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It's not outrage; it's bewilderment. (Tucker Carlson/X)
There’s this face Tucker Carlson makes when he’s got a particularly wild story in the offing. The eyebrows knit together at the centre, the mouth is downturned with lips either slightly open or pursed in a pouty frown. Whoever wrote Carlson’s Wikipedia entry describes it as his “trademark scowl”, but scowl isn’t quite the right word. The expression isn’t so much angry as astonished, maybe even a little bewildered. It’s an embodiment of the classic newsman’s caveat, “Big, if true”, which allows members of the press to maintain plausible incredulity about a rumour even as they spread that same rumour all over the place.
Whether Carlson makes this face strategically is hard to say; it’s certainly a fortuitous way for someone in this line of work to look, but is it also just how he looks, generally. He got a lot of mileage out of it when he was the primetime poster boy at Fox News, monologuing on such matters of national importance as the gender identity of the green M&M. And he’s working it to great effect in his new interview with Larry Sinclair, a man who has spent the past 15 years alleging that he once engaged in a drug-fuelled homosexual liaison, in a Comfort Inn, with the then-not-yet-President Barack Obama.
“What was Obama like on crack?” Carlson asks, and then pulls the trademark face while Sinclair meanders through an answer. It’s a neat trick. The pundit’s new self-produced show on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is a lower-budget affair than the Fox News position from which he was fired in April; it doesn’t allow for such technical flourishes as a chyron. But he doesn’t need one: Carlson’s expression alone creates the impression of a subtextual thought bubble floating invisibly somewhere above his head: Do you believe this shit?
Full disclosure: I, for one, do not believe this shit. It’s not just Sinclair’s less-than-credible history, which includes multiple convictions for fraud and forgery, or the lie detector test he voluntarily took and summarily failed back in 2008 when he first levelled his allegations. It’s that the substance of Sinclair’s claims is wildly out of keeping with virtually everything we know about Obama, if not in terms of moral goodness, then certainly in terms of his ambition. Even Obama’s fiercest critics would surely concede that a man who structured his entire personal and professional life around making himself electable was unlikely, as a married state senator at the very start of a long-desired and painstakingly planned-for political career, to risk it all for the sake of $250 worth of cocaine and a blowjob.
But more importantly, does Tucker Carlson believe it? It’s not unreasonable to be a little bit cynical on this front. There is, arguably, a burgeoning effort afoot by certain members of the media to take Barack Obama down a peg, retroactively tarnishing his presidential legacy as well as his reputation for being a paragon of moral uprightness. Obama’s continued presence in Washington has been raising eyebrows among conservatives from basically the moment he left office, and some have begun to openly speculate that he’s acting as a sort of puppet master to the addled senior citizen currently occupying the White House.
And of course, there’s the matter of Carlson’s own integrity. Like many American media personalities, he does not necessarily believe all the words that come out of his mouth on camera. Among the revelations that preceded his ousting from Fox were text messages in which he privately contradicted his on-camera stances on Donald Trump and the 2020 election, which he publicly described as a “scam”. “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait,” he texted a producer in the days after the election had been called for Biden. “I hate him passionately.”
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SubscribeIt is worth pointing out that a conspiracy theory about Trump and urinating Russian call girls occupied 3/4s of his term in office and was pushed relentlessly by CNN, MSNBC, the Dems etc. When it was finally proved to be baseless, shoulders were shrugged and everyone moved on to the next one.
On a related note, have you seen today’s story that the BBC’s celebrated “Disinformation Correspondent” Marianna Spring has been found guilty of lying on her CV and fabricating her job history?
Surely a contender for story of the year!
I think the defence BBC is running for her is that she was ‘young and confused.’ Poor thing – keeping the facts straight about your own life can be so terribly daunting.
How much of her life was there for her to remember ? She was only in her early twenties .
The Marianna Spring story exemplifies just how rotten and cynical is the Woking Class. “Do what I say, not do what I do!”
Just out of interest, how was that “proved to be baseless”? It may well not be true, but proof? Please don’t downvote me folks, just explain how that was proven, or even better link to the proof – and Russian authorities denying it doesn’t count as proof!
If a rumour is not substantiated with credible evidence then it must be regarded as false. Otherwise we cannot live together.
President Obama can say to Tucker Carlson, present some evidence of these scurrilous claims or they should be regarded as lies. I think that is a reasonable position.
Half the world’s journalists plus the apparatus of the US government (most of whom were hostile to Trump) failed to turn up any evidence to substantiate the rumours in the Steele Dossier. So I think they can be safely regarded as false.
Otherwise we are in the madhouse!
Why should Obama stoop to saying anything to Carlson? He should just sue him for defamation of character.
