Tucker Carlson Tricks Audience, Teasing Them To Watch Conservative

[JABBS]

Still to come, have Americans mastered the art of selling evil? You‘ll meet one man who says unequivocally yes when THE SITUATION comes back.

That was a Tucker Carlson teaser from last night's edition of The Situation, on MSNBC.

I have to admit, I was intrigued. I had visions of a discussion on violent video games. Or the popularity of television shows like MTV's Punk'd or Jackass. Or cults. Something like that.

I had forgotten that I was watching Carlson, the bow-tied boy wonder conservative host. I listened to his mellow, almost NPR-esque voice -- perhaps why some conservatives in the blogosphere don't consider Carlson one of their own -- and was tricked into watching what followed.

CARLSON: Welcome back. There is no question that America‘s society is changing faster than most adults are comfortable with. Even parents who consider themselves pretty liberal stand back in horror as their kids decide which parts of their bodies to pierce next and how many sex partners at one time is just too many. My next guest says these changes are by design, the result of a sinister marketing scheme you might not even be aware of. David Kupelian is the author of “The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell us Corruption Disguised as Freedom.” He joins us live from Washington, D.C., tonight. David Kupelian, thanks a lot for coming on.

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Kupelian, a managing editor of the conservative website WorldNetDaily.com, isn't as genteel as Carlson. And conservatives definitely think of him as one of their own.

Kupelian is more in the Ann Coulter category of over-the-top conservative punditry. He calls Bill Clinton an "amoral sociopath." He thinks gay Americans have forced acceptance of homosexuality using techniques "uncomfortably reminiscent of various mind control and brainwashing tales." He calls abortion "the unrestricted slaughter of unborn babies."

So why didn't Carlson just introduce Kupelian appropriately? Why trick the audience?

Maybe because his book is not new. It came out in August. Or maybe because Carlson knew that a decent chunk of his tiny audience would be turned off by what Kupelian wanted to say.

See, the "evil" that Kupelian wanted to discuss was abortion rights and gay rights.

Two quotes from last night's interview:

KUPELIAN: Abortion is basically an issue where one side is based completely on lies and fabrications, going way back to the beginning of the 1960‘s, and continuing until today.

KUPELIAN: You know, the gay rights agenda, regardless of what you think about homosexuality and the gay rights movement, basically has been implemented in America by way of a very sophisticated, long-term, public relations campaign.

Carlson, with his NPR-esque voice and on a channel that isn't Fox News, no doubt knew that a good chunk of his audience would reach for their remotes if they knew the featured guest's version of "evil" was that a portion of the country was tricked with "lies and fabrications" and "public relations" to support abortion rights and gay rights.

Funny thing is that throughout the interview, Carlson agreed with just about everything Kupelian said. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

"I don't see why people say I'm liberal or a moderate. I don't feel that way at all," he said in a July interview with the Richard Mellon Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In the same interview, Carlson said he was "adamantly against abortion."

Guess Tucker knew what he was doing when he teased his audience last night.

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This item first appeared at Journalists Against Bush's B.S.