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6.20.05

Nerd Revenge: Tucker Carlson's New Show Disappoints

By Mark Grueter

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After Tucker Carlson’s dust-up with Jon Stewart last October, I concluded an article on that objectively interesting CNN spectacle with the following:

"Crowd pleasers like Jon Stewart and George W. Bush would have us believe that divisiveness and confrontation (crossfires) are unhealthy for democracy, which is why both assiduously avoid actual debate whenever possible. Instead of engaging opponents, these types of people pander to their audiences. They avoid disputation, complexity, and feed off the same reactionary, trendy energy which permeates our culture. They win on style, not substance, and Jon Stewart is winning big in 2004. It now looks like George W. Bush could do the same.”

Not bad. Not only did I call the election (well…), I also captured the essential flaw of popular faddists like Jon Stewart: they don’t want to argue with anyone or to defend their points; they want to tell you what they think and then smugly walk away as if they’ve just performed an act of public service. Even worse, Stewart’s herd of fans and other associated social climbers celebrated the CNN melee as a Stewart victory and no doubt felt better about themselves for doing so.

An acquaintance of mine recently wrote me an email that took the form of a lecture. It is replete with unsolicited criticisms of my lifestyle, attitude, and behavior (a real doozy - one of those ‘I hate to be the one to tell you this, but someday you’ll thank me’ letters – wait, am I the only one who gets those?). Instead of ingesting The Wisdom, I countered with some pumped up digs of my own. My correspondent was shocked by this insolence and I was made out to be the bad guy for turning the tables on her sermon – a set of views she had pompously and naively assumed were truisms.

Stewart, similarly, thought he could climb off his pedestal, swoop down and tell the lowly boys of Crossfire what’s what (“you’re hurting America”), without ever bothering to make himself available for a conversation or give and take. I really don’t understand the mentality of these sorts of people: they take a dump on your doorstep and expect you to keep silent while they do so? Watch the Stewart-Carlson clip (make sure you watch the whole thing too, because Stewart becomes visibly stumped at the end when he realizes his whole premise - too much crossfire in our culture/not enough pointed questioning – runs the risk of seriously contradicting itself) and notice how every time Stewart gets cornered he panders to the audience by resorting to a comic throwaway line, at which point the issue at stake, as I wrote back then, “gets drowned out by the easy laughter.” Jon Stewart is guiltier of the things he accuses Tucker Carlson of than Carlson is.

Well, at least that’s what I thought. Observe the sequel: Carlson leaves CNN and Crossfire and gets his own show (“The Situation with…” which began last week) on MSNBC. Now he has the chance to break through and put on a real debate show. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Carlson’s not a big fan of “too much” debate and argumentation either. For the entire hour, he surrounds himself with his friends -- the three principals who appear every night are Air America’s Rachel Maddow, sleazy conservative guy Jay Severin, and contrived “contrarian” Max Kellerman -- and they chat their way through every goddamned subject and non-subject that’s in the news that day (you know, “The Corpse of Natalee Holloway Inks Book Deal” – that sort of rubbish). “Quick, quick, quick, quick,” Carlson says in the ad for the show. Indeed. Gore Vidal noted that some talk show hosts used to ask him to explain the meaning of life, just before telling him he has twenty seconds to do so. I don’t encourage the aged relative to tune in to MSNBC any time between 9 and 10pm weekdays.

Because of the ultra-fast pace and because the show goes so far out of the way to avoid unpleasant exchanges (ala Carlson-Stewart), nothing is ever truly probed or explored. How can you shed any light, Tucker, if you purge all the heat?

“The Situation” is dorky; it reeks of an incestuous little affair put on by rich boys from the Yale Club. They complacently sit around and imagine themselves - as they state their typically pre-prepared, “witty” take on a subject - engaged in sophisticated debate. Far too superficial, Carlson and Friends jump to the next subject just as outright disagreement begins to surface on the preceding one. A shame, that. None of the talkers are all that bad (though I think Severin should be dragged out into the street and shot) – it’s largely the set-up that makes the program suffer. Live television can be interesting because of the element of unpredictability and the requirement of improvisation. But Carlson and Friends comes close to wiping out both facets. The three times I watched it, my eyes glazed over about halfway through and I found myself pottering around the room looking for other things to do. And the ratings for the first week reinforce the point: despite all the hype and the great time slot, Carlson’s numbers were notably lower than MSNBC Keith Olbermann’s unfunny show at 8pm and Regular Joe Scarborough’s 10pm show.

I’m still holding out hope for Carlson, who bravely took down both Jon Stewart and more recently Don “Rat Face” Imus, to alter the show and set matters right. He needs to have some guests who will inject a bit of gravity and depth, and even a few people he actively dislikes to spice things up. Carlson is at his best when pressed and provoked, not as emcee of a cable news cocktail hour. Stick to being an unforgiving prick, Tucker, and use that wit of yours to attack the self-righteous, the stupid and the powerful, not crack jokes with your blue-blooded buddies.

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Mark Grueter is the Managing Editor of Me Three. He writes book reviews for Stop Smiling and blogs for Snarksmith. Write to him at grueter@methree.net

© 2005 Me Three