I tried watching Tucker Carlson, the malignant news host on Fox News, the other night. Apparently, a lot of people watch him.
But I turned him off pretty fast because I was afraid somebody might find out and never talk to me again. That’s where we are, isn’t it? In the lingering toxicity of the Trump years, we’re considered traitorous if we’re caught even listening to the other side’s arguments. And the ones like Carlson make certain it’ll remain that way, as long as it profits him and Rupert Murdoch, the Fox boss.
We remain mired in two different political realities, each side regarding the other as deranged and neither seeking compromise. Trump’s gone from the White House and banned from his incessant Twitter rages, but Carlson’s picked up the poisonous rhetoric and he’s running with it.
Running his mouth, that is.
Now he’s got the Anti-Defamation League calling on him to resign in the aftermath of some scurrilous remarks Carlson made regarding white supremacy and a “white replacement theory.”
“I know,” Carlson said, “that the left and all the gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters, from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually.”
Actually, it’s not.
But Carlson’s speaking in code. By “Third World,” he means people of color. By “obedient” voters, he means people who vote Democrat by instinct. These are folks who wouldn’t vote for certain Republican candidates because, gee, they don’t like being the targets of racial bullying.
And Carlson knows the history of the word “replace.” That’s his sly wink to all those who thought it was just fine when the bigots in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will not replace us,” and Donald Trump found “good people” mouthing this hatred.
Carlson’s rant roused the anger of Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League’s chief executive. He called Carlson’s remarks “not just a dog whistle to racists, it was a bullhorn.”
Greenblatt sent a letter to Suzanne Scott, the chief executive at Fox News, declaring, “This is not legitimate political discourse. It is dangerous race-baiting, extreme rhetoric. And yet, unfortunately, it is the culmination of a pattern of increasingly divisive rhetoric used by Carlson over the past few years.”
“Everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it,” Carlson said. “Ooh, the white replacement theory. No, no, no, this is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that?”
Why? Because it’s willfully twisted logic, and because such language plays into prejudice — and fear.
Like Trump, Carlson knows there are white people who feel threatened that the country’s becoming more diverse, and that we’re finally starting to live up to some of the ideals we’ve long boasted about but came up short in the actual deliverance — ideals of fair play and tolerance and equal rights for all, no matter a person’s background.
As long as those like Carlson (and Trump) keep doling out such language, the country stays divided. It works politically, maybe, and it’s helping those like Carlson and Fox cash in.
But it’s keeping the country divided when we ought to know better by now.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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