Tucker Carlson

Tucker Swanson Diner Carlson
Tucker Carlson during a special edition of MSNBC's Tucker in Manchester, New Hampshire (2008)
Born	(1969-05-16) May 16, 1969 San Francisco, CA, U.S.
Occupation(s)	News Anchor, Commentator, Pundit, and Columnist
Spouse	Susan Andrews
Children	Lillie, Hope, Dorothy, and Buckley II
Website	>Tucker

Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born May 16, 1969) is a U.S. political news pundit who formerly co-hosted CNN's Crossfire and MSNBC's Tucker. Currently, Carlson is listed as MSNBC's Senior Campaign Correspondent.

Family and education

He is one of the sons of Richard Warner Carlson, a former banker, Los Angeles local news anchor, U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles, director of the U.S. Information Agency, and president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. His mother is the former Patricia Caroline Swanson. He has one sibling, Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson. Carlson's maternal grandmother, Roberta Fulbright Swanson, was a sister of U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright..

Carlson attended St. George's School, a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island. After graduation, he majored in history at the private liberal arts Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he left before receiving a degree in 1992.

He is married to Susan Andrews, with whom he has four children: Lillie, Hope, Dorothy, and Buckley.

Journalism career

Carlson began his journalism career as a member of the editorial staff of Policy Review, a national conservative journal now published by the Hoover Institution. He later worked as a reporter at the regionally influential Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Carlson most recently served as host of the MSNBC program Tucker, which was canceled on March 10, 2008. Carlson joined MSNBC in February 2005 from CNN, where he was the youngest anchor in the history of that network. At CNN, he hosted a number of shows and specials, including the network’s political debate program, Crossfire. During the same period, Carlson also hosted a weekly public affairs program on PBS, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered. As a magazine and newspaper journalist, Carlson has reported from around the world, most recently from Iraq and Lebanon. He has been a columnist for New York and Reader's Digest. He currently writes for Esquire, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic and The New York Times Magazine.

Autobiography discusses false rape allegation

In 2003, Carlson authored an autobiography, Politicians, Partisans and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News, about his television news experiences. One of the book's revelations was Carlson's description of how he was falsely accused of raping a woman he did not even know. Carlson wrote in the book that the incident was emotionally traumatic and strengthened his belief in the presumption of innocence, particularly on allegations of a sexual nature.

National television career

CNN and PBS shows

Prior to hosting Tucker on MSNBC, Carlson got his television start in 2000 as co-host of The Spin Room opposite Bill Press. He later was appointed co-host of Crossfire, where he represented the political right. He also previously hosted PBS's Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered from 2004 to 2005.

2004 confrontation with Comedy Central's Jon Stewart

One of Carlson's most memorable appearances on Crossfire was his heated exchange with Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, prior to the 2004 presidential election. Stewart criticized the format of shows like Crossfire, calling Carlson and co-host Paul Begala "partisan hacks," and asked them to "stop hurting America."

Carlson countered by criticizing Stewart's July 2004 interview with former U.S. Presidential candidate John Kerry. He accused Stewart of "sniffing Kerry's throne" and "not asking tough questions." Stewart replied "I didn't realize that [...] the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity." After Carlson told Stewart "I think you're more fun on your show," Stewart replied by saying: "You know what's interesting though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show." Carlson replied by saying "Now you're getting into it...I like that!"

After their televised confrontation, Carlson recalls, Stewart "stayed at CNN several hours after the show to discuss the issues that he raised on the air." "He (Stewart) needed to do this," Carlson said.

Shortly after the Stewart interview, CNN announced they were ending their relationship with Carlson and would soon cancel the long-running Crossfire program. CNN chief Jonathan Klein told Carlson on January 4, 2005, that the network had decided not to renew his contract. Carlson, however, claims he had already resigned from CNN and Crossfire long before Stewart was booked as a guest, telling host Patricia Duff: "I resigned from Crossfire in April, many months before Jon Stewart came on our show, because I didn't like the partisanship, and I thought in some ways it was kind of a pointless conversation... each side coming out, you know, [raises fists] 'Here's my argument,' and no one listening to anyone else. [CNN] was a frustrating place to work."

