Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson
(born May 16, 1969) is an American political news correspondent and commentator for the Fox News Channel. He is a senior fellow for the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. [1]
He formerly co-hosted CNN's Crossfire
and MSNBC's Tucker
.
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TUCKER CARLSON TICKETS
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Family and education
Tucker Carlson is the elder son of Richard Warner Carlson, a former Los Angeles news anchor and U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles who was a president of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting and director of
Voice of America.
[2] His mother is Patricia Caroline Swanson (born 1945), former wife of Howard Feldman and an heiress to the
Swanson food-conglomerate fortune.
[3] He has a brother, Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson.
[4] [5] A great-uncle was Sen.
J. William Fulbright.
He attended
St. George's School, a
boarding school in
Middletown,
Rhode Island. After graduation, he majored in history at the private
liberal arts Trinity College in
Hartford,
Connecticut. Carlson says of his time there: "After four years I had met a lot of interesting people, gone to a couple of classes and restored a motorcycle and that was it. And so I wasted my time at college."
[6]
Journalism career
Carlson began his
journalism career as a member of the editorial staff of
Policy Review
, a national
conservative journal then published by the
Heritage Foundation (and since acquired by the
Hoover Institution). He later worked as a reporter at the regionally influential
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
newspaper in
Little Rock, Arkansas.
Carlson most recently served as host of the MSNBC program
Tucker
, which was canceled on March 10, 2008. Carlson joined MSNBC in February 2005 from CNN, where he was the youngest anchor in the history of the network. While with CNN, he hosted a number of shows and specials, including the network’s political debate program,
Crossfire
. During the same period, Carlson also hosted a weekly public affairs program on
PBS,
Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered
. As a magazine and newspaper journalist, Carlson has reported from around the world, most recently from
Iraq and
Lebanon. He has been a columnist for
New York
and
Reader's Digest
. He currently writes for
Esquire
,
The Weekly Standard
,
The New Republic
and
The New York Times Magazine
and
The Daily Beast
.
Autobiography discusses false rape allegation
In 2003, Carlson authored an autobiography,
Politicians, Partisans and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News
, about his television news experiences. One of the book's revelations was Carlson's description of how he was falsely accused of raping a woman he did not know. Carlson wrote in the book that the incident was emotionally
traumatic and strengthened his belief in the presumption of innocence, particularly on allegations of a sexual nature.
National television career
CNN and PBS shows
Carlson got his television start in 2000 as co-host of
The Spin Room
opposite
Bill Press. He later was appointed co-host of
Crossfire
, where he represented the political
right. He also previously hosted PBS's
Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered
from 2004 to 2005.
2004 confrontation with Comedy Central's Jon Stewart
One of Carlson's most memorable appearances on
Crossfire
was his heated exchange with
Jon Stewart, host of
The Daily Show,
prior to the
2004 presidential election. Stewart criticized the format of shows like
Crossfire,
calling Carlson and co-host
Paul Begala "partisan hacks," and asked them to "stop hurting America."
Carlson countered by criticizing Stewart's July 2004 interview with then U.S. Presidential candidate
John Kerry. He accused Stewart of "sniffing Kerry's throne" and "not asking tough questions." Stewart replied, contextualizing his own show as a comedic rather than informational venue, "I didn't realize that [...] the news organizations look to
Comedy Central for their cues on integrity." After Carlson told Stewart "I think you're more fun on your show," Stewart replied by saying: "You know what's interesting though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show."
[7]
After their televised confrontation, Carlson recalls, Stewart "stayed at CNN several hours after the show to discuss the issues that he raised on the air." "He (Stewart) needed to do this," Carlson said.
[8]
In January 2005, CNN announced they were ending their relationship with Carlson and would soon cancel
Crossfire
.
[9] [10] CNN chief
Jonathan Klein told Carlson on January 4, 2005, that the network had decided not to renew his contract.
