What popped into my head is, the Dominion discovery process uncovered severe misconduct on his part (harassment) which wasn't shared out, but was still seen by too many people internally, esp. legal staff, for it to keep being quashed like it has been so many times.
Lawsuit just last month consistent with this: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-03-21/tucker-carlson-producer-sues-fox-news-discrimination
On the other end of the speculation spectrum, it could be directly at Trump's command.
https://twitter.com/tuckercarlson/status/134046087139950592?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
Just wondering who the next shitheel they'll get to replace him that my parents will watch religiously. It's too much to hope that they won't be as vilely racist, homo/transphobic and all the rest but maybe they won't be such a Kremlin shill, I'd be happy with that.
Don Lemon suddenly out at CNN as well. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Don Lemon, Tucker Carlson, and Susan Rice.... its MOVING DAY!
Wow. Over/under on them releasing the news under cover of Tucker?
https://twitter.com/devanitely/status/1650533722129670147
2: Direct financial ties to Russia seems more likely to me in terms of fireable misconduct than sexual harassment.
If you want to hate watch something about Tucker's interview with Trump, this is good.
The Russians might have paid him to sexual harass.
I suspect if the Russians wanted to pay him they would be pretty good at keeping the money from anywhere noticeable. And Tucker's not under government investigation.
Whereas harassment is easier to uncover now that so much day-to-day interaction happens or is memorialized on phones.
https://twitter.com/beijingpalmer/status/1650534059741786113?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
Every time I'm about to get off Twitter, something like this pulls me back in. And I've just been too fucking lazy to suss out and set up alternatives.
I do think it may be teetering; my wife, who generally does not pay attention to meta-stuff re: Twitter and the 'net asked over the weekend why the replies to the posters she follows were suddenly all weirdo MAGA-ish stuff.
But there is a lot of ruin in a large social network.
8:Don Lemon, Tucker Carlson, and Susan Rice.... its MOVING DAY!
I really dislike Susan Rice's politics and probably good that she is going, but holy shit is she a poster child for how black women in politics can just be used as the butt of everything. From Benghazi to the NYTimes access dweebs (Thrush and Haberman) goading Trump into saying she had committed a crime. Sad and telling. See also Kamal and Loretta Lynch.
We'll see if they can keep up their streak of the next guy always being worse. Remember when Eric Cantor was one of our villains? He feels like an after-school-special bad guy now. But Tucker was way smarter than the other Fox clowns, like O'Reilly and Beck, so maybe there will be some reversion.
I wonder if there's a pattern with Beck, O'Reilly, and Carlson that people who try to be personalities bigger in profile than Fox News itself don't last, one way or another. What FN really wants is delivery vehicles for its own conspiracy puzzle box.
Sources say not only was it completely involuntary, Carlson was as shocked as the rest of us.
Was Eric Cantor ever really a villain or more of an obnoxious dweeb? He didn't have the juice to be a villain.
24: As long as he was House Majority Leader it was his job to be a spokesperson for villainy, even if he wasn't precisely in the driver's seat.
Yeah, but Paul Ryan was the villain. Cantor was merely a henchman.
And then he lost his seat, which was hilarious.
16 is excellent.
Assuming this is tied to the Dominion stuff*, this is kind of what I mean that we already got the lion's share of possible benefits from that case. The highly publicized discovery plus a really substantial settlement created real, visible damage to Fox as an institution and (surely) internal chaos and shifting balance of power.
*including if indirectly per 2
Anyway, as for his replacement, I assume they'll find somebody, but I do wonder: it's never been clear to me how any of these choads succeed. That is, Rush had legitimate talents as a broadcaster: booming, sonorous voice and a real (bully's) sense of humor*. But none of these other guys have any of that: Hannity in particular has a whiny, nasal voice that could easily be cast for a loser middle manager's, and lord knows he has no other gifts. Tucker has no obvious talents as a broadcaster, and his constant pained expression doesn't seem made for TV. Meanwhile, guys who don't seem to have any more or less talent (Mark Levine comes to mind) top out at 11 pm syndicated radio host.
Point being, there's some sort of selection process. Maybe it's purely down to how flexibly and rapidly they follow the party line, and literally anyone could succeed if they can do that while getting promoted by Fox. But just as the pop music industry can make (virtually) anyone a star for an album cycle, the people who end up with real careers tend to have discernible talents, even if they're just "being charismatic" or "surfing the waves of fashion". Can literally anyone do what Carlson did exactly as successfully, or might there be a drop in popularity/success for the next guy?