MSNBC's Tucker

On March 10, 2008, MSNBC announced the cancellation of Carlson's early evening show, Tucker, which had premiered on June 13, 2005. The final episode aired on March 14, 2008. Carlson will remain with MSNBC as Senior Campaign Correspondent, reportedly through the 2008 election.

Carlson had also hosted a late afternoon weekday wrap-up for MSNBC during the 2006 Winter Olympics, during which he attempted to 'learn' how to play various Olympic sports. In July 2006, he reported live for Tucker from Haifa, Israel, during the 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. While in the Middle East, he also hosted "MSNBC Special Report: Mideast Crisis," which aired at 10 p.m. ET.

Political views

Partisan ambivalence

Carlson has stated that while he votes, and cares deeply about conservative ideas, he does not care about the success or failure of any political party. In addition, his definitions of "conservative" views often conflict with the partisan mainstream opinion. This has created tension between Carlson and staunch Republicans.

Carlson has stated that U.S. President George W. Bush is not a true conservative. Despite his general reputation as a political conservative, this and other views have been interpreted as partisan ambivalence by some Republican political figures and movement conservatives.

In an August 27, 2004 Washington Post interview, Carlson expressed his "displeasure with Bush." "Why do so many anti-war liberals give Kerry a pass when he adopts the Bush view on Iraq, as he has? The amount of team-playing on the left depresses me." Carlson did not vote in the 2004 election, citing his disgust with the Iraq war and his disillusionment with the once small-government Republican party.

"I don't know what you consider conservative," Carlson said, "but I'm not much of a liberal, at least as the word is currently defined. For instance, I'm utterly opposed to abortion, which I think is horrible and cruel. I think affirmative action is wrong. I'd like to slow immigration pretty dramatically. I hate all nanny state regulations, such as seat belt laws and smoking bans. I'm not for big government. I think the U.S. ought to hesitate before intervening abroad. I think these are conservative impulses. So by my criteria, Bush isn't much of a conservative."

Conservative Republicans have accused Carlson of not being sufficiently conservative. This first began following Carlson's public and private endorsement of former Presidential candidate John McCain. Speaking to Salon.com, Carlson responded: "I liked McCain. And I would have voted for McCain for president happily, not because I agree with his politics; I never took McCain's politics seriously enough even to have strong feelings about them. I don't think McCain has very strong politics. He's interested in ideas almost as little as George W. Bush is. McCain isn't intellectual, and doesn't have a strong ideology at all. He's wound up sort of as a liberal Republican because he's mad at other Republicans, not because he's a liberal."

1999 Bush interview

In 1999, during the 2000 Republican Presidential primary race, Carlson interviewed Bush, then Governor of Texas, for Talk magazine. Carlson reported that Bush mocked soon-to-be-executed Texas death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker and "cursed like a sailor." Bush's communications director Karen Hughes publicly disputed this claim.

Asked by Salon about the response to his article on Bush, Carlson characterized it as "very, very hostile. The reaction was: You betrayed us. Well, I was never there as a partisan to begin with. Then I heard that (on the campaign bus, Bush communications director) Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard — that I watched her hear — she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane. I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness. They get carried away, consultants do, in the heat of the campaign, they're really invested in this. A lot of times they really like the candidate. That's all conventional. But on some level, you think, there's a hint of recognition that there is reality — even if they don't recognize reality exists — there is an objective truth. With Karen you didn't get that sense at all. A lot of people like her. A lot of people I know like her. I'm not one of them."

Supporting, then opposing, the U.S. war in Iraq

Carlson initially supported the U.S. war with Iraq during its first year. After a year, he began criticizing the war, telling the New York Observer: "I think it’s a total nightmare and disaster, and I’m ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it. It’s something I’ll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who’s smarter than I am, and I shouldn’t have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I’m enraged by it, actually."

Critic of Norquist

Carlson has also been a critic of conservative activist Grover Norquist, calling him a "mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep…an embarrassing anomaly, the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home...[he] is repulsive, granted, but there aren't nearly enough of him to start a purge trial." According to American Politics Journal, Carlson went a step further, characterizing Norquist as a "buffoon commissar who has misplaced his principles to the extent of accepting money to lobby on behalf of the Marxist government of the Seychelles."