[11] Carlson, however, claims he had already resigned from CNN and
Crossfire
long before Stewart was booked as a guest, telling host
Patricia Duff: "I resigned from
Crossfire
in April, many months before Jon Stewart came on our show, because I didn't like the partisanship, and I thought in some ways it was kind of a pointless conversation... each side coming out, you know, [raises fists] 'Here's my argument,' and no one listening to anyone else. [CNN] was a frustrating place to work."
[12]
MSNBC's Tucker
Carlson's early evening show,
Tucker
, premiered June 13, 2005 on
MSNBC. (The original title was
The Situation with Tucker Carlson
.) The show lasted less than three seasons; the network announced its cancellation due to low ratings on
March 10,
2008.
[13] Many critics had called him an "
MSNBC conservative."
[14] The final episode aired on
March 14,
2008.
Carlson had also hosted a late afternoon weekday wrap-up for MSNBC during the
2006 Winter Olympics, during which he attempted to learn how to play various Olympic sports. In July 2006, he reported live for
Tucker
from
Haifa,
Israel, during the
2006 Lebanon War between Israel and
Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. While in the
Middle East, he also hosted
MSNBC Special Report: Mideast Crisis.
He appeared regularly on
Verdict with Dan Abrams
as a panelist in political discussions.
Fox News Channel
On May 16, 2009 Carlson was introduced as a member of the 'Fox Family' while appearing on the
Fox & Friends Weekend
edition with no mention what he would be doing for the network.
Political views
Partisan ambivalence
Carlson has stated that while he votes, and cares deeply about conservative ideas, he does not care about the success or failure of any political party. In addition, his definitions of conservative views often conflict with the mainstream opinion.
Carlson has stated that U.S. President
George W. Bush is not a true conservative. Despite his general reputation as a political conservative, this and other views have been interpreted as partisan ambivalence by some
Republican political figures and movement conservatives.
[15]
In an August 27, 2004
Washington Post
interview, Carlson expressed his "displeasure with Bush." "Why do so many anti-war
liberals give Kerry a pass when he adopts the Bush view on Iraq, as he has? The amount of team-playing on the left depresses me."
[16] Carlson did not vote in the 2004 election, citing his disgust with the
Iraq War and his disillusionment with the once small-government Republican party.
"I don't know what you consider conservative," Carlson said, "but I'm not much of a liberal, at least as the word is currently defined. For instance, I'm utterly opposed to
abortion, which I think is horrible and cruel. I think
affirmative action is wrong. I'd like to slow
immigration pretty dramatically. I hate all
nanny state regulations, such as
seat belt laws and
smoking bans. I'm not for big government. I think the U.S. ought to hesitate before intervening abroad. I think these are conservative impulses. So by my criteria, Bush isn't much of a conservative."
Conservative Republicans have accused Carlson of not being sufficiently conservative. This first began following Carlson's public and private endorsement of 2000 Presidential candidate
John McCain. Speaking to
Salon.com, Carlson responded:
"I liked McCain. And I would have voted for McCain for president happily, not because I agree with his politics; I never took McCain's politics seriously enough even to have strong feelings about them. I don't think McCain has very strong politics. He's interested in ideas almost as little as George W. Bush is. McCain isn't intellectual, and doesn't have a strong ideology at all. He's wound up sort of as a liberal Republican because he's mad at other Republicans, not because he's a liberal." [17]
1999 Bush interview
In 1999, during the 2000 Republican Presidential primary race, Carlson interviewed George W. Bush, then
Governor of Texas, for
Talk magazine.
Carlson reported that Bush mocked soon-to-be-executed Texas
Death Row inmate
Karla Faye Tucker and "cursed like a sailor." Bush's communications director
Karen Hughes publicly disputed this claim.
Asked by Salon about the response to his article on Bush, Carlson characterized it as "very, very hostile. The reaction was: You betrayed us. Well, I was never there as a partisan to begin with. Then I heard that (on the
campaign bus, Bush communications director) Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost
Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard—that I watched her hear—she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane. I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness. They get carried away, consultants do, in the heat of the campaign, they're really invested in this. A lot of times they really like the candidate. That's all conventional. But on some level, you think, there's a hint of recognition that there is reality—even if they don't recognize reality exists—there is an objective truth. With Karen you didn't get that sense at all. A lot of people like her. A lot of people I know like her. I'm not one of them."
