Tucker Carlson was Fox News’s biggest star. Then he became its biggest liability, Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian
Carlson has been far more than a cable-news host over the half-dozen
years since he took that prominent evening slot and became Fox’s
most-watched personality.
He has been America’s chief fomenter of populist resentments, its
go-to guy for the politics of grievance and – despite his smarmy
demeanor, and aging prep-school appearance – he’s been a twisted kind of
working-class hero.
“Carlson has been uniquely dangerous and damaging – the leading
figure in the right’s larger undertaking of making stuff up and inciting
a hate-filled narrative against the educated, cosmopolitan elite,” said
Linda Hirshman, an author and cultural historian who studies and writes
about social movements.
Tucker Carlson was doing something different — and darker — than most Fox hosts, Andrew Prokop, Vox
And that’s why his departure really matters.
It might sound odd to claim that a TV host losing his program is
seismic news for American politics, but with Tucker Carlson’s exit from
Fox News, that claim is justified.
Like the rest of his Fox colleagues, Carlson’s main job was winning
eyeballs to the network — and he was very successful at that.
But he was also engaged in a different and more ambitious project
from, say, Sean Hannity. Rather than just cheerleading for Trump or the
Republican Party or the Fox News company line, Carlson was articulating
an ideology.
Some call it conservative populism, or national conservatism, while
critics say it’s akin to white nationalism. It’s an ideology that
panders to many Americans’ bigoted and xenophobic impulses, their
resentments and their grievances. It welcomes in voices denounced by
others as racist, and delights in mocking “woke” liberals. It promotes
conspiracy theories. It admires foreign leaders denounced by others as
authoritarians. It denounces “elites,” the traditional establishments of
both parties, and the long-held commitments of US foreign policy.
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