Tucker Carlson's 'No Judgment' Zone

Perhaps Tucker Carlson read David Brooks' column on judging others and... got the point? Missed the point? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

“But more than that, I say that as someone who’s philosophically committed to the truth that unless you fail — and I don’t mean in a minor I-didn’t-live-up-to-my-personal-expectations kind of way — but in a real way, where your neighbors avert their gaze when you pull into your driveway at night, when people think you’re a loser, if you haven’t had that experience, then you really don’t know yourself really well, you don’t know your limits, you don’t know what you’re capable of and more importantly, you don’t know what you’re not capable of,” Carlson said.

“I want to honor that, especially in a city that is given to quick and phony judgements about other people, the underlying point being ‘I’m better than him.’ I raise the middle finger to those people, and I raise a glass to Jack Abramoff and I’m proud to do so,” Carlson said.

Because nothing says "I'm not inclined to make quick and phony judgments about other people" like extending your middle finger to those over whom you're clearly professing moral superiority.

How to Save CNN

Um... paraphrasing Ross Douthat... Let's see... Jon Stewart made fun of Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for their part in turning Crossfire into a bad show, and CNN responded by firing them. But Crossfire was once a better show, so CNN should bring it back - because objectivity is boring and CNN needs more head-butting editorializing. But not "red-faced shouting" because that's not debating. They need the type of head-butting they did on Crossfire back when Jon Stewart embarrassed them. Only in your dreams will you see Pat Buchanan back in the host's chair (glory days... well, they'll pass you by) and, as high minded as he is, poor widdle Tucker Carlson gets all worn down by responding to the other side's talking points.

But you know what was great - truly wonderful, high-minded debate? Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. But without the partisanship. So maybe William F. Buckley, Jr. versus Gore Vidal. Because nothing is as high-minded as seeing Vidal call Buckley a "pro crypto Nazi" (I still don't know what that is), or seeing Buckley threaten to sock Gore Vidal in his "goddamn face" and call him a "queer". Discourse just doesn't get better or more elevated than that.

To Vidal's credit (cough), he later indicated that he should have said "fascist-minded" instead of "pro crypto Nazi", but would that have been calling Buckley a liberal? Can you take this much high-mindedness in a single dose?

Ah, but Buckley's not available, so who could possibly step into his shoes. Other than John Stewart, who we've previously ruled out for recognizing that there's a political divide in this country. Who is the obvious heir to somebody like Buckley, who certainly would never have tried to divide the country by politics. There's only one possible person who comes to mind - a person whose high-mindedness and entertaining brand of nonpartisanship would do nothing but shoot CNN's ratings through the roof! You guessed it - Glenn Beck. Jon Stewart's ability to debate and interview, crossed with Beck's ability to be "lengthy, respectful and often riveting", even if, um, only when hosting "conservative commentators". Maybe it would look like this:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Conservative Libertarian
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Pair Beck with Gore Vidal, and you've got a real ratings winner! Or if Vidal's not available, Ross Perot! Anything involving Ross Perot is a winner!

I'm not going to say that Douthat's completely wrong. He's correct that CNN's formula isn't working. He's correct that there's a shortage of "real debate" on television. Pretty much everything else he writes, though, is nonsense. Despite his pretense that he wants to move away from political partisanship in favor of some other flavor of partisanship - people clashing over controversial ideas, but leaning back in their chairs when insulting each other or threatening fisticuffs - he seems to view conservative commentators through a lens that transforms them into non-partisans, while being quick with the ad hominem toward anybody on the left (other than Gore Vidal).

One of Douthat's more ridiculous sneers is directed at Rachel Maddow, who he accuses of only inviting conservatives on her show "when they have something nasty to say about Republicans." I don't watch her show, but even I know better than that. Is his problem that he isn't watching and chose to make stuff up? If Maddow has difficulty booking conservative guests, it goes back to one of the hallmark failures of modern talk TV - if the host makes a guest look bad, the guest will refuse to come back and will tell all his friends not to do the show - or maybe even to boycott the entire network. Most guests prefer only to go on shows where they can expect to be tossed not just softball questions, but marshmallows.

