society
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October 25, 2024
By hailing President Trump as “Daddy” for his opposition to corporal punishment, the disgraced TV host is peddling authoritarian patriarchy.
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Two notable facts about Tucker Carlson are that he was so racist on Fox News that he lost a high-profile TV post, and that he was rehabilitated by the Trump campaign. In 2023, Trump supporters beat up protesters, Carlson wrote to producers as a result of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News for lying about the 2020 election. An executive at the network saw a memo in which the cable news star was overjoyed. . carlson enthusiastic: “A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started beating the living shit out of him. It was at least 3 to 1. It’s clearly a disgrace to jump a guy like that. That’s a white man. “That’s not the way he fights.” already under attack Its repeated hiring of white supremacists and its echoing of neo-Nazi ideas such as the theory of the “Great Replacement” on its programs now left its fingerprints in evidence. Equating honorable fighting with white men is clearly racist. Fox kicked Carlson out of the door as part of an internal clean-up to restore the network’s reputation following the fiasco of a smear attack against Dominion Voting Systems.
After Fox, Carlson reinvented himself as a social media provocateur and even more openly bigoted. Last month, he hosted a lengthy interview with amateur historian and Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper. new york times reported On Carlson’s show, Cooper “continued to make various false claims about the Holocaust and World War II, including that the Nazis simply did not have enough resources to care for them. This includes the fact that millions of people in concentration camps “eventually died.” Not as a result of intentional genocide. ”
In the pre-Trump era, a figure like Carlson, deeply involved not only in racism but even in Nazi apologies, would have been considered radioactive to mainstream political movements. But the Trump campaign has repeatedly used Carlson as an honorary surrogate, in line with its strategy of reaching out to difficult constituencies ignored by mainstream Republicans.
On Wednesday, Carlson was warming up the audience at Trump’s rally in Duluth, Georgia. Mr. Carlson broke new rhetorical ground by praising Mr. Trump and hailing the former president as a tough “daddy” who administers corporal punishment to immature Democrats.
Carlson works until he’s bubbly and often laughs maniacally. conjured up terrifying visions America as a dysfunctional family under the Democratic Party. Carlson’s bizarre speech deserves to be quoted at length.
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Carlson said of the situation: “It’s a familiar saying to anyone who has children, but when you allow that, you encourage it even more, when you allow people to get away with something completely over-the-top and outrageous. What if you let your 2-year-old smear the contents of his diaper on the living room wall and you did nothing? What if you let your 14-year-old light a joint at the breakfast table? If you make your hormonal 15-year-old daughter slam her bedroom door and give you the finger, those kids will get a lot more out of it. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for them. No, there has to be a point when dad comes home and he’s angry. ! The father is angry. He loves his children, even if they are disobedient. They live in his house. However, he is very disappointed in their actions.
“You know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl, you’ve been a bad girl, and now you’re getting a hard spanking…’ No, it hurts me more than it hurts you. No, I’m not going to lie. This is going to hurt you much more than it will hurt me. And you earned this because you were a bad boy. , I’m getting a hard spanking.”
Images of Donald Trump giving a 15-year-old girl a “severe spanking” are disturbing on their own, but they’re even more so when you remember Trump’s long history as a sexual harasser. . trump was once boasted About walking into a locker room full of teenage beauty pageant contestants. Trump is accused Sexual assault by more than 20 womenand the court found him guilty Charges of abuse and defamation against E. Jean Carroll.
Given Trump’s history, Carlson’s attempt to recast the Republican presidential nominee as a tough but righteous patriarch seems absurd and politically self-defeating. Some are tempted to advise Carlson to quit his political speeches and seek a therapist for his unresolved “daddy” issues.
But Carlson’s speech, however delusional, is as much a product of ruthless political calculation as personal pathology. This is Trump’s second run with a female candidate, who has energized women outraged by the repeal of reproductive freedoms by Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump.
President Trump faces what is becoming the largest gender gap in American presidential history. According to USA TodayTrump “has a 53% to 37% lead among men.” Vice President Kamala Harris’ lead among women is 53% to 36%. ” The problem for Trump is that women vote at a higher rate than men. Early voting in six states (Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, and Virginia) showed that women account for at least 54 percent of voters. This is a great sign for Harris.
The Trump campaign has responded by doubling down on patriarchy as a way to mobilize less inclined male voters (and perhaps traditionalist women). This is the logic behind President Trump References Not only in Carlson’s spanking father rhetoric, but also in himself as a “protector” of women.
In her thoughtful new book. wild faithJournalist Talia Lavin points out that evangelical Protestant culture encourages corporal punishment of children as a necessary part of social order. In 1970, evangelical child psychologist James Dobson (later founder of Focus on the Family) argued in his book: dare to punish“The relationship between parents and children should be modeled on the relationship between God and man. By this same love, a merciful father guides and corrects his children, ultimately guiding and correcting them when necessary for the good of the child. It can even be painful.”
Lavin notes that the influence of Dobson and many other influential evangelicals of his ilk
It made corporal punishment of children not only tolerated but almost compulsory within the church community. Their relentless pursuit of obedience from their children has created a culture across evangelical denominations where beating children with sticks and hands is a daily ritual. The theological framework they provided made it seem as if refraining from doing so was a mortal sin. And they preached to a congregation that actually took sin very seriously.
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This is the audience Carlson hopes to mobilize with a story about Papa Trump punishing America’s erring children. But Carlson’s rhetoric certainly risks a Biblical backlash. It’s hard to imagine that most American women want to be treated like misbehaving children who deserve to be spanked. In fact, Carlson would probably seem as odd to mainstream America as J.D. Vance’s complaints about childless cat ladies. The best hope for Democrats is that Carlson’s macabre fantasies will strengthen opposition to Trump’s third presidential bid.
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