Notice he hasn’t?
Yet.
It’s now known to be a campaign hit piece paid for by Hillary Clinton.
The sole source of that pee drivel was the Steele Dossier which was produced for the Hilary Clinton campaign to use against Trump. That Dossier has been thoroughly debunked, in fact the top brass at the FBI new this in 2016! They offered Steele $1M fore proof of allegations- he couldn’t because his “source” was Danchenko (also on DNC payroll) who made it all up.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/10/11/new-stunning-revelation-about-how-the-fbi-tried-to-take-down-donald-trump-prior-to-his-2016-election-n641668
Honestly Tony – just look it up and read about it yourself. Try anything by Matt Taibbi. Pro tip – don’t look it up in the NYT, NPR, MSNBC or Washington Post – their interest in covering it diminished when it was irrefutable that it was a stinking pile of BS that they had been pushing on their credulous readers for 3+ years.
I’m on your side on this one. It is true there is no definitive proof in either direction – but. Here you have a man, Trump, who was unfaithful to three spouses. He had plenty of confirmed extramarital romps with a variety women. He paid hush money to keep them quiet. He has been convicted of sexual assault by a jury. He was in Russia in the years before his political life running a beauty contest. The Russian security agencies are notorious for compromising and setting up senior government and business officials. None of this is disputed. It strains credulity to believe the Russians would not have attempted to compromise Donald Trump or that he would have resisted a seduction like this 20 years ago. I doubt the Russians would overtly blackmail him. For Trump it would be enough to know that he was probably surveilled for him to not poke the Russian bear.
Carlson is well-known for pushing shock-jock rubbish that he does not himself believe:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/03/09/tucker-carlson-trump-texts-fox-news/
Re the Trump story, I struggled to believe it, but largely because I’ve never been convinced that Trump is straight anyway. His “marriage” is obviously fake. His hands are feminine-small. All that make-up, all that draft-dodging, all that pouting, all that thin-skinned vanity.
But saying that that story re him and the hookers “occupied” anything is a considerable exaggeration.
Stood outside the window perhaps, looking in briefly.
Nobody was too exercised by it.
In fact, if true, it would have served as a sort of exculpation.
That is, if the rat in the Kremlin had some kompromat on him, then fawning to a dictator might at least be understandable, if not excusable.
But cosying up to said rat, without compulsion, is truly despicable.
“His hands are small”?. Really? Have you perhaps carried out some research into the correlation between hand size and sexuality?!
As a matter of fact I’m gay and my hands are large. Not that I’d read too much into that either..
Truly bizarre comment among some reasonable ones. Any semblance of critical thinking is becoming far too rare on this forum. People are just addicted to confirmation bias and various absurd conspiracies, which don’t even make sense in their own terms.
There’s truth in that for sure. It is also relevant that the source of pee-gate was an erstwhile, trusted senior MI5 officer, rather than a career criminal with convitions for fraud and forgery; and that Trump’s alleged misdoings are just the kind of thing he would do (except for his phobia of germs) – we all know it – whilst Obama’s are wildly out of character.
Christopher Steele, a former MI5 spook hired by Hillary Clinton to concoct a ludicrous story, and to whom the FBI offered $1 million to prove his dossier’s allegation were true, but couldn’t do it, is trusted by whom?
What are these “misdoings” we all supposedly know are just the sort of thing Trump would do? What is “wildly out of character” for a man who was a proud member of the Choom Gang, who was as avid a coke user as Bill Clinton, who famously earned the name “Bathhouse Barry”, who most recently, in a letter to an old girlfriend, confessed his-sex-with men “fantasies”?
Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s about Obama’s sex life. What I DO give a rat’s about is a media that covers up for their political pets but are delighted to smear those they’ve been ordered by their overlords to irrationally hate.
Trusted by whom? I did write ‘erstwhile’. Moreover, he clearly is still trusted by many – and no, I’m not going to research this issue for you and back with the evidence – read more widely – you will also discover that much of the Steele dossier hold up. As for Trump – if you have no handle on his misdoings, more fool you. All media, highlights the stories that fit their editorial bias – I’d say welcome to the New World, except the reality is ‘welcome to the World’ Alison.
Be honest, we all wanted as much dirt as possible on Trump and in this we’re no better than any ‘alt right’ conspiracy theorist.
I think you’ll find it’s commenters on online publications who tend to “push[ed] relentlessly” ridiculous conspiracy theories. News organisations just put it out there for slack jaws to dribble over.
Anyone with half a brain knows that if Russia had any juicy kompromat on Trump they would’ve leveraged it by now. Besides, he’s largely immune to the effects of lurid scandals because he knows his base is chock full of credulous morons, and he doesn’t give a rat’s arse about his reputation.
