147 Comments

And CNN fired misogynist Don Lemon today, and NBC fired CEO Jeff Shell for an "inappropriate workplace relationship". Maybe things are finally starting to improve for women in broadcasting, though I won't hold my breath.

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I always feel sad when a member of a minority turns out to be just like a badly behaved white guy. Always need to remind myself that misogyny is universal, and not confined to any one race!

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CNN needed room under the salary cap to hire Charles Barkley!😉

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I forgot ablout Shell. It's been a very busy morning indeed.

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Baby face Swanson frozen food heir: love it. You always nail the descriptor, Lucian. Can’t wait to read more of you on this delightful topic.

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I can't wait either. I hope it's suitably scandalous.

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The only descriptive Lucian missed was beady eyed rat baby faced

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One can only hope that he more or less evaporates, like Glen Beck.

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Or like Bill O'Reilly.

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Never forget Imus referring to Bill's loofah escapade as a falafel! Did it for weeks!

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"The worst person in the w-o-r-l-d."

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I doubt he'll vaporize. He'll soon turn up on one of the extreme right-wing sites that make Fux Nooz seem liberal.

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or, worse...as TCinLA theorizes, he'll try a shot at politics, a la J.D. Vance. (goddess, I hope not!!!)

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That trying politics himself idea has been floating around before today. I do not see Tucker being a good campaigner in any way.

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I doubt if another right-wing channel would hire him. They would not want to be sued when he spews out his stream of lies and harasses his women co-workers. Maybe he'll start his own You-Tube channel.

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That channel should be in Hungary since Tuckems loves Orban so much.

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Yes! And he should move there too. I saw that RT extended an invite. That sounds like a suitable channel for him also.

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Time will tell! He surely doesn’t need the money.

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To me at least it's obvious that Murdoch blames him for costing him $787 million.

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it would seem, since they have suits lined up, Smartmatic being next and they say they are NOT going to settle, that Tucker's brand can't play well with all that going on. All that is evidence they're continuing to produce so what good is he to them now. If there was anything on earth good about COVID it is that Murdoch on down all started laying it all out in their texts and emails and every other way. Figure how much Fox figured Tucker was worth, plus what they paid him, how close does that come to $787 million?

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I'm guessing nowhere near...

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Maybe a good guess, maybe not - Fox stock dropped 5.2 %, estimated at $870 million, who knows whe that will be recouped:

"Of note: Fox Corporation stock lost 5.2% of its value in the 22 minutes after Carlson’s ouster was announced. That’s about $870 million in lost value — more than the $787.5 million Fox is paying Dominion, to which the market had a more muted reaction."

I'm about to post the link to the best coverage I have seen so far --- Lucian, as usual, already mentioned one key factor!

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Which makes things a whole lot more interesting. If that stock stays down for any substantial amount of time, and there are stockholders, of course anything that remotely looks like Fox might not be in anybody's future would be good. The down side is they've made so many little clones of themselves. Still for the poisoned minds these monsters are responsible for, I would love to see the end of Fox. Knowing there will be others. Maybe Tucker will be the new Rush Limbaugh.

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Yeah, all sorts of possible parallels with right-wing blowhards and irresponsible racist haters are out there now, it's disgusting, but too important to ignore!

It's maybe worse for Carlson than it ever was for Rush Lamebrain, in that he is also encountering a landscape in which his own reckless disregard for the facts, disregard for the relevant laws concerning publishing those facts, the establishment of a legal record of his erstwhile "private statements and emails," through the info from the defamation suit, now on the public record prior to the settlement, is his own self-created nemesis, nice job, Tucker!

And as if that were not enough to deal with, Lucian highlighted the pending lawsuit filed by Ms. Grossberg, alleging sexual harassment --- or however the detailed charges break down --- in the Fox News workplace, with direct participation by Carlson.

Plus, as if all THAT was not ominous enough for Carlson and his cult-like following, there's more in the same vein continuing to surface .

Finally, worth remembering, this is less than TWENTY-FOUR HOURS since the mainstream mass media --- however defined, using whatever criteria -- and other media investigators, even "amateurs" unaffiliated with any one media outlet, who sometimes dig out relevant facts, too --- found out about the departure.

I would expect the entire week, on into the next week, and for who knows how long after that (!) to produce still more damaging revelations, or facts already available but ignored by the somewhat skittish and even cowardly media establishment mavens.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive " is a very famous quote from Sir Walter Scott's play "Marmion." This quote is frequently used to describe the destructive consequences of lies and the impact on peoples lives.

