Was Tucker Carlson Fired Because of His Racist Text Message?

You knew there were land mines. You just didn’t know where they were hidden, which is the whole point of land mines, now that I think about it. My guess was that they were contained in Abby Grossman’s suit against Fox News. Now one of them has gone off, blowing up the narrative of Tucker Carlson’s dismissal from his Fox gig, as well as the narrative about why Fox settled with Dominion Voting Systems at the courthouse snack bar shortly before the trial was supposed to begin. The New York Times obtained what he wrote:

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

Narrator: You’re not. You’re substantially worse. From the Times:

The text alarmed the Fox board, which saw the message a day before Fox was set to defend itself against Dominion Voting Systems before a jury. The board grew concerned that the message could become public at trial when Mr. Carlson was on the stand, creating a sensational and damaging moment that would raise broader questions about the company.

You think?

It was argued for a long time that Carlson’s outrageous racist commentary was nothing more than a shuck, a strategy for scaring various Papaws and Meemaws out there into boosting his nightly ratings. This text is straight proof that, a long time ago, it had ceased to matter whether or not Carlson truly believed what he was spouting or not. (In another context, that of the 2020 election results, it turned out he didn’t.) The reason it doesn’t matter any more is that Carlson’s white supremacist ideology apparently runs so deep that he felt compelled a) to share it, and b) to admit to a tiny bit of shame that he believed it. In any case, this text would have detonated the news cycle for at least two weeks had it come out from Carlson on the stand. Fox settled the suit, fired Carlson, and now is hunkered down against what appears to be a limitless shower of fallout.

One of the lesser aspects of the Text Message of Doom is how stupid the manifestation of Carlson’s white-power sympathies really. Three or four to one is “not how white men fight.” Really. Tell it to George Floyd, or Theodore Landsmark, or Emmett Till’s family, or Jim Reeb’s, or the Goodmans, Schwerners, and Chaneys, or the families of the many of the long anonymous victims remembered at Bryan Stevenson’s National Memorial For Peace And Justice in Alabama to those murdered by white men’s violence. Or he could sit down in front of a mirror and talk to himself. From the Advocate:

News commentator Tucker Carlson admitted on an episode of MSNBC Live that aired August 28 [2007] to having assaulted a man who he said “bothered” him in a Washington, D.C., restroom when he was in high school. His statement came amid discussion of the recent scandal involving Idaho senator Larry Craig’s arrest for lewd conduct in an airport men’s room.

When host Dan Abrams asked how Carlson responded to the incident, Carlson said, “I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the — you know, and grabbed him, and…hit him against the stall with his head, actually…. And then the cops came and arrested him.”

Two on one. That’s not how white men fight, but talking about it is damn sure how they get fired.

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.