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Last Night on The Situation with Tucker Carlson

The transcript of the ASZ appearance on The Situation with Tucker Carlson is out.
Richard Cranium is the one who successfully promoted this story of Latoyia Figueroa to national media, getting CNN, FoxNews and MSNBC to aim their cameras to West Philadelphia ten days after Latoyia Figueroa went missing. Unfortunately, Richard was unable [...]

 Commentary By: Steven Reynolds

The transcript of the ASZ appearance on The Situation with Tucker Carlson is out.

Richard Cranium is the one who successfully promoted this story of Latoyia Figueroa to national media, getting CNN, FoxNews and MSNBC to aim their cameras to West Philadelphia ten days after Latoyia Figueroa went missing. Unfortunately, Richard was unable to go live to speak on The Situation with Tucker Carlson, so about 80 minutes before the show went on air he asked me to step in. I’ll skip over the parts where I hung up on Tucker Carlson’s Assistant Producer Amy because I needed to shave, where I met members of the Figueroa family at the studio, and all the other events and inanities attendant to a remote live feed on a major network. Frankly, it was my first appearance on such a show, and I was pacing like a caged lion beforehand, when not talking with the Assistant Producer, the make-up artist or with Richard Cranium. But all went well. Mostly.

This is going to be a long post. . .


I’m relatively pleased with my performance, and even with the way Tucker Carlson conducted the interview. Sure, the first time I talked with the Assistant Producer she indicated I was there to talk about the way the story was promoted through the Blogzome. I was ready to talk about how Richard had alerted many major Blogs about the urgency of Latoyia’s case, and I was ready to discuss how the story grew to be featured on a few dozen blogs, both liberal and conservative. I was even ready to discuss the term “blogzome,” coined here several months ago. Alas, I got a different take on what last night’s show was going to be about when the Assistant Producer called back to tell me that Tucker Carlson was going to challenge me on the topic of race. You know, there’s been a lot of words written about how Latoyia Figueroa’s disappearance was ignored by national media because she’s not white and blond. According to the Assistant Producer, that was now going to be Tucker’s angle, and I wanted no part of it. This story is about a missing 24 year old pregnant woman, and a discussion of whether the media is or isn’t racist changes the subject to my view. So I steeled myself to talk about Latoyia, not race. I wasn’t altogether successful.

There are two parts of the show I want to focus on. First is where Tucker Carlson wanted me to talk about race as the reason Latoyia’s case got no national publicity for nearly ten days. Here’s the transcript from that part of the show:

CARLSON: Well, we‘ve made the decision to devote a lot more airtime to Latoyia Figueroa than we have to Natalee Holloway. What does that tell you?

But here‘s my—here‘s my question. Why is this a political issue? You get the sense reading these overheated blogs, almost all of them, for some reason, left-wing blogs—why do you get the sense that they‘re angry at the press about this and that it‘s a political issue? I don‘t see the political connection at all.

REYNOLDS: The political connection? We don‘t only focus on political issues.

CARLSON: Right. But you…

REYNOLDS: I‘m not sure what your question is.

CARLSON: Well, you get the sense reading blogs on this subject that there‘s a belief on the left that the press, owned and run by corporations, is intentionally ignoring the plight of the downtrodden as a policy, and that that is somehow—you know, it‘s part of some right-wing conspiracy.

REYNOLDS: No, I wouldn‘t—I wouldn‘t say that.

I would say that it‘s a marketing decision by the press, likely, and that is—just as you said earlier, that it‘s probably, they—they gauge that a middle-class or upper middle-class white woman missing is likely going to get more viewers more excited.

CARLSON: All right.

REYNOLDS: And—and we—I would speak for myself. I would say, that‘s not what the press should be doing. The press should be reporting news. They shouldn‘t be trying to get viewers.

