Attention Conservatives: Don’t Defend Tucker Carlson’s Piggish Attitude

So let’s address the Tucker Carlson issue.

Since Media Matters dug up some pretty atrocious comments from the Fox News personality, made in a series of interviews with a so-called shock jock, Bubba the Love Sponge, it’s now an issue.

The comments referred to women as “primitive,” called Martha Stewart’s daughter, Alexis Stewart, “c**t-y,” and even went on to defend Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Jeffs was accused in 2006, several months before Carlson addressed the charges in the interview, with facilitating rape, by forcing an arranged marriage of a 14 year old girl to her 19 year old cousin.

The girl objected, but Jeffs pushed the union, and later officiated. He also instructed the girl to be “obedient” to her new cousin-husband.

There was a deep fear within the sect of what would happen to anyone to disobeyed Jeffs. He had a history of driving dissenters out of their homes and away from their families.

He was also known to have multiple, polygamous marriages to underage girls, himself, but was not convicted of any of those relationships.

Said Carlson in that September 2006 interview:

“He’s not accused of touching anybody; he is accused of facilitating a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old man. That’s the accusation. That’s what they’re calling felony rape. [cross-talk] That’s bulls—. I’m sorry. Now this guy may be [cross-talk], may be a child rapist. I’m just telling you that arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old and a 27-year-old is not the same as pulling a stranger off the street and raping her.”

But when you use your position of power to force children into uncomfortable or adult situations, then you’re very guilty of abuse.

Some within the state have felt the charges against Jeffs were excessive, but it is what it is.

I’ve seen a lot of conservatives rushing to defend Carlson’s statements.

The main line of defense seems to be that these are things that happened over a decade ago, and this practice of digging up old comments to use as a bludgeon against individuals has gotten out of hand.

I’ll admit, I’ve also grown weary of these “gotcha!” antics, usually carried out by people who wouldn’t want their own past drudged up and laid out for the world to see.

I defended Justice Brett Kavanaugh from attacks on things he did as a kid (and I was never convinced that the sexual assault complaints against him were true).

This, however, is different.

Tucker Carlson, at the time of these interviews, was a grown man, not a dumb kid at a party.

Another thing being pointed out by his defenders is that he was working at MSNBC, at the time.

Why does that matter, unless the implication is that his character shifted, depending on what network he was employed by?

For his part, Carlson has made the choice to stand defiant against the outrage.

“Media Matters caught me saying something naughty on a radio show more than a decade ago,” Carlson said in a statement on Twitter just hours after the left-leaning watchdog organization surfaced a variety of remarks Carlson made on the “Bubba the Love Sponge” radio program between 2006 and 2011.

“Rather than express the usual ritual contrition, how about this: I’m on television every weeknight live for an hour. If you want to know what I think, you can watch. Anyone who disagrees with my views is welcome to come on and explain why,” Carlson added.

Here’s the thing: What was said was more than simply “naughty.” It was disgusting, disparaging, and is a look at someone with a complete gutter mindset.

It also wasn’t the end of it, as should be expected.

Someone with such putrid ideas doesn’t stop.

In 2015, Carlson sat with white nationalist/Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnis, and gave his stamp of approval to statutory rape.

“Here’s what I’m for,” Carlson told Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, in a Jan. 2017 interview. “I’m for treating women differently from the way we treat men. I’m not for playing along at all.”

“It’s not even in the same universe, actually,” he said just two years ago, of statutory rape committed by women. “There are lots of things you have to play along with in life, and I understand society demands compromises,” Carlson continued. “But there is a limit beyond which I can’t pretend anymore. And calling—in this case, it was a 17-year-old kid—a ‘rape victim’ because a teacher, who wasn’t even that old, or married, was kind enough to initiate him into the ways of adulthood. I’m not just going to sit there.”

I have to note that I’ve heard a lot of guys say similar, piggish things. I also have to note that the men saying these things don’t have kids who have been through it, so they’re not thinking like parents.

It is disgusting that anyone would make excuses for someone in a position of authority over our children, such as a teacher, to abuse that position in order to draw a kid into a sexual relationship.

Teacher-student statutory rape is better than the alternative, Carlson explained, noting “my best friend was involved in a relationship like that when we were kids. There are not that many options. So you’re a 15-,16-, 17-year-old boy. You are driven by biology to procreate, so you are either going to be inflicting your attentions on one of your peers, who let’s be honest is not ready for it; she’s going to get hurt emotionally—90 percent, I mean I’ve never seen a woman—girl—not hurt at that age.”

“Or,” he continued, “you can have a safer, albeit technically illegal outlet, with a woman who knows what she’s doing. You’re not going to hurt her feelings. You know what I mean? This is harm reduction. This is like a needle exchange.”

No. It’s not like a needle exchange, and it’s not “technically illegal.” It IS illegal. It’s a crime.

“I’m not going to pretend that’s rape, because it’s not,” he added.

So what were the details of the case Carlson was referring to?

He was talking about a 2013 case of a 40 year old teacher out of Queens, married, with 4 children of her own, who was carrying on a sexual relationship with a 16 year old student.

After finding that her teenage victim was taking a girl his own age to the prom, she got “revenge,” by sleeping with another 16 year old student.

That was absolutely sick, obsessive behavior, but according to Tucker Carlson, she was doing those young boys a favor.

He brought this insane line of reasoning up first in 2014:

In a 2014 appearance on Fox News daytime gabfest Outnumbered, he discussed the same case. “It’s ludicrous we are calling this a rape. Are you serious?” he commented before blaming the teenage victim: “I’ll tell you what’s wrong to this extent—he went and tattled to the police and destroyed her life.”

Yeah. I can’t even begin to count the ways that this attitude is wrong.

Then again, according to Carlson, he’s a bit of a stud.

Carlson, for his part, told McInnes he had slept with “a hundred” women in his lifetime. “It was a short window,” he said of his unmarried sex life, “but I packed it full.”

I won’t ask the age of this conquests.