You Will Anyway: Tucker's dilemma

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Tucker's dilemma

FOX NEWS EXECUTIVES have in their possession a dossier of alleged dirt on Tucker Carlson should he attack the network in the wake of his departure.

[...]

Fox News and its communications department — long led by the notoriously aggressive Irena Briganti — has assembled damaging information about Carlson. One source with knowledge calls it an “oppo file.”

[...]

The file includes internal complaints regarding workplace conduct, disparaging comments about management and colleagues, and allegations that the now-former prime-time host created a toxic work environment, three of the sources say.

Rolling Stone

Fine, but I don't think anybody would care. Who doesn't know already that Carlson is an SOB? And we're learning more and more about him from Abby Grossberg's lawsuit against him.

A network spokesperson denied the existence of the file on Carlson. “This is patently absurd and categorically false,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “We thank Tucker for his service to the network as a host, and prior to that, as a contributor.”

I don't know if I buy that, either. But I don't think there's any real danger to Tucker from Fox at this point.

Over the years, Briganti and Fox PR’s tactics have been turned against its own most prominent talent. For instance, The Daily Beast reported in 2018 that “emails reviewed and verified” by the outlet “show that Fox’s communications brass have planted negative stories about some of their own top stars, including hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Stuart Varney — the latter of whom is still a Fox employee.”

Those methods for keeping personnel in line are an open secret among current and former Fox News staff. Four former Fox News personalities confirmed Briganti likes to keep “dirt files” on Fox News talent, including one on Carlson.

“[Briganti] keeps files on everybody to screw with them,” a departed Fox News host adds. “It’s classic Fox.”

[...]

On Monday, it was revealed that Carlson had hired Bryan Freedman, a high-powered entertainment lawyer, to represent him following his Fox exit.

[...]

“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Carlson wrote shortly after Fox News projected Joe Biden had beaten Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Regarding Fox News executives, Carlson also privately sniped: “A combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down is what’s happening.”

Harshly trashing leadership is considered to be a major transgression at Fox News and Fox Business, where those who step out of line may find themselves on the receiving end of an unfavorable story.

There may indeed be worse things, but those remarks are really rather mild.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

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"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

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"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

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"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.