Monday, November 26, 2007

Good riddance, Tucker Carlson

Think Progress reports MSNBC may be considering canceling Tucker Carlson's show.

They suggest you write to MSNBC and tell them what you think about Tucker. And, they link to this website constructed by a couple of his supporters to rally the troops with statements like this:

This decision by MSNBC will silence a conservative voice, part of a move by MSNBC to swing left and become "FOX for the Liberals," dropping any pretense of objectivity or balance.

I could tell what this guy was going to be about the first time I saw him listed in the TV guide for his program on PBS. Since then, I've watched many hours of his dreary droning and read miles of transcript excerpts on blogs. He appeared in the name of "balance" after the Bush administration decided to cast out Bill Moyers for telling the truth and listing some of their infinite crimes. It just goes to show how easy it is to get plum media jobs when you're related to the right people.

His downfall just goes to show what I've been telling you: authoritarianism is not a majority position—never was, still isn't and never will be. America's founders came here to escape authoritarianism and put it to rest forever. In the 21st century, people who are still trying to beat life into the dead horse of authoritarianism demonstrate they know nothing of history, and altogether can't manage a collective IQ of 14, besides not understanding anything about the American creed. Giving these people and their authoritarian ranting a public forum in the name of "balance" assumes authoritarianism is a legitimate platform—which it is not. It's as unAmerican as it is unChristian and undemocratic. News stories and television programs devoted to authoritarianism are propaganda and only propaganda, and the political authoritarianism of the last 40 years is of a caliber that even its proponents cannot permanently abide. On top of all this, Tucker is awful, truly terrible, and anyone who hired him supposing he is intelligent and engaging has urgent reason to question his own judgment.

Tucker's vanishing audience and talk of dropping his program are proper examples of all of it. He and all the so-called "conservative" pundits aren't the result of a lack of vigilence in protecting democracy and our free society as much as they are the result of individuals who wrongly chose to embrace principles that were dead on arrival.