A (Fat) Face in the Crowd

 

     A lot of ink, both real and virtual, is going to be spilled about Tucker Carlson getting personally fired yesterday by Rupert Murdoch. While some may think it's newsworthy and represents an important paradigm shift in television journalism, I don't. Carlson is the very poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

     Carlson's career in television should've ended when he was epically taken down by Jon Stewart nearly 20 years ago. Indeed, just months after Stewart's appearance on CNN's Crossfire, Carlson was dumped. It would be the first of what would lead to Carlson's one singular greatest and unique achievement- Getting fired by all three major news networks.

     "You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show," Stewart told Carlson right before a commercial break. That was October, 2004, just days before the election, By January 2005, Crossfire was history (although it did make an ill-conceived and ill-fated comeback). Thanks to Jon Stewart, people had finally tired of the "Jane, you ignorant slut" format of debate shows.

     Then Carlson claimed he voluntarily left CNN (just as it's claimed he left Fox voluntarily) and migrated to, in one of the worst hiring decisions in television history, MSNBC, which thought he'd make a fine addition to their stable of talent. They fired him, too.

 

     When Donald Trump began his nightmarish ascent in 2015, comparisons were being made between him and Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, the Andy Griffith character in his debut film, A Face in the Crowd. It was a ground-breaking film made in 1957 by Elia Kazan and Budd Shulberg that sought to be a cautionary tale as to the corrosive effects of television influence on the American public. It was released to mixed reviews in its time and, while it launched Griffith to stardom, the film was never a big box office draw. It was, simply, a film whose time had come yet was underappreciated by the people who'd missed that cautionary tale.

     Since then, it's found another audience and fresh appreciation for its prescience. It's since joined the pantheon of movies that also strive to warn us of the danger of the unchecked power of personality such as Network and Elmer Gantry. But the post-cautionary tale taught to us by A Face in the Crowd could more seamlessly be superimposed over the likes of Tucker Carlson than Donald Trump.

     1950s rural America was ripe for a character like Lonesome Rhodes and Kazan and Shulberg were savvy enough to spot that and to take steps to prevent us to feel compelled to ensure that a such a character would be invented to fill that void.

     Lonesome Rhodes is first discovered in a drunk tank in Arkansas by radio journalist Marcia Jeffries, who invites the reprobate to expound on matters and play his guitar. His appeal is immediate and quickly leads to him getting his own radio show then eventually a TV show.

     Unlike Rhodes, Tucker Carlson was born to wealth and privilege yet somehow was able to fail his way up the television food chain. But both men are cut from the same rotten piece of whole cloth. Both are self-interested sociopaths who innately loath anyone who isn't them. Like Rhodes, Carlson had denigrated his show's sponsors, his viewers, his colleagues and even the stuffy right wing politician he'd decided to prop up and turn into an Everyman. 

     When a mattress sponsor threatened to pull out, Rhodes sent his supporters to the store and burn mattresses in the street. He realizes that his words have power and that power was intoxicating. That was the moment that Rhodes transitioned from being merely a popular radio personality to a dangerous "demagogue in denim", as Walter Matthau's character had described him.

     But secret recordings that today are all the rage proved to be Rhodes' downfall. Tucker Carlson's downfall, or part of it, came in the form of text messages.

     Here's the crucial difference between the movie and real life- While Kazan and Schulberg plausibly relied on the self-interest of Rhodes' viewers to turn on him when the tapes came out, no such thing happened to Carlson. Even after the texts came out about how much he hated Trump and how he looked forward to the day when Fox could finally move on from him, he kept his three million viewer fan base. Trump, even, in contrast to Rhodes' Senate hopeful Worthington Fuller, not only never lashed out at Carlson but even defended him on Truth Social.

     Carlson, at least for now, hasn't lost his fan base, if yesterday's antics on Twitter are any indication, even though it hasn't dawned on them that if Carlson hates Trump so much, his opinion of his voters can't be any kinder than his thoughts on certain M&Ms. Unlike the viewers in Kazan's movie, Carlson's viewers are too stupid to know they've been had any more than Trump's voters (essentially the same people) are unfazed by how disgusting he thinks they are ("How stupid are the people of Iowa?", anyone?).

      This curious lack of self-respect would've made the ending in Kazan's movie absolutely impossible. How it did end was a powerful bit of film-making, with Rhodes demanding the love of those who worked for him when he realizes the walls are falling down around him. As he screams at a nearly empty room, only one sound engineer remains playing canned applause as the woman who literally raised him from the muck and mire walks out for good.

     And, as with Carlson, it's speculated that Rhodes will land another gig somewhere on television or radio but will never again reach the heights he once had.

     Television should've left him in the mud of the wayside after Stewart verbally butt-fucked him on his own show. But it didn't. MSNBC chose to hire him, then Fox and, in his 14 years on that network, he was once again allowed to climb to the top of the food chain, essentially running the MAGA movement, hence the modern-day Republican Party.

     But now Carlson can't hold that movement together under a show. No one will be sending him any more insurrection videos for him to cherry-pick. Orban may still have him over in Hungary but it'll be purely a social call. Carlson may pop up in subsequent CPACs but, again, without a top-rated show, what's the use?

     I guess it could be said that there's finally some accountability in MAGA world but there's no serious indication of that. Fox has already promised in its press release after the Dominion settlement that they're still committed to giving the American people the same right wing propaganda it's been giving them since 1996, with or without Tucker Carlson...

     ...who is now just a fat face in the crowd.