News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
PHOENIX, AZ — Attendees at Turning Point’s AmFest 2025 event experienced an awkward moment last night, as Tucker Carlson interrupted his own speech for an evening prayer to Mecca.
Onlookers were startled as Tucker halted a lengthy speech on cancel culture and looked at his phone. “Ope! Looks like it’s that time again!” said Tucker to the confused audience as he rolled out an ornate prayer rug and began to kneel. “It’s time to pray. That’s important, obviously, and we’re going to pray together, clearly. I mean, seriously, obviously. Why wouldn’t we? HAHAHAHAHA!”
Sources said Carlson then began chanting in a haunting, melodic voice.
“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allaaaaaaaahu Akbar.
Ashhadu alla ilaha illallah.
Ashhadu anna Muhammadar Rasulullah.”
An uproar immediately started among the crowd, with confused audience members trying to make sense of the incident.
“Woah! What’s he sayin’? Is he speaking terrorist?” said one agitated audience member. “I think he’s speakin’ terrorist! Get off the stage, terrorist! Booooooo!”
Carlson reportedly grew agitated as the crowd began to jeer and boo. “You’re trying to censor me! This is cancel culture!” he cried. “How dare you! This is loathsome, obviously!”
Go here to read the rest. An interesting debate could be had between Tucker Carlson and Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson is… a Shock Jock.
Sometimes useful but always a Shock Jock.
Yes, he is a shock jock, and he has a tendency to drift into conspiracy theories, but sometimes the conspiracies are are true and merely covered up by the Lyin’ Media. It won’t matter because AI is getting better and better to the point that soon nobody’s going to be able to believe anything that they see online. They’re going to be forced to drift back to what we can see feel taste and touch. And oh yeah, back to what matters not the endless rage that is the internet.
One thing I didn’t have on my bingo card when I was younger is that some people would in late middle age or early old age decay intellectually without suffering manifest dementia. First Mark Shea, then Ron Unz, now Tucker Carlson. Makes me wonder what I sound like to the youths in my family.
LKL:
Chesterton had an essay called “The Pub and the Club” (I believe) to describe the tendency of people to associate only with those who agree with them, arguing it was a bad thing (as his own friendship with George Bernard Shaw was a great counter witness). In a Club you could travel all over the Empire and meet only fellow “believers”, but in a Pub you met everyone: the vicar and the village atheist, along with the village idiot, and whatever you said would be challenged and you in turn could speak you own bit. Modern society has turned,alas, too many Pubs into Clubs (of the Jacobin variety) in which only certain ideas are accepted and the rest forcibly (even violently) expelled. So we form our own Clubs (as Tucker has) and that creates its own set of echo chambers, now linked by social media. The upshot is that few people ever fully understand what the other fellow is saying and mutual respect has plummeted. So how do we get the Pub back, or can we?
I dunno about ‘shock jock’ … for Tucker, I prefer the term ‘click whore‘.
To Art’s point, I would also place Mark Shea under that umbrella.
Ben Shapiro gave an amazing speech at TPUSA last week. He made the case for calling out people like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, then called them out on everything. Outstanding (but language warning).