Wednesday , I watched Tucker Carlson destroy my one-time favorite, Bill Kristol.

On Tuesday,  Bill Kristol,  a one time "intellectual conservative,"   tweeted an accusation,  charging Tucker Carlson with being  anti Semitic in addition to defending Trump while "rationalizing slavery."   

Think about what has happened to the anti-Trump crowd;  Jeb is a nobody  --  a total has-been,    Romney has no serious influence within the party.   McCain has proven himself to be a spiteful obstructionist in addition to being an 80 year old buffoon, a pretend conservative,  willing to watch the GOP self-destruct rather than be a team player,  

You should know that Tucker work with and for Kristol, at the Weekly Standard, for five years.  As Tucker said,  Wednesday evening,  "We used to be friends." 

In responding to Kristol,  Tucker said,  “Last night at the top of the show, we addressed the removal of Civil War monuments from public places around the country. We made the point that the sudden outrage isn’t entirely about slavery, horrifying as slavery is. It’s also part of a larger effort on the left to discredit the Founders of this country and the beliefs they enshrined in law.  Once you believe that any figure in history who once owned slaves is illegitimate and should be erased, it’s hard to take our founding documents very seriously. How can you accept a Bill of Rights when it was written by slave owners? You can’t. Which is why so many on the left don’t — and ignore the First and Second Amendments, among many others. That was the point we were trying to make. You may disagree but it didn’t seem crazy or mean spirited.”  All this were words on Tucker's show."

These are the words,  as righteous as they can be, that Kristol responded to;  his words of criticism well received by the antafada community (aka Progressive Democrats).   

Reminding his audience of Kristol's slander, Tucker made this statement on Wednesday evening show as de dealt, specifically,  with the charge that he was anti-Semitic and approving of slavery:
 
That is libel. But it’s also really stupid,  and yet,  Bill Kristol isn’t stupid. I know that because I worked for Bill Kristol for more than five years in the 1990s. I knew him well. He was a genuinely smart guy. He was a good boss, too. He was humane and fair-minded. He was the kind of person I never would imagined would write something that nasty and dishonest about an enemy, much less an old friend. What happened?    Kristol refused to explain himself today. Part of the explanation has to be the moment we’re living in where hysteria has supplanted rational debate. No longer to explain your beliefs but to highlight what a morally upstanding person you are, a virtuous guy you are, using by contrast of your opponent who is by definition, evil. It’s childish, obviously. But to many people, it’s tempting. Even 64-year-old men with Harvard degrees fall for it, apparently.” 

“Part of the problem is the medium. Twenty years ago, when he had something to say, he had a magazine to say it in. He talked through ideas with his friends before spending hours writing a piece that expressed it precisely. There was thinking involved in the process. Now he just goes on Twitter and stays on Twitter all day, every day, dashing off thoughts and impressions, scoring tiny little points against strangers in cyberspace, keeping obsessive track of his likes and retweet.    At an age when he could be playing with his grandchildren, he’s glued to social media like a slot machine junkie in Reno. after a while, that distorts you. When you disagree with someone it doesn’t occur to you to hash it out. You tweet it hoping for retweets. Depressing as hell. Kristol isn’t the only one who does this. Washington is littered with formerly impressive people who shout and preen on social media. I hate to see it with him. I liked Bill Kristol once and thought he liked me. What a shame.”

No comments:

Post a Comment