So on last night’s show, Tucker Carlson opened the program with this nearly 17-and-a-half minute rant, which I’m going to transcribe for you, because I love y’all so much, and because I apparently don’t get nearly enough punishment…
You can watch the segment here, if you like, or just read the transcription:
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Good evening and welcome to Tucker Carlson, happy Friday. In your head, you always imagine the revolution, when it starts, will start with tanks and gunfire. With chaos and soldiers on the street. You’ll know when it comes! But it never does. Instead, the really big changes to American life, the profound ones that affect all of us, forever, those changes almost always begin quietly, with gentle pleas for “tolerance.”
Me: Yes, because tolerance is teh evul!
TUCKER CARLSON (ANTI-TOLERANCE): “We’d like to do things a little differently,” they tell you. “We’d like to make a change to some custom or belief that people have been attached to for the last few thousand years. But don’t be alarmed! It’s not a big deal! You don’t even have to participate. All we ask is you let us live the way we want to live.” That’s always the pitch. And of course you always we agree with it. Why wouldn’t you? Who could say “no” to that? Some guy down the street wants to wear a dress? Okay. Fine. Have a party. It doesn’t affect you. You don’t have to wear a dress. So go ahead. Live and let live.
Me: That’s the wind-up. Now the pitch…
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): But it turns out that’s never actually the deal. The guy down the street wears his dress, but after a while, that’s not enough for him. He’s still angry. And for some reason, he’s angry with you. And that doesn’t make sense, because you’re the person who had no problem with him wearing a dress in the first place. What did you do wrong?
Me: Tuned into Tucker Carlson, that’s what.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Well, the problem is you’re not wearing a dress.
Me: Oh, of course. Because this is where Tucker takes us into a fairytale land where everyone has to wear dresses. Which is the worst thing that can happen to manly alpha men like Tucker and everyone else on the right. Just ask that Nick Adams guy…
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): And neither are your kids. Your normal-person clothes, the ones you’ve always worn are suddenly immoral.
Me: Um… the stupid, disingenuous “argument” here is… um… yeah. This is gonna be about trans people, isn’t it?
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): You’ve gotta change, immediately! “Whoa, wait a second,” you say. “That’s not what we agreed to. You do your thing and I do mine. Remember?” (chuckles) They don’t remember. They don’t care. That’s not how this works. You don’t get to do your thing anymore. The dress guy’s in charge now.
Me: So… um… we went from a guy wanting to wear a dress to apparently he’s installed himself as potentate who gets to tell everyone what to do. Without even bothering to get himself elected to be in charge first. Yeah, all this sounds really plausible.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Everybody’s gotta do his thing, the dress thing.
Me: So a random guy in your neighborhood can now dictate to everyone a dress code. (Get it?) Again, yeah, this seems real plausible.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Or face punishment. That’s how it goes.
Me: Is this the most ridiculous sophist argument you’ve ever heard?
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): “Be tolerant,” becomes “Show some respect!” which evolves very quickly into “Bow down before us and lick our feet or we’ll hurt you.”
Me: Is it just me, or does this sound eerily like that Russian propaganda clip that was being posted around on Twitter a few days ago, about a Russian family on a plane heading for America?
At least now we know for sure where Tucker gets his talking points from…
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): That’s the final stage. That’s where we are now.
Me: Really? Are we really at the stage where we have to bow down and lick anyone’s feet? Or is this all a bunch of fearmongering hot air from a Russian shill?
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): For example, a democratic lawmaker from Virginia called Elizabeth Guzman is introducing a bill that will charge parents with a felony, strip them of their employment, and imprison them if they don’t wholeheartedly endorse their minor children’s sex changes.
Me: How many of you would be shocked if I told you that’s not what’s in the bill?