Supporting, then opposing, the U.S. war in Iraq
Carlson initially supported the U.S. war with Iraq during its first year. After a year, he began criticizing the war, telling the
New York Observer
: "I think it’s a total nightmare and disaster, and I’m ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it. It’s something I’ll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who’s smarter than I am, and I shouldn’t have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I’m enraged by it, actually."
[18]
Critique of Norquist
Carlson has also been a critic of conservative activist
Grover Norquist, calling him a "mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep...an embarrassing anomaly, the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home...[he] is repulsive, granted, but there aren't nearly enough of him to start a purge trial."
[19] According to
American Politics Journal,
Carlson went a step further, characterizing Norquist as a "buffoon commissar who has misplaced his principles to the extent of accepting money to
lobby on behalf of the
Marxist government of the Seychelles."
[20]
Confrontations between Carlson and Norquist escalated, with Carlson dismissing Norquist's weekly conservative movement meetings as events "where conservative-movement activists, political strategists, Congressional staffers, and conservative journalists who are deemed loyal from magazines and newspapers like
National Review
and
The Washington Times
gather to hash out the GOP party line." Carlson then wrote a critical profile of Norquist.
In a move rumored by
Beltway insiders to have been retaliation for the profile, Norquist tried to persuade media
mogul Rupert Murdoch to abandon financial support for the
Weekly Standard,
for which Carlson was a writer. Author
David Brock alleged Carlson told him that then-U.S. House Speaker
Newt Gingrich became involved in the feud, and that Carlson's job was endangered. Norquist has since denied using such tactics with Carlson, although he has admitted telephoning Murdoch insider
Eric Breindel to discuss "alleged inaccuracies in Carlson's piece."
As
MC for the
Campaign for Liberty's
Rally for the Republic, Tucker introduced Grover Norquist.
[21]
Defending Rainbow Warrior
bombing
Carlson drew criticism from
Greenpeace in July 2005 after stating that he supported the
French government's 1985
bombing of the Greenpeace ship
Rainbow Warrior
in a
New Zealand port to prevent it from interfering with a scheduled
nuclear test. Following the bombing, the ship sank, resulting in the drowning of a Greenpeace photographer and creating an international scandal. Carlson called the operation "a bold and good thing to do" on his MSNBC show,
[22] and said that it was "vandalism," not terrorism, because "it wasn't intended to kill anyone."
[23]
Canada, the "retarded cousin"
Carlson has also made controversial remarks about
Canada, describing Canadians as being very "brittle." "Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in
New York," he has said. "Canada is a sweet country. It is like your
retarded cousin you see at
Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he's nice but you don't take him seriously. That's Canada."
[24] Carlson later appeared on
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's
CBC News: The Hour,
saying that while he had "nothing against Canada" his description accurately reflected how "a lot of Americans see you."
Gay marriage
On July 24, 2007, Carlson said on his show, "I'm just for marriage generally. I'm for people making a lifelong commitment. Do you know what I mean? I'm not against gay marriage, actually, and I'm the most right-wing person I know."
[25] Carlson later went on to say, "I think, marriage has been a great thing for me, and I think it's a really civilizing force, and I think it would be a civilizing force for gay people too."
Libertarianism
On May 3, 2007, Carlson interviewed Republican presidential candidate
Ron Paul and recalled voting for Paul in 1988 when he was running as the
Libertarian Party presidential candidate.
[26]
On November 20, 2007, Carlson was seen showing his support at a Ron Paul rally in
Reno, Nevada.
On November 26, 2007, it was reported that Carlson lobbied Nevada brothel owner
Dennis Hof to support Paul's candidacy. Explained Carlson, "Dennis Hof is a good friend of mine, so when we got to Nevada, I decided to call him up and see if he wanted to come check this guy out."
