We interrupt your usual No-Night Owl Tuesday for breaking news: Tucker Carlson got shit-canned by Fox News Monday morning!
Even though this is old news by the time you read this, Tiff thought I might want to say a few words, since I’ve spent a lot of time in my Snark Attack articles writing about the man I love to hate, Tucker Carlson. (No, worries! I’ll still be doing the Noir Side Street tomorrow, featuring one of my faves, “Repeat Performance.” If you have time, check it out on YouTube.)
Tiff Discorded me (Is that a thing? Is it a dirty thing? Because it sounds kinda dirty…) at 11:52 AM Eastern with a link to the news, which I’d already seen and tweeted about. And then we had an involved discussion there, in which much celebratory confetti was thrown (in .gif form!), and many jokes were had.
This is the last couple of minutes of Tucker’s Friday show, his last to ever air on Fox. You can see he had no idea of what lay ahead. (And reports by yesterday afternoon/early evening were that the decision to fire him was made back on Friday. No idea why they held off sacking him until yesterday…)
So here’s a link to Fox News’ very brief announcement, if you want to read it (and haven’t done so already).
Two things stick out immediately: his Friday show was his last. IOW, they denied him any opportunity to say goodbye to his audience on-air. The other is that, unlike with their announcement letting Dan Bongino go, the Carlson kiss-off memo doesn’t offer any good luck wishes for Carlson’s future endeavors. Those two things seemed to indicate this was not at all amicable. (You could say it was an unscheduled decoupling!)
When the news broke, apparently we weren’t the only ones giddy; the Fox News staff was elated Tucker had been tossed.
There was a great deal of speculation about why Carlson was fired so unceremoniously, but by yesterday afternoon, the truth started filtering out: it wasn’t just because of the Dominion lawsuit, but also his show’s former booker, Abby Grossberg, filed a lawsuit last month against Fox Corp, Fox News, Carlson, Justin Wells (“Tucker Carlson Tonight” Executive Producer and also fired with Carlson in Monday’s bloodletting), along with a number of other named defendants, alleging they created a hostile work environment. (You can read the entire 79 page filing here.)
It’s possible since this lawsuit was filed last month (and in light of the Dominion settlement), Fox conducted an investigation and decided it was better to cut Tucker loose since he was a serious liability.
If you read the Grossberg lawsuit, “gross” is a really good word to describe the toxic environment at Fox News…
As you might well imagine, MAGAworld was more than a little miffed about their favorite extremist blowhard mouthpiece being shown the door. Semafor has a post about the early reaction.
Here’s a few more:
Catturd–
That’s probably an impending bowel movement you’re feeling. Oh, sorry. My bad. I thought you said “shit.”
Brian Kilmeade, who filled in for Tucker last night, used Twitter to invite people to tune in. It didn’t go well…
(Click through to read the angry replies.)
Eric Metaxas:
Was Eric referring to truths like this?
And then there was this totally bananas theory about how Tucker was taken down by the Deep State. (Which, apparently, Fox News is now a part of!)
You really need to watch that video, because it’s a hoot.
Here’s Joy Reid sharing with her audience this fact about Tucker:
To quote that famous saying, “Everything Trump touches dies.”
I’ll close this out with a new favorite song, and very appropriate, since it’s a girl power twist on a moldy oldie…
One last parting shot from me to Tucker (and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, buddy!)