*contrast with Trump who, other than the nicknames (few of which are funny or clever, but maybe a couple qualify), has never said anything remotely humorous
24 &c: Cantor was being groomed to be the next villain, then he got taken out in a primary. It's like when someone is clearly set up in one Marvel movie to have a star turn in the next one, then they kill them off in a TV show and everyone suspects that the actor was an unbearable asshole (or rejected someone's sexual harassment).
Oh yeah, the prerequisite of being completely craven and hateful does eliminate a lot of people, but not as many as you'd hope.
For that matter, most people aren't good at all in front of the camera, but it's not a rare skill per se. Even in the shittiest, tiniest markets, the local TV newspeople are good looking, can read teleprompters, and feign basic human emotions.
A long, long time ago
I can still remember, burning crosses lit the sky
And I knew that if I had a chance
That I could make the MAGAts dance
And maybe they'd be angry for a while
But then the suits made Rupert shiver
With massive judgments they'd deliver
Bad news for the stock price
He didn't have to think twice
So bye, bye white supremacist guy....
People familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly said the decision to fire Carlson came straight from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, with input from board members and other executives at Fox Corp.
...
Carlson's exit was driven in part by the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, the producer fired by the network last month, the sources said. Carlson's senior executive producer Justin Wells has also been terminated, according to insiders.
Grossberg was moved off of "Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo" and onto "Tucker Carlson Tonight," where she alleged she was bullied and subjected to antisemitic comments, according to a lawsuit in New York.
In deposition testimony, the former Fox News producer also said she was coerced by company lawyers to give misleading answers in the Dominion defamation case against the network. Fox News previously denied the claim and said she was terminated for disclosing privileged company information.
...
Murdoch also was said to be concerned over Carlson's coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which the host has promoted the conspiracy theory that it was provoked by government agents.
The paparazzi
left the Nazi
Now he's just a small fry.
30.last I hate the motherfucker but respectfully disagree, he's often funny and even downright hilarious. I think our hate blinds us to this part of his charisma but it's for real.
38: the only kind of joke I've ever seen him make is "Hey, look at the cripple" and his fans laugh. I don't think Don Rickles was funny either.
Literally the only thing he's ever said or done that I found remotely funny was when he talked to that kid about believing in Santa. "Nine is kind of marginal, right?"
I mean, he never seemed funny when he was a local news figure in NYC back when I lived in north Jersey in the late '80s/early '90s. It's not as if I used to laugh and then stopped because he had an R next to his name.
@30 Tucker's stock facial expression (head tilted, slightly quizzical look) reminded me of nothing more than a particularly stupid golden retriever.
@30 Tucker's stock facial expression (head tilted, slightly quizzical look) reminded me of nothing more than a particularly stupid golden retriever.
I'm generally not a fan of Trump humor, but when he brags about his humility -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InD7NmdmEVQ - he earns a chuckle.
30, 38, 40: I'm with Barry on this one. I don't have too much exposure to any of these folks, but I think Carlson has an in-your-face shamelessness and an ability to construct a coherent narrative that even Hannity lacks. O'Reilly and Beck had that gift, too. As does Trump. (And, as JRoth notes, Limbaugh.)
Betcha Hannity doesn't get Carlson's time slot. Hannity, in talent, is really closer to people like Bartiromo, Pirro and Dobbs.
(But unless he goes into politics, I betcha Carlson disappears from the pseudo mainstream -- as Beck and O'Reilly did.)
I just had a thought that some executive at CNN is at this very moment trying to persuade his colleagues that they should hire Tucker ("he's a proven ratings winner!")
JMM is right, I think, in waiting for another shoe to drop on the reason for Carlson's dismissal. But his half-hearted proposal of Epps as the cause suffers from the same problems as all of the other supposed causes.
As with any prominent Republican, I think it would be a mistake to rule out pedophilia.
(But unless he goes into politics, I betcha Carlson disappears from the pseudo mainstream -- as Beck and O'Reilly did.)
Yeah, saw somebody suggesting that it's not over for Carlson, but I have no idea why you'd think that: nobody has ever left Fox and maintained anything like their former profile. Obviously anything's possible, but there's no actual precedent. Even if CNN is completely craven and hires him, who's going to watch? Fox grandpas don't watch CNN on principle, and who else is his audience?
On a separate note, somebody else was noting that Carlson has been quite aggressive in platforming some distinctly terrible people. It's entirely possible that his successor, whatever else they do, won't be bringing on Libs of TikTok and whoever else. Or, more importantly, won't be as successful in raising their profiles. They're all equally terrible in their own ways, but not all ways are equally effective.
