Obsidian Wings

An arc described with mathematical precision: The well worn path of Tucker

by liberal japonicus

I'm a bit late with this, but I have a few thoughts about Tucker completing his collection of pink slips (CNN, MSNBC and now Fox) It seems to me that rather than an outlier, Carlson's path was, in hindsight, rather predictable, and is a path that others take as well, though none as flamboyantly as him.

This is not about the external, though I would note that there are a number of different theories as to which straw it was, and a quick list would be:

• It was discovering what Carlson had actually said
• It was Tucker finding religion
• He wasn't making that much money for them
• He was too vulgar for the network

However, it seems like a shit-ton of straw. But I'm thinking that the path Tucker followed is not some kind of unique trip, but a sadly common one.

This Atlantic article (I think, it is now behind a paywall, but I think this is the one I read) wondered how a person who was essentially raised within that Washington bubble and someone who could have, with a little more finessing, easily played the role he started out on, as token conservative who was 'just asking questions'. To me, there's an interesting tendency at the bottom of that. People like Carlson back in the day, wanted to be able to simultaneously stand apart from the majority, but wanted to be lauded by it. While we have gotten a Tucker's greatest hits album, with him touching on wokeness, white replacement theory, CRT and a host of other boogeypersons, that's describing where he ended up. This article, discussing Carlson's reporting of George Bush's mocking of Carla Fay Tucker's appeal, is interesting in that regard. Here's what Carlson wrote:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker’s] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ ” “What was her answer?” I wonder. “Please,” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “don’t kill me.”

The article writes that Carlson then ran away from that reporting, and it was never mentioned again. But what interests me is that there was Tucker was tapping into, and seemed to want credit for tapping into liberal impulses. Prospect had this bizarre encomium which hails Carlson as a puncturer of social pieties. It's a truly stupid piece when writing about where Carlson is (or at least was until the weekend), it helps illuminate Carlson's path. I don't think the article is wrong in the particulars and it does catch how he was able to carve out his audience, but I'm not sure why Prospect felt like it was important to note this.

As a parallel, think of Matt Taibbi. His book I Can't Breath was a sympathetic account of Eric Garner's death at the hand of the police, and in another reality, one could have imagined him taking up a position as an insightful critic from the left, maintaining his bona fides by throwing some rocks at the other side. It's not like the left is perfect, so there would be the opportunities. Yet now, he's taking point on the twitter files (and getting dismantled). He hasn't crashed as hard as Carlson, but only because he didn't go as high. But the trajectory seems to be the same. And it seems to me that you could identify any number of people who path can be described in the same way. Why is this?

I leave it to the interested reader to come up with more examples, but the arc is to start off as the 'just asking questions' type and when you aren't lionized by the left, go to the right and get people to tell you how good you are because you have rejected that echo chamber. These stories all seem to share a moment when they get their ideas roasted in front of everyone. Jon Stewart famously ripped Carlson apart on CNN. Taibbi had his life in Moscow, which he had held up for the world to see in his co-written memoir entitled The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia, examined and found himself beat over the head with it. 

As Tucker goes on to whatever is in store for him, it's something I've been wondering about lately. If my description is accurate, who's next? And if it's not, why is it wrong?

Constitutional?

by wj 

For this weekend's Open Thread, we look at political theater vs reality.

The text of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution is unequivocal: 

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

So what does that mean in practice?  Well, suppose you have a law (call it a debt ceiling law) which has the effect of forcing the US government to default on its debts.  Such a law is, on its face, in violation of the Constitution.  Period. 

So suppose we find ourselves in a situation where (after exhausting various accounting tricks) the government can only pay off existing bonds and/or meet obligations under existing contracts by taking on additional debt beyond that statutory limit.  It isn't the case that the President (or, acting on his behalf, the Secretary of the Treasury) may breach the debt ceiling.  Rather, they are required to do so.  Nothing optional there at all. 

So, if the Congress cannot get itself together to raise the debt ceiling, then all that happens is that the government shuts down.  A scenario we have seen played out before, whenever the Congress cannot manage to pass a budget bill.  Inconvenient?  Sure.  Nasty impact on the party (historically, and this time, the Republicans) who caused the problem? Also true.  But a disaster for the economy, both of the US and of the world? Not so much. 

An obvious step for the President to take, in order to avoid the negative impacts of worries about the US paying its debts, is to simply stand up and say exactly that:  "We will pay our debts.  If we have to shut down because we don't have funds beyond what is required to pay our debts, then we will do so; I hope the GOP will avoid that, but it's up to them.  However, our debts will be paid, in full and on time."   

The sooner he does so, the better.   

The art of provocation: Barry Humphries RIP

by liberal japonicus

GftNC noted that Barry Humphries, whose creations of Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson were comic genius of the first order, had passed away. I'm not sure how familiar everyone here is with Barry Humphries, but below the fold are some thoughts and various Youtube videos

Open thread

by liberal japonicus

Seems time to open another thread. Would love to have some informed speculation about Dominion v. Fox settlement. Shootings out the wazoo. Trying to figure out the sweeper pitch. Great chess. ANything else?

Degrees of separation

by liberal japonicus

While I am 2 degrees of separation from the World's Worst Georgian, James Earl Carter (Walter Mondale spoke to my students when they were doing an exchange in Minnesota and in the party afterwards, I managed to spill ice cream on my tie while I was thanking him for his help for foreigners in Japanese universities while he was Ambassador to Japan), I was surprised to find that I am 2 degrees of separation from Hitler memorabilia collector and bff of Clarence Thomas, Harlan Crow. In music school, we had a oboist/saxophonist who, after graduation, went to Dallas to make his bones. Being a gigging musician, he was part of a woodwind quintet that did gigs at Crow's hunting camp. Several others chimed in with things they remembered about the gigs and one person pointed out that it was always a male only event, any wives or significant others were dropped off at the main house. Another person pointed out that it was shortly after Crow avoided jail over Iran/Contra. Gifts that keep on giving...

Obviously an open thread.