And here's proof that incisive "very famous quote" can be twisted by pretzel logical gyrations, dear to right-wing crackpots, into a vindication of TRUMP, it's hilarious to read this kind of stunningly absurd distortion and circular logic, offered as a defense for him:

www.ocala.com/story/opinion/columns/more-voices/2019/12/28/from-right-oh-what-tangled-web-we-weave/1998933007/

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And he did not get a severance package -- since you referenced we'll be talking about this for days and weeks and journalists and such didn't have much info either -- and was fired "for cause," and references to that based on the misogny in his department and how women were treated, which is part of this lawsuit against them as well. And interestingly, Tucker's contract with Fox was about to expire and he fully believed and told people he would be signing a new one soon and the income we're hearing was $100 million a year. Oh, and when he asked, he was told the decision came from on high and he considers Lachlan a very close friend, and that's who would have been involved in that kind of decision since he's Murdoch's favorite henchman son. James is left leaning and does good things in this world. I'd love to see Fox swirl and die in its own toxic stew.

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Twas a great day! I never want to see Orville Reddenbacher, Jr. ever again, on any tv show, youTube, or radio. I do want his producer to prevail with her lawsuit successfully. I want Rupert to take a flying f*ck in the excrement he helped to create. Hannity really should be gone too.

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well damn.

hell hath been frozen over.

maybe there is a God. i'm sure many prayers are being answered.

next please do trump.

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Good riddance!

Best news of the day!

Guess now Fox Conspiracy and Lies Channel will not have to pay for Tucker’s lawyers in his current lawsuit.

Would love to think Murdoch will think twice about spreading lies as this one was a punch in his pocketbook.

However, his fortune is made on lies, and as I have come to the reality that unicorns and fairies don’t exist, hoping for Murdoch to turn away from his yellow journalism is a wish in vain.

Nonetheless, Carlson is GONE!

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WOW wow wow wow WOW! Wouldn't it be fascinating to know how much Tucker Carlson's [in]voluntary departure from Fox is fallout from the revelations of Carlson's private messages as a result of the discovery process in the Dominion Voting Machines vs. Fox trial: He wrote that he hated Trump and couldn't wait until he didn't have to talk about him on-air anymore. He wrote that he didn't believe the 2020 election was stolen. Was it Murdoch who was too embarrassed to keep him? Or Dumpster who demanded that Murdoch fire him? Or something even more convoluted. And what darker and even more unsavory corner of the media world will Carlson surface on, next?

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TCinLA's theory posted on his Substack page today is that since the only thing that past Fox personalities have ever been fired for was sexual improprieties, that means that the Abby Grossberg lawsuit against Carlson for creating a hostile working environment will actually reveal far more serious and personal offenses by Carlson. It wouldn't surprise me. Or maybe it really was that Murdoch decided Carlson had become too expensive a liabillity--a net drain on the bottom line.

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Maybe both reasons and more to come, let's be openly greedy about this!

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Looks like Tucker has turned from gold to lead. He's dross to them now. With ongoing lawsuits and evidence anybody and everybody can use and probably will use, they have no use for Tucker anymore.

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Wouldn't surprise me if he dissed the Murdochs inc. the old man in those text messages. He's the type that would text Hannity and Laura and declare the Big3 are Fox News Channel if not Fox Corp.

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That's an interesting possibility-- that t-Rump demanded Murdoch fire Carlson.....when the Dumpster learned that Carlson was--GASP-- not sincere in his adulation, he had to go!

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As my grandmom would say: Good riddance to bad rubbish. Hope it's something horrible.

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My Grandma's favorite saying, too! Don't hear it very much anymore.

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Yeah, for us older people, it's like we all have our own inside joke these days. Who ever hears "riddance" "rubbish." A friend of mine and I at lunch last week joked with our very young server with an abbrivated "oh, this is like the bears" when she gave us three choices. We had to explain Goldilocks and to discover they don't tell that tale anymore either. So we have lots of inside jokes anybody over 60 would catch instantly.

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I totally agree. We speak a different language than the younger generations. Much of theirs is incomprehensible to me!

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That code-switching and "teen slang" you recognize, though --- just different specific slang words, that's all, more graphic by far, otherwise still the same "war of the generations," but with all kinds of exceptions within families, some working harder to bridge the divides, same as it ever was.

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Of course it's the same as it always was but it's amusing just the same and particularly when you were once upon a time the cocky young person thinking anyone over 30 was old, dumb and probably about to die. If you live long enough, you get some weird comeuppances as you see the world from such a different perspective. Ind they're not all comeuppances. I depend on my young friends to keep me from being one of those dreaded old people who finds herself in a group of young, savvy people sometimes.

