Why Are Writers and Editors So Obsessed With Tucker Carlson?

Hello everyone, and welcome. Can you hear OK? You are all here because you are signed up for my class, “How to Write About Tucker Carlson.”

First, I’m sorry we can’t meet in person during these challenging times. I promise we will do our best to make the course instructive and rewarding by Zoom. As you know, tuition is prepaid and nonrefundable.

Our goal by the end of the semester is that each of you will be able to pitch story ideas and successfully publish news stories, commentaries, and even full profiles in newspapers and magazines. You, too, will be able to profit from the voracious appetite among the most prestigious publications for content about Tucker Carlson.

We might as well address the elephant in the room: Amid a global pandemic, with the looming possibility of economic depression, might there be diminished appetite for more stories about Carlson? Will influential editors still have the same obsessive curiosity about a fellow journalist, once a devilishly clever prodigy as a writer for conservative magazines, now still boyishly handsome in middle age as one of the country’s most inflammatory provocateurs in his prime-time slot on Fox News?

Set your mind at ease. Carlson coverage is a 20-year-old phenomenon. In the three years since Donald Trump won the presidency, The Atlantic has published at least seven pieces about Carlson ( Here, here, here, here, here, here and here). The New Yorker did a major profile and later published a follow-up. There have been big treatments in GQ, the Columbia Journalism Review, The New Republic, Vanity Fair, and the still-publishing Playboy, as well as Fly Tyer, aimed at fly fishers. Just this year, to cite examples at random, there have been prominent columns in the New York Times and Washington Post. The latter was part of voluminous coverage of Carlson’s views and actions on coronavirus, which he implored Trump to take seriously while at a Mar-a-Lago party. Our models forecast no out-years decline in Carlson coverage, even (or especially) if Trump loses reelection and Carlson can position (or reposition) himself as an important voice in the future of the conservative movement.

Excuse me, whoever has that dog barking could you put your microphone on mute? Thank you.

Let’s continue with an overview of the course curriculum.

The key question we will tackle this semester is: Why are writers and editors so curious about Tucker? Every article about Carlson in our syllabus starts with a common premise, that he is more interesting than the typical television talking head. Partly this is because of evolutions and surprising jerks and jolts in his worldview. He’s a former hawk who is now often a dove on military intervention, a conservative who found things to admire in Elizabeth Warren and her attacks on big corporations.

Even more, however, it is because of how he fits in the ecosystem of Washington and New York journalism. Carlson is comfortably familiar. He’s one of us, an entertaining companion at lunch, full of gossip and wit and even ideas. At the same time, over the years, he has become radically unfamiliar. There are not many journalists or other people regarded as public intellectuals who are promoters of Trump and Trumpism, and who share the president’s fluency in insult and indignation.

It is the composite nature of Carlson’s character—belonging at once to two divergent worlds—that makes him interesting to fellow journalists in a way that, say, Sean Hannity, with a larger audience and more direct influence with Trump, generally is not. Many colleagues once viewed him as an important voice of the intelligentsia. Many now believe he has joined the dumbgentsia. They wonder, as Columbia Journalism Review put it, “What happened to Tucker Carlson?”

By the way, even though this is remote learning, no question is out of bounds. Use the chat function at the bottom of the screen. Here’s one from Jennifer in Washington state: “You say that journalists are curious about Carlson because they personally know him or at least know lots of people who know him. Doesn’t that tend to validate the critique of many Fox News viewers that mainstream journalism is insular and self-referential?”

Hmm … Jennifer, that question is out of bounds. Let’s continue.

Just as all piano music flows from different combinations of a mere 12 notes, all Tucker Carlson coverage flows from infinite variations of how different writers engage with a small set of unchanging questions. Note that I did not say answer the questions. Carlson, though far from a recluse, is a latter-day J.D. Salinger, shrouded in imponderable mystery. If these questions were ever definitively answered, the entire Tucker Carlson industry would have to apply for relief with the Paycheck Protection Program.

What motivates Carlson?

In general, writers must fill up their plate by selecting from some combination of three buffet tables.

One motivation is ideological. This puts the emphasis on the possible coherence of Carlson’s views, in particular his florid conviction that economic and cultural elites manipulate affairs to their own advantage and the detriment of average Americans. The opportunity is to explore areas of continuity (a sharp eye for the hypocrisy of his subjects) and reversal (foreign policy and unchecked free enterprise) in views he expressed in early writings at places like The Weekly Standard.

