On any other day, the revelation that anchor Don Lemon was out at CNN would have been a big deal in the world of media news.
But Tucker Carlson’s abrupt toppling from his primetime perch at Fox News not only overshadowed that development by a mile, but it threw the whole rightwing media ecosystem into a tailspin.
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.
He has consistently elevated white-nationalist voices and, according to Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, “used his primetime show to spew antisemitic, racist, xenophobic and anti-LGBTQ hate to millions”.
Tucker is hard to replace with just another cable-news face, Hirshman noted, because “he doesn’t just repeat things that others are saying but rather he cooks up these ridiculous issues in an ever-evolving list of grievances”.
What’s more, he’s remarkably good at capturing attention and giving his viewers the language to express their anger, racism and hate.
In that sense, Carlson is something like Donald Trump, who famously called himself a “ratings machine”. You can despise what these men are saying and still have trouble tearing your eyes from their TV presence; they possess a kind of perverse gift, like one bestowed by an evil godmother upon an ill-fated infant in a fairy tale.
Carlson is smarter than most of his TV peers, but he has used that intelligence in the service of tearing down the democracy whose very first amendment protections have allowed him to spread his lies and hostility.
The media world was obsessed Monday with precisely why Carlson was out. Was it entirely related to the just-settled Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit which cost Fox News $787.5m? Perhaps it really was about some other lawsuit yet to reach fruition – like that of his former Fox employee Abby Grossberg who is suing Carlson and the network for discrimination, citing a hostile and sexist work environment, or another defamation suit coming up in New York by Smartmatic. Or maybe Fox’s shareholders are preparing to file their own suits that would finger Carlson.
And, reporters speculated, how will the deposed host resurface? Will he drift to an even farther right network? Will he run for president as a spoiler against Trump whom Carlson has said privately he despises, despite continuing to give him valuable airtime? Will he accept the apparent invitation of state-funded Russia Today which was tweeting out its advances on Monday? Maybe he will start his own media enterprise, like Alex Jones with InfoWars, and take his huge and fervent audience with him?
Because Carlson has loomed so large, these questions are intriguing, though the answers are elusive.
But what we do know for sure may be more important: one of the worst influences in American media and politics has been knocked off his extremely prominent perch. For now, his voice is – if not silenced – quieted.
“At least his Great Replacement lies won’t be aired in America’s waiting rooms or included in basic cable packages anymore,” observed Ben Collins, the talented NBC News reporter who covers “the dystopia beat”, delving deep into media’s darkest fissures. Collins noted that Carlson’s “A-block” – the first segment of his nightly show – was “often more extreme than the front page of InfoWars”.
Carlson won’t stop what he’s doing. And he won’t disappear. His outrages will probably get even worse, since they will be freed of even the weak constraints at Fox News.
Whatever he does next, he will be no less toxic. But he may be less visible – less omnipresent in American day-to-day life.
And that alone is something to be grateful for.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
