Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Tucker Carlson Condemns Critics Of His Racist Former Staff Writer: "It Is Wrong To Attack People For Qualities They Cannot Control ... We Judge People For What They Do, Not For How They Were Born"


Tucker Carlson of Fox News criticized the "ghouls now beating their chests in triumph" after Blake Neff, a former writer on his show's staff, resigned after it was revealed he had been posting racist and sexist comments online for many years.

Carlson addressed the issue on the air last night:
Over the weekend you may have seen stories about a writer on the show called Blake Neff. For years, since he was in college, Blake posted anonymously on an internet message board for law school students. On Friday, many of those posts became public. Blake was horrified by the story and he was ashamed. Friday afternoon, he resigned from his job.

We want to say a couple of things about this. First, what Blake wrote anonymously was wrong. We don't endorse those words. They have no connection to the show. It is wrong to attack people for qualities they cannot control.

In this country, we judge people for what they do, not for how they were born. We often say that because we mean it. We will continue to defend that principle, often alone among national news programs, because it is essential, nothing is more important. Blake fell short of that standard and he has paid a very heavy price for it.

But we should also point out to the ghouls now beating their chests in triumph at the destruction of a young man that self-righteousness also has its costs. We are all human. When we pretend we are holy, we are lying. When we pose as blameless in order to hurt other people, we are committing the gravest sin of all and we will be punished for it. There's no question.
Neff is the sole author of his own destruction. He is being judged by what he did. There's no question.

Expressing racist thoughts (whether in speech or typing them in an online discussion) is not a malady with which a person is born. Carlson believes Neff had no control over the thoughts in his mind or the words his fingers typed. Yet, by some strange coincidence, he supposedly never typed racist things while working for Carlson's show.

Carlson is wrong (or lying) when he says there was no connection between Neff's online comments and his writing for Fox. The original CNN story pointed out several instances of overlap.

Carlson is also wrong when he says the people enjoying the schadenfreude of a long-time racist being exposed at Fox are claiming to be holy or blameless. No one is doing that. Only Carlson's Great God Trump believes in personal perfection.

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace expressed horror and surprise in a memo to staff, condemning Neff's "horrendous and deeply offensive racist, sexist and homophobic comments". This is truly hilarious because, as Media Matters' Matt Gertz details, "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (and Fox News, in general) is "drenched in the talking points of white nationalists".
Regardless of who authored the words that appeared on his teleprompter, Carlson has been the one spewing them out, to an audience that recently became the largest in cable news history. ...

It was Carlson who attacked ethnic diversity for "radically and permanently changing our country."

It was Carlson who said, "My country actually is being invaded by other countries from the south."

It was Carlson who asked, "How precisely is diversity our strength? ... Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don't know, marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common the more cohesive they are?"

It was Carlson who claimed that immigration makes the country "poorer, and dirtier, and more divided."

It was Carlson who termed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a Muslim who came to the United States as a refugee from Somalia, "a living fire alarm, a warning to the rest of us that we better change our immigration system immediately or else."

It was Carlson who called white supremacy "actually not a real problem in America," adding that it was a "hoax" and a "conspiracy theory" to say otherwise.

And it was Carlson who argued amid protests against police brutality that this moment "is definitely not about Black lives. And remember that when they come for you." ...

David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, tweeted just last week that Carlson should replace Vice President Mike Pence on the Republican ticket.
Carlson has also called Black Lives Matter a "terror organization", a "poison", a disease ("Minneapolis was our Wuhan"), an "insidious" attempt to "challenge Western civilization itself", "a totalitarian political movement", and has demanded the US government take "decisive action" against them to save the country.

Carlson has said protesters should be labeled domestic terrorists, arrested, and paraded "in front of cameras like MS-13", he has called race sensitivity training "the purest kind of race hate" and compared it to gay conversion therapy, and he claims that holding police accountable “will almost certainly increase police brutality".

Carlson also believes masks and social distancing "have no basis of any kind in science" and "there is no evidence" masks help stop the spread of coronavirus.

There is also no evidence of a bottom to Carlson's insanity, his racism, or his stupidity.

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