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I can only attribute avoiding that truly, deeply inane attitude about past generations to pure luck.

After all, the "older generation" was claimed to be a mere TWELVE YEARS or more older than "us," the span from eighteen or nineteen to "over 30 and not to be trusted," older than my age cohort, yes, and now having mostly wandered, years and years ago, into that country from which no traveler returns.

"Pure luck," or what might amount to the same thing --- having really "old," old, mentors and teachers, old, that is, measured in chronological human years, apart from any other context.

The fact is, they seemed far more alive than all sorts of people more or less my own age.

They were mentors, teaching examples, professors like David White (b. 1917, d. 2000, draft resister in World War 2, from Oklahoma, lived for about nine years in India, taught my Philosophies of India course) and Mary Gwen Owen ( Macalester Class of 1923 ,studied with the Moscow Art Players, taught the Drama Choros at Macalester).

No way in hell! I can imagine anyone with a functioning neocortex encountering teachers like that, and still, against all odds, retaining much of the "Don't trust anyone over 30" bullshite attitude, the operative term being "functioning."

Possibly that's a failure of my own imagination, but somehow I doubt it.

Sure, I suppose it's just barely possible, but how on earth anyone could be that obtuse after even a cursory dive into our collective history - I mean, back several thousand years, reading the ancient philosophers and historians, the dramatists and poets --- is a real mystery to me.

Both of those teachers, and many others, were passing on that kind of tradition, it was simply what they did. Tapping into a tradition of "questioning authority" that began thousands of years before SDS and the New Left were around, astonishingly enough, or not!

Here's an equally relevant example of what I am talking about:

diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/238474

Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading excerpts from Tyrannus Nix.

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Rupert's pathetic attempt to save face and fortune means

diddly squat to me. The cancer of Fox continues, along with all

its evil tributaries. Will Jesse Watters in the 8p slot absolve anything

or anyone?

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No other advanced, civilized country has let Rupert run loose like this. He made his mark with Reagan. Did him a little favor and look where we are. It might amuse some that Tucker actually has had an offer from RT, Russia TV. They played him all the time.

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Ahem...the UK is neither advanced nor civilized?

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Since this contretemps seems to be floating untethered in semantic space, here's a hypothesis: maybe MVH is crediting our British cousins (I actually have some and for all I know you do too, right?) with not "letting Rupert run loose," but sizing him up and trying mightily to stifle him?

For all his godawful faults, Murdoch is no pushover, that's for sure, so failing to stop his insidious right-wing kookery as purveyed via his media acquisitions is not exactly a rare occurrence. Hell, he's still at it!

Just a "most charitable interpretation," that's all!

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Perhaps I was talking about Australia. But this whole thing gets juicier concerning Tucker, whose discomfort pleases me mightily. It is beginning to look more and more like Tucker, who has been fired from almost every real job he's ever had, overplayed his hand. And last Friday night -- new thing, not mine -- he apparently attended some far right uppers thing and went on about trans and how all that's taking us down and his upshot was pretty much: All Republicans/Conservatives need to just do a whole lot of praying. It's said Rupert really doesn't like all that praying stuff, plus all the emails and texts where he calls upper management -- meaning Rupert and Lachlan, his once-upon-a-time best friend -- really didn't cotton so much to being called "fuckers." LOL. If you're being charitable to me in interpreting, not to worry. I don't need that. It reminds me of a boat builder of epic status who left school in the 8th grade but could build fabulous ships with patterns in his mind loved hiring all the Moot Court and Law Review attorneys and ordered them to fetch his coffee as he remarked they were pretty much his hired help. It is beginning to look like Tucker just hit that tipping point.....again.

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Maybe I wasn't talking about the UK. He's been other places that have rejected his ultimate glow.

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Even better - I see in another comment you mentioned Australia -- it was obtuse of me not to have recalled Murdoch's history running The Australian.

I only have a (very superficial, of course) awareness of any of that, through The Guardian for the most part, absolute truth, I am compelled to admit!

The thing is, I was only responding to the abstract argument, that Murdoch had been allowed to proceed with no serious opposition, expounding upon it as such, irrespective of who originated it.

Apologies if I offended you, that was not something I would do intentionally, but through clumsy expression, sure, I'm sorry if that was your conclusion.