Confrontations between Carlson and Norquist escalated, with Carlson dismissing Norquist's weekly conservative movement meetings as events "where conservative-movement activists, political strategists, Congressional staffers, and conservative journalists who are deemed loyal from rags like National Review and The Washington Times gather to hash out the GOP party line." Carlson then wrote a critical profile of Norquist.

In a move rumored by Beltway insiders to have been retaliation for the profile, Norquist tried to convince media mogul Rupert Murdoch to abandon financial support for the Weekly Standard, for which Carlson was a writer. Author David Brock alleged Carlson told him that then-U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich became involved in the feud, and that Carlson's job was endangered. Norquist has since denied using such tactics with Carlson, although he has admitted telephoning Murdoch insider Eric Breindel to discuss "alleged inaccuracies in Carlson's piece."

Defending Rainbow Warrior mining

Carlson drew criticism from Greenpeace in July 2005 after stating that he supported the French government's 1985 mining of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in a New Zealand port to prevent it from interfering with a scheduled nuclear test. Following the mining, the ship sank, resulting in the drowning of a Greenpeace photographer and creating an international scandal. Carlson called the operation "a bold and good thing to do" on his MSNBC show, and said that it was "vandalism," not terrorism, because "it wasn't intended to kill anyone."

Canada, the "retarded cousin"

Carlson has also made polemic remarks about Canada, describing Canadians as being very "brittle." "Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in New York," he has said. "Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he's nice but you don't take him seriously. That's Canada." Carlson later appeared on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's CBC News: The Hour, saying that while he had "nothing against Canada" his description accurately reflected how "a lot of Americans see you."

Gay marriage

On July 24, 2007, Carlson said on his show, "I'm just for marriage generally. I'm for people making a lifelong commitment. Do you know what I mean? I'm not against gay marriage, actually, and I'm the most right-wing person I know." Carlson later went on to say, "I think, marriage has been a great thing for me, and I think it's a really civilizing force, and I think it would be a civilizing force for gay people too."

Libertarianism

Tucker Carlson at a 2007 Ron Paul presidential event.

On May 3, 2007, Carlson interviewed Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and admitted to voting for Paul in 1988 when he was running as the Libertarian Party presidential candidate.

On November 20, 2007, Carlson was seen showing his support at a Ron Paul rally in Reno, Nevada.

On November 26, 2007, it was reported that Carlson lobbied Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof to support Paul's candidacy. Explained Carlson, "Dennis Hof is a good friend of mine, so when we got to Nevada, I decided to call him up and see if he wanted to come check this guy out."

SIRIUS Satellite appearances

Carlson also appears as a regular weekly guest on the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show on SIRIUS Satellite Radio on Howard 101, every Tuesday at either 4:30 p.m. (ET) or 5:00 p.m. (ET). Tucker Carlson appeared on the Bubba the Love Sponge show at 9:00 a.m. (ET) on Friday August 24,2007. Carlson took a Bubba phrase "Cancel Christmas, Kitchen Closed" to the air in late February 2008 while talking to the Hillary Clinton campaign manager, saying that Hillary was basically out of the race for President.

Bow ties

On April 11, 2006, Carlson (who is known for wearing bow-ties) announced on his MSNBC show that he would no longer be wearing a bow-tie, adding, "I just decided I wanted to give my neck a break. A little change is good once in a while, and I feel better already." He now wears neckties on the air. Carlson had previously been mocked for his bow-ties, and the matter was often teasingly brought up in many interviews over the years.

Dancing with the Stars

On August 14, 2006, the ABC television network announced that Carlson would be a participant in its Fall 2006 Dancing with the Stars reality show.

Carlson reportedly took four-hour-a-day ballroom dance classes in preparation for the competition, and mourned of "missed classes" during an MSNBC assignment in Lebanon. "It's hard for me to remember the moves," he stated. When asked why he accepted ABC's invitation to perform, Carlson responded, "I'm not defending it as the smartest choice, but I think it's the most interesting. I think if you sat back and tried to plan my career, you might not choose this. But my only criterion is the interest level. I want to lead an interesting life." He concluded, "I'm 37. I've got four kids. I have a steady job. I don't do things that I'm not good at very often. I'm psyched to get to do that."

