Why We Stand With Tucker Carlson

BY BRIAN MAHER
POSTED
APRIL 26, 2023

Why was Tucker Carlson evicted from his anchoring at Fox?

Was it due to his involvement in past litigation — and potentially future litigation — against Fox Corp.? That is, had he become too great a legal liability to shoulder?

Was it due to the obligatory and cancel-cultured allegations of “racism,” “sexism” and “anti-Semitism” that often hound controversial Caucasian men of conservative leanings?

Or was it simply due to his mighty capacity to step on toes?

Show after show, night after night, Mr. Carlson not only stomped on what we will loosely label “Establishment” toes.

He dug his thumbs into Establishment eyes… yanked their noses… and kicked them in the shins…

He leveled his piercing darts against them, striking bull’s-eye with ferocious repetition… and lobbed shell after shell into their camp — to devastating detonative effect.

He let off stink bombs in their midst.

He proceeded ferociously against them, that is. Yet he executed his capers with the bladder of humor and the rapier of wit, grinning all the way. He laughed in their stern and sour faces.

Carlson was, in brief, a fantastic thorn in the Establishment flesh.
Why Carlson Had to Go

If you wish to substitute “Deep State” for “Establishment,” you are free to execute the substitution. You may label the thing as you please.

Did this bunch labor to engineer Mr. Carlson’s eviction — and hence his mouth-taping?

We do not know the answer. Our spies are on the case. They report various whispers but can confirm nothing yet. Some of these rumors, in fact, strike us as somewhat dubious.

What was this fellow’s great threat to the Establishment, the Deep State or what have you?

He asked questions. He challenged narratives. He planted doubt seeds. He chinked armor.

Did the virus escape from a laboratory in Wuhan, China? Mr. Carlson asked questions.

Were the vaccines truly “safe and effective”? Mr. Carlson asked questions.

Are American elections necessarily innocent of skullduggeries and tricks? Mr. Carlson asked questions.

Is it wise to wage proxy war against Russia by way of a Ukrainian catspaw? Mr. Carlson asked questions.

Did the United States dynamite the Nord Stream pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea? Mr. Carlson asked questions.
Shut up, They Explained

These were questions largely unasked by the mainstream agencies. They were largely content to shovel out answers — officially provided answers.

Might we remind you of the media’s ceaseless and tireless suppression of all unofficial pandemic-related content?

This Carlson fellow refused to march in step. He refused to become a member of the regiment. He went absent without official leave… and crossed into enemy camp.

He asked forbidden questions.

And these questions are the mortal, to-the-death foes of narratives.

Not only did he ask them — he invited in dissidents to challenge and refute them before millions of viewers.

Was he always correct? We do not believe he was always correct, no.

Did his compass always indicate true north? We believe it may have proven a bit deviant at times, a few degrees off.

Yet whose compass is infallibly accurate? We have yet to encounter anyone whose is — our own often points 180 degrees astray.

And who gets to decide whose compass proves most accurate? In Mr. Carlson’s case Fox Corp. and Mr. Murdoch get to decide. They hosted him at their pleasure and they can evict him at their pleasure.

Yet who gets to decide for the rest of us? Who will be the guardians of consensus? And who will guard the guardians?
Why We Sympathize With Tucker Carlson

Here at The Daily Reckoning we are grateful for one central and cardinal fact: We lack all significance.

We are not Fox News, we are not Tucker Carlson. We are but a minnow among whales — and who needs to silence a minnow?

Yet if you will allow us an indulgence, perhaps an over-flattering indulgence…


We are but a minnow, it is true. Yet we hold out a certain sympathy for our fellow sea creature, despite his vastly superior mass.

That is because we swim in the same larger sea. That is the Sea of Journalistic Endeavor.

In that one sense we are brothers. And we don’t want our fellow sea creature harpooned.

For the same characters that would harpoon a whale would feed us to a fish.
Mutual Merchants of Disreputable Opinion

Like Tucker Carlson, we merchant opinion. And like Tucker Carlson, we often merchant disreputable opinion.

Like Tucker Carlson, we have filed severe grievances against lockdowns, vaccine mandates and the rest.

Like Tucker Carlson, we have questioned the United States’ role in the Ukrainian morass.

Like Tucker Carlson, we have questioned America’s innocence in the Nord Stream dynamiting.

All of this has often put us afoul of prevailing wisdom — and, in some cases, our readers.
Samizdat

In our own little way we are publishers of samizdat. And you, our reader, are often a reader of samizdat.

What is samizdat?

Samizdat refers to subversive and underground literature distributed by dissidents in the former Soviet Union. It was formally under excommunication, banned.

Our subversive writings are not officially banned of course. They are nonetheless… officially discouraged.

And official sources would discourage you from reading them.

“Fake news” they would label them. Or “misinformation.”

And let us concede it: Perhaps even they are fake news or misinformation — in certain instances at least.

We stake no claim of infallibility. By our own admission, we have chased phantoms and raced down garden paths. We have ended up in ends that are dead.
Take It or Leave It

Yet we have something to say — and we are going to say it. Frankly, we like to hear ourself chirp.

Meantime, we do not instruct our readers to do a single thing. Nor do we instruct our readers not to do a single thing.

We merely tack our note upon the community bulletin board… as a man might post notice of a yard sale… or a death.

You, our reader, may choose to stop, look it through and take it aboard — or you may simply push on, uninterested, according to your own livers and lights.

It is all one to us.

This we do in the contrarian and rascally spirit to which we are harnessed acknowledging forthwith that we are far superior at asking questions than answering them… and that we claim nothing as fact.

Above all: We pound no one’s drum, blow no one’s bugle, dance no one’s waltz.

Of that you can rest assured, deeply and soundly.

Unlike Fox News we are not sponsored by producers of vaccines. Unlike Tucker Carlson, we therefore face no risk of infuriating our sponsors — we have no sponsors to infuriate.
The Only Unacceptable Viewpoint

The only unacceptable viewpoint — in our view — is the viewpoint that unacceptable viewpoints exist.

If the censor’s tape comes out, our blood goes up, our back goes up — and our dukes go up.

On this high hill of free speech we are willing to die the death.

If a viewpoint is horrifically toxic, take it outside. Let the sunlight disinfect it. Keep it dark and the thing spreads and spreads until it can no longer be cordoned… wildfire through a prairie.

This the mouth-tapers among us fail to understand, in our estimation at least.

Free speech yesterday, free speech today, free speech tomorrow, free speech forever and ever, we shout — lest the heavens fall.