When it comes to that, I'll gladly make a case for (almost) any opposing view, just to study its possibilities. All clarification is intrinsically valuable, and there are

plenty of different paths through this hurly burly, madcap "psychological speculation mania" the mass media loves, it's only beginning, it's hopeless to resist the oncoming deluge! --- and only this very few days into another media frenzy.

We can dissect someone's motives, assess blame, insist on who should be ashamed, or even who plead for forgiveness (in a more perfect world, where that would be expected even of a Media Mogul like Murdoch!), and that's just a superficial gloss of what we're likely to enjoy, yikes.

Murdoch's guilt or innocence, Commander Malachi McMurdo's sinister secret spying on behalf of MI5 (ok I just made that up) or MacRune's Guevara, it's all the same to me! I am definitely already done with it. and it ain't even started...

Just can't take this stuff very seriously anymore, except as a distraction from much more pressing problems. Say, GLOBAL ECOCIDE, if you sympathize with that comparison!

If the !%$@! mass media, here, there and everywhere, spent one tenth of one percent of their time on existential threats to our planet, instead of (Pick the inane tripe), if only...

Rant over, I feel SO much better!

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I always look for you because it's always worth it. The good newsd is we're all in a rant right now and when that happens, often the closest neighbor gets a nip bite here and there. I think we should make a point of ranting together from time to time. It's purging.

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Thanks!

It also helps that I can trace some of it to WAY too much strong coffee, rare for me but...

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Carlson never changed his tune during the course of Dominion's many court filings, despite being revealed as an egregious liar. Yet he has now been "fired." Makes me wonder what else is going to come out about Herr Carlson in the next few months - I suspect it's going to be pretty nasty.

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First O’Reilly, then Limbaugh, now Carlson. Slowly but surely these people are getting what they deserve.

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Maybe Sean Hannity is next, wouldn't be a big surprise to discover some nasty background connected to what's already on the public record involving him.

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What they all DESERVE, is what Limbaugh got: a slow, horrible death!!!!

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BREAKING!

Goebbels’ Grandson by Lída Baarová to Take Over Tucker Carlson Anchor Spot at Fox News

Berlin, Germany

April 24, 2023

Adolf Baarova, the grandson of the love child of Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels by his 1930s mistress Lida Baarova, will take over the anchor position at Fox news left open by today’s departure of Tucker Carlson.

“Herr Carlson has taken great strides in leading America back to the racial principles that inspired the greatest leader in German history — for whom my grandfather devoted his life, and ultimately gave his life”, said Baarova, in a prepared statement.

Baarova’s mother, Lida Baarova, was Goebbels’ mistress in the mid to late 1930s. They had a boy, named Heinrich, whose existence was a closely guarded secret of the Third Reich.

Goebbels also fathered six children by his wife Magda. They murdered all six of them before committing suicide themselves in Hitler’s bunker in April 1945.

Heinrich Baarova led a quiet life in postwar Germany, aware that his father’s role in supporting Hitler would cast a shadow in his life.

However, his commitment to Nazi principles never wavered, and he instilled this belief system in his son, Adolf, whose mother was Leni Riefenstahl.

Riefenstahl never revealed that she had a child, and as an infant, Adolf was placed in a Lebensborn maternity ward.

After the war, Heinrich was able to adopt his son from the maternity ward, and raised him inculcating strict Nazi principles.

Adolf, now 78, said that he welcomed the opportunity to push back against nearly 80 years of anti-Nazi propaganda in the United States. He thanked Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, and the owners and management of Fox News for “dispelling the evil myths that have been propagated since the Fuhrer and my grandfather’s tragic deaths defending their homeland in the capital of the Fatherland, after the glorious struggle to establish the Master Race’s historic destiny.”

Lída_Baarová_(1914-2000).jpg

Lída Baarová

wikipedia.org

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... reallly?

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Rim shot.

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Be proud and take a bow.

Well-played. Indeed.

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Seems like it might be part of the undisclosed terms of the settlement.

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Hope Tucker enjoyed that pizza Friday night when he signed off…now what about Bartiromo, Pirro, and Hannity? Why only Carlson (so far)?

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Bartiromo and Dan Bongino were canned last week, relatively quietly.

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Was Bartiromo? I didn't see that-but it's a great thing, too! She used to be fairly good at her reporting economics and the stock market, but I guess the pay sucked.

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"Good riddance to bad rubbish" as it used to be said. Wondering who might be next? He was certainly the worst of them. His next gig will probably be as a campaign consultant to MTG, Boebert and some of the other loons out there. Perfect for the job.

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One down, how many more to go?

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