Tucker Carlson to launch new right-leaning news site: The Daily Caller
This should be cool. I like Carlson. I think he’s a pretty smart guy, one of the more honest voices on the right. We’ll see what it’s like when it goes live…
The Daily Caller, the Huffington Post-style political news site being set up by right wing pundit Tucker Carlson and former Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel, has raised $3 million in seed funding. Carlson tells us seed funds come from conservative businessman Foster Friess. He adds that the site—which was initially set to launch over the summer—is now set to go live later this month. One reason for the delay is that it’s hiring a staff of journalists, who will contribute original reporting—something Carlson adds is “expensive.”The Daily Caller describes itself on its Facebook page as being a “comprehensive news site, providing original reporting, constantly updated links to the latest news, analysis of current events, satire, research on current policy issues, columns from thought leaders, and Congressional Member reviews.”
Tucker Carlson….meh….smart, I don’t know, but he does have a bow tie. My biggest memory of him was when he had his show his rating were both sucking and blowing. He made some obviously silly comment about how he was all for blowing up Greenpeace ships but he is against terrorism. He was so obviously trying the coulter strategy of saying something stupid and outrageous to get attention just to get more then 12 people to watch his show. And he was so pathetic at it, that it didn’t even work.
I wonder if he will try to interview Jon Stewart for his new website.Report
You think a guy who repeatedly said that Democrats have the same ideas as Osama bin Laden is one of the best the right has to offer?Report
I don’t know if he’s one of the best the right has to offer, but as far as mainstream conservatives he’s quite a lot better than many. He turned on the Iraq war long before many of his contemporaries, and generally has a much smarter approach toward foreign policy. He’s said he supports gay marriage. He made a lot of sense during this last election. Sure he’s said some dumb things, but I think he’s come around in many ways.Report
I find it interesting that the defense of Carlson here amounts to… “he agrees with me on X, Y and Z.” Which is fine. But it seems that in recent weeks, the complaint about conservatives and their (internal) detractors has focussed on “messaging.” For instance, everyone appears to agree with Conor regarding the lameness of talk radio and the Palinites. It’s his STYLE that many object too. Stop hollering at these folks! Build bridges! The same critique seems to apply to talk radio and the Palinites. Hey, the GOP needs to be a big tent party if it’s ever going to succeed! But come on! Stop the screeching and say something CONSTRUCTIVE. Don’t just be against liberals. Be FOR something.
If that’s the standard, does Carlson still qualify as smart?
I honestly don’t know. But I do think it would be interesting to see an assessment along these lines, because coalition-building seems to be the golden ring these days. In your opinion, will his site be just another entry in the Right Wing shout fest? Will it err on the other side, taking the shouters to task in a destructive way? Or will it walk this line in a constructive way? Whatever your response, what is it about Carlson that leads you to think that? Or is there something inherent in being anti-Iraq and pro-gay-marriage that automatically makes you a constructive addition to the discussion?Report
Or is there something inherent in being anti-Iraq and pro-gay-marriage that automatically makes you a constructive addition to the discussion?
More that the opposites make you a non-constructive subtraction. OTOH, Tucker Carlson is a pretty generic Reason.com Republican, a group which is hardly underrepresented in the blah-gas-sphere. So, while not exactly agreeing with Sam, I get his point here.
Apart from any discussion of Carlson’s smarts, this new site is so obviously doomed he might as well have named it Culture12. It says it wants to be a Huffington Post competitor, but Carlson’s designing it as a right-wing Talking Points Memo with journalists and stuff, which suggests at least an order of magnitude between the hoped-for and actual possible audience. Did these people even look at Huffington Post? It gets all those visitors not because it’s a page of left-leaning news, but because it has one page of left-leaning news and thousands of pages of celebrity gossip, boobies, funny videos, etc. Also, the sugar daddy is an investment fund manager, ferchrissakes. Even ignoring the optics, that puts its need to embrace economic populism (which nowadays is a prerequisite to secure a conservative audience) in direct conflict with its need to keep the sugar flowing. I’m betting on this ending up as a 1 year vanity project with mutual recriminations.Report
Tucker Carlson would be a great Colmes to Olbermann’s Hannity. He’s got the affable ineffectualness, and a show where he’s not allowed to get a word in would hide many of his flaws.Report