As the man said himself, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Grift harder.
That might be true David though I find the line between news organisations and online commentators pretty unclear nowadays.
I’m not convinced that people are as credulous as you say. I suspect most people look at the Russiagate stuff and this Obama stuff and recognise that these are just stunts by political activists, be it Carlson or the anti- Trump brigade. What I think it does though is harden existing political allegiances. Every time a new allegation is thrown at Trump, it just increases his support because his fans think he is being singled out for unfair treatment.
Thank you. I am not defending Tucker – but to single him out as an example of shoddy journalism given the state of ‘reporting’ from the US mainstream media is pretty rich.
Absolutely. That MSNBC talking head Rachel Maddow flogged the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ farce nightly for more than two years, nightly crafting scenarios like a deranged Scherezade speaks volumes and they still pay her $30 million annually for her part gig spewing absolute nonsense.
I question your statement that CNN pushed a salacious story about Trump “relentlessly”. I watch CNN a lot and I never heard that rubbish even once. Not that I wouldn’t put it past the old fart.
Two points. One, America is an absolute Leviathan of coordinated Public/Private Bureacracy. Second, I agree the details of this story seem beneath Tucker…if he didn’t have a larger point. The Media applies Repressive Tolerance toward Conservatives that question the new religious ethos. They attack Conservatives with malicious intent mostly based on salscious hearsay. Yet they ignore the same when Progressives are involved. They uncritically cater to Progressives that promote The Narrative” about America being an unwelcoming place toward women and minorities and there is always a “dogwhistle” narrative that says Conservatives are White Supremacists while Progressives are the “Good People” fighting for Democracy. What form of Democracy that is, nobody knows yet. It appears to be something like the “General Will” concept that Rousseau cooked up with regime technocrats arbitrarily deciding what “consensus” means.
Progressives meanwhile talk about preventing “hate” and spreading “tolerance” while joyfully promoting intolerant hatred against Conservatives. For example, Progressives throughly enjoyed watching the unvaccinated die from Covid because they saw it as a political win for the Public Health Bureacracy over the Non-Compliers. Prosecuting and canceling influential political enemies is like theatrical game of palace intrigue to Progressives. Its an ideology of resentment, punishment and schadenfreude. The amount of purpose and enjoyment they get from dueling with Trump is something to behold.
I’m sad to see Tucker go that route. He did alot of heroic journalism the past few years and didn’t deserve his fate at Fox. Anybody that watched his show knows he was extremely skeptical of election voting machine allegations. He was a symbolic take down by coordinated public-private forces because he was saying unapproved things to a mainstream audience. For that reason he’s definitely going to be a thorn in the side of legacy media because he saw the Leviathan in action. I for one hope the Republicans and Conservatives don’t act like Democrats when they eventually get power back but Democrats have limited room to complain if Republicans use their tactics.
I’m not sure why Kat Rosenfield and everyone else seems to have missed the reason Tucker is interviewing Larry Sinclair now, in September 2023.
It’s because Sinclair distinctly says in his interview that Donald Young, an openly gay church choir director well regarded within the Black community, told Sinclair in late 2007 that he’d also had an intimate relationship with Obama. Young was killed shortly afterwards – shot to death at close range in his apartment – and his mother blamed the Obama campaign. The case has never been solved. (Feel free to Google it.)
This summer, another Black man in his 40s connected to Obama died suddenly. Tafari Campbell, Obama’s personal chef, drowned after “paddleboarding after midnight” in a pond on Martha’s Vineyard. The Obamas were on the island at the time, although stories about their exact location have changed. Campbell was a strong swimmer. The death was quickly ruled an accident. (Again, feel free to Google it.)
I know nothing about the Campbell case I haven’t read in the media, but perhaps Tucker does. Anyway, it makes the Sinclair interview relevant.
What would be the reason that in the years since, Sinclair has not been assassinated?
He has been living in Mexico, which makes it slightly more complicated.
The Obama team may have also assumed that Sinclair had been thoroughly discredited. Not only does he have a fraud conviction (from 13 years before he claims to have met Obama), but he’s a beaten-down looking guy missing several teeth.
I saw several US commenters on Twitter dismissing Sinclair precisely because of his shabby dental work, which in the US is a sign of grinding poverty. Americans do love their teeth.
It is ‘slightly more difficult’ to assassinate someone in Mexico?
I said “slightly more complicated”, which it is. You need to deal with a third party instead of having your usual goons do it, plus deal with the Mexican government and whichever payoffs are required there.
I would think if he’s toothless in Mexico it would make it easier.
