Corporate America has filed for divorce from the American people.

Cancelling Tucker Carlson was the business equivalent of throwing all your husband’s clothes out the window and setting fire to his car. There's no going back now.

I have never been a corporate America kind of gal. Going back to the 1990’s, I was unnerved by the power American corporations had over both the culture, and individuals who worked for them (myself included) — to say nothing of the their political and legal clout. 

But at least they seemed to try, in inauthentic and transparently self-serving ways, to mimic mainstream American culture, to ingratiate their craven selves with Ordinary People. And as such they seemed, as the kids say nowadays, cringe.

Something very weird has happened since. Where they always seemed desperate to flatter and fawn over centrist values (as a cover for all their craven misdeeds and unseemly power-grabs), today they seem desperate to flatter and fawn over the extreme left. 

What gives? I thought capitalists didn’t align with communists? Did I miss a memo from some grey-suited oligarch? Did everyone’s fancy golf club memberships suddenly become contingent on pledging allegiance to the Pride flag?

I thought the dumb Dylan Mulvaney- Bud Light debacle was the pinnacle of this transformation. But I was wrong. On Monday, Fox dumped Tucker Carlson, America’s most popular prime time news anchor, and I realised that corporate America was intent separating itself from the American people, for good. It was the business equivalent of throwing all your husband’s clothes out the window and setting fire to his car.

I have never watched Tucker’s show — or any other Fox show — in full or live. I know his work mostly from the clips that are constantly being shared on social media. But I do know that saying even a single positive word about him, if you are connected in any way to liberal America, is probably the most effective way to get yourself banished from whatever blue social circle or family WhatsApp group you are a member of. Only the 1,000 pound orange gorilla himself, DJT, sends more rage coursing through the veins of your average Prius driver or NPR tote-bag carrier.

But I love a good media dust-up, so all week I’ve been reading The New York Times coverage of the story, as well as some of their past deep-dives into his supposedly far-right, extremist views. The Times articles are an absolute masterclass in how to smear, monster and toxify an ideological opponent so effectively that the very mention of their name has the same effect as touching a surging electrical current. It induces a shock and then, a recoil. And a vow to never do it again.

The Times’ Nick Confessore this week wrote Carlson’s show “may be the most racist show in the history of cable news;” then goes on to provide, as evidence, a quote from Tucker saying he doesn’t judge people on their race. To support his claim that Carlson is king of the white backlash, Confessore offers Tucker’s warnings that “tech companies and cultural elites…silence them or label them racist if they complain” — while Confessore does exactly that.

This piece is full of very sophisticated wording and sentence construction. More than anything, it creates an impression, a sense, an interpretation of the subject, as opposed to an accurate, straight news report. But it it gives the reader the idea that it is just that, just the facts. Personally, I think this is more effective than any ad-hominem hit piece. It’s far more subtle and insidious. 

Let’s go through it. It opens with a scene-setting anecdotal lede (forgive the jargon, but I draw attention to it because they are often frowned upon for being pretentious), in which Tucker is cast as a devil-may-care, big swinging dick, surrounded by minions, entering a “power-class steakhouse” (are you picking up the signals here?), with his cellphone “pressed to his ear.” On the other end is the Big Boss, who praises him. Subtext: Life is good when you are a white man at a steakhouse.

Then, boom! The reader is hit in face with a journalistic equivalent of a two-by-four: the phrase “most racist show on television”. At this point, everything that follows after is almost immaterial. Anyone quibbling with the article, or defending the show, or Tucker, or the right to free speech and open dissent, is defending the most racist person on television. You don’t want to do that, now, do you? Of course you don’t. You are a good liberal.

“His show teaches loathing and fear,” Confessore writes. Not being an avid watcher of the show, and being a stickler for accuracy myself, I cannot swear on a Bible that Carlson’s show does not do that. But you know what else teaches loathing and fear? This article. 

Perhaps some of you reading this agree with Confessore and the rest of the corporate media and find Tucker’s coverage beyond the pale. And that’s fine. But it is important to recognise that at least part of this crusade against him — first by other media corporations, and now his own — is driven by the simple fact that these huge businesses can’t allow him to say the things he says. And if you are adult, that should really, really bother you.

Something crazy happens, though, when you listen to what Tucker Carlson actually says, in speeches and interviews. It’s like you step into a parallel universe. A universe in which a person whom you have been told repeatedly is a scary, resentful, ogre, is speaking plainly and openly about fundamental principles that you also hold. And hearing that is a balm to your battered soul. Because being on the receiving end of a firehose of horseshit — which is what the mainstream media subjects us to, if we watch/read it — is alienating and demoralising almost to a cellular level.

Even more interesting, is the kind of information Tucker shares with his audience. Like the arrest and indictment of a group of radical black American socialists, for colluding with Russia. Something which Carlson criticised on his show, seven days ago.

In this mostly ignored story, Tucker gives minutes of primetime air to African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela, discussing in February 2022 the Ukraine-Russian war and America’s role in it. “Even if it was wrong,” Carlson says of the clip he played of the elderly radical, “it would still be constitutionally protected speech.” 

I am guessing that was the first and only time the African People’s Socialist Party has been mentioned on any major news show. Funny how Nick Confessore didn’t mention that in his lengthy article. 

Last month, Carlson did a long interview with a YouTube channel called Full Send Podcast. 

He reveals some very interesting information, including the fact that the NSA intercepted his Signal messages regarding an interview he was trying to organise with Vladimir Putin. (As one of America’s most famous anchors, this falls well within his remit.) “If you have no privacy, you have no freedom,” he tells the hosts. 

“If you’re an adult citizen, why don’t you have the right to all the information you can get? When did we give that up? First of all, I can like or dislike anyone I want. Ok? I’m 53. I’ve earned that right. I can like anyone I want. That is not a crime, my opinions are not a crime, they never can be a crime in a free country. B - I have a right to all the information I need to make an informed decision about whatever the issue is. That’s democracy, right? If they’re like ‘oh, you’re not allowed to know that,’ really, why am I not? Because I might arrive at a conclusion that’s different from the lies you’re telling me? Actually, I want that information. Fuck. You. ”

Corporate America, on the other hand, would rather distract us with Dylan Mulvaney pretending to be a woman who drinks Bud Light. Corporate America, never known as a bastion of integrity, cannot allow us to hear the plain-speaking of a man like Carlson. They would rather lose billions.

But most of us still recognise, on an instinctual level, when we are being lied to and when we are being told the truth.

The Friday before his show was taken off the air, Carlson gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation. He said:

And once you say one true thing and stick with it, all kinds of other true things occur to you. The truth is contagious. Lying is, but the truth is as well. And the second you decide to tell the truth about something, you are filled with this, I don’t want to get supernatural on you, but you are filled with this power from somewhere else.

Try it. Tell the truth about something. You feel it every day. The more you tell the truth, the stronger you become. That’s completely real. It’s measurable in the way that you feel.

And of course, the opposite is also true. The more you lie, the weaker and more terrified you become. We all know that feeling. You lie about something, and all of a sudden, you’re a prisoner of that lie. You are diminished by it. You are weak and afraid.

For all its vast power, for all its messaging sophistication, for all its skill at creating fear and mistrust in the population, corporate America is now looking very much like a prisoner ensnared by many, many lies.