SALON: Carlson is now engaged in giving the people — the idiotic, angry, paranoid people — what they want, which became incredibly apparent once the Caller began tackling the Trayvon Martin tragedy by launching a campaign to prove that Martin had been a thug. It was barrel-scraping racist garbage. Martin’s Twitter feed and social media presence were cherry-picked to make him seem scary because he engaged in adolescent macho posturing. It was convincing proof that Martin wasn’t as “innocent” as he seemed, if your definition of “innocence” is “not young, black and male.” Asinine race-related trolling is now a major Caller beat, naturally, because, again, it’s good for traffic. I don’t think Carlson is remotely as racist as he is sexist and homophobic, which just makes it even grosser that he’s willing to exploit conservative racism for fun and profit.
Some particular low lights from an increasingly regrettable career: The time Carlson said he beat up some gay guy who tried to be gay all over him because Carlson is deathly afraid of gay people and the prospect of anyone ever thinking he is gay. The time he got a video store employee fired, and threatened to “destroy” him, for mentioning that Tucker Carlson rented a video from his store. His remarkably stupid and creepy interview with Elle in which he embodied every repulsive fratty asshole stereotype imaginable (“One area of liberal phenomenon I support is female bi-sexuality,” “Most of the time you can beat a woman in an argument.” And on and on.) And the fact that his full name is Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, and that his brother’s name is Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson. MORE