Maybe it's his producers that find those people. The producers might stay.
There's always the lecture circuit. Apparently Bill O'Reilly did a joint circuit with Trump a couple of years ago!
51: Justin Wells, his senior producer, was fired simultaneously with him.
From a friend: He Tucked around and found out. I laughed.
So, spitball: assuming, (1) that voting machines are a fucking terrible idea (for any Americans somehow not persuaded by 2000, I implore you for lo the umpteenth time to consider the numerous highly consolidated (and even not-very-consolidated-at-all) democracies worldwide which conduct elections entirely by hand and complete counting faster and more reliably than you do), and, (2) that the Big Lie will prove in fact to be as fatal to the businesses of Dominion and other plaintiffs as they allege in their suits, might it be that, (3) there is a prospect, however dim, of the United States learning to conduct elections like a civilized country?
Entirely by hand? Like, no machine tabulation at any stage in the process? I don't see us going that direction, no. I think paper ballot with initial tabulation by machine and manual double-checking if necessary is probably the most common method in the US these days and that's likely to remain the case.
Entirely by hand? Like, no machine tabulation at any stage in the process? I don't see us going that direction, no. I think paper ballot with initial tabulation by machine and manual double-checking if necessary is probably the most common method in the US these days and that's likely to remain the case.
No double-posting with a paper comment.
41: I think that's really unfair to golden retrievers - even the dumb ones. Insert appropriate friendly emoji here.
Don Lemon, Tucker Carlson, and Susan Rice.... its MOVING DAY!
Not to mention Diane Abbott and Dominic Raab over on this side of the Atlantic... it's a real "today I settle all family business" week.
54: I think the trouble is simply that tabulating paper ballots in a US election by hand would take ages, because there are so many different offices up for election at the same time - far more than in any other comparable country.
And Americans really like the fact that machine counting, because it's so fast, makes it absolutely certain that they will definitely know the results of an election by the next morning at the latest, as we saw in 2022 and 2020 (taps earpiece, checks notes) wait, I'm getting an update here...
I think paper ballot with initial tabulation by machine and manual double-checking if necessary is probably the most common method in the US these days and that's likely to remain the case.
That's the way they do it in Maryland.
I am now realizing that I have no idea what Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines actually do.
Americans are trained to say 'ah ah ah" between numbers as we count. It takes forever.
I am now realizing that I have no idea what Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines actually do.
No one does. TRUE THE VOTE!
61: yes, actually. There may be more elected offices in India, but each individual voter will be voting for far fewer of them than is the case in a US election.
In an Indian general election you're voting for one office: your local member of the lower house of parliament. You don't vote for president, or vice-president, or the upper house. Parliament elects the president and VP, and the state assemblies elect the upper house.
You might also be voting for a member of your state assembly, but the state assembly elections don't all coincide with the national parliament elections - they all have five-year terms like the national parliament, but most of them are out of sync with it. The same is true of municipal elections.
So, as far as I can tell, on a general election day your average Indian will be voting for one office, some will vote for two, and a very few will vote for three (if they're in an in-sync municipality in an in-sync state).
Also Indians are better at counting because of their diet, which consists mainly of very large numbers of very small things (rice, lentils, etc). From the moment he's weaned the Indian is therefore challenged to count to high numbers very quickly.
The US diet consists of smaller numbers of large things (chicken, potatoes) and the challenge just isn't the same.
66 we must adopt the lakh and the crore into English.
INDIAN MOTHER: come on, finish your food
SMALL INDIAN CHILD: don't wanna
INDIAN MOTHER: don't be silly, you've already eaten 251 grains of rice and there were only 557 in the bowl. You don't have to finish it, just eat enough so that the total number of grains of rice remaining is a product of two primes under 100 between which the difference is less than 5, and so that the total number you have consumed is at least as large as one of those primes raised to the power of the other
SMALL INDIAN CHILD: (pouts, grudgingly picks up spoon)
MEANWHILE:
AMERICAN MOTHER: come on, finish your food
SMALL AMERICAN CHILD: don't wanna
AMERICAN MOTHER: don't be silly, you only have two... ah ah ah... two potatoes left. Just eat one... ah ah ah... one potato and then you can give the other .... one.... ah ah ah... to your sister.
68 this is how you get a Ramanujan
Next month, I vote for county executive, county treasurer, county council, city council, city controller, school board, district attorney, several judges, and best pizza topping.