The gambling site BetBet placed Carlson's odds of winning the competition at 15:1. Jerry Springer was ranked as having the longest odds of winning, at 30:1.

Carlson was voted off on September 13. His performance on the previous night was the lowest ranked among the judges; the low score resulted from him spending much of the performance sitting down in a chair. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, at the end of his show that night, said of Carlson's performance: "Any dance a man spends part of which in a chair is, by definition, a lap dance!"

At the close of the show Carlson said: “Teaching me (to dance) is like Einstein teaching a slow child math.”

CBS game show

In April 2007, the entertainment publication Variety reported that Carlson would host a game show pilot for CBS titled Do You Trust Me?. According to Variety, the show has been picked up for a six episode run with Carlson as host. CBS has not yet announced specifics as to when the show will air.

Criticism

Carlson was ranked 93rd in the 2006 book 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America (ISBN 1-56025-875-6), by author Jack Huberman.

On the conservative Media Research Center-owned blog "Newsbusters", Carlson was called an "MSNBC conservative" explaining that: "Carlson is clearly the kind of conservative MSNBC could love - one who doesn't support the incumbent Republican president and opposes the cornerstone of his foreign policy. It's the same phenomenon that explains Pat Buchanan's ubiquity on MSNBC."

On air admission

On MSNBC Live, on 28 August 2007, Carlson told host Dan Abrams that as a teenager, he and a friend physically assaulted a man who reportedly "bothered" Carlson in a public restroom in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. As Carlson explained, "I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the -- you know, and grabbed him, and...hit him against the stall with his head, actually.... And then the cops came and arrested him."

A day later, Carlson described the incident differently in a statement to Media Matters for America, which had reported on the exchange, writing:

In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men's room in Washington, D.C. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men's room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived. Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That's absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn't angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.

In multiple later airings of the 28 August 2007 episode of MSNBC Live, Carlson's comments about the 1980s incident were omitted. After Carlson justified his behaviors with his second statement, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) expressed outrage and called on Carlson and MSNBC to apologize for "remarks that appear to condone violent assault" against gay people.

Grateful Dead

He stated in August 2006 on MSNBC's Tucker that he is an ardent fan of Grateful Dead and late Grateful Dead guitarist and songwriter Jerry Garcia, and says that he has attended more than 50 of the Grateful Dead's shows. This puts him in the company of fellow conservative pundit Ann Coulter, liberal actor and activist Edward Norton, and politico (via Saturday Night Live) Al Franken, all of whom also profess to being "Deadheads."

Popular culture references

• Carlson and Chris Matthews played themselves in a fictional edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews seen in the 30 Rock episode "Hard Ball."
• Carlson made a brief appearance during a dream sequence in an episode of King of Queens as himself.
• Carlson was mentioned in an episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin, by going back in time, changes the future. In the future, Tucker is inadvertently killed, along with Karl Rove, by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney after Cheney accidentally shoots Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on a hunting trip. This is a reference to the Dick Cheney hunting incident, in which Cheney accidentally shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, while participating in a quail hunt on a ranch in Kenedy County, Texas.
• In an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David decides that the bow-tie is a "good look" and wears one to an anniversary party. While trying to order food, he is unable to hear the waiter since the family at the next table is too loud. Larry tries to get them to quiet down and one of the men at the table sarcastically responds, "I guess we need to listen to Tucker Carlson here" and everyone at the table bursts out laughing at Larry's expense.

External links

• Tucker Carlson's Official Web Site at MSNBC.
• Tucker Carlson profile at NNDB.
• Tucker Carlson profile at IMDB.
• Media Matters' page on Tucker Carlson.
• Tucker Carlson Fan Community at LiveJournal.com.
• "Hillary Clinton Has Sweet Revenge", CNN, July 9, 2003.
• Video of Tucker Carlson exchange with Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire, 2004.
• "Tucker Carlson to join MSNBC", MSNBC statement, February 2, 2005.
• MSNBC promotional video slot for Tucker.