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.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
THE FRENZY Joyce Carol Oates
Early afternoon, driving south on the Garden State Parkway with the girl beside him.
UPDATED KENNEDY CENTER 2025 SCHEDULE
April 1—A. R. Gurney’s “Love Letters,” with Lauren Boebert and Kid Rock
YOU MAD, BRO?
Young men have gone MAGA. Can the left win them back?
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS BETTING ON THE FUTURE
Lucy Dacus after boygenius.
STEAL, ADAPT, BORROW
Jonathan Anderson transformed Loewe by radically reinterpreting classic garments. Is Dior next?
JUST BETWEEN US
The pleasures and pitfalls of gossip.
INHERIT THE PLAY
The return of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Ghosts.”
LEAVE WITH DESSERT
Graydon Carter’s great magazine age.
INTERIORS
The tyranny of taste in Vincenzo Latronico’s “Perfection.”
Naomi Fry on Jay McInerney's "Chloe's Scene"
As a teen-ager, long before I lived in New York, I felt the city urging me toward it. N.Y.C., with its art and money, its drugs and fashion, its misery and elation—how tough, how grimy, how scary, how glamorous! For me, one of its most potent siren calls was “Chloe’s Scene,” a piece written for this magazine, in 1994, by the novelist Jay McInerney, about the then nineteen-year-old sometime actress, sometime model, and all-around It Girl Chloë Sevigny.