Exactly, that would be logical, if there was any logic in all this.
I have no idea about any of that. I just hate salacious press stories. I don’t want Conservatives doing it just because it’s the lifeblood of Progressives. It goes unsaid but everyone expect Conservatives to conduct themselves with more class than Progressives because Conservatives are considered the “Status Quo” regardless of whether their values are the “normative values” at a given time. Conservatives are always held to a higher standard.
Conservatives have historically ascribed to a set of clearly defined values beyond winning. In contrast, Progressives think the Ends Justify the Means and anything that advances their vision of progress is considered righteous…which means anything goes. Obviously Trump through that standard out the window.
If we’re going to have functional societies, the goal should be steering political conversations back to the quality of ideas and away from salacious personal attacks. But maybe that’s a utopian pipedream itself.
You are right – that is why Tucker is pushing it. I also think it is pretty clear Tucker really doesn’t like Obama – because all of this is salacious tittle tattle. It is a pretty big leap to go from ‘someone drowned on your property’ to ‘you murdered someone on your property.’
Yes, it’s a big leap. All anyone can say for sure is that two otherwise healthy Black men in their 40s have died mysteriously near Barack Obama. Could be a coincidence.
Personally, if there’s a smear campaign against the Obamas, it seems more likely to be coming from someone within the Democratic field who does not want Michelle to run for President.
The Obama girls have also been exposed to unflattering media attention this summer, mostly press photos of them in beach clothes smoking cigarettes. Why?
Because it sells newspaper which sells advertising. Actually, they were rather kind to Sasha because she was obviously smoking a joint.
Obama’s chef was not wearing a safety vest and blacks are not generally known to be good swimmers, many of them not having had the opportunity to learn when young. As for the black choir director- he was brutally gunned down in his apartment.
Funny you bring up that stereotype, Cathy, because that was also what the first reports out of Martha’s Vineyard said, that Tarafi Campbell couldn’t swim. Unfortunately, they’d failed to check the dead man’s own Instagram account, which showed him swimming a very strong crawl in an Olympic-size pool and talking about challenging his own best time. Not only could he swim, he was a serious swimmer. Account is currently set to private.
Yes, choir director Donald Young was brutally gunned down in his apartment, just as the first Obama presidential campaign was gaining steam. A coincidence I’m sure. The case has never been solved.
Exactly, and the chef had not taken any of the safety precautions
Good grief, it’s hard to belive how simple minded you are. If there was a rumor that Obama was a womanizer, then yes it might be believable, but this stuff is rubbish.
That sounds rather homophobic of you. Cheating with a woman is believable, but cheating with a man is not?
For what it’s worth, both Barack and Michelle have independently acknowledged that their marriage hit a rough patch around 1999.
This is also when Sinclair says he encountered Barack Obama.
Homophobic, PLEASE!! Do you think every straight male is secretly lusting after men! Dream on.
Not to mention Garrow’s (an avowed Progressive) 2017 biography of Obama which first mentioned the letter Obama sent to his then girlfriend stating he ‘fantasized having sex with men.” The letter itself is in a university library.
That Obama is gay doesn’t surprise or scandalize anyone – Joan Rivers joked about it ten years ago. The scandal is the Clintonesque murder of Obama”s lover, Donald Young, which the media simply ignored. The media is owned by government and literally gets its scripts from the CIA, according to RFK Jr. Tucker Carlson is one of a very few who are turning over that rock and exposing the media grubs for what they are.
Agreed, and add to this the mysterious drowning of Obama’s personal chef, Tafari Campbell, on Martha’s Vineyard in late July. Paddleboarding after midnight, sure. Paddleboarding on a pond, uh-huh.
Campbell was a healthy man and a strong swimmer, and the Obamas’ stories about their location – they were on Martha’s Vineyard, but precisely where isn’t clear – is a bad sign.
Might not have been a murder; might have been just a boys’ night out gone wrong. Whatever it is, it was very quickly declared an accident. Mary Jo Koepechne weeps.
Even strong swimmers can get tangled up in weeds on a pond, especially if he’d been drinking.
Yes, that’s true. Most people don’t paddle board on ponds, however – it’s usually something you do out in the open water. And its a sport that is generally done during the daytime.
Obama is not gay so the rumors are very surprising to most people. Joan Rivers didn’t have the fast track on truth, she’d say anything for shock value.
You must being wrong is gay, then. Be honest.
What?!
Joan Rivers made her career in gay nightclubs in the beginning. She often spoke of how she liked to ‘dish’ with them. God only know what was whispered or not. That said, her private life was very traditional and I think one could even say she leaned conservative. Her country house was down the road from me in Connecticut. She was very well liked and polite to everyone no matter the social status.
