Tucker Carlson has released a second episode of his boring Twitter Show.
The 12 minute episode is actually titled "Cling to your taboos!"
Like any good clickbait SEO expert - Tucker dives right in, inviting his Twitter audience to imagine with him. "Let's say you wanted to control a country ..."
He hints at various techniques of social control before zeroing in on "taboos" as the key ingredient to a healthy society - but not as a tool of control?? Tucker reminisces about the good times when social taboos were rigidly enforced, BEFORE things got out of hand.
"You knew what was allowed and what wasn't because the rules didn't change very often. The taboos were 'organic'. They were derived from collective experience and instinct." - Tucker Carlson (11:36 in his video)
MEDIA LITERACY TIP: The word "Organic" is an often used rhetorical trick. It's a ghost-word, used to describe anything the speaker prefers or wants to elevate as normal. Tucker and propagandists like him use words like "organic" and "natural" to bolster their position from a place of moral superiority, without the burden of earning it. He understands that his emotional, fear-driven viewer base won't ask - what was "organic" about chattel slavery, or Jim Crow? What was "collective" about the exclusion of the Female sex from the Democratic process, and from Business and Public life?
Tucker is nostalgic for an "organic" utopia that only ever existed in his weird head ... and he just won't stop whining about it. The episode jumps from monstrous Jeffrey Dahmer to the heroic Kyle Rittenhouse, to a detailed description of the problem of child p-ngraphy on social media. Tucker leaps from one loose observation to another, weaving a barely coherent narrative until its conclusion ... "White Supremacy", according to Tucker, isn't real nor important in America. Boring stuff, mostly, but sometimes the host spices things up with total absurdity, on its face.
"Until fairly recently, for example, it was taboo in this country to attack people on the basis of their race." - Tucker (1:26 in his video)
Are you sure about that, Tucker?
"Stealing, flaunting your wealth, striking women, smoking marijuana on the streets, shameless public hypocrisy, taking other people's money for not working. All of these things used to be considered unacceptable in America, but not anymore." - Tucker (2:50)
Tucker sidesteps that one ancient taboo we all have about Lying. As a self-interested internet influencer, Tucker shows contempt for his audience through his willingness to say absolutely anything. I'm reminded that Tucker already admitted in court that he shouldn't be seen as a serious person, at his previous job anchoring at corporate FOX News. Isn't that "shameless public hypocrisy" right there? My nostalgia longs for those days when the nation's most watched News-Man was a bit more impressive than this ...
Episode 2 of Tucker's independent Twitter venture has been "seen" so far by 50 Million people; a very different metric than "views". Tucker enjoys a loyal cadre of fans who've retweeted his idiotic drivel an impressive 134,000 times. "Cling to your taboos" is indeed a ratings winner for this fear-driven demo.
Tucker has no specific dates - but he understands that the vague Past is a safe, comfortable bet to resonate with a population that feels underserved by their political leadership. The PRESENT is icky - full of challenges, contradictions and uncertain opportunities - but the past is an opaque canvas on which he can simply rewrite history, stoke comparisons and grievances.
That's the Carlson business model, and brand. Yuck.
For the first time in Tucker's long and successful Corporate News career, there are no business Executives telling him what the correct narrative is on the morning call. Stripped of his writing team/producers - what we're seeing now are the vapid inner workings of the man. Tucker's monologue reflects the caliber of white-noise nonsense he's able to produce, after swimming nearly 30 years in the dull muck of Cable News.
Tucker claims that his move to Twitter has something to do with his passion for Truth. I think he has alot of work to do on himself before he can offer any such value to the world. Until then, he's just another guy displaying his limitations on the internet.
- Billy Buntin
YOUTUBE:
INSTAGRAM: