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I was asked on Tucker Carlson Tonight only once, while in New York about two years ago, and I turned the invitation from America’s most popular cable news commentator down. Did I worry that while discussing my previous Spectator column, I might put my foot in it? The subject of immigration is always a minefield. No, I believed computer modeling of the astonishingly high number of illegal immigrants really living in the US had attracted far too little press, and a sympathetic host would have given these staggering figures a wider airing.
Obviously, then, I was instead loath to appear alongside a notoriously racist, far-right, xeno-/Islamo-/homo-/trans-phobic purveyor of deceit and disinformation who panders to the basest instincts of a white-supremacist underclass and threatens American democracy. Bravely resisting the lure of the national spotlight, I was displaying my moral backbone.
After force-feeding myself the usual self-righteous news, I settle down to dessert: a truffle from the dark side
Umm… not quite. Television appearances rattle me, and my first instinct is to try to get out of them. I calculated that branding myself as a Tucker Carlson guest would tarnish my reputation in America as a fiction writer, which could hardly afford to become more compromised in the eyes of a far-left publishing establishment.
And what really put the kibosh on saying yes was the fact that I had family staying with me at the time for whom my appearance on Fox News would damn me for eternity. One of these relatives had previously volunteered how much she detested Carlson in particular, even though, typically for a Democrat, she’d never watched a single clip of the guy, much less one of his shows. The blowback around the dinner table would have smashed a fair whack of crockery.
Ergo, I didn’t decline from principle but from cowardice. Yet much of my readership seems to regard me as fearless (a cheap status; to be “fearless” these days, you merely say what would have been boringly self-evident ten years ago). I’m not usually fastidious about platforms so long as they allow me to advance my views, and I’ve done multiple interviews on quasi-Foxy GB News in the UK. So I relate this slight anecdote merely to demonstrate the unique position Carlson has occupied in the American media landscape as the left’s bête noire, subject to an antipathy rivaled only by its antipathy for Trump. Go on that show, and you have irretrievably crossed to the dark side.
I suspected in 2021 that I’d get no further invitations from Tucker Carlson Tonight, and sure enough that gut sense has proved correct. As of last week, the star of Fox News has been fired (as for why, speculation abounds, but I’ve no inside track). While the gleeful MSM runs out of Champagne to spray about the office, my colleague Andrew Sullivan is urging Carlson to run for president. (Nah. I doubt Carlson wants to be president. He’d rather keep doing what he’s been doing.)
Now every weeknight at 8 p.m. ET, I’m personally aggrieved. Allow me to come clean. After force-feeding myself each evening the UK’s self-righteous Channel 4 News and America’s equivalent bastion of liberal sanctimony, the PBS NewsHour, I’ve often flossed to Carlson’s nightly open, posted on YouTube in London at 2 a.m. After all that earnest concern for the environment, hanky-twisting about indigenous American poverty and all-minority arts coverage — the culinary equivalent of overcooked lentils and steamed tofu — I settle down to dessert: a truffle from the dark side.
I often disagree with Carlson. I differ on Ukraine, even if his opposition to American military backing for Zelensky does fill a journalistic void. I support abortion rights, though Carlson has a point that Democratic belief in “bodily autonomy” for pregnant women ought to have translated into opposition to Covid vaccine mandates. I dislike Trump, and I’ve been pleased to detect Carlson’s growing backing for Ron DeSantis as the GOP 2024 presidential nominee; when the presenter’s passionate off-air hatred of Trump leaked, I was favorably impressed (better hypocrisy than atrocious political judgment). While I didn’t consider the riot an organized attempt to overthrow the government, I don’t downplay the lawlessness of the January 6 Capitol attack. The idea that the 2020 presidential election was rigged is indeed a poisonous lie, and while Carlson hasn’t heavily flogged that myth, he’s kept the door open to it. But I’ve no problem listening to people I disagree with. After all, I disagree with the PBS NewsHour 90 percent of the time.
On other issues Carlson and I intersect: the ravages of mass illegal immigration; the counterproductivity of affirmative action; the lunacy of Woke World; the scandal of Covid lockdowns; the political weaponising of Big Tech and state bureaucracies such as the IRS and FBI; the maiming and castration of “trans” children; the imbecility of Kamala Harris; last but not least, the atrocity of overhead lighting.
Yet Carlson’s appeal is as stylistic as it is doctrinal. He’s been a thorn in the side of the American left because he’s good at what he does, and he shows up his progressive competition as dour, leaden and predictable. He’s funny. He’s energetic, and during his monologues clearly enjoying himself. His delivery is skillful, especially when dismissing Democratic pieties with offhand understatement. He has a keen eye for small stories that tell big stories. Whatever his demeanor off-camera, he has a warm, congenial screen presence. He’s a natural satirist with a feel for the ridiculous that makes him an ideal commentator on a deranged era. His whooping laugh can come across as unhinged, but at least, unlike Kamala’s, it sounds as if he’s genuinely tickled. He’s fun to watch.
How many pundits are fun to watch? Even the rest of the Fox line-up is unbearable — loud, strident and over-emphatic, clumsily collusive, not clever but merely snide. So come 2 a.m., I now feel robbed. I have choked down my tasteless legumes and blobby soy protein, and I want dessert. Were Carlson to pop back up on a podcast, I’d check it out. If I often disagree with him, he’s interesting to disagree with, and interest beats sheer despair.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