I worked in Child Protective Services and know 1st-hand how often LGBTQ+ kids are subjected to physical & mental abuse simply because of who they are. Many LGBTQ+ youth are kicked out of the home & become homeless if they are outed to their parents. 2/
— Elizabeth Guzman (@guzman4virginia) October 14, 2022
Children are scared. Governor Youngkin and Republicans are putting LGBTQ kids at serious risk of harm and homelessness by encouraging schools to out children to their parents. 4/
— Elizabeth Guzman (@guzman4virginia) October 14, 2022
Why did I do this interview? Why didn’t I hide from a story that could have been (and was) twisted to misrepresent what was an anti-abuse bill? Why didn't I play it safe and stay silent when presented an opportunity to talk about LGBTQ+ issues? 6/
— Elizabeth Guzman (@guzman4virginia) October 14, 2022
I have spent my career fighting to support families and keep all children safe – as a social worker, mother to four children, and CASA child advocate. I will not let my record be distorted by anyone and I will always stand up to Republican attacks against our children. 8/8
— Elizabeth Guzman (@guzman4virginia) October 14, 2022
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): So your 12-year-old daughter says she wants a vasectomy.
Me: Um… this is already going off the rails. Do we really want to finish this transcript? Let me know in the comments below if I should’ve stopped at this point…
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): If you object to that in any way, if you raise questions, Elizabeth Guzman will send you to jail.
Me: No, she won’t.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): For real.
Me: Not for real. Not even close to for real.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Here’s a local news report.
Me: I’m going to link to the report myself so you can see it in its entirety without any cherry picking. You can then compare what the report says with what Guzman says in her twitter thread and decide for yourselves who’s playing straight and who isn’t.
VIDEO FROM A NEWS REPORT
WJLA REPORTER: Her bill would expand the state’s definition of child abuse and neglect to include parents who do not affirm their child’s gender identity or sexual orientation.
GUZMAN: There is an investigation also in place that is not only from a social worker but there’s also a police investigation before we make the decision that there’s going to be a CPS charge.
WJLA REPORTER: What could the penalties be? You know, the investigation concludes, and it’s concluded that a parent is not affirming of their LGBTQ child, what could the consequences be?
GUZMAN: Well, we first have to have an investigation. You know it could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor. But we know a CPS charge could harm, you know, your employment, could harm your education.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS
Me: I’ll make the point in case you didn’t follow any links, that Guzman’s bill is in response to Gov. Youngkins’ position that schools would basically out trans kids to their parents. She’s concerned that such a situation could lead to a child being thrown out of the house by the parent, or the child attempting suicide. We can argue over whether or not her bill can prevent such tragedies or not, but Carlson isn’t even playing fair with the facts at hand. Which is his typical modus operandi.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): So who is this Elizabeth Guzman?
Me: We’ve apparently reached the part of the clip where the witch will be culled from the rest and held up for public attack.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Well, Elizabeth Guzman came to this country not so long ago, from Peru, as a single mother.
Me: IOW, she’s one of those scary brown people he’s always fearmongering about to his old and white audience. For the record, she came here as a single mom to one daughter over 20 years ago, according to her campaign website bio.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Now, rather than wait a while, maybe spend a few generations here before telling you how to raise your children in America, she’s decided to get right to it and completely change child-rearing in this country in a way that would never be tolerated for a second in the country from which she comes.
Me: The hard turn to racism should’ve been expected, but gee, this is difficult to listen to. Also, again, she’s been here over twenty years and has worked as a social worker. It’s not like she just arrived and decided to change things to suit her own whims.
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Try that in the Andes, honey, and see how that works.
Me: And now he adds in a bit of misogyny. Classy.
I’m just going to link to my first Snark Attack post way back in January, which featured Tucker Carlson making the argument that it’s republicans, not democrats, who want immigrants to come here, get an education, and get a good job. But only if they vote republican, right, Tucker?
BTW, this is his expression right after he says that:
Has there ever been a face more eloquently begging to be punched?
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Yeah. But in this country, according to Elizabeth Guzman, you have to affirm your child’s sex change or else you’re going to prison. And the State will raise your kids.
Me: Hold up there, Tucker. She didn’t say anything about affirming a child’s sex change, only their gender identity. But it’s not as though you’re going to let a little thing like specifics or facts get in the way of your narrative, right?
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): Now you gotta think, maybe they’ve wanted this for a while. What would this mean? Well, it would mean fewer intact families.
