TUCKER CARLSON, MARTIN LUTHER, & THE NEW MEDIA: a 🧵
Perhaps I’m the only one who sees @TuckerCarlson’s departure from @FoxNews as good news.
If I’m a Democrat strategist, I want him there so that I can, by applying pressure to Murdoch, at least control him a little….
2/
Carlson, for example, after an initial rollout of the #Jan6th tapes, went silent on the subject.
He also gave no coverage to @DineshDSouza’s 2000 Mules film which exposed massive election fraud. Perhaps these reflect Carlson’s own opinions, but one suspects he was…
3/
…receiving pressure from above.
In 1519, Martin Luther was invited to debates Papal representative Johann Eck, a ruthless rhetorician without scruples. Luther, still a naive academic, sought a fair hearing for his ideas. Eck’s goal was to label Luther a heretic.
When Eck…
4/
…asked Luther if he agreed with the ideas of John Hus—who was burned at the stake as a heretic—Luther, taking the question seriously rather than seeing the trap that it was, deliberated and said he agreed with many of Hus’s ideas.
Eck, replied that if Luther agreed…
5/
…with the heretic Hus, then Luther was a heretic.
In strictly debate terms, Luther lost. He left Leipzig shaken. Heretics were burned, and Luther now carried the label. But Leipzig was Pyrrhic victory for the Papacy.
To date, Luther had largely confined his criticism of…
6/
…the Papacy to the sale of indulgences. After the Leipzig Disputation (as it became known), however, Luther had nothing to lose. Henceforth, he’s let them know what he really thought, and the Protestant Reformation began in earnest.
Carlson isn’t Luther, but I think you…
7/
…get my point. Media has changed massively in the last decade, and with @elonmusk’s $44 billion Twitter purchase, it has changed yet more in just the last six months.
Carlson’s audience on Fox, the largest in cable television, averaged 3.5 million. @joerogan’s podcast…
8/
…averages 11 million per episode.
Carlson, now free and with nothing to lose, enters into those waters where his potential reach, and thus his influence, would dwarf that of cable television, a rapidly diminishing medium.
9/
Add to this that Musk is hinting that he intends to turn Twitter into a media platform that will challenge the space Instagram currently occupies.
So, don’t cry for Tucker Carlson. He can write his own ticket. This was the Left’s Pyrrhic victory and Fox’s suicide.
THE END
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I started Netflix’s new series “Transatlantic.” Contrary to what you might think, it’s not the story of a transgender love boat, though I’m sure Netflix is working on that.
It’s about Varian Fry’s heroic efforts to evacuate Jews from Hitler’s…
2/9
…Europe.
Transatlantic is an elegant, expensive period piece full of lush French vineyards and charming villas. There’s even time for romance.
In some ways, the series forges new territory, injecting some levity into an otherwise heavy topic. This isn’t Schindler’s List.
3/9
Distance from the actual events affords filmmakers some creative license, and to this extent I do not object.
They don’t make light of the Holocaust nor of the war itself. Instead, they’ve almost given this topic its own version of “The Great Escape,” making the victims…
If the American Left has a hit list—and they do—their Top 5 Most Wanted would be (in no particular order):
• Trump. This one is obvious. Ann Coulter said Democrats don’t fear Trump. I like Ann. But in this she is spectacularly wrong….
2/
Unrelenting media attacks and the weaponizing of the Department of Justice against him screams otherwise. I mean, I had barely left Mar-a-Lago last spring when the FBI decided to send their storm troopers in on a (literal) panty raid. (Yup, Melania’s. Because we all know…
3/
…that’s where you hide nuke codes.)
• Ron DeSantis. Younger than Trump, charismatic, beautiful family, media savvy, politically astute, and a true conservative, he’s the heir apparent.
Where Trump is a force of personality, DeSantis combines that quality with a moral…
AUDREY HALE, DEMOCRATS, & THE MAKING OF A TERRORIST: 🧵
On July 7, 2005, I boarded a flight from Kiev, Ukraine to London.
I arrived at Heathrow to the news of a tragically successful terrorist bombing in London that would become known as the “7/7 Bombings.”
4 Muslim…
2/
…youth had carried out the attack that killed 52 and injured some 700 others. 3 of the 4 were born in Britain. The fourth was a naturalized British citizen and convert to Islam.
All had been radicalized, not abroad as many supposed, but in London mosques. Under the…
3/
…steady influence of Muslim clerics who taught them to hate their homeland and feel nothing but a pitiless contempt for the British people, the 4 became precisely what their teachers intended them to be: weapons against the “infidel” West.
ANECDOTES & OBSERVATIONS FROM THE LAST 3 MONTHS ABROAD: 🧵
It might be useful to say at the outset that I’m no novice to world travel. I’ve been in more than 60 countries, six continents, high society and lowest of the low. At one moment I might be sipping champagne along the…
2/
…Champs-Élysées, the next I might be hiding from Boko Haram in Africa.
The point is, I don’t simply read the headlines from an armchair in NY or DC & react to them. I am set apart from others because I am usually speaking to you from the perspective…larryalextaunton.com
3/
…of someone who was/is there.
This was my first trip to Europe since being stuck there when the pandemic began. In that short interval much has changed. At that time, Europe’s China virus policies were much more severe than most of America.