[27]
On September 2, 2008, Carlson participated in Ron Paul's
Campaign for Liberty Rally for the Republic in
Minneapolis, MN, as the first speaker to introduce the rally and also acted as the
MC by introducing nearly every guest speaker.
On February 23, 2009, Carlson was introduced as a senior fellow for the
Cato Institute.
[28]
SIRIUS Satellite appearances
Carlson also appears as a regular weekly guest on the
Bubba the Love Sponge
radio show on Bubbas Terrestrial Radio morning show and on
SIRIUS Satellite Radio on
Howard 101, every Tuesday at either 4:30 p.m. (ET) or 5:00 p.m. (ET). Tucker Carlson appeared on the
Bubba the Love Sponge
show at 9:00 a.m. (ET) on Friday August 24,2007. Carlson took a Bubba phrase "Cancel Christmas, Kitchen Closed" to the air in late February 2008 while talking to the Hillary Clinton campaign manager, saying that Hillary was basically out of the race for President.
Bow ties
On April 11, 2006, Carlson—who was known for wearing
bow-ties—announced on his MSNBC show that he would no longer be wearing a bow-tie, adding, "I just decided I wanted to give my neck a break. A little change is good once in a while, and I feel better already."
[29] He now wears neckties on the air.
Dancing with the Stars
On August 14, 2006, the
ABC television network announced that Carlson would be a participant in its Fall 2006
Dancing with the Stars
reality show.
Carlson reportedly took four-hour-a-day
ballroom dance classes in preparation for the competition, and mourned "missed classes" during an MSNBC assignment in Lebanon.
[30] "It's hard for me to remember the moves," he stated.
When asked why he accepted ABC's invitation to perform, Carlson responded, "I'm not defending it as the smartest choice, but I think it's the most interesting. I think if you sat back and tried to plan my career, you might not choose this. But my only criterion is the interest level. I want to lead an interesting life." He concluded, "I'm 37. I've got four kids. I have a steady job. I don't do things that I'm not good at very often. I'm psyched to get to do that."
The gambling site BetBet placed Carlson's odds of winning the competition at 15:1.
[31] Jerry Springer was ranked as having the longest odds of winning, at 30:1.
Carlson was voted off on September 13. His performance on the previous night was the lowest ranked among the judges; the low score resulted from him spending much of the performance sitting down in a chair.
At the close of the show Carlson said that teaching him to dance was "like Einstein teaching addition to a slow child."
[32]
CBS game show
In April 2007, the entertainment publication
Variety
reported that Carlson would host a game show pilot for
CBS titled
Do You Trust Me?
.
[33] According to a May 2007
Variety
article, the show has been picked up for a six episode run
[34] with Carlson as host. It is unknown at this point if CBS plans to actually air the program.
Criticism
Carlson was ranked 93rd in the 2006 book
101 People Who Are Really Screwing America
(ISBN 1-56025-875-6), by author Jack Huberman.
On the conservative
Media Research Center-owned blog "Newsbusters", Carlson was called an "MSNBC conservative" explaining that: "Carlson is clearly the kind of conservative MSNBC could love - one who doesn't support the incumbent Republican president and opposes the cornerstone of his
foreign policy. It's the same phenomenon that explains
Pat Buchanan's ubiquity on MSNBC."
[35]
On air admission
On
MSNBC Live
, on August 28, 2007, Carlson told host
Dan Abrams that as a teenager, he and a friend physically assaulted an apparently
homosexual man who allegedly grabbed Carlson in a public restroom in
Georgetown in
Washington, D.C. As Carlson explained, "I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the -- you know, and grabbed him, and...hit him against the stall with his head, actually.... And then the cops came and arrested him."
[36] [37]
In the initial exchange, Carlson only described the man as having "bothered him" in the restroom. A day later, Carlson described the incident in a statement to
Media Matters for America, which had reported on the exchange, writing:
In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men's room in Washington, D.C. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men's room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.
Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That's absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn't angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.
