The stunning announcement on Monday that Fox News and Tucker Carlson have parted ways was about as shocking and unexpected as Michael Jordan’s first retirement.
Like everything involving Carlson, the news elicited vociferous reactions from both sides of the aisle.Talking heads on the Left rejoiced that the only individual they abhor as much as Donald J. Trump has been canceled and silenced—for now.
Most on the Right were overcome with a sense of sadness, as if we had just lost a favorite uncle. The charming, exceptionally witty and highly intelligent individual who we watched religiously over the last six years had suddenly disappeared without any warning.
The opening monologues that we made a point of never missing are now gone, creating a 15-minute void that will be difficult to fill.
How on earth could Fox Corporation let the most popular prime time cable news anchor, one who regularly averaged over 3 millions viewers per night, and one of the few bright stars on an otherwise vapid network just simply walk away?
The details, as of this writing, are nebulous and still emerging.
Maybe it had to do with the Dominion lawsuit that Fox recently settled for $787.5 million.
Maybe Carlson would be forced to issue a retraction regarding his opinion of what we were told was the safest, most secure election in history.
Maybe it’s because he released footage of January 6 that counteracted the lies and deceptions from Democrats and the propagandists in the corporate media about what really happened that day.
Or maybe, Carlson would be forced to concede editorial control over what stories he could and could not cover.
We will find out what happened soon enough, but right now, none of that even matters.
It matters not one iota that Fox News will continue to run a profitable business in the absence of Carlson.
It does not matter in the slightest that there will always be a demand for Fox as long as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS continue to fill their airwaves with race baiting leftist malcontents and miscreants.
It does not matter that Fox will continue to reach a sizable audience, even with conservative alternatives like Newsmax, OANN, and RSBN gaining traction.
The only thing that matters is that Fox just let the highest rated and arguably the most important conservative voice walk away without any viable replacement.
Watching Fox without Tucker Carlson is like watching The Beatles without Paul McCartney or John Lennon. It’s like going to a steakhouse and ordering the vegan option.
There was no one better in the cable news industry than Carlson, and it really is not up for debate.
No single political commentator riled up the Left and garnered as much vitriol as Carlson did, which is why last May, the Marxists over at the New York Times disgorged themselves of more than 20,000 words in an effort to smear and vilify him and his viewers. Nicholas Confessore, the author of that astonishingly asinine hit piece wrote that Carlson, “has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news,” but conceded that it was, “by some measures, the most successful.”
In reality the Left is threatened by Carlson, because he exposed just how corrupt, sinister and anti-American the leaders of that benighted ideology are. He showed how much disdain the Left has for the free expression of ideas, and for blue collar Americans. He proved that belonging to a marginalized group is not enough to make one immune from criticism. He accurately pointed out that no entity is more historically bigoted than the party that fought to keep slavery alive and continues to divide us by race and skin color every single day.
Carlson was also crucified by the Left for pointing out that the entire Black Lives Matter movement, in which people were killed and businesses were burned to the ground in the wake of the George Floyd protests, was a complete farce. He wondered rhetorically how it helps middle class Americans to allow unvetted illegal immigrants to pour across our border, and why we should deliberately destroy our economy and relinquish control of our lives to a health bureaucrat because of COVID. He challenged Republicans to be better at their jobs, and to actually pretend to care about the issues that matter to their constituents, as much as they care about what the Washington Post writes about them.
But above all else, Carlson is authentic. He knows exactly who he is.
That could not have been more evident to me than it was when I had an opportunity to sit in the studio during a live episode back in 2019. It was apparent that, unlike a lot of other hosts, Carlson really does listen to what his guests have to say, even if he does not necessarily agree with them. He does not put himself on some pedestal knowing that millions of people are watching and hanging on his every word. As I observed, he spoke as if he were just talking to myself and the other four people who were in the studio.
Without Carlson, there will no longer be any unique perspectives, combined with clarity, comedy and entertainment on Fox. Instead, we’ll just be treated to the same recycled Sean Hannity soundbites that have become as stale as a year old box of Wheat Thins.
I do not believe this is the last we’ll see of Tucker Carlson, but if it is, it was one hell of a run.