By Dustin Rowles | Politics | July 14, 2020 |
By Dustin Rowles | Politics | July 14, 2020 |
If you haven’t been keeping up with this, CNN unearthed racist, misogynistic, and homophobic blog posts written anonymously on the Internet by Blake Neff, a high-profile writer for Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show who, at one point said that he basically writes the first draft of everything Carlson reads off a teleprompter. Carlson has previously acknowledged as much about the writer, who he originally hired over on his (racist) conservative outlet, The Daily Caller. Neff resigned last Friday, after his blog posts were outed by CNN.
Before we go any further — and so that you know what Tucker Carlson is downplaying — here’s a sampling of what Neff wrote on the underground chat board AutoAdmit:
— He responded, “I wouldn’t get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no,” to the question, “Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?”
— He wrote just last month, “Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down.”
— Likewise, two weeks ago, he wrote, “Honestly given how tired black people always claim to be, maybe the real crisis is their lack of sleep.”
— Over a five year period, Neff mocked and ridiculed and an unidentified woman and her dating life, using “vulgar racist, sexist, and dehumanizing language”
— He joked about “foodie fa**ots,” and called George Floyd a “piece of sh*t”
— He said that The Squad (AOC, et al) would “MAKE YOUR COUNTRY A DUMPING GROUND FOR PEOPLE FROM THIRD WORLD SHITHOLES.”
— He wrote that “once Democrats have the majorities to go full F**K WHITEY, things are going to get really wacky really quickly” and that a “large minority of whites are fully supportive of a F**k Whitey agenda”
— He replied and made jokes on a number of threads with the n-word as the subject headline
You get the idea. Neff is clearly a vile human being, so much so that before he resigned, even Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace condemned his “horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior.”
And what did Tucker Carlson have to say about his long-time writer on last night’s show (rather than on last Friday’s show, after Neff resigned)? He centered the story on Neff’s feelings, “Blake was horrified by the story and he was ashamed.” Was he? Or was he just horrified and ashamed that he was caught?
“It is wrong to attack people for qualities they cannot control,” Carlson said. “In this country, we judge people for what they do, not for how they were born. We often say that because we mean it.” Carlson added that Neff “fell short of that standard,” as though he used a couple too many racist slurs to qualify as an employable human being.
However, Carlson directed his harshest criticism not at Neff, but at the reporters who unearthed Neff’s racist blog posts. “We should also point out to the ghouls now beating their chests and triumph of the destruction of a young man that self-righteousness also has its costs. We are all human. When we pretend we are holy, we are lying. When we pose as blameless in order to hurt other people, we are committing the gravest sin of all and we will be punished for it. There’s no question.”
Carlson behaved as though Neff said a few unfortunate things on a chat board once or twice in his past, rather than the reality: That Neff has been saying these things for years, and as recently as last month. Meanwhile, although Carlson downplayed Neff’s comments, he also tried to distance himself and his show from Neff, saying that his comments have “no connection to the show,” when the reality is — as CNN reported — he often dropped Easter Eggs on Carlson’s show for his friends on the message board.
Let’s not kid ourselves about what Carlson said or didn’t say: Tucker Carlson hired and promoted Blake Neff because he is a white supremacist, because Tucker Carlson is himself a white supremacist. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. Last night’s display was of one racist distancing himself from the views of another racist just enough to keep his job, so that he can continue to espouse his racist views on a very large platform.
“I think his show is very close to what his writer, Blake Neff, was doing, apparently anonymously for five years,” Soledad O’Brien told NPR. Carlson is “anti-immigrant, he’s frequently racist. He says despicable things about women, he says despicable things about Asians. He says despicable things about Latinos. He talks about the kind of people who ‘hate’ America.”
But will Tucker Carlson keep his job? Maybe. Because Tucker Carlson — who has been hemorrhaging advertisers on what is nevertheless the highest rated news show on cable — also said that he would be taking a “long-planned” vacation, which is what all the Fox News personalities say before ducking out amid controversies. One of those anchors, Bill O’Reilly, never came back. It’s unclear what Tucker Carlson’s long-term fate will be, and Fox News will have to decide whether his ratings — despite the lack of ad dollars — are worth the headache and continued blow to the Fox News “brand,” which is “racist, misogynistic, and homophobic, but slightly less blatant about it.”