But when you're reading an essay that effectively argues, "CNN should hire somebody like Glenn 'Been There, Didn't Do That' Beck to revive its ratings," and works its way up to the dig, "And some CNN suits have probably never even heard of Gore Vidal", perhaps you shouldn't expect much.

Elitist Politicians

You think Obama's an elitist? Get a load of this guy:

For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction.

There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society.

May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?

It's kind of hard to imagine him pretending to like pork rinds, or making fun of a political candidate for eschewing Cheez Whiz (yes, that was Tucker Carlson calling John Kerry "elitist") or for eating fried chicken with a knife and fork, isn't it....

You Couldn't Pay Me To Look This Stupid On Television

I'm going to give Tucker Carlson the benefit of the doubt, that he's not an idiot but just plays one on television, but let's take a look at a couple of his statements from his recent appearance on Real Time.

Let's start with a comment that is, in a superficial sense, reasonable - but simply detached from reality. Speaking about the insane right-wing attacks on 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family, Carlson states that individual cases shouldn't have been brought into the debate:

And here’s why. It’s moral blackmail. We’re having an adult conversation about what is best for the country. You bring your ailing child in, who is 12, I can’t disagree with you, because I’m mean all of a sudden. It ends the conversation. It doesn’t start the conversation.

This is, of course, the flip side to Michele Malkin / Rush Limbaugh approach, which seemingly is to send people the message that if they dare to attach their names and stories to a program they oppose, they will abuse their public platforms to hurl wild personal attacks without regard to such niceties as facts. If you're brave enough to put your name forward anyway and weather those attacks, Carlson is there to tell you that you are subverting the debate.

If you remove the personal element from the debate, you're left arguing dollars and statistics. It's a great way to bore the audience, and help ensure that the broader general public doesn't gain any real understanding of the public policy issues or consequences of a particular vote or agenda. So it's a great tack for people who oppose programs like SCHIP. But to pretend that this will lead to better informed decisions and better public policy is naive, dishonest, or both. That's why the rabid dogs of the right responded not with statistics, but with an (entirely dishonest) counter-narrative that the Frosts were rich and undeserving. They could have taken Carlson's (supposed) cue and limited themselves to describing what percentage of recipients fall into the Frosts' demographic, and why that demographic doesn't need SCHIP, but even their most engaged supporters would be drifting off to sleep.

I would accuse Carlson of endorsing high school debate tactics, but even there I doubt that many debate coaches would tell their students, "Pretend that your audience is Mr. Spock from Star Trek, and tailor your argument to what you believe would convince him." (And similarly, I doubt any debate coach would embrace Carlson's tactic of rudely interrupting people and talking over them to prevent them from making their points, even if that is the unfortunate standard for modern political television.) If Carlson is sincere in his argument, he's charmingly naive. If not, as I suspect, he simply wants to foreclose effective tactics of persuasion - if the bullies won't scare people out of sharing their personal stories, Carlson has their back with his accusations that they are subverting the debate and distracting people from the "real issues".

KRUGMAN: Did you go – did you go on your program and start raging against that ad that Bush had in the 2004 campaign about Ashley’s story and how he comforted a young girl after 9/11?

CARLSON: Probably.

I'm thinking "probably not". Further, even assuming that he can find an example where he criticized the personalization of a policy he favors, I very much doubt it was more than a finger wag before endorsing the message. Maybe Carlson truly does want all personal stories eradicated from politics, but I suspect that he reserves this type of argument for issues which he deems unimportant or where he disagrees with the narrative advanced through the personal story.

KRUGMAN: [overlapping] The point is, it’s a perfect illustration of what we’re trying to deal with. [voices overlap]

BEHAR: [overlapping] He’s the symbol of it.

MAHER: [overlapping] He was—

CARLSON: [overlapping]—there is no one child who’s a perfect illustration of any problem in this country. That’s ridiculous.

MAHER: [overlapping] But, he – but, he – but, he was a prop. But he also legitimately epitomized the issue.

CARLSON: [overlapping] Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. No one child can epitomize – this is a very – this is one-seventh of the U.S. economy, pal. ... No one child is a metaphor – he’s a kid.

