Tucker Carlson Leaves for a Conveniently-Timed “Trout Fishing” Vacation Following Resignation of His Racist Head Writer

During his show Monday night, Tucker Carlson addressed the resignation of his head writer Blake Neff after Neff was revealed to be even more of a bigot than you might expect from a Fox News writer.

Neff resigned on Friday just ahead of a CNN report detailing racist, sexist, homophobic messages he posted anonymously online.

Carlson addressed Neff’s resignation and the reasons behind it last night and his chosen defense tactics were peak Carlson. He alternated between trying to distance himself from Neff and lamenting Neff’s hurt feelings.

He told his viewers that Neff was “horrified by the story and he was ashamed,” though I don’t know how “horrified” you can be over your own words. Tucker continued:

“What Blake wrote anonymously was wrong. We don’t endorse those words. They have no connection to the show. It is wrong to attack people for qualities they cannot control. In this country, we judge people for what they do, not for how they were born. We often say that, because we mean it. We will continue to defend that principle, often alone among national news programs, because it is essential, nothing is more important.

Blake fell short of that standard and he has paid a very heavy price for it, but we should also point out to the ghouls now beating their chests in triumph at the destruction of a young man that self-righteousness also has its costs. We are all human. When we pretend we are holy, we are lying. When we pose as blameless in order to hurt other people, we are committing the gravest sin of all, and we will be punished for it, no question.”

My god, there’s just so much awfulness here.

First of all, “It is wrong to attack people for qualities they cannot control” makes it sound like Carlson thinks things like race and gender are attackable or at least undesirable qualities, we just shouldn’t attack them because it’s not nice.

More importantly, Carlson’s attempts to distance himself from Neff are ridiculous. How can he claim that those anonymous posts, in which Neff presumably expressed his genuine beliefs, “have no connection to this show” when anyone who has ever watched Carlson’s show can clearly see that it is built on a foundation of deeply ingrained racism?

For at least five years, Neff posted horrifically racist things and engaged in and encouraged targeted harassment of women, specifically Asian women. In what world would it not be assumed that he brought those views into his work?

In a recent interview, Neff said that “Anything [Carlson is] reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me.” Carlson has repeatedly praised Neff’s writing and the work he’s done to “greatly” improve his show, even acknowledging him as a researcher in the credits of his 2018 book Ship of Fools.

You don’t hire a racist to write racist content for a racist show and then get to distance yourself from him when it turns out he was also being racist in his leisure time.

As for the extensive waxing poetic about “ghouls” and cancel culture (which is, essentially, what he’s blaming here), Carlson is telling on himself by mourning “the destruction of a young man” as if his downfall was caused by outside forces rather than his own atrocious choices. No one is pretending to be “holy” by calling out bigotry–especially when that bigotry is on display at a giant media company whose regular viewers include the President of the United States.

But Carlson seems to be angrier at those who outed Neff for being racist than at Neff’s racism itself and that says everything you need to know about him.

Tucker ended his show by saying he’ll be taking some time off to go “trout fishing.” He claims that the vacation was already planned and has nothing to do with Neff.

Sure.

(image: screengrab)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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