Me: Oh good grief. This is seriously going off the rails here…
TUCKER CARLSON (SOPHIST): It would mean people like Elizabeth Guzman make decisions, the meaningful decisions within your house. It means less resistance from you. It means more power for them. What it doesn’t mean is that Elizabeth Guzman will be protecting your kids. She doesn’t even claim this law will protect your kids.
Me: Go back and read her third tweet in that thread. She specifically says: “The 2020 bill was a child safety bill that would have simply protected children from ‘physical or mental injury on the basis of the child’s gender identity or sexual orientation.'”
Yet now Tucker is arguing it has nothing to do with protecting children. Gee, I wonder what he’s going to tell us it’s really about…
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): Instead, she acknowleges the whole point is to “educate parents.”
Me: OMG!!!! That bitch!
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): Right. So, like the Covid vaccine–
Me: Wait, wut? How did we go from his racist diatribe about Elizabeth Guzman’s bill to the Covid vaccine? There’s more than 12 minutes left of this, too…
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): –this is a pretty easy way to see who’s on which side.
Me: Yes, the stupid, racist, misogynistic know-nothings are on Tucker’s side.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): Are you for this? Okay, you’re on our team. You’re willing to surrender control of your own children to Elizabeth Guzman, who, again, just got here.
Me: Over 20 years ago. But, sure. She “just got here.” 🙄
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): But if you’re not for it, then we know you’re not on our team. We know who you are. We can silence you. We can punish you, because you refuse to be educated.
Me: Playing on his audience’s paranoia and feeding their distrust of education. Nice.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): So it’s a signalling mechanism. And you know that, because the ideology underlies, gender ideology, is completely incoherent. It doesn’t make any sense at all. It is not rooted in science; it’s a form of religion that’s so crazy, it dares you to say something about it. What? You can’t even say that. If you do, they know you’re on the other side. And it’s not just lunatics and ideologues like Elizabeth Guzman from Peru.
Me: I’m about to tap out. Seriously, there’s still 12 minutes of this bullshit, and he’s already reached the point where he’s calling her and others “lunatics.”
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): It’s doctors, it’s medical professionals.
Me: Once again attacking experts because clearly they don’t know what they’re talking about. They just deal with children with gender dysphoria every day is all…
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): Here’s a video from Boston Children’s Hospital–
Me: Because they haven’t attacked this facility enough yet. I guess the bomb scare didn’t give them enough of a destructive thrill…
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): –one of the most famous hospitals in the world–which like many hospitals in the United States at this point, under the Joe Biden administration–
Me: Because they weren’t offering gender-affirming care when Trump was in office! (Even though they were…)
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): –cuts the breasts off of minor girls for no medically justifiable reason.
Me: Except there is one. It might not be one you approve of, but there is one.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): Watch a practicing psychologist, attending psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital explain how early children can become trans.
VIDEO CLIP PLAYS
KERRY MCGREGOR, PsyD.: So most of the patients that we have in the GeMS clinic actually know their gender usually around the age of puberty; but a good portion of children do know as early as, seemingly, from the womb. And they will usually express their gender identity as very young chidren, some as soon as they can talk, they may say phrases such as, “I’m a girl” or “I’m a boy” or “I’m going to be a woman,” or “I’m going to be a mom.” Kids know very, very early. So in the GeMS clinic we see a variety of young children, all the way down to ages two or three and usually up to the age of nine.
END OF CLIP
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): So that’s Kerry McGregor. She’s a “psychologist.” (He used fingers to indicate the quotations) She works at Harvard. I wonder how many children does Kerry McGregor have? Has she raised a lot of kids? Has she watched kids carefully?
Me: One would think as a trained psychologist who works with children, the answer to that last question would be “yes.”
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): Does she know anything about kids?
Me: Probably far more than you do, Tucker.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): ‘Cause she’s telling you that if your little kid says, “Oh, maybe I’m the other sex,” that means your kid is the other sex. Well, that’s insane, because almost a hundred percent of kids at one point or another, at a certain point in development, say things like, “I think I’m a boy. I think I’m a girl.”
Me: OMG. If your child says that once or twice it’s just a development thing. If they say it repeatedly over months or years, then maybe there’s a real gender dysphoria issue that needs to be addressed. It’s not like the kid says it once and they’re taken to Boston Children’s Hospital to immediately have their breasts cut off.