I haven't voted for a weed control officer since I left my home county.
My understanding is that Malcom Gladwell's theory is that rice-growing peoples are best at math because of the challenges of growing rice. Ajay's theory. that it is because of the challenges of eating rice, is at least as good.
Whereas in the US you're usually voting for at least a dozen positions, some of of which you probably don't even know what the position does! The absurd number of elected positions in the US is a real problem.
||
But the shock [of the 1973 war] remained and the glue that had bound Israeli society together in the face of the external Arab threats for a generation came unstuck. Israel's faith in her leaders, both political and military, was shaken, leading to the factionalised and polarised society that exists today [2003].How say the 'tariat?
Talking about Israel is always a mistake... That said, the changes in Israeli society are primarily about demographics. Loads more Haredi because of birth rates, plus lots of ex-Soviet immigrants which is going to be loads of hard right types (basically everywhere that's ex-Communist has a huge fascism problem).
Hell, you see the exact same shifts in Brooklyn over the same timeframe.
I thought Brooklyn was all hipsters.
ISRAEL IS NOT THE TETRAGRAMMATON.
72: Aren't you afraid that the wrong weed control officer will win?
It turned out they meant thistle, not marijuana.
80. Had no idea he was still alive. He must have been a crore years old
I STILL WANT TAKES, PEOPLE! And thanks, upetgi(9).
Nate Silver apparently will be leaving 538.
538 (and Nate Silver especially) is bad at takes, but the models really are valuable. Everyone's focused on the politics models, but I just love all their sports modeling. I don't even like college football, but I love their college football model which lets you see how they predict the top 4 going based on each possible game outcome. I heavily rely on them for my March Madness pool. And also their soccer stuff, like relegation odds for the Premier League. Some of this stuff you can get at better through sports books, but I find their websites annoying and I don't like gambling, and it's interesting to see it all done via modeling. Maybe ESPN will keep all the legacy code going if Silver leaves, but I'm worried they won't, and at any rate there won't be anyone working on improving the models.
75/84: Well, now I'm doing a weird thought experiment conceiving of Israel as a post-Communist state. Obviously untrue, but I think it did have a big ideological shift as a society around the same time (or a decade later) that was not entirely because of FSU immigration-- other global and local factors played a role. The economic history of Israel doesn't get nearly enough attention in general IMO.
Well, now I'm doing a weird thought experiment conceiving of Israel as a post-Communist state. Obviously untrue, but I think it did have a big ideological shift as a society around the same time (or a decade later) that was not entirely because of FSU immigration-- other global and local factors played a role. The economic history of Israel doesn't get nearly enough attention in general IMO.
Maybe not post-Communist per se, but there's definitely something to this. The decline/privatization of the kibbutz system is one index of the change. In a lot of ways the trajectory of Israeli history parallels that of Russia over the same period.
? They're on opposite sides of the oil shock ledger, to start.
It's not an exact parallel, to be sure.
OT: I just signed up. How much money is Facebook going to send me?
I guess $725 million, unless someone else signs up.
Superb: a source tells Vanity Fair that the real reason Murdoch fired Carlson was his overly Manichean/religious speech on the previous Friday - coming on the heels of Murdoch canceling his engagement after two weeks because his fiancee described Carlson as "a messenger from God", and engaged in other religiosity that put him off in the same way.
It's probably really hard to meet women who aren't completely shitheaded if you run a conservative network and are old as dirt.
Like, Joe Hardy was old. But he ran a resort that owned a Himalayan spotted bear. He could just marry a waitress who would let him worry about the religion.
Did Joe get all the money so that Frank Hardy's resort had to be content with a measly brown bear?
basically everywhere that's ex-Communist has a huge fascism problem
Mm, not really. East Germany? Czech Republic? Slovakia? Romania? Bulgaria? The Baltics? Ukraine has a huge fascism problem in that it is being invaded by them, but not otherwise.
Plus, there are countries out there where the fascists get 40% of the presidential vote, or get their woman elected as prime minister, or try to storm the Capitol to overturn an election they don't like, and they aren't ex-Communist.
For the two remaining people who will click a NYT link: op-ed on Tucker Carlson by a journalist writing a book on him. "[A]s his professional struggles mounted, his contrarianism curdled into resentment against 'the elites' who took the country into Iraq, triggered the 2008 financial crisis and refused to give Mr. Carlson a television role commensurate with his talents. He paired his staple rep ties and Rolex with this new populist streak -- and assumed the role of class traitor."
to give Mr. Carlson a television role commensurate with his talents
If the woke mob hadn't canceled The Apprentice and had Jon Stewart praised the even-handedness of Crossfire, the Democrats would be enjoying a fourth consecutive term in the White House, with supermajorities in Congress.
