The inside story of Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News is being told and it reveals that Fox remains a cancer of misogyny to the nation.
Brian Stelter wrote in Vanity Fair (profanity edited):
Carlson’s internal critics, of whom there were many, viewed his treatment of the female executives as part and parcel with the misogyny displayed on his show. More than a dozen current and former Fox staffers brought this problem up to me, unprompted. “Tucker is very titillated by misogyny,” a host said. Some of the staffers theorized that his mother’s mistreatment—she abandoned the family when Carlson was six—engendered a negativity toward women.
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Carlson told a friend that the word f*ck “is so overused it’s lost all its power and meaning,” so c-nt was more effective: “It’s super naughty, but it’s to the point.” His brand, weird as it was, revolved around the idea that he could call anyone the C-word, or anything else, at any time. He could say anything, do anything, and never be held accountable, so long as he commanded the attention and affection of millions.
Fox News has had the Roger Ailes scandal, the Bill O’Reilly scandal, and countless allegations of sexual harassment, but the network somehow let Tucker Carlson and his raging sexism run wild.
Organizationally, this reality suggests that no matter who gets fired or how much money is paid out in lawsuits, nothing has changed at Fox News.
Fox News gives over a constant unspoken pulse of hatred of women. It beats through every program.
The conversation about the toxicity of Fox News tends to revolve around what is seen. Fox News plays to racial divisions, religious divisions, cultural divisions, and political divisions, but the network and Donald Trump are such a perfect fit for each other because of how sexism is part of Fox News’s organizational DNA is embodied in human form by Donald Trump.
Tucker Carlson was always going to crash and burn. He did it at both CNN and MSNBC before Fox News.
The bigger problem is that Fox News is still chugging along, and pumping out hatred of a majority of the country to their viewers daily.
The issue was never Tucker Carlson. It was always Fox.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
