The Washington Post’s Hit Job on Tucker Carlson - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The Washington Post’s Hit Job on Tucker Carlson
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Tucker Carlson on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” July 16, 2021 (YouTube screenshot)

The Washington Post headline read this way:

How Tucker Carlson became the voice of White grievance 

As Ronald Reagan might say, there goes the left-wing media again.

When a conservative media figure arises with a sizable audience of millions of Americans, one can bet that, like clockwork, the Post or some other lefty journal or network will indignantly smear the target of the moment as racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, etc.

This kind of racket has appeared since the late William F. Buckley Jr. burst on the national scene with his bestselling book God and Man at Yale, way back in 1951 — a full 70 years ago. The young whippersnapper Buckley — 26 at the time — was assailed by horrified leftists as promoting “pure fascism” and worse by simply saying Yale had been infected with left-wing bias in its classrooms.

So with Tucker Carlson drawing millions to his Fox show Tucker Carlson Tonight it was inevitable that he would be targeted (again!) as Buckley, the late Rush Limbaugh, and a by-now lengthy list of conservative media personalities and news outlets have been (including, as I was startled to realize while at CNN, yours truly).

But let’s stick to this piece on Tucker and wade in to the specifics of the Post smear to illustrate just how the Game of Smears has been played here — and focus on just who, really, is into the politics of racial grievance.

Let’s start with the headline. Again, it read,

How Tucker Carlson became the voice of White grievance

Note that the issue isn’t whether Tucker is “the voice of White grievance.” Nor is there any questioning about the very absurd concept of “white grievance.” No, no. The author, Michael Kranish, asserts that “White grievance,” like the sun or gravity, simply exists, you see. Tucker is its evil voice, and this is how this happened. Because, you know, it’s so obvious that Tucker is Mr. White Grievance.

In other words? The very first play — the central play — in the smear job is … the race card.

This is, of course, hardly surprising. The Washington Post of today is out there constantly supporting the one American political party that was established and built as the Party of Race. The paper — and the Left in general — is obsessed with race.

Gone are the days when a young Ben Bradlee, the future executive editor of the Post — in June 1949, as he wrote in his memoirs A Good Life“covered the race riots in Anacostia” (the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C.). Bradlee’s focus was on six city pools and a “pitched battle” — a “riot” between whites and blacks over the segregation of the pools into “whites only and “Negroes only.” Except the story was watered down. The word “riot” was gone from the story, and the story itself was pushed deep within the paper guaranteeing that not many would see. Bradlee was furious — and then he learned the reason.

The Post‘s publisher, Phil Graham, struck a deal with the Truman Secretary of the Interior (who was in charge of the pools) that either the pools were fully integrated the next summer — or the next day there would be a front-page story at the Post running a detailed Bradlee story on the riots and their segregation. Graham and Bradlee stood up for integration and racial equality, put the paper’s integrity on the line — and carried the day.

But now? The Post is hell and gone from the pro-integration, pro-colorblind beliefs of its one-time publisher Graham and its then-young ace reporter Bradlee. It is fully on board with the racism of identity politics, the son of segregation.

Tucker Carlson in 2021, like Bradlee and Graham, has routinely opposed segregation. In his book Ship of Fools, Tucker writes,

For decades, racial integration was the central project of American elites. Some may believe it still is. But a remarkable transformation has taken place: Elites no longer oppose segregation. They no longer insist on treating all races equally. Many instead call for segregation. They consider race the center of human identity. They demand that individuals be exalted or punished because of their skin color.

No better illustration of the modern elites’ support of segregation and the politics of racial grievance politics in the Post can be found than this hit job on Tucker Carlson. The Post swims in the Left’s political culture of racial obsession that demands everything and everyone be judged by race. Which is why it takes Tucker to task for saying this: “Racial solidarity wasn’t a working concept in my southern-California hometown.”

Imagine that. Tucker Carlson believes the idea of racial solidarity is … racist. That’s something the Post’s Graham and Bradlee believed. But now to call out the inherent racism of “racial solidarity” makes left-wing heads explode. The Post, in fact, has morphed into a paper that exemplifies racial grievances — now supporting identity politics, the son of segregation.

Tucker is, says Kranish, “the preeminent voice of angry White America.” Say what? Since when did believing in a colorblind America become evidence of an “angry White America”? Answer? If you believe in and are obsessed by race — which, clearly, Kranish is.

Then there’s this:

He has frequently ridiculed the notion that America should celebrate diversity and has lashed out repeatedly at the idea that he, as a White person, bears any responsibility for racism against Black people.

Well, thank God for that. “Diversity” has become code for racism, dividing, and judging everything and everybody by race.

And as to those who bear responsibility for racism against Black people? Here’s what the Post and Kranish will not discuss. That would be the major league responsibility of the Democratic Party and the American Left for institutionalizing racism in America.

They will not mention that the Democratic Party, founded by slave owners, endorsed slavery six times in its political platforms (from 1840 to 1860). After the Civil War and an unsuccessful attempt to stop the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery, the paper’s now-favorite party began supporting segregation and using it, courtesy of the Jim Crow laws it enacted, as its primary organizing tool. The Ku Klux Klan, per Columbia University historian Eric Foner, was “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease’s description of the Klan was that it was used as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.” Today, as evidenced by the Kranish article, this culture of racial obsession exemplified on the left is alive and flourishing.

