Like many other conservatives, Fox News host Tucker Carlson gushed over Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter during his show on Monday night, heralding the development as a win for free speech. In fact, Carlson’s show claimed, Musk was working his magic already by freeing the Fox host himself from his Twitter chains!
Tucker and shackles. Nice imagery…
…Fox host shouldn’t be expected to give “actual facts” about whatever he’s blustering over.
Oh FFS
His (Tucker) stupidity is just evil
I’m trying to figure out what I miss by not being on Twitter.
I can’t come up with anything, so far.
You offer two reasons that Carlson’s wrong, but the one you lead with (Musk isn’t in charge yet!) is mostly wrong and irrelevant anyway, and the one you follow with (this happened long before Musk began moving to acquire Twitter) is far stronger and makes the case all by itself.
It’s true that Musk isn’t in charge yet, but he doesn’t need to close the deal before exerting influence on the company. People know which way the wind is blowing, and there’ll be a lot of jockeying for position. People who want to do well under the new regime will be looking to do Musk’s bidding now, long before the deal is final.
For example: There was some kind of debate inside Twitter about whether to ban Trump, and someone was on the losing side of that debate. Whoever that was, their star is rising now.
There’ll be a lot of Musk-friendly moves between now and when the deal closes. If you commit now to the view that Musk has zero influence until he’s formally in charge, you won’t be able to understand what you’re seeing.
That ball irradiation causes brain damage.
There’s nothing better than letting the assholes shine their assholiness to a wider audience. Good move Elon.
I wouldn’t commit now to the idea that Musk will allow people to use bigoted speech or lie in ways that effect the public good. He makes noises about censorship, but his lawyers know otherwise. Twitter is not the government, full stop.
the account stayed silent for more than a month until it posted about being “back” on Monday night
I’m guessing Tuck didn’t gets his rocks off during the week after he finally got an account on TRUTH Social.
If you’re arguing that Musk’s twitter will suppress conservative hate speech and disinformation to, and only to, the extent that plaintiffs outside the company are able to use the legal system to outright force them to do so, then we agree entirely.
It’s my understanding that that’d be a pretty significant downgrade from the present state. Have I got that wrong?
That’s probably generally true, but the fact is that Twitter told Carlson they would unfreeze his account if he deleted the tweet, and the next day it was gone, presumably because Carlson deleted it. I don’t think any sort of penumbral influence from the not-yet-owner Musk had much to do with it. I think Carlson whined about the injustice of it all and then deleted the tweet himself.
“So you just became a little more powerful,” the Fox News host declared. “The people already in charge just became a little less powerful. It’s that simple and it’s that profound.”
By having just one fickle super-rich guy in charge of access instead of a few fickle super-rich guys, you just became a little more powerful! That is EXACTLY how this works, Tucks!
Absolutely. I meant to be clear about that, but perhaps I fumbled it?
The Carlson affair had nothing to do with Musk. His account was restored long before Musk made his first moves to acquire the company.
My point here, simply, is that Musk now has tremendous influence over Twitter, even though the deal hasn’t formally closed yet, and that the original article would be stronger without the claim that he doesn’t.
OT.
Random Paulski
Texas anyone?
As has been said before:
Tucker Carlson replacing disgraced Bill O’Reilly proves that foul loudmouthed ignorant racist xenophobic misogynist gay bashing religious bigoted lying hypocrites are a dime a dozen.
Yup. Me neither.
Oh no, I wouldn’t say that. Sometimes the editing side of my career overpowers my ability to keep my mouth shut and I retroactively offer tweaks. It really does happen the way you suggest; people do what they think the (new) boss would want them to. But in this particular case, if I understand correctly that Tucker was pushed to clean up his own mess, then it wasn’t so much that other thing.
To be clear, here’s me in the original:
You offer two reasons that Carlson’s wrong, but the one you lead with (Musk isn’t in charge yet!) is mostly wrong and irrelevant anyway, and the one you follow with (this happened long before Musk began moving to acquire Twitter) is far stronger and makes the case all by itself.
“Musk isn’t in charge yet” is wrong because he DOES now have significant influence. And it’s irrelevant because he didn’t yet have that influence when l’affaire Carlson was completed.
I’m not arguing anything. I’m saying that we should not just assume that Musk is going to turn Twitter into Parler or some such unmoderated cesspool. Twitter allowed certain people to violate its rules for a long time before it finally started enforcing them, and kicked Trump and others off. The policy right now is to comply with court decisions, but that is a moot point when no litigation has been successful at getting the bigots and liars back on. If they could have gotten re-instated that way, they would have. They have no leg to stand on, and the 1st Amendment leaves no room for equivocation on that. The status quo abides.
It’s my understanding that no court decision forced them to ban Trump, and that no such decision was forseeable. Have I got this wrong?