I am taken back to my first year of law school where some of the students simply couldn't grasp the idea of arguing based on analogy, particularly when they were emotionally close to an issue. This is necessary skill in law, where applying the law as interpreted in previous cases can be crucial to advancing your client's case. A certain subset of students took the position that unless the metaphor was perfect, no comparison could be made. Taken to Carlson's extreme, assuming he doesn't fall into the block of conctrete thinkers who lack the cognitive tools to handle metaphors, avoiding metaphors isn't about making the debate more balanced. It's about making the issues more abstract and more difficult to understand.

There's also an inherent absurdity in arguing that you can't examine individual experience, because (definitionally) each individual's experience is uniqe. Some experiences are highly representative of the whole. And some individual experiences will demonstrate institutional failings that may not be obvious, or may be hidden from view, if you take a broad, impersonal perspective.

No, but you know what I mean? It’s not just Bush. It’s like the same Darfur talk. “We need to get in there and invade Darfur.” The same people who are against being in Iraq say, “Oh, we have to get in there to avert humanitarian crisis there. I mean, the left is for intervention, too, in equally crazy ways. We should all back off, take a good listen to the libertarians, and don’t invade unless we have to. ... Look at Somalia. We were just going to feed the people. And the next thing you know, they’re killing our Seals in the middle of Mogadishu.

Somalia? Darfur? So I guess, Tucker, you only have a problem when other people analogize?

He continues,

What is our responsibility? Do we have a responsibility to police the world? I thought we didn’t. And if we do, then we have to stay in Iraq, if we have that responsibility.

I annoint Tucker "King of the False Dichotomy." If we don't have a responsibility to police the world, does that mean we can simply pack up and go home with no thought for the consequence? If we do, does that mean we have to act everywhere, with an equal amount of effort, and cannot consider whether our efforts will be productive, or the financial, military and human cost?

On Blackwater:

And for the third and most important reason, you can’t go anywhere in Iraq without them. You have to have them. The military is not going to protect you. And so if you want to deliver air conditioners or feed people or get up the, you know, phone lines, you have to have these people. ... I don’t think there’s any evidence the Blackwater guys have committed more atrocities than our own troops.

Tucker.... I think our troops slightly outnumber the Blackwater contractors in Iraq. Also, if you believe that the roles of the troops and of Blackwater "contractors" is equivalent, such that the comparison might make some amount of sense, your argument that we "need" Blackwater falls apart. But then, you do have such difficulty arguing from analogy....

Who – who – who protects your bureau – who protects the New York Times bureau in Baghdad? Because the military is not going to. You wouldn’t have reporters there if it weren’t for private contractors.

So now government agencies are analogous to private news companies, with no greater contribution to the war effort, and thus should be protected by private contractors and not the military.... Deeper and deeper.

MAHER: [overlapping] They didn’t have Blackwater in World War II. Eisenhower wasn’t protected by Blackwater.

CARLSON: [overlapping] Because we weren’t rebuilding the country, that’s why.

Well, now you know. There was no U.S. effort to rebuild Germany or Europe after WWII, and had there been it wouldn't have succeeded without companies like Blackwater. Thanks for clearing that up, Tucker. (It seems that Tucker's never been particularly good with facts.)

Tuckered Out

I caught an episode of Bill Maher's show on HBO with Tucker Carlson, and found myself, well, tuckered out. Oh, he seems dogmatic enough for opinion-based television, but how much of that stuff can you take without choking? I mean, the man actually argued that health care costs in the United States consume a lower percentage of GDP than in nations with national health care plans. (And he actually appeared to believe it.) Note to Tucker: On Real Time, Maher's supposed to be the comedian.

What I found most interesting about him was that everything about him screamed "I was a privileged child", right down to his rant about how it isn't moral to brag about your possessions. (He'll apparently challenge the notion that you shouldn't lie to a grand jury, but don't go bragging about your "bling bling".) So I wasn't surprised to read that "He is the son of Richard W. Carlson, who was president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 1992 to 1997. His stepmother is Patricia Carlson, heir to the Swanson frozen-food fortune."

How old is his money? Maybe he and Anderson Cooper should have a show together.