The Problem with Being Awful for a Living

 

One of the hottest stories in the global media has been on the story of the dismissal of Tucker Carlson from Fox News (“Fox”). The dismissal of Mr. Carlson came shortly after his employer had to settle a US$787.5 million law suite with the Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (“Dominion”).

The facts of the case were well known. The hosts on Fox News had supported the idea that Dominion had aided the Biden team in stealing the 2020 US Presidential election from the previous incumbent, Donald Trump. Dominion had argued that by promoting this theme, Fox was effectively going out of its way to damage their business and unfortunately for the network, the lawyers for Dominion did a very good job in getting hold of the documents that would have made life very uncomfortable for Fox.

What made Fox particularly weary was the fact that the lawyers from Dominion managed to get the documents that showed that the hosts on Fox promoting the idea that the 2020 election thought that what they were promoting was political snake oil. This was particularly uncomfortable for Mr. Carlson in particular. The man who had achieved superstar status by promoting Donald Trump had admitted to “hating him passionately.”

Still, it was a surprise when Fox News fired Mr. Carlson after settling the law suit with Dominion.  Mr. Carlson was effectively the “rainmaker” for Fox. His show had the highest ratings on the network, which in turn meant that the advertising space around his show was particularly valuable (Fox’s owner Rupert Murdoch is very clear that his main objective is to make money – “it’s not red or blue but green.”). So, why would Fox fire the person generating revenue? The answer turns out to be simple – there were things about Mr. Carlson that would have made life particularly him more trouble than he was worth for Fox News:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/03/tucker-carlson-text-message-fox-news

 

 

 The news story focused on the fact that Mr. Carlson had effectively admitted to being a blood thirsty racist who enjoyed being involved with violence but was having a conscience about enjoying being awful. The text can be seen below:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/business/media/tucker-carlson-text-message-white-men.html

 

You could argue that Mr. Carlson had just discovered the problem of profiting from being an awful person. As is shown in the clip below by John Oliver, Mr. Carlson could promote the “White Nationalist” agenda in an almost reasonable way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMGxxRRtmHc

His ability to make “racism” comes across as reasonable resonated with a large segment of the population and people who wanted to believe in conspiracy theories listened to him, thus making him the “rainmaker” that he was for his employers.

However, it is clear from the various documents that what Mr. Carlson said in public and what he thought in private were quite different. He knew that the “Crazy” stuff was “crazy” and I guess you could say that he paid a price for it. If you look at the text that he sent, he realised that after years of promoting the ugly – he was actually turning into an ugly person himself. The problem with promoting and justifying the ugly in society is the fact that your internal ugliness will shine through and you will have to face it. Knowing how ugly you’ve become is probably one of the biggest horrors we can face.