Tucker's doubtful demise

All the way out here, halfway across the country, over hill and dale of the Alleghenies, through cities like Akron, Chicago, Davenport and Cedar Rapids, then across the fertile Iowa prairie, all the way to the far northwest corner of the state, I swear, this morning, I hear east coast libs partying. "Ding, dong--the witch is dead," they're singing, in chorus, "Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead.

Tucker is out. The biggest of the bigs, the headliner, the talking head King, is gone.

In an amazing turn of events that left the media world in shock, not a single investigative journalist saw the man's demise coming, and everyone--most everyone--was thrilled and overjoyed. MSNBC folks gathered like birds of pray, and the minor leagues of right-wing journalism started sensing a swelling audience and overflowing coffers. 

I can't help thinking, nationally and culturally, Tucker getting dumped is a good, good thing. His determination to blame the full load of all our nation's problems on George Soros and the libs-behind-every-bush got old and tedious and ridiculous  when he looked through the thousands of hours of video (given to him by his buddy Kevin McCarthy) and produced his own summary/interpretation of what happened on January 6--just another day at the office. 

He lived on lies and knew it and did 'em anyway night after night. The Dominion tapes hammered together a coffin Rupert Murdoch laid him in when it became evident Tucker didn't believe what he was saying to his millions of slack-jawed listeners. 

Good riddance. Let me join my voice with the song.

Any number of voices last night made it clear that Rupert Murdoch has no problem sending his own headliners down the road. He did in Glen Beck, the scary Mormon prophet, then Bill O'Reilly, the hate-monger, knocked them both down like bowling pins, instantly shrinking their audience. In their places he set up Tucker, who, in all likelihood, said some unbecoming things about the bosses at Fox, who canned him. 

Bret Stephens, a NY Times columnist, a conservative registered his sadness, not at the death of Tucker but at the death of a dream of a truly conservative network, a line-up of shows in the tradition of William F. Buckley, not would-be bullies like Donald.

Tucker may be gone, or at least dehorned, but his absence won't go unfilled, I'm sure, because someone else will come along and make millions on the fears of white folks in a nation where they're soon to be outnumbered and replaced ("replacement theory," Tucker maintained). Some new voice is out there already sharpening his politics and getting ready to trade on grievances in the hearts of men and women. 

Once upon a time, Herman Melville's "The Lightning-Rod Man" was a kind of best-seller. It was just short story, something of a fable, really, but it somehow found a readership that, during his lifetime, may well have surpassed anything else Melville wrote, including most certainly Moby Dick. I can't help but think it's still not only readable but pertinent. 

In a violent storm that shakes everything in the house, a rain-soaked lightning-rod salesman comes to the door peddling his wears, having long ago realized that he best turns a dollar when he uses a thunderstorm as a backdrop. 

Melville's narrator listens to the man's smooth schtick, then boots him and his wares back out into the storm. The last line of the story is perfectly prescient: "But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my neighbors, the Lightning−rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in storm−time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man."

There'll be another Tucker soon, if it isn't Tucker. There's ample room for fear amid the darkness of the human heart.