To me it is clear what Tucker Carlson wants to do, to make the point that “overheated” “left-wing blogs” are too quick to attach racism as a reason for any situation gone wrong. Nevermind the right-wing blogs that have picked up this story. Nevermind that Tucker Carlson himself highlighted the topic of race and class the night before. Carlson’s agenda was clear to me. He was trying to get me to criticize corporate-run media as racist, therefore enabling him to then make the sweeping judgement that left-wing blogs are somehow anti-capitalist. I hope I acquited myself well in blunting his agenda, because that agenda is the worst impulse that emerges from Talking Head shows such as The Situation with Tucker Carlson.

Let me expand just a moment. Latoyia Figueroa is a young pregnant woman missing. We need to focus on that, because the mainstream media missed the boat in focusing on it for ten days. To focus instead on racism and supposed “overheated” “left-wing blogs,” Tucker Carlson does more than merely deflecting attention from Latoyia, he attempts to reduce the issue to the lowest common denominator, to one of left vs. right. I’ve stated many times here on ASZ that the conservative penchant for demonizing the terms “liberal” and “left” is surely the most divisive and destructive strategy in American politics today. To take a tragedy and try to thrust that spin on it is bad form, and bad form that further divides and damages our body politic. Those of us in the progressive side of the blogzome know that the founders of this country based it on liberal philosophies from Rousseau, Locke, Paine, etc. Folks like Tucker Carlson, who likely is well-versed in history, conveniently forget that in order to extend an attack on the “left” even in the context of a missing pregnant woman.

There’s another point in the talk, just following this, where I think I got through to Tucker Carlson, and I suppose I ought to give him some credit for that:

CARLSON: Yes. Well, before you continue to lecture me on what the press ought to be doing, Mr. Reynolds, let me remind you that there are a lot of crimes committed in this world every day, right?

REYNOLDS: Absolutely.

CARLSON: And so, at some point, if you‘re making decisions about what to cover, you need to favor one crime over another. We‘re picking from not an infinite, but a very large number of crimes, right? That‘s the decision you have to make. There‘s a lot of news. You can only cover so much.

REYNOLDS: What kind hysteria can you possibly create if all you focus on is upper-middle-class people as victims of crimes?

CARLSON: Well, actually, I—I absolutely agree with you. I do agree with you. And, in fact, I think it‘s disproportionate and it‘s not representing reality. And on that…

REYNOLDS: Good.

CARLSON: … we agree.

REYNOLDS: We agree.

CARLSON: But to get high-handed and say, your job is to report the news, indeed, we do report the news, including this.

So, we sure appreciate, Mr. Reynolds, you joining us.

REYNOLDS: Thanks.

I suppose Tucker Carlson gets testy here, so I must have had him on the ropes, as ASZ reader Eric suggests in his comments to another post. But we come to a kind of agreement on a point that was not fleshed out well at all, though probably as well as possible in such a short segment. If the media focuses its energies always on crime committed against upper-middle class white women, what does that do to twist the public perception of crime? Surely the eventual view will be that being upper-middle class and being a white woman is to be a victim, always in the crosshairs of some amorphous criminal. Doors get bolted in the suburbs, where statistically crime is not rampant. Neighborliness becomes the victim — people become afraid to reach out to each other. Meanwhile, in the real mean streets, in areas like Southwest Philadelphia where Latoyia Figueroa lives, the neighborliness and volunteerism, the community watches and desparate fight against real crime, is ignored.

There’s a lot of lessons to learn from how the media has failed to attend to the case of Latoyia Figueroa. Indeed, there are many lessons to learn from an examination of Tucker Carlson’s trying to twist this issue into one of left vs. right, which also works to turn neighbor against neighbor. But I think Tucker Carlson and I came to some agreement that this huge focus on crimes against upper-middle class white women has a deliterious effect on the national psyche, though I don’t suspect Tucker Carlson has thought it out enough to see that it has a potentially huge effect on our national sense of neighborliness towards all citizens.

Is this left vs. right? Perhaps so in the final analysis. I’m willing to say that those on the “left” are much more likely to examine this phenomenon more closely and look to the long-term effects. Would that the media could examine this issue that closely.

Friday, July 29th, 2005 | Reddit |

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