Another motivation is psychological. Writers can explore the possibility that childhood disruption (his parents’ divorce, that he discounted as a formative event in a New Yorker profile) and a preternaturally fidgety temperament are behind his seeming desire to provoke outraged responses, and his ambivalent feelings about Washington. He says the place he excoriates and calls home is both filled with wonderful people and infused with conventionality and phoniness.

Finally, nearly all major Carlson profiles grapple with economic motivation. The stories mention his presumably high Fox salary (while leaving frustratingly imprecise the actual figure) and in several he frets over the high cost of tuition for his four children. Could it be that Carlson, whom many people experience as friendly off-camera, is responding to financial incentives to be hectoring and combative once the red light goes on?

Judgments about motivation flow nicely to the next important question:

How much of his performance is an act?

If there is any consistent theme to Carlson’s quotations in multiple profiles and news stories it is that he is the real deal. He may sometimes get hot under the collar and say things he regrets. He’s happy even to run himself and his ideas down as not deserving of all this attention.

One thing he’s not, he says, is full of B.S. Of course, many Washington players still enjoy Carlson despite statements that might otherwise get him banished from polite company—Iraqis are “semiliterate primitive monkeys,” immigrants are disproportionately responsible for litter—precisely because they believe his shtick is partly B.S.

Whichever curtain you choose, use his own words as support. People will forgive politicians and media figures for error, he recently told Vanity Fair, but “what they won’t forgive you is being dishonest or weak.” But in a 2018 podcast for National Review, chronicled by the Post, he at least hinted at a distinction between real life and performance: “I don’t say everything I think. I don’t feel an obligation to say everything I think, but I don’t lie.”

This is also a good occasion to track down Carlson’s old writer colleagues. Some, like Matt Labash, tell GQ he is a great guy, uncommonly generous to friends. Some, like Andrew Ferguson, say he is sincerely talented, but wasting his gifts through insincere showmanship and ideological scab-picking. “I think he’s better than that,” he told The New Yorker. “To me, it’s just cringe-making.” A quote from the late Christopher Hitchens, a Carlson admirer-mentor, is always welcome. He was among the first to rue Carlson’s choices : “Sometimes I hope he still hears my voice in his head: No, Tucker, don’t do that.”

Any profile writer must decide how argumentative to be. The New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh in “Tucker Carlson’s Fighting Words” spent long hours visiting him in Washington and his Maine summer home, and generally engaged with his subject on Carlson’s own terms. Columbia Journalism Review’s Lyz Lenz in “The Mystery of Tucker Carlson” seemed determined to resist the ebullient Tucker rap, and regularly reminded him that her status as an underpaid single mother leaves her closer to the travails of real people in ways that his populist bluster only pretends to be. Both approaches are fine models.

On balance, should people welcome his influence in the Trump era?

This is a tricky one for liberal journalists, especially in this year of crisis.

Yes, said The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan, who in March described with relief how Carlson had “admirably” intervened to convince Trump of the gravity of the coronavirus.

No, said The New York Times’ Frank Bruni, who believes Carlson’s well-placed warnings about military conflict against Iran don’t compensate for the “ugliness” of his views on immigrants or his “on-air rant” against billionaire Paul Singer.

More questions? Let’s finish up with a speed round.

“Is it OK to use the same details in a new profile if they have been used repeatedly in old profiles?”

Yes, it sure is, and some vignettes are like a favorite joke that gets funnier with each telling. By all means, be sure to describe Carlson being careful with carbs while at your luncheon interview at the Monocle. His successful battle to stop smoking, aided by prodigious quantities of nicotine gum, is still interesting.

On the other hand, he’s not worn a bow tie since 2006, and there’s not much life left in that. Many writers can’t resist a flick of class-based sarcasm by invoking his full name, “Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson.” But note that this is something of a non sequitur, since he didn’t choose his own name and it implies a George Herbert Walker Bush-style upbringing that apparently isn’t quite accurate.

Oh, and here’s a good one: “What’s your own connection to Carlson?”

I know him a little, from infrequent interactions that have always been friendly. Used to be my neighbor in Virginia before he moved to D.C. He sometimes takes shots at POLITICO (as here) that strike me as unfair though I have never taken personal offense. More congenially, early in 2016, he wrote a piece on this site called, “ Donald Trump is Shocking, Vulgar, and Right.” I told him this column was coming. He was pleasant, said thanks but no comment.

That’s it, and don’t forget your homework—300 words by next class on your argument for the most newsworthy thing Tucker Carlson does this week.