Self-righteous Schadenfreude is the flavour of commentary on Fox News ‘personality’ Tucker Carlson’s sacking by the cognoscenti.
Less common is the observation Carlson’s sacking had more to do with potential legal liability than lying through his teeth and promoting the American brand of populist, bourgeois fascism so fecklessly adopted by nominally conservative politicians and media workers in Australia.
Still less common is what ought to be self-evident: Carlson probably believed none of what he said, but played to ratings. He is a showman, not a journalist.
Borrowing tricks from evangelists and enthusiastic, self-promoting mountebanks who fuel the ‘self-help’ genre, he played to a demographic that wanted its own ignorance and prejudices to be given a folksy legitimacy that removed the obligation of civilized people to educate themselves and not talk utter nonsense or act like barbarians.
At Fox, as at every Murdoch-owned media asset, populist fascism is probably de rigeur. Carlson hardly invented that kind of recidivism. But he intuited that it is most valued when bundled with showmanship. Valued, as in his ratings and salary.
Carlson may have been in a class of his own, but what he did, and will probably continue to do, is not so far away from our own television ‘personalities’. Talk to a perceived demographic, taking a bourgeois tone, and offering repulsively ignorant opinions. Showbiz, not news or current affairs. Anally retentive bureaucrats more than informative journalists. Administering and approving public opinion as socially acceptable to dull drones.
Our media commentators could do with a bit of introspection. How much of what they do is spectacle rather than analysis? How ignorant are they about the topics they talk about? How patronizing are they to an educated public to knowingly maintain dishonest economic, political, and social fictions?
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