The other day I was in a bookstore looking in vain for a decent book of crosswords.* While in that part of the shop I saw a weighty tome called Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind by Jason Zengerle. Reading the jacket copy didn't convince me that it was much more than a hatchet job, and nor do the glowing reviews. The publisher being founded by former Obama staffers doesn't help.
Carlson was also lampooned on SNL as a paranoid Oscar commentator, although if you can take more than thirty seconds your tolerance is higher than mine. This comes at a time when talk is being floated of prosecuting Carlson for not being down with the war effort. It's all just a wacky coincidence, I'm sure.
In recent years, there's been a different kind of anti-establishment movement on the Right, Tucker included, which has more than once aligned with dissident voices on the left (Glenn Greenwald being one example) and free agents like Joe Rogan. The people who have power in both major parties and consider themselves responsible stewards of public thought aren't keen on this. Big Lib does its best to make these people seem icky. Big Con is less shy about being openly authoritarian, and so threatens them with jail. It's a process that can be used and reused against many different targets, which seems to have at least someone at Daily Kos rightly worried.
* Sad to say, crossword content outside of The New York Times tends to be wan. I wound up turning to Thriftbooks.
1 comment:
It sounds like a mediocre book, not one written for the ages from the bits I read of the reviews. Obama staffers founded the publisher, eh? Say no more.
I must have missed that SNL episode but then again I've been missing them since John Belushi died. They've been making cheap jokes for far too long. Americans in general don't know anything about the Middle East and haven't been educated about theological and historic elements of Islam, never mind Shiite Islam.
Tucker is a prominent voice on the right side of the isle, and he is not particularly thrilled with our little Iranian incursion at the moment. But right now we know so little that it's a bit like reading the tea leaves. We have no idea who Tucker has been talking to about what, but I suspect those who support him will back him, and those that don't won't. And the rest of us who are Tucker agnostic will just have to wait for more info. Meanwhile, he was the first person to interview Julian Assange in years and that deserves respect.
You should probably stick with the better crossword puzzles until things get sorted out. I know you can't get the Times of London crossword without payment but there must be a few more - but maybe you can't download them. I imagine Thrift Books is a good source.
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