And your point is?
Yep, they definitely put conspiracy-inducing chemicals in the water in Florida…
America has a sitting president who is clearly senile. His son is clearly involved in some seriously dodgy business and has direct access to him.
The opposition leader is very likely facing criminal charges for anything and everything.
And Tucker decides this is the story worth pursuing.
I despair.
This is a just a distraction people.
This story involves the puppet master. It is relevant.
No it’s not.
My beef with this whole interview is it serves no purpose – other than clickbait.
We all know the regime media sucks. We knew it when Obama won the Nobel Peace prize before he spent even one day in office, and we know it now. This interview does nothing to set the record straight or right the wrongs committed by the regime media.
Who cares what Obama did 15 years ago? It made a difference then. It doesn’t now. And if Biden manages to live another 10 years, exposing his corruption will mean nothing, unless it leads to a trial and prosecution. The Carlson interview won’t lead to such an outcome.
There’s no question the subscription based model of media profitability has forced journalists to adopt the biases of their audience, but at least try to have some self respect. We all read Unherd because it shares our political outlook. That doesn’t mean it has to pander to our biases.
In that case why have you not mentioned the multiple allegations against Trump and Trump supporters by the named broadcasters that have been proven to be false. The article I read is how are stories covered up not whether those that are issued are true or not.
just look at MSNBC website for the classic examples of continuous stories about one person to probably avoid news on others
I’m a consistent admirer of Tucker’s work, and I agree with you. The one salient caveat I can muster is that, if Tucker is willing to trade the barest whiff of credibility that he may have heretofore retained among those inclined to reflexively disagree with him in order to slide the “Overton Window” of acceptable conjecture about St Barack and his fawning army of dishonest media apparatchiks, then that is his choice and I hope it has some useful impact.
Obama was opposed to same-sex marriage as a candidate in the 2008 election. It’s 100 percent relevant to point out the hypocrisy of publicly opposing same-sex marriage while being unfaithful to one’s wife with other men. Other closeted gay male politicians like New Jersey governor Jim McGreevy lost their careers when the media reported on their extramarital affairs with men. Why should Obama be shielded from this?
Because it’s not true, that’s why!!
Obama was opposed to same sex marriage because black Christians have been reluctant to embrace gayness in their communities until very recently (and many still don’t). Obama is, if anything, an opportunist.
Unherd writer are interesting, tackle unusual topics and don’t seem particuarly conservative, unlike the majority of commenters. But who wants to preach to the converted? Not me. It’s fun to go where angels fear to tread.
Why do you bother, Clare? A majority of these commenters are conservative verging on the alt-right, mysoginistic, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists. But oh do they believe they are above-the-masses intelligent and savvy. Let them. I’m done in November,
Why not just debate people on the facts, instead of calling them names?
It’s a nasty job, Danielle, but someone has to do it! What do you mean “done in November”?
Re: clickbait- maybe, maybe not. It’s goes in the ‘Presidential history file’ much like Thomas Jefferson’s rumored affair with Sally Hemings, that can not or has not been confirmed to date. It is all conjecture; the DNA link was to a ‘male Jefferson’ but that could have been a number of people- many think it his brother who spent more time in the ‘negro quarters’ of the estate. Maybe, Obama will eventually speak on the matter and discuss it publicly to wipe his own slate clean?
Kat is either the most naive journalist at UnHerd or she is a water-carrying hack.
“Sinclair’s story does not appear to have ever been rigorously investigated by the media.” Really? There’s not enough room to list all the other major stories that were suppressed or buried as the media chased every horned rabbit and unicorn if it involved Trump.
Why not at least try to list them?
Because he can’t but knows that most Unherders won’t care?
I know he can’t that’s why I said it.
Tucker Carlson is not the ideal vessel for this story, clearly has an agenda, and dislikes President Obama. For the record, I think his claim that President Obama is “anti-white” is absolutely absurd. Someone more objective probably could have done this story more justice.
However, I do not think we should so easily dismiss the idea that Obama had affairs with men; and I don’t think we should dismiss it as “inflammatory or tawdry.”
David Garrow’s biography of Obama, “Rising Star,” includes letters from Obama’s college girlfriend Alex McNear in which Obama writes about repeatedly fantasizing about sex with men. So it’s not far-fetched to think that Obama acted on those fantasies.