We still have ten-and-a-half minutes of this…
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): And you smile indulgently. Get back to me in fifteen years. But no, says Kerry McGregor. In the womb you can know.
Me: She says “seemingly from the womb.” Meaning it’s so far back the kid can’t remember not feeling like they didn’t fit their gender. Apparently metaphor is hard for Tucker. Or his audience. Or both…
This is what’s on the screen now:
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): So think about what they’re telling you. They’re telling you the developing child in the womb is just a part of the mother; therefore, you can abort that child at any time, it’s like an appendectomy. But at the same time, that same cluster of cells, that fetus, can also be woke.
Me: What Tucker is really talking about here isn’t trans, it’s individuals who are intersex, i.e., someone who doesn’t easily fall into the male/female box of identity. They may have genitals of both sexes; they may not fit down at the chromosome level. And, traditionally, these people have been assigned a sex at birth. You can read more at the link.
These aren’t children who simply express a feeling that “I’m a boy, not a girl” but who are physically different from the sex they’re being raised as.
So the surgeries and treatments given these children at places like Boston Children’s Hospital aren’t being done on a whim, but to address an issue they have had, yes, since they were a fetus.
What Tucker and the right are getting their panties in a bunch about is something that has absolutely nothing to do with them. Nobody is coming for their kids to give them gender reassignment surgeries or treatments. Nobody is going to force them and their kids to wear the dress. But, hey. They wouldn’t be fearmongering shit-stirrers if they weren’t riling up their base with nonsense, now, would they?
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): And ascribed to left liberal gender ideology, and you need to honor that.
Me: Yeah, I just explained that. No, it’s not about ideology; it’s about biology down at the level of the chromosome.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): So no sane person could believe any of this voluntarily. It doesn’t even make sense on its face.
Me: You’re right, Tucker. The way you’re explaining this doesn’t make sense. It’s also a mischaracterization. (I’m trying to be charitable here, even though he doesn’t deserve it.) If you’d educate yourself (OMG! I said he needed to be educated!), you might see how treating children for their gender dysphoria is necessary. Also, as stated in the link on intersex I shared, the medical community is starting to hold off on surgeries for intersex and allowing the child to decide how they want to live with their situation. Some might opt for some kind of surgery. Others might end up opting to do nothing and simply embrace their entire self. The old-fashioned way of dealing with intersexuality has been to lop things off while the child is a minor.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): Again, it’s a religion.
Me: No, it’s not.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): And if you resist it, they resort immediately to force.
Me: No, they don’t. Nobody’s gonna make you or your kid get a sex change operation, Tucker.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): No questions allowed. Now, again, this is science. And the essence of science is relentless questioning about what you think you know is true. That is the scientific method. That’s science itself.
Me: You know who isn’t questioning his assumptions here? Tucker Carlson. He’s also not encouraging his audience to question their assumptions, either. They already have their answers: men are men; women are woman, and there’s nothing other than those two boxes. Sorry, but that’s not true, and even people my age have been aware that there are people born with both sets (in whole or in part) of reproductive parts.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): But it’s no longer allowed. The American Medical Association, which has utterly beclowned itself, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Children’s Hospital Association just sent a letter to the Attorney General of the United States demanding that the Biden Administration, and we’re quoting, “Take swift action to investigate and prosecute high profile users on social media who have engaged in quote, ‘disinformation.'”
Me: He doesn’t offer any more context than that, so who knows what came before and after that sentence.
TUCKER CARLSON (DISINGENUOUS GASBAG): (evil chuckling) You hate to always invoke the German government of eighty years ago, but what else is that? That’s totalitarian.
Me: OMG. Seriously. I want to kill myself right now. This has gone beyond stupid. What’s the word for that? There really needs to be one.
TUCKER CARLSON (SHIT-STIRRING GASBAG): They’re saying if you disagree with what we’re doing, people with guns should come and take you away.
Me: If they were really saying that, Tucker, you would’ve been carted off a long time ago.
TUCKER CARLSON (SHIT-STIRRING GASBAG): Now you’d think someone in the media would point out, “Wow! We, we can’t have that in the United States, where people are free, to believe what they want, and to talk about it in public. And to ask questions. In fact, they should be encouraged to.” But the media don’t say anything like that.
