My English mother had a saying: \u201cthat\u2019s the pot calling the kettle black.\u201d It\u2019s from a time so long ago, that many don\u2019t even \u201cget\u201d the expression. Cooking in my mother\u2019s house in 1920\u2019s England was done over a coal-stoked stove. The flames would coat the cookware with carbon. Both the pot and the kettle were black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watched Fox News for a bit last night. That\u2019s not a common occurrence in my household, but I wanted to see Tucker Carlson. I remember Tucker as a much younger man: he was the \u201cconservative\u201d voice on MSNBC a decade ago. It was a different time, when CNN and MSNBC tried to have conservative voices balancing their more progressive \u201cstars.\u201d At the time, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann were the liberal lights on MSNBC. Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough and Carlson were the \u201cbalance\u201d on the other side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MSNBC seemed \u201csmaller\u201d then. They were closer to \u201cmother\u201d NBC News during the daytime, mostly \u201chard\u201d news. It was in the early morning and the evenings that it\u2019s \u201cProgressive\u201d flag flew. But it was in the late afternoon that Tucker got his time, and he tried to present a \u201creasonable\u201d conservative view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I turned to Tucker last night, because the night before he claimed that the \u201cwhite nationalism\u201d issue in America was a \u201choax, not a real problem.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It shouldn\u2019t be surprising, Fox as a whole claims that lots of things are \u201choaxes\u201d including Russian involvement and the Trump campaigns\u2019 cooperation in the 2016 election.\u00a0\u00a0But I wanted to see how the murder of 22 people in El Paso by an avowed white supremacist was somehow a hoax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carlson\u2019s logic last night was quite contorted.\u00a0\u00a0His argument:\u00a0that \u201cwhite nationalism\u201d is a \u201cstraw man\u201d presented by MSNBC to distract from the real issue of, wait for it; economic inequality!\u00a0\u00a0Carlson argued that the rich commentators of MSNBC were defending their \u201cclass\u201d against changes that would make economic improvements.\u00a0\u00a0This, about the same network that Fox claims is \u201cin the pocket\u201d of progressives, like Sanders and Warren who absolutely want changes to reduce inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s start with this: Tucker Carlson makes $6 million a year. His direct MSNBC competitor, Chris Hayes makes about the same. MSNBC\u2019s star Rachel Maddow makes about a million more than that, while Fox\u2019s Sean Hannity outdistances everyone at $36 million a year. Looks like everyone, on both networks, are in a class way above that of the \u201caverage worker.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the argument that somehow Carlson and Fox are representing the \u201ccommon man\u201d while MSNBC represents \u201crich elites\u201d is a little hard to swallow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it is a distraction, something that Fox, and the President they represent, desperately need. The Presidential tweets and statements that were racist and incited violence are too clear. The violence of El Paso is too real. It is hard not to draw a straight line from one to the other. The President, and Fox, needs to somehow blur that line, and make someone else at fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So MSNBC is a great candidate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carlson used one commentator of MSNBC as an example of their \u201ccraziness.\u201d Frank Figiluzzi is a former FBI Assistant Director for Counter Intelligence. On MSNBC he has often expressed his concerns about the dismantling of the Countering Violent Extremism program in the government. That program had in-depth knowledge of the white supremacist movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Figiluzzi pointed out that white supremacist\u2019s have a known symbolic \u201ccode\u201d around the number 8. \u201c88\u201d to them stands for \u201cHH\u201d which are initials for the Nazi salute, \u201cHeil Hitler.\u201d The White House ordered that flags be lowered to half-staff because of the Dayton and El Paso shootings, then raised back on August 8th<\/sup>, or 8\/8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Figiluzzi didn\u2019t say that the White House was intentionally signaling white supremacists. His point was that they blundered into an action that supremacists will take as a \u201cdog whistle\u201d of support. If the programs with that in-depth knowledge were still active, the White House would have known better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Carlson cherry-picked Figiluzzi\u2019s comments, claiming that the former FBI agent was saying the White House was intentionally calling out to the supremacists. He used that to buttress his claim that MSNBC was inflaming America against the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carlson called on MSNBC to \u201ccalm down. His words:<\/p>\n\n\n\nOn Both Sides <\/h3>\n\n\n\n