Larry Sinclair came forward with accusations in 2007/08 in the context of Obama’s presidential campaign. This was a campaign in which President Obama was publicly opposed to same-sex marriage – before “evolving” when there were no longer political consequences for doing so. It is completely relevant to point out the hypocrisy of a man married to a woman having affairs with men while publicly opposing the idea of two men in a long-term, committed relationship. The Obama campaign denied access to any journalist who pursued the story, so you have to wonder why there was such a forceful reaction to accusations if they have no merit. I’d also like to point out that former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevy, who is around the same age as Obama, was forced out of the closet and lost his career as a politician – so why should Obama be shielded from this if he was also a closeted gay/bisexual man dishonestly projecting a culturally conservative heterosexual “family values” image?
I say all of this as someone who likes President Obama, voted for him twice, but was disappointed in some of his policy decisions. I think he molded himself to fit someone else’s agenda in order to pursue the presidential ambitions he had since the 1980s. This includes his adoption of African-American identity politics and his marriage to Michelle – if you read anything about his early life, you will know that he did not identify as African-American. His own mother called it a “professional choice.” But I think the adoption of the culturally conservative African-American identity politics within a church like Jeremiah Wright’s would also have an impact on any choice he made regarding sexual orientation. At that point, African-American voters in the Democratic tended to be pretty opposed same-sex marriage and many were taught to see homosexuality as a “white thing.”
All of this is to say that I find this story and the reaction to it pretty fascinating in what it reveals about President Obama as a vessel for neoliberal identity politics and the lengths that the politically powerful will go to to protect any vessel for their agenda. It also reveals that people across the political spectrum in the United States are not as “accepting” of male same-sex relationships as they claim to be.
There seems to be confusion about tolerance and support. I think what consenting adult men, or women, get up to in private is their choice and concern. The fact that I may find it disgusting or ‘wrong’ does not mean I am intolerant; quite the opposite in fact.
“Accepting” was probably the wrong word. As long as people are not trying to re-criminalize homosexuality or turn back legal equality, I’m fine with them being disgusted. I don’t need people to like me or accept me. But my experience is that people who are specifically “disgusted” by male homosexuality are usually projecting their own insecurities onto their object of disgust.
Exactly, Benjamin, so true.
I think that goes without saying.
Re: male ‘same sex’ relationships being accepted….as I mention in an above comment, the black community was one of the last to embrace gayness and many still do not as they are Christian and very faithful. In fact, Americans have not rejected ‘gayness’ as much as they hate hypocrisy.
Leviathan of coordinated Public/Private Bureacracy.
Hmmmmm….there’s a word for that. Starts with “f”. Don’t help me….let me see…..very popular in the 20’s and 30’s ….. it’s just on the tip of my tongue….
Odd kind of column. Promised much but delivered:
“….journalism evolves from a truth-seeking enterprise to a bias-stroking device.”
Hardly a fresh and interesting point. Jejune,I would say. Readers everywhere ( said advisedly ) have been suffering that evolution ( devolution, I would say ) for decades.
Who is this you the lady keeps referring to? It’s not me. Is it you?
Often Unherd has some good and interesting writers. They seem to want to say something true. The place doesn’t strike me as having a soapbox of its own, though, which is good.
Unherd has a soapbox no question. Readers here cant stand woke politics, net zero, Covid insanity and censorship. I share these sentiments. That’s why I’m here. Unlike the regime media, Unherd doesn’t pretend otherwise, and occasionally offers perspectives from the other side.
Soapbox refers to politics, the left/right thingy. I doubt that Harrington, Kingsnorth, Roussinos, Fazi, Luttwak etc all share the same politics. No offence, but it is for them and their like that I’m here, not the readers.
Exactly, thank you.
Here’s how I will respond. The New York Times would never publish any of those authors. And 90% of the people at this site would not read the New York Times – because we do not share the same political values. The very fact that Unherd writers espouse a variety of viewpoints is a political expression. And although Unherd writers have diverse ideas, 90% of the articles here oppose things like net zero, censorship, the trans ideology etc. Politically nuetral publications no longer exist, if they ever did.
As a reader here I need to make it clear that, unlike you, I don’t go along with black or white thinking so don’t don’t lump all of us in with yours.
Seriously. You don’t think Unherd favours a right wing point of view? I neither approve or disapprove. It’s the reality of the media landscape today. More than 90% of the readers at this site would leave if the editorial direction of this publication resembled the Washington Post or New York Times.
I rarely agree with you, yet I do this time. Unherd contrary to ” providing a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places” is blatantly right wing verging on far right. The problem is that it is not acknowledged.
What exactly is a far right view? List a couple examples please. Unherd doesn’t pretend to be neutral, unlike the regime media. And it is far more receptive to divergent views than the regime media.