This is what critical race theory is all about. In the eyes of the Left we are no longer Americans, and we’re no longer individuals. No, in the so-called “diversity” world, everybody is divided and judged by skin color. Tucker Carlson vehemently opposes this. Somewhere Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — he who dreamt of an America where his children would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin — is shaking his head in disgust at what the Post and today’s liberal elites are pushing. So good for Tucker for carrying the banner of Dr. King, not to mention all those millions of us who agree with both of them.

Then there’s this in the Kranish hit job:

His audience soared as Donald Trump was remaking the Republican Party around “America first” appeals that embraced further restrictions on migration and a turn away from America’s tradition as a land of immigrants.

Say what? To say this is wildly, flatly untrue would be to understate. Donald Trump never opposed immigration or led the country in “a turn away from America’s tradition as a land of immigrants.” Both Trump himself and most of the American population are the descendants of immigrants. News flash? He’s married to an immigrant. The only issue with immigration is opposition to illegal immigration. His view, and that of many Americans, is that people should obey the laws, apply to come in, wait your turn, and come in.

Curiously ignored by the Post is what is doubtless fact not just for the Washington Post itself but any major corporation today. One does not show up in the lobby of any corporate headquarters uninvited and breeze upstairs via the nearest elevator. No, in Trumpian style, visitors to the Washington Post are surely required to produce ID and have their name appear on a security computer as having an appointment with a specific employee. Then and only then does one get admitted to the Post. Which is to say, exactly as Trump was saying, there are rules. If it’s OK for the Post, it should be OK for the southern border. Which is, of course, Tucker’s point exactly.

On the Post anti-Tucker screed goes: “Night after night, Carlson stokes resentment among his audience of nearly 3 million.”

Um. Wrong. This is the same old, same old tactic of accusing conservatives of stoking resentment that has been employed for decades. In fact, resentment is repeatedly and willfully stirred by the American Left, not to mention its media allies. In the summer of 2020, to cite but one on a long list of examples, a combination of Black Lives Matter and Antifa leftists led a parade of carnage in one American city after another. Axios headlined the story this way:

$1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history

Night after night cities were set ablaze, with one small business after another, many owned by minorities, ransacked and ruined. A couple dozen Americans were senselessly killed in all the mayhem. Then there was the toppling of statues of American historical figures.

Which is to say the sight of the destruction and violence they were witnessing on television newscasts made Americans resentful and not a little furious. They needed no encouragement by Tucker Carlson. Their “resentment” was already stoked — over and over again — by the American Left. And, yes, by the liberal media.

Then there’s this jewel:

Carlson has used his influence to spread unfounded claims that have been embraced by many Republican leaders. He has echoed Trump’s falsehood that the election was “rigged.” 

First of all, just right here in my own state of Pennsylvania, the historical record shows in vivid detail that elections in this state have in fact frequently been tampered with. Just in 2020 a Philadelphia Democratic Judge of Elections was indicted and convicted of voter fraud — standing by voting machines in his ward and, when no one was looking, “ringing up” the totals on the machine. He did this in three elections: 2014, 2015, and 2016. And he was paid by a former Democrat congressman turned political consultant to do so. He too was indicted.

There is chapter and verse out there on one election after another being rigged in Pennsylvania in one way or another. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney got zero — say again zero — votes in 59 Philadelphia voting divisions, a statistical impossibility.

In 2008, a retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice and the Dauphin County District attorney specified in detail evidence of voter fraud in six different Pennsylvania counties.

In 1994, a federal judge overturned a special election for the State Senate, saying there had been a “massive scheme” to steal the election from the Republican candidate.

The Post article saying that Tucker’s allegations of election-rigging are a Trumpian “falsehood” is, in fact, a falsehood itself. Indeed, as this is written the Democratic governor and attorney general of Pennsylvania are trying to suppress a Republican state senator’s request for an audit. There’s nothing false about that.

Not to be forgotten in the “rigged” category: Twitter blocking the New York Post bombshell story about Hunter Biden’s laptop and its evidence of Biden family corruption.

Then there is the Washington Post’s umbrage at Tucker’s stance on vaccination. He had the nerve to say this: “If the vaccine is effective, there is no reason for people who have received the vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact.” This was said some time ago. This very week we are learning that Los Angeles County is demanding that, yes indeed, vaccinated citizens must wear masks inside. Which goes to Tucker’s point exactly — if the vaccine works, then why the need for the vaccinated to wear a mask? I’ve been vaccinated, but if I visit Los Angeles I still have to wear a mask? Why? The Post is silent on his point.

There’s more in this all-around Post hit job.

But the essence here is the same sorry story that would be instantly familiar to Bill Buckley or Rush Limbaugh or any other major conservative media member. When a conservative star takes off or gains even more popularity, he or she becomes a target. A target for smears and falsehoods, not to mention attempts to take him or her off the air — the latter being the ultimate authoritarian attack on the First Amendment and free speech.

Tucker Carlson is making waves and making an impact. He never hesitates in taking on the racial grievance culture and politics of the American Left. Good for him.

Which is exactly why a hit piece like this one in the Post is run in the first place.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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