Sometimes, when Tucker Carlson is in the shower, he takes a quiet moment to reflect on whether his haters may be right about him. I know this not firsthand but because he recently mentioned it to a few thousand fans in Rosenberg, Texas. He said, "I have been through this process for so many years, where they call you something"-in his case, a very incomplete list would include "ven9966 omous demagogue," "crypto-Nazi blowhard," "anti-science ignoramus," and "a dick" "and I actually do try to take stock.
Like, am I that person?" These reveries always lead him to the same conclusion: he's clean. It is the haters who are wrong. That night, in Rosenberg, the epithet he lingered on was "extremist." He drew out the syllables in a derisive growl, followed by his foppish hyena bark of a laugh-a familiar sequence to anyone who has watched Tucker Carlson heap scorn on his enemies, which is to say, anyone who has watched Tucker Carlson. "Whatever else I am, I'm the opposite of an extremist," he continued. "My parents got divorced.
I'm totally opposed to change." He claims that his vision for the country's future is actually a vision of the country's past, one that strikes him as modest, even obvious: "I liked America in 1985." This was the ninth stop on the Tucker Carlson Live Tour-sixteen arenas, this fall, from Anaheim, California, to Sunrise, Florida, but mostly in the heartland.
At each stop, before bringing out his special guest (Kid Rock in Grand Rapids; Donald Trump, Jr., in Jacksonville), Carlson delivered a semi-improvised monologue, usually starting with some geotargeted pandering. In Michigan, he praised the local muskie fishing before slamming the state's "brain-dead robot" of a governor. In Pennsylvania, he extolled the beauty of the Conestoga River before describing that state's governor as "evil, actually." In Texas, he said, "There's something about being in a room full of people you agree with that is so great.
Esta historia es de la edición November 11, 2024 de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición November 11, 2024 de The New Yorker.
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GET IT TOGETHER
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.
GAINING CONTROL
The frenemies who fought to bring contraception to this country.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.
AGAINST THE CURRENT
\"Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,\" at Soho Rep, and \"Gatz,\" at the Public.
METAMORPHOSIS
The director Marielle Heller explores the feral side of child rearing.
THE BIG SPIN
A district attorney's office investigates how its prosecutors picked death-penalty juries.
THIS ELECTION JUST PROVES WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED
I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris’s loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think.
HOLD YOUR TONGUE
Can the world's most populous country protect its languages?
A LONG WAY HOME
Ordinarily, I hate staying at someone's house, but when Hugh and I visited his friend Mary in Maine we had no other choice.
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”