It’s interesting that you rarely agree with me. I would consider myself one of the more moderate commenters here. I support gay and trans rights, but oppose medicalizing children and trans in women’s sports. I got vaccinated but oppose mandatory vaccines and authoritarian Covid policies. I think CO2 is warming the planet, but oppose net zero and the hysteria associated with the issue. I don’t like Trump, but think the Dems are more dangerous. Everyone is free to disagree with any of this, but I often find myself on the wrong side of many commenters.
Actually, it takes courage to be on the wrong side of the crowd, to be the lone voice in a group. I’m used to it but it’s never comfortable.I found Unherd’s articles to be original and it took me a bit of time to realize the commenters were right wing. I’m here now and I’ll battle it out till I tire of it,or die, because I’m rather old.
When did opposition to authoritarianism become a far-right position? That used to be what the left was about, at least in western democracies. I think we would all do well to ditch notions of “left” or “right” at the moment. They no longer have any meaning or use except as epithets with which to brand whichever faction one opposes.
It’s short hand and everyone knows what it means. “woke” is the label that’s being misused by the right for anything they don’t agree with. It gets tiresome.
Don’t you have a less stupid way to refer to Kat?
Are you saying it’s stupid to refer to her as a lady?
Don’t you have a more gracious way to disagree?
Obama – our first Facebook-made President.
So what you are saying is that Tucker is no better than your average MI5 chappie flogging a pee-tape to the Democrats.
Many years ago there was a phrase that unfortunately has fallen into disuse and indeed is even unknown by younger generations: hogwash. It meant the soapy water that slid from the sides of the animal taking the mud and feces they wallowed in before slaughter. See what I did? Setting the scene by in this case describing the expression on a face lures you deeper into a story that is hogwash if that word were only still in currency. Kate is awfully good at hooking you in; a career as a feminist ideologue and left-wing journalist teach the value of a prologue fluttering with colorful ribbons. The “pouty frown” was pure artistry. But the whole article was hogwash. Carlson was not merely a prime time poster boy on FOX, he was the only serious conservative voice with the authority to command an audience that dwarfed competition babbling the familar tripe favored by the revolving door talking heads who move between government and MSNBC and other left wing shouting matches. He is a serious man who does serious work and who doesn’t take himself seriously. Kate is right about the Sinclair story being kicked around and refusing to die despite the lid the hopelessly compromised legacy press kept on it. Obama’s major domo David Axelrod told the press if they wanted access to Obama they better not go near that spicy tale. If you ran a newspaper and were given the choice between that and a gay hustler’s claims, which would you pick? The powers-that-be, which include Rupert Murdoch, furthermore were made uneasy by someone shining light into the dark corners so Carlson was packed off. But mirabile dictu he showed up on X (formerly Twitter) and his audience shot from 3 million nightly to 100 million and more at a crack.
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” H L Mencken
Thought is was PT Barnum.
I stand corrected .
P. T. Said there’s a sucker born every minute. Supposedly.
The news in the United States is a 24 hour feast of gossip and innuendo. Oh, with a little bit of actual information thrown in about current events. Every channel from CNN to FOX is filled with “experts” talking about “what might happen if something else happens” and then other “experts” talking about what might happen if THAT something happens.
Madness.
It’s the reason I read about America in foreign news. It’s the reason I, and many of my friends, subscribe to even Unherd for a different, but usually balanced, take.
Carlson isn’t doing anything other than the news people who deliberately twist politicians words around. It’s a nightmare here.
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see. ~ Edgar Allen Poe.
The real scandal is not the former President’s sex life. It’s that he’s able to maintain “moral, elder statesman” status when he droned innocent people left and right while in office. The fact that people think that dude is so nice, and scandal-free is trulu mind boggling to me.
The US is the land of conspiracy theory. It is doubtlessly connected to the Baudrillard premiss that this new New World is a simulacrum of a European nation-state and requires the simulation of an organic history in being such. The political system and its separation of powers is based on the Roman republic for chrissakes.
One thinks of cinema, of course, and the centrality of the conspiracy in political and historical storytelling. And in letters, James Ellroy, the greatest of modern noir creators, has built his career on creating detailed conspiracies taken from 20th history. Don DeLillo’s characters talk about them constantly if the whole is not based upon one (the reimagining of Lee Harvey Oswald in “Libra”). Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde was another one from a feminist perspective.
Whether the conspiracy theory can be paired with the culture war is an interesting question. Perhaps the hypothesis that mass media has provided ‘democratic fuel’ – or certainly insane levels of mass interactivity – to fuel a new civil war fought over information.
Did Kamala Harris write this for you? Or are you her under a fake name? Asking for a friend and myself.
Yeah, Spy Magazine used to have a column called “I’m Writing As Bad As I Can.” This text would qualify.
I await your superior contribution
Well said.
Kamala Harris can’t pronounce her own name – can you?
