Tucker Answers the Questions

Some Swiss guy named Urs Gehriger interviewed Tucker Carlson.  There’s a change of pace!  Being a Carlson fanboy of sorts I found the interview fairly interesting.  There were no big surprises but the questions and answers were fairly satisfying.

One of my favorite quotes is toward the very end of the interview:

Weltwoche: In general, what gives you hope in a rather worrisome time, looking into the future? 

Carlson: That the stakes have suddenly gotten so high that smart people are rethinking their assumptions. I see it all around me. I see people all around me asking themselves, “I used to believe this. Is it still true? Was it ever true? What is the truth?” People are focused on questions of truth and falsehood, I think, much more deeply than they ever have been, and that’s a good thing.

I also see an awakening of spiritual awareness and religious faith in the United States that I think is great. Not everyone is reaching the same conclusions that I’m reaching, but that’s okay. It’s better than thinking that Amazon’s going to make you happy, because Amazon is not going to make you happy, actually. That’s not true. That’s a lie. And more and more people seem to be concluding that it’s a lie, and I think that’s a great thing.

That Tucker Carlson thinks there are “smart people” who are rethinking their positions on important issues might give me some cause for hope.  He has access to some of the movers and shakers and maybe there really is a change going on among the elites.  I haven’t seen any proof of that.  In fact, the exact opposite seems to be the case.  The term “doubling down” seems to be the order of the decade.  But maybe he can see that starting to happen.  At least it leaves a sliver of hope.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 13SEP2023 – The Fog of War Reporting

The further away the reporting, the more bullshine in the story.

This was in West Germany. I was there between 1978-81 on that tour with the Army.

When our tanks went out on exercises of any size, at least 25% had to be fully combat loaded in case the Warsaw Pact and the Rooskies decided to make a surprise attack, hoping to catch us with empty guns. The 25% could hold the line/ delay the attack while we uploaded the rest.

This was a large-scale exercise and the tanks were loading up on trains to be taken to the training area. One of the M-60 Patton tanks which was uploaded with ammo as one of the 25%, swiveled its turret and fired the main gun point blank into the turret of another tank of the same unit. It killed the only man aboard, the tank commander. Likewise, the tank commander was the only one in the firing tank.

It was the old triangle. The dead GI was having an affair with the firing tank commander’s wife. Of course, he was tried by courts-martial and either got life with no parole or it may have been a death sentence.

By the time the story got back to the US and then rebroadcast by Walter Cronkite, the story’s own mother would not recognize it. It was attributed to racism or a near mutiny of the troops in Germany, a communist infiltrator, and likely Martians for all I know. It was the same in Vietnam before. Only what fit the liberal mantra was reported. All else was ignored or outright falsified.

That is why the average GI wants nothing to do with the press or embedded press teams. They are worthless as unbiased tellers of facts and will gladly throw a wounded warrior to the hyenas for something that fits their agenda.

Tucker’s First Twitter Commentary

Tucker’s first opinion piece on Twitter dropped today.  It started out talking about the media pretending that Russia blew up their own dam in Ukraine just like they pretended that Russia blew up the NordStream pipeline.  Then he used this as a jumping off point to show how the media feeds the American public the talking points that the regime wants promulgated and ignores anything that isn’t sanctioned.  As a case in point he mentioned the recent UFO story.  And to drive the point home he compared it to the way information was handled in the Soviet Union.

It was a nice coherent ten minute piece.  It goes without saying there isn’t an opinion piece on any of the cable or broadcast news shows that I would listen to for ten minutes because it would be too painful.

Well done Tucker.  Keep it coming.  And well done Elon.  Without you there would be no place this could be seen.

Podcast Musings on a Friday Morning

So, I started my Friday as I usually do, listening to the mellifluous tones of the ZMan Power Hour podcast while I exercise.  And as luck would have it, today’s show was made up of several segments about things in the news.  I like this kind of show because he puts his slant on these topics and it gives him a chance to be amusing at the expense of the clowns involved.

For instance, he commented on the recent Banking Sub-Committee meeting that featured Senator John Fetterman.  After a few clips of Fetterman attempting to articulate complete sentences about the recent bank failures ZMan opined that the real takeaway was that the Democrats want Fetterman there because having a brain damaged hobo in the Senate further disrupts the norms of our society.  After all, if the most powerful deliberative body in the world can include a man who can no longer master the use of the definite article, “the” in his sentences then why shouldn’t the country go for decades without negotiating a budget for the federal government.

And I get his point.  But the reward for me is listening to someone who can interlard his speech with a description like “brain-damaged hobo.”  There’s an eloquence, a style there.  We have to enjoy our lives and having someone as witty as that provides the opportunity.  And he has a number of these witticisms.  Some he borrows from impeccable sources.  He has taken Oscar Wilde’s phrase, “It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at …” and used it to very good effect on a number of occasions.  He invented that excellent trope “Xirl Science” where he reads from the published papers of mostly female practitioners of usually social sciences like “gender studies.”  The contents are sometimes hilarious in their use of pseudoscientific jargon and obvious lack of rigor or even coherence.  But my all-time favorite ZMan-ism was when he called David French an obsequious rumpswab.  It doesn’t get better than that.

I don’t always agree with all of the ZMan’s conclusions.  But his analysis of what’s going on is usually very insightful.  And his podcast is extremely well done.  The audio quality is good.  His thought process is clear and well enunciated and there is enough humor with the often-distressing message about our times to keep us from gagging on the medicine.

So, he did a segment on Tucker Carlson’s banishment from Fox News and their replacing him.  And while discussing this he made the point that eliminating Tucker Carlson may have also been a business decision based on the reality of cable news economics.  Not enough people are getting their news from cable channels to make it a lucrative business.  The highest rated news channels get one or two million viewers.  There are YouTube channels that get ten times that.  If Fox News pays Tucker Carlson millions of dollars a year, then there isn’t that much left for their bottom line.  And they would prefer to pay chump change to some kid to read off the teleprompter instead.  And I think he’s right.  They’ll be “retiring” all the high salary pundits and hiring kids who just want a job.

And that makes sense.  If a place like Twitter will give a megaphone to independent contractors like Tucker Carlson it may not be long before cable news is a thing of the past.  And that’s good.  The news channels have been shown to be a racket with their sham objectivity and their willingness to lie for the powers that be.  In a sense what I do is no different from what the pundits perform.  The only difference is the economics.  And honestly, that seems to be shifting too.

The ZMan provides a quality product.  The value proposition he provides is very equitable.  He provides entertainment and valuable information.  That’s much more than you get from many cable news shows.  So, it was a good lesson I took away.

Now to figure out a way to make it pay!

A Former Fox Insider Speculates on Tucker Upending Fox’s Position

Ken LaCorte has an excellent blog that talks about right-wing stuff in an intelligent way.  Here he speculates on Tucker teaming up with Newsmax or some other smaller right-wing station and pulling with him his fans.

“Could Tucker join forces with some of his former Fox News colleagues and create a new conservative media powerhouse? With the combined star power of figures like Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Glenn Beck, and Greta Van Susteren, a rival network could pose a serious challenge to Fox News’ dominance in the conservative media sphere.”

I think the answer is yes.  My question is Newsmax the right vehicle.  I’m wondering if someone like Elon Musk could be a better vehicle.  And instead of the listed journalists I think people like Taibbi and Greenwald provide more journalistic clout.  But we’ll see.