So we're a hundred comments in, so let me briefly hijack Tucker's thread. Did everybody know that the 2018 Farm Bill essentially legalized weed nationally due to a loophole in defining THC that re-classifies a bunch of it as industrial hemp and you can just pick and choose strains from legit companies and have it sent straight to your mailbox and everything? I know some of you live in already legalized states so it probably seems less magical, but suddenly, starting around the beginning of the year, it's freaking everywhere here in NC. Ridiculous quality. In brick-and-mortar storefronts, even. It's like I went to sleep and woke up in Oz. I'm earning frequent flier miles, for god's sake.
I guess at least one good thing did happen during the Trump presidency, even if it was an accident.
East Germany absolutely has a major fascism problem (maybe not as bad as Hungary or Poland, but still bad). I can't say I know anything at all about politics in those other countries.
Tried looking at Bulgaria, looks like their politics has been dominated by a Trumpy right populist who went into coalition with their literally fascist party lead by a holocaust denier, so I don't think they're exactly an exception to the trend.
Russia, Hungary, Serbia, ruled by fascist or at least hard ethnonationalist elected dictatorships. Not sure if PiS in Poland is fascist, but far to the right, and their smaller partner even further.
Plus 107 (me, obvs). An exaggeration, but not baseless. And AFAIK juche also is in many ways fascism (though the DPRK's post-communism, whether now or earlier in juche's evolution obviously is dubious).
"Live Free or Die" apparently doesn't apply to smoking weed, so I still have to make a run across the border. Fortunately I have my choice of borders. Somehow the outdoor shit they grow in Vermont is better than the indoor shit they grow in Massachusetts.
It's the difference between venture capitalists growing for money and hippies growing for love.
I found the "Nuts on Clark." They just moved it.
Of course I'm influenced here by the fact that in my daily life if I interact with someone far-right odds are very high that they grew up in a communist country. It's a rare situation where you get far right educated people.
HEMPEACH THE HEMPEROR!
(Guarantee you can get it shipped directly to you, unless you just like your spot across the border.)
When they ship to a state where it's not legal, do they put something on the packaging like "pornography"?
I used to do mail order and got some great deals that way. It was a pain in the ass having to use bitcoin, though.
On another topic, the things kids do with AI generated presidential voices these days is fucking cool.
It's federally legal. The USPS will not confiscate it. The place I order it from sends it in a plain cardboard shipping box with WNC Distribution as the sender.
pain in the ass having to use bitcoin
I use my Visa and get 2 miles for every dollar I spend. It's adding up.
Are pot gummies in airline baggage still no go, though? We have been babysitting a couple of packs of gummies for a relative who couldn't take them home. I guess we could mail them.
Just say you need them to give out at Halloween.
121, 122: did you want to fix this? I was going to comment that based on your quasi-anonymity, it seems that you're not quite that confident about the legality of this.
121, 122, 125; as usual a few steps ahead of me.
Can't speak to airline policies, but they're also federally legal because they fall under the farm bill as a hemp-derived product, and just have to have
Oh, plenty confident about the legality. But, you know, appearances.
127: foiled by the less than sign.
...less than 0.3% d9-THC by weight, and 10-20 mg isn't much compared to a dense gummy.
I've been getting "hemp gummy" commercials on YouTube, which seems new and weird and not really the legalization future I was hoping to see. My decades of stoner instinct is to keep that shit on the DL but I guess the commercial cannabis industry has investors to pay.
When these commercials get shown to gamer kids its going to set off a whole moral panic and associated backlash. Not entirely unjustified, either.
Are pot gummies in airline baggage still no go, though?
My understanding is if TSA finds marijuana in California airports, they will "refer" you to the local law enforcement, which will do nothing. Of course it will depend how you feel about having contact with the latter.
The gamer kids are all about the vape carts now. Gummies are for old people.
Are the cartridges safe now? They did straight-up kill a couple of people a very few years ago.
The carts weren't the problem, it was using vitamin E acetate as a medium (don't inhale heated acetates! es no bueno!). I'm leery of carts just because who knows what residual solvents or metals or whatnot might be in there due to Joe Stoner chemistry major missing a filtration step, but the specific problem from a few years ago isn't really an issue any longer.
130: The pot shops in Anchorage are now sponsoring radio stations and stuff. It's weird.