“Conspiracy theory ” has become another of those catch-all phrases that’s so malleable it’s lost any meaning it once had. But isn’t a conspiracy theory merely an attempt to explain the cause of some event or social phenomenon that the theorist doesn’t welcome? The theory may be completely bat-shit crazy, but that doesn’t mean that the moral assessment of the phenomenon the conspiracy theory seeks to explain is wrong. And maybe that’s where the focus of journalistic investigation should be directed, rather than the (sadly more prevalent) psychological profiling of the people likely to hold conspiracy theories, which is bad enough, or the self-congratulating drivel on offer by so much of the legacy media, which is worse, and can be summarized as follows: “Our moral compass points in no discernable direction, but at least we don’t believe THAT”.
Listening to openly gay Republican presenter Dave Rubin, it seems that most people see this ‘scandal’ as a bit of a joke and one guest laughed that if the allegation proved to be true, it would make Barak Obama more human and more likable.
Oh, and well done for reading so much on Tucker Carlson’s face. I’ve always found him as expressive as a block of wood.
Many mainstream figures practise this sort of click harvesting type issue journalism. And more and more ‘newspapers’ like The National in SCotland, New European and similar are little more than on street flyers to validate niche websites that beggar for retweets, re posts and likes to support their ad model.
How do you create a vibrant, niche website?
Start with a long established newspaper or TV programme and work down from there, was a clear survival strategy across journalism when the advertising roof fell in back in 2007.
Semi- crackers hucksters and grifters like Carlson are not the only ones-and not all are on the left.
We have our James O’Briens, AC Graysons and many imitators ploughing the same field.
Sinclair’s story is certainly unbelievable, particularly if you accept another story floating about namely that Michelle is a transgender man; Obama could have stayed home for a homosexual b*****b.
Trying to figure out who Barack Obama is as a person is an exercise in futility because I don’t think he even knows who he is a person. He is to insecure and cares way to much about what his peers think about him. What his beliefs and values, or what passes for them, are born from a combination group think, peer pressure, and desire to be liked by the “Right People” and simple instinct to conform. Evan with that, what his beliefs and values he has are prone to change, not out conviction but of consensus. The guy is the definition of a Bugman, but able to mimic authenticity better than most of them. If he had gay inclinations, he would never be true to them because he is to afraid of what would happen if he did. That being his public image would be destroyed as a loving family man and husband and would result in chaos, which was part of his appeal, not due to homophobia. He is kind of similar to Patrick Bateman from American Psycho save for the serial killing, and what scary is that the ruling class is full of people like that.
I find him to be a brilliant orator, funny, playful and articulate. He can out his shoes under my bed any time.
You really need to grow up and I don’t care how old you are. I’m talking mentally.
That says volumes about you, and thank you for your candor. Gentlemen, start your engines.
Thanks, Jerry, much apprecitaed. There’s more salty humor where that came from, regardless of whether Yvonne thinks it’s childish or not. We need a chuckle now and then, don’t we. It should have been”put” his shoes under my bed. Damn typo.
I’m no fan of Barack Obama but even I can see that this is the least believable political scandal in history.
I don’t like Obama but I have a hard time believing this story. And even if it’s true, I don’t care. He’s still a despicable human being.
No he’s not.
Donald Young says hi.
You can Google reports of his death, if you like.
Exactly.
‘Ker-ching’. Bit of salacious rubbish about a figure they love to hate and the mugs, and of course those who always had the racial element out front in their view of Obama (oh yes we all know that’s going on too) will empty their pockets yet again.
What a grifter. But nothing that new really.
By bringing up race when it is clearly inappropriate makes you no different than Carlson. Something, something dog whistle.
You’re naive on this one JV if you genuinely don’t think that’s trigger being played too.
The interview is gross and creepy, no question. Obama is a public figure. He’s going to be smeared by slime balls and grifters. That’s the deal people accept when they choose to pursue fame. The danger in playing the race card with no evidence is it chokes free speech. People with legit criticism will hold back for fear of accusations like this.
Well apparently they haven’t held back.
“Inappropriate” why?
Conservatives really do love to be played for fools, don’t you?!?!?
Trump, Tate, Tucker – any swindler who says the right crazy stuff is an instant here to you rubes. Cosmically stupid.
elcome to Nu-USA – where you can choose your facts and confidence level just as easily as your burger options. Eat as much as you like cuz the only problem with fat is the haters.
They tend to love a good bit of gossip and conspiracy, don’t they?
Having sat through 6 years of Trump gossip and conspiracy, I hardly think the conservatives are the ones most often played for fools.
We prefer to be called “a basket of deplorables.” Bud Light Socialist is closer to the mark, I’m thinking.