,” cast American politics as a battle between “good and evil” and suggested the solution was taking “10 minutes a day to say a prayer about it.”

The source told Vanity Fair, “that stuff freaks Rupert out.”

“He doesn’t like all the spiritual talk,” the source said.

As a man who seems to direct every topic to the fattening of his own bottom line, “spiritual talk” must either bore him or creep him out.

But more likely, it has something to do with the lawsuits descending on Fox.  One from ex-producer, Abby Grossberg, who stated that Tucker Carlson “made my life a living hell,” and two from voting machine companies, Dominion and Smartmatic.  Fox News, who has racked up a history of doling out tens of millions of dollars to settle numerous sexual harassment lawsuits, finally got nailed for “defamation” by Dominion Voting Systems, to the tune of 787.5 million dollars.  Rupert might not like “spiritual talk,” but he’s got to like losing ¾’s of a billion smackers a whole lot less.

Clearly, once the risk/benefits analysis has been completed on even their most profitable hosts, long run loss determines when to cut bait.  Carlson’s case remains more of a mystery as, against type, he didn’t get hit with sexual harassment charges, and he had risen to the top of the ratings heap.  Dominion’s suit brought to light his nasty interoffice texts, all the deliberate, money-based lies Fox told, and to the point, his contempt for Donald Trump, the most famous being, to wit: “I hate him passionately.”

That’s out of the mouth of a guy who has spent a shitload of air time defending Trump and advancing the MAGA movement.  In other words, doing exactly what Fox paid him to do, and grandly succeeding at it.  Many have noted how his bald racism, aggression toward women, demonizing of immigrants, etc. didn’t in any way give Fox pause, but his behind the scenes texts provoked them to draw a line in the sand.  Purportedly it was this text more than any other, they feared coming into public view.  He’s describing here three “white men” beating up someone who’s pro-Antifa (because we definitely want to beat up people who take a stand against fascism):

“I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it,” he wrote. “Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be.”

After all, he wrote, “Somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed.”

“If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?” he wrote.

Well, huh.  He sounds like a human being for once.  Like he’s got some active shred of bodhichitta.  This is what they were so worried about?  That it’s destructive to their interests for the world to discover that he has a glimmer of regret about being a complete asshole?

Perhaps, though it’s unsaid in his description, the man getting beat by the “white men” was black, something he relishes. That looks bad for Fox News, doesn’t it?  Wanting white guys to beat the crap out of a black guy till he’s dead?

Nevertheless, if that’s what they fired him over, the Board of Directors might have taken some time to listen to his public statements on their network.  However much Carlson danced in circles around his subjects in this way or that (“I’m just asking questions”), the audience couldn’t miss him driving home racial superiority, time and again, rousing their bitterness and fear against the chthonic other trying to take away and destroy the “white” way of life, kindling resentment into a raging fire.

This has been going on with the right for a very long time now, but if we look back into the middle distance, to the earlier years of “hate radio,” it’s the kind of media message that stoked up Timothy McVeigh around the Waco siege (1993) and got him to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City (1995).  The extreme right, which was something Republican members of congress didn’t uniformly condone in those days, shrilly inveighed against the government and promoted gun worship, with ever more inflammatory rhetoric (Hey, inflammatory rhetoric makes for excellent ratings!), until one dimwit (McVeigh) actually went out and did it.

But it’s this same torch Carlson’s been holding on a national stage, the stance of total good (well-armed, white supremacist, Christian nationalism) prodded right up to the verge of violent action against total evil (Democrats, people of color, Muslims, gay people, trans, etc., etc.—it’s a long list of scape goats).  This incessant, gushing pollution, like a breached oil line that’s permanently poisoning all potable water sources, presents an unconscionable, ever more dangerous evil corroding our civic life.

That’s the face of evil, all right—in a bow tie—with smug egotism, declaring himself on the side of the angels.

He had a moment, starting his website, The Daily Caller, circa 2010, where he wanted to lean into fact-based journalism to support conservative causes.  Fact-based journalism proved of little interest to his conservative readers, however, and it wasn’t long before the site pivoted to conspiracy theories, faux outrage, and scantily dressed women.  He understood what constituted facts, but if they didn’t get a big audience, he didn’t have a problem jettisoning that for the bullshit that would.

He may hate Trump passionately, but maybe it’s because they’re using the same playbook and trying to corner the same market.  In Carlson’s case, a little more than a week before he got fired, he gave one of those softball Faux interviews to Trump, essentially genuflecting and offering to blow him.  This merely constitutes the transactional nature of his job as Fox host; he’s smart enough to know that Trump’s the idiot-savant of politics, and that Carlson’s position and big salary depend on debasing himself.  If that’s what he has to do to exercise his own power and blast his hatred into the national microphone, he won’t hesitate.

Yet now, suddenly, he’s out of power, torn with barely a comment by the Fox Board from his seat in front of the cameras.  FINALLY some good news from Fox!

As many have pointed out, the others deposed before him (Beck, O’Reilly, Kelly, et al.) have gone on to diminished profile, influence, and fortune.  It remains to be seen if Carlson can find a way to do some real damage to Fox in his afterlife.  Fox could shrug off the sexual harassment scandals, but not that Dominion settlement.  787.5 million has got to put a crack into your thinking, with other suits on the way.  Meanwhile, Fox has lost a lot of Tucker’s viewers to its competition.  Newsmax slammed them for being too “woke.”  Hey, Ron DeSantis! Hey, Fox News!  Don’t worry!  You don’t look woke at all: merely tossing and turning in the depths of your fast-asleep nightmare.

There’s a long line of Wormtongues waiting for that seat Tucker Carlson vacated, greedy for the power, money, and self-importance it conveys, none of whom will be troubled by integrity issues–at least not until they’ve gotten canned or managed a generous court settlement.

As for Carlson, “Once it was a man, and it did you service in its fashion.”