Alex Pareene, Salon: Tucker Carlson’s downward spiral

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Thursday, Apr 26, 2012 3:00 PM UTC
Tucker Carlson’s downward spiral
Once a promising young magazine writer, the bow-tied Daily Caller pundit has come to epitomize right-wing hackdom VIDEO
By Alex Pareene



http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/tucker_carlsons_downward_spiral/

In many ways Tucker Carlson’s a better symbol of the pathetic state of what passes for conservative journalism than even Glenn Beck or the late Andrew Breitbart, to name two of his contemporaries with a much larger following. Glenn Beck started as a no-account shock jock and is now a no-account Internet show host. Breitbart at least went from Drudge lackey to successful right-wing media mogul. Carlson, though, began his career in the most respectable fashion possible and has spent the ensuing decades gradually lowering himself into the gutter. His story illustrates why we can’t have a responsible or at least slightly less hysterical conservative media.

The Daily Caller, the site he launched with a promise to offer a new model for conservative journalism, is primarily a catalog of sleazy traffic-baiting aggregated Web garbage (“Top 10: Most beautiful ‘most beautiful’ women [SLIDESHOW]“), ancient relics of online commentary with nowhere else left to publish (Ann Coulter, Mickey Kaus), and overblown scandal-mongering headlines that promise much more than they can deliver. In other words it is like a mean-spirited parody of a conservative version of the pre-AOL Huffington Post, with a healthy dose, recently, of attention-grabbing race baiting. This is not the sort of thing Carlson used to be known for.

Raised in WASP-y boarding school privilege to a prominent Republican family (mom was heiress to a frozen-dinner fortune, dad an anchorman and eventually media executive), Carlson was never going to want for work in the conservative media world. But initially, at least, he worked hard. He began as an assistant editor at Policy Review, the sober conservative intellectual policy journal published then by the Heritage Foundation. There he wrote mostly ponderous pieces on popular intellectual conservative trends of the early 1990s: Chuck Colson’s prison fellowship program, the growing market for rent-a-cops to supplant the public police, etc.

Soon Carlson was writing long, reported pieces, many of them very good, for the Weekly Standard. More sharp magazine journalism appeared in Tina Brown’s Talk magazine, the Atlantic and Esquire. (He even won a National Magazine Award for a 2003 Esquire story in which he traveled to Liberia with the Rev. Al Sharpton, toward whom Carlson is remarkably sympathetic.) In the early 2000s, he had a political column at New York Magazine. This is the sort of career most young political journalists and would-be commentators would kill for.

[hlthe2b]

1. Only one word to describe--smarmy

Don't you just know he dies a little inside to see how his former "guest," Rachel Maddow has infinitesimally eclipsed him..

[Amerigo Vespucci]

2. He's really become "persona non grata" in even the lower echelons of journalism

Too bad, too, because as the article said, he had ALL the breaks coming out of the gates. The "downward spiral" is entirely Tucker's fault.

[libodem]

3. Never did like this bowtie

Lorknozzel.

[longship]

4. Jon Stewart's take-down on Crossfire was brilliant

Jon had the Bowtie spinning like a prop and there was nothing Tucker could do. Stewart pwned Carlson. Crossfire died of terminal embarrassment in less than three months.

Watch it on YaTube, if ya getta chance.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. I've seen it and enjoyed it many, many times.

I might have also watched the original program when it aired. That was pretty much the first major nail in the coffin of Carlson's career.

[NICO9000]

6. Never trust a man in a bow tie!

And I'm speaking as someone who wore one in 1973 to my 8th grade graduation dance!



As for Carlson, once a douche, always a douche no matter what the attire!