In multiple later airings of the August 28, 2007 episode of
MSNBC Live
, Carlson's comments about the 1980s incident were omitted.
[38] After Carlson justified his behaviors with his second statement, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (
GLAAD) and Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (
GLSEN) expressed outrage and called on Carlson and MSNBC to apologize for "remarks that appear to condone violent assault" against gay people.
[39] [40]
Grateful Dead
He stated in August 2006 on MSNBC's
Tucker
that he is an ardent fan of
Grateful Dead and late Grateful Dead guitarist and songwriter
Jerry Garcia, and says that he has attended more than 50 of the Grateful Dead's shows. This puts him in the company of fellow conservative pundit
Ann Coulter,
[41] actor and social activist
Edward Norton, and United States Senator and former
Saturday Night Live cast member
Al Franken, all of whom also profess to being "
Deadheads."
References
- Tucker Carlson Joins the Cato Institute - Cato Institute: Pressroom
- Council of American Ambassadors > Members > Richard W. Carlson
- David Harris, "Swanson Saga: End of a Dream", The New York Times, 9 September 1979
- "Weddings: Melissas Price, Buckley Carlson", The New York Times, 8 June 1997
- Melissa Price, Buckley Carlson - The
- Trin's Tucker Carlson '92 Dances With The Stars - Trinity Tripod, the official student newspaper of Trinity College
- Jon Stewart on Crossfire - Viral Videos - SPIKE Powered By IFILM
- http://msl1.mit.edu/furdlog/docs/nytimes/2004-10-24_nytimes_damien_cave.pdf
- Jon Stewart's Wish Fulfilled; 'Crossfire' to Stop 'Hurting America'
- CNN Will Cancel 'Crossfire' and Cut Ties to Commentator, ''New York Times''. Published January 6, 2005. Last retrieved March 16, 2009.
- CBC.ca Arts - CNN lets Tucker Carlson go{{dead link|date=August 2009}}
- {{dead link|date=August 2009}}
- David Gregory Replaces Tucker Carlson on MSNBC Evening Shift
- MSNBC Cancels Tucker Carlson Show
- Tucker Carlson - Media Matters{{dead link|date=August 2009}}
- Republican Convention: Tucker Carlson (washingtonpost.com)
- "You burn out fast when you demagogue" - Salon.com
- LP: Newly Dovish, Tucker Carlson Goes Public (Tucker Carlson turns against the war)
- Right-Wing Journalism - By Tucker Carlson and David Brock - Slate Magazine
- American Politics Journal - Why Grover Norquist Might Go to Jail
- Rally%20for%20the%20Republic
- 'The Situation with Tucker Carlson' for July 15 - Tucker - MSNBC.com
- Passacantando and Carlson Talk
- edmontonsun.com - Election - Canada called 'retarded cousin'{{dead link|date=August 2009}}
- 'Tucker' for July 24 - Tucker - MSNBC.com
- All Ron Paul: Transcript: Tucker Carlson interviews Ron Paul on MSNBC before the May 3 debate
- [1]{{Dead link|date=March 2008}}
- Tucker Carlson Joins the Cato Institute
- "The Situation with Tucker Carlson" for April 11
- Names & Faces
- wikinews:Mario Lopez favored to win Dancing with the Stars
- Tuck Neverlasting
- Carlson to host CBS gameshow pilot - Entertainment News, TV News, Media - Variety
- CBS puts 'Trust' in gameshow - Entertainment News, TV News, Media - Variety
- MSNBC Conservative: Carlson Didn't Vote For Bush, May Not Support 2008 GOP Candidate
- MSNBC's Tucker Carlson Recounts Assault
- MSNBC Live
- Re-airing Abrams/Carlson segment, MSNBC left out part where Carlson admitted assault
- Glaad: Glaad Calls On Tucker Carlson, Msnbc To Apologize For Insensitive Remarks Condoning Violence{{dead link|date=August 2009}}
- GLSEN Outraged by MSNBC Host Tucker Carlson's Comments About Assaulting Gay Man
- Features