Me: Have you noticed how this entire rant (and we have about 8 minutes and 45 seconds left) has thrown in everything except the kitchen sink? We had hating on uppity brown foreigners, hating on people who tell us we need to be better at handling trans/intersex children, hating on abortion, hating on educated professionals, and now he’s thrown in hating on the media. And the entire reason for his rant is because he doesn’t understand what being intersex is. And rather than learn, he’s smugly satisfied to sit in judgment of others and insist to his audience how wrong all these others are, and how right he and the political right are on this and every other issue. Fuck him with a rusty rake. Sideways.
TUCKER CARLSON (SHIT-STIRRING GASBAG): They’re joining with the Children’s Hospital Association, the AMA to call for more censorship at gunpoint. Watch.
VIDEO CLIP PLAYS
MSNBC REPORTER: Obviously the question becomes then, when misinformation/disinformation is being spread, when hate and threats are being spread, where are the social media companies? What’s YouTube doing? What’s Twitter doing? And then, of course, you have the reaction to that. “Oh, this is Big Tech silencing people.” It always becomes a debate about free speech, doesn’t it?
BRANDY ZADROZNY: Yeah, it does. You know, last week Twitter suspended Libs of TikTok, specifically for the policy of the promotion of threats, violence, and harrassment. So, great job, right? Um, but, it’s been seven days and Libs of TikTok is back now and they’re tweeting this very minute. This is violence. This is harrassment. It’s clear what these accounts are doing.
VIDEO ENDS
TUCKER CARLSON (SHIT-STIRRING GASBAG): (laughing) It’s so funny, back to the point of opening, when the revolution comes, there won’t be tanks and soldiers. There won’t be stormtroopers and uniforms, and symbols. It’ll be some unmarried, thirty-something woman talking in a sing-songy voice, inflection at the end, “right? Right?” With her special glasses, her complex glasses that don’t actually improve her vision.
Me: So now he’s mocking Brandy Zadrozny, because, hey… she’s an easy target. And she’s not in his studio to defend herself. It’s easy and cheap to mock people behind their backs, isn’t it, Tucker? And you wonder why people accuse the right of spreading hate. Well, here we go. Here’s you doing exactly that. This entire segment has been about hating anyone who disagrees with you and your very narrow way of looking at the world.
TUCKER CARLSON (SHIT-STIRRING GASBAG): She’ll have all kinds of pointless humanities degrees. She’ll be on cable news saying, “Right? It’s violence!”
Me: Yes, please, continue to mock her. Because that’s what you do. That’s your entire, pathetic existence. This is your job, mocking what you don’t understand. You’re a dinosaur and you’re either too dumb to see it, or too desperate that others not see it. And your audience is comprised of other dinosaurs like yourself. People who live in a past that never was and insist it remain intact, or we get back to it. Good luck with that.
TUCKER CARLSON (SHIT-STIRRING GASBAG): What she’s really saying is, “Shut up and obey, or we’ll hurt you.” She’s delivering the same message any stormtrooper delivers, she’s doing it in a sing-songy way. (in a mocking tone) “This is disinformation!” (garbled) this is the opposite of disinformation. It’s not disinformation. This is literally what they’re saying. Boston Children’s Hospital, we just showed you on tape, is telling you what they’re doing. They perform double mastectomies on minors for no medical reason.
Me: Where in the tape he showed did they say they perform double mastectomies on minors?
I haven’t seen evidence that they perform these procedures on minors. But let’s accept for the sake of argument that it is being done. How does this personally impact Tucker Carlson or the people in his audience? What does this have to do with them? Why are they expending so much energy on being outraged about this? Oh, right. Because angry people aren’t fully engaging their higher reasoning; they’re in reacting mode. They’re easily controlled and easily led. This is why Tucker Carlson and the RW media complex spend so much time riling up their audience.
It’s getting late (it’s about half an hour before post-time) and I’m about fried. There’s still seven minutes of this bullshit, if you want to watch/listen to the hatemongering Tucker Carlson. Have a great day and weekend, my Blender peeps! I’ll see you tomorrow for the noir picture!