I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to rant about Swanson TV dinner multi-millionaire and Fox News lightning rod Tucker Carlson, or not. I kind of feel like we all need a break from the outrage and continue our victory laps for having survived the previous guy’s four years worth of criminal shenanigans, stymied the Q-shaman from goring the Speaker of the House on live television, perhaps dealing a fatal blow to the continuance of democracy, righting the vaccination ship so quickly that all of us who want to be vaccinated might be by July 1st, and delivering a stimulus package for the ages that some believe contains a precursor to Universal Basic Income.
I watched the latest episode of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, which dissected the formerly bow-tied, currently blow-dried bloviator and his ability to subtly insert white supremacist talking points into his nightly screeds, and my blood started boiling. Even so, I still wanted to pontificate about an entirely different topic.
Ever notice that it’s the highest paid people on television who are the most determined to convince you that white supremacy is America’s biggest problem?
Why is that?
Simple: every minute you’re angry about race is a minute you’re not thinking about class, which of course is the real divide in this country.
Tucker Carlson, who was probably very wealthy when he started at America’s loudest propaganda outlet - since he’s an heir to a fortune - is paid an annual salary of $6 million dollars. Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson’s net worth is said to be at least $30 million. I’ll bet that’s a conservative estimate.
You know how it is that many of us frequently grouse about how little difference there is between Democrats and Republicans?
You know where there is zero difference? Between fabulously wealthy conservative commentators and fabulously wealthy liberal commentators. They are all sitting on the rich side of the tracks. Even the Democratic Socialist-leaning commentator, Krystal Ball earns $3 million a year.
You know who is not fabulously wealthy. . . . yet? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes. Katie Porter. Ilhan Omar. Rashida Tlaib. Cori Bush. A score of other freshman in Congress and their “sophomore” cohorts. As of this moment, these representatives are still painfully aware of the plight of blue collar workers.
He’s dangerous. He has millions of viewers. David Duke, allegedly former muckety muck for the Klan, endorses him. Derek Black, son of some guy who bleeds white supremacy and once considered to be his father’s heir apparent until he went to college and woke the fuck up, says in an interview that his family would listen to Tucker every night and, sometimes, twice! Once for the sheer pleasure of hearing him denigrate liberal ideology and once to pick up on his subtle talking points when it came to how to present “master race” arguments and not sound like a hillbilly.
Tucker is a danger. He’s believed. He’s the epitome of whiteness. I mean, he’s the heir to some of the schlockiest crap capitalism has ever imagined - television dinners! (I know. Swanson produces other things.) And as John Oliver points out, when Tucker is at his best promoting white supremacy it’s cloaked in euphemisms galore. Like the former guy, he speaks to those who want to blame immigrants for everything wrong in their world and he can do it while having them believe he is talking solely to them.
The TV dinner heir is the more cunning fascist candidate we were warning ourselves could come to the fore in the next election cycle. He’s youthful and smart and already has the ears of his fellow right wing countrymen. He appeals to your common, run-of-the-mill, flag-waving, kneel-hating patriot, and your Q-patriot. His ability to veil his lies in patriotic gobbledy-gook will make him harder to deter on social media which is where the website hopes he will garner the most momentum.
If you are like me, and you feel you have been in a celebratory parade since the fake inauguration of the former guy never happened on March 4th, and the vaccinations have been getting ironed out and ramped up and your ability to get an appointment for one has become easier, and the American Rescue Plan is finally on its way and it appears the act holds much, much more than the most publicized aspect - the $1400 stimulus check. . .
Well, this is me. Sprinkling a bit of rain.
Fully disengaging from what is going on is not an option. We should have learned that with the Obama presidency. Biden’s riding high right now and the American Rescue Plan might contain some deft policy stroke that makes it way into the consciousness of the majority of Americans and cannot be ignored - like the pre-existing conditions part of the ACA.
We have no idea right at this point in time.
There’s nothing we can do about Tucker Carlson’s popularity. My long-term hope is that one of these ideas emanating from this predominantly moderate to progressive Congress will capture the imagination of the every day American. Like Social Security did in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s. Like the G.I. Bill did in the late ‘50s. Like Medicare and Medicaid did in the ‘60s.
And once your every day American is reassured that it is not a zero-sum game, not always us versus them, and that our representatives are trying to generate a tide that will raise all boats, the other rising tide of fascism will abate. In order for this to happen, we need to be their conscience. We need to remind them what we want from our public servants. I know I am a broken record about this, but I think that’s the only way we keep from backsliding on the gains we’ve made so far.
The poet, Carl Sandburg, wrote that the “fog comes on little cat feet” and I take that to mean, surreptitiously. Quietly. Unnoticed. John Oliver and I are not going to let the deification of Tucker Carlson to creep up on us “on little cat feet”.
I mentioned Palki Sharma on one of my other recent columns. I think she was talking about International Women’s Day. This video is about the hijab and the controversies surrounding the wearing or not wearing of one. I love this woman’s analyses. I am sure she is extraordinarily wealthy as well.
Excellent article about a journalist’s relationship to his Filipino mom who - over the past four years - fell down the QAnon rabbit hole.
From skepticalinquirer.org
To reiterate. From Indivisible.org’s preface to the guide for what we/you can do. I like the quote from FDR. I like Indivisible because it was created by former Obama staffers. They know of which they speak.
There’s another historical parallel that guides us. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt won a landslide electoral victory against a discredited Republican opponent. FDR’s win delivered a Democratic trifecta for the first time in more than a decade. The economy was in shambles and fascism was on the rise globally. Shortly after his election, a labor leader visited with him to ask for a big policy reform. FDR replied, “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”
FDR’s landslide did not by itself save America. Resisting his agenda, his opponents cried “socialism”! Members of his own party urged caution. The Supreme Court fought back. But grassroots advocates pushed, prodded, cajoled, incentivized, welcomed, and willed FDR’s agenda into existence. Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor rights, the Fair Employment Practice Committee, rural electrification, and defeat of the fascists are not just FDR’s legacy—they are the legacy of the people-powered movements that shaped that era.
What our legacy will be depends on what we do right now in this very moment. Together, we can demand and win the era-defining reforms that save our democracy, lift a nation out of economic turmoil, secure our country against the current and future pandemics, and turn back a rising tide of fascism. Ours could be an era that future generations write practical guides about.
If there’s one takeaway from this new guide, we hope it’s this: we have the power, we have the opportunity, it’s up to us, and the time is now.
