Conservative Blogosphere Unfairly Turns On Tucker Carlson For Palin Twitter Notes Release

The Daily Caller has emerged as a bona fide member of the internet right, in part by drawing refreshing distinction from a crowded landscape through its willingness to critique those whose ideas its right of center writers may share. The latest damning exposé revealing a member of Palin’s staff attacking fellow conservatives is merely one example that has sparked  infighting among conservative bloggers, fueling a surprising zeal to slam its publisher, Tucker Carlson.

The Daily Caller‘s recent scoop of fairly banal private Twitter messages from Sarah Palin‘s former aide, Rebecca Mansour, illustrates the latter’s willingness to break Ronald Reagan‘s Eleventh Commandment by speaking other unflattering things about other Republicans. Jon Bershad explained precisely why criticism of this non-story from those on the right who celebrated the release of the Journolist emails, but the viciousness of the attack, especially in light of Carlson’s record, is completely disproportionate to the magnitude of the story.

The ever-classy Dan Riehl headlined his piece on the matter “Breaking: Tucker Carlson To Give Head On Pennsylvania Avenue.” “Conservatives 4 Palin” accused Carlson of attempting to emulate the National Enquirer. Free Republic commenters have accused him of having a history of bashing Fox News (on which he routinely appears) and Sean Hannity (for which he sometimes fills in when Hannity is absent).

This is not respectful disagreement. For many online conservatives, especially those who only burst on the scene with the advent of new media, Tucker Carlson has been exiled with a nastiness typically reserved for Paul Krugman or George Soros, yet he enters the new media landscape with a decade-long record of defending his ideas before staunch ideological foes in a way many right-wing idols now manage to avoid. Even in his comparatively brief career as an online publisher, he has come up with some of the most creative and hilarious ways to irritate those on the left, but it appears to have done little to dissuade his detractors. How did the proprietor of KeithOlbermann.com become such a pariah on this wing of the conservative movement?

Perhaps the turning point of his career was the launch of the Daily Caller, which, while right-leaning, has not been uniformly friendly to all conservative public figures. It could have also been a sudden collective realization that the rise of Rachel Maddow was in part due to her frequent spots on his MSNBC program, The Situation. Maybe it began the moment it took off his last bow tie. But the most vocal backlash commenced the moment Carlson made it clear he was not opposed to mocking Tea Party sacred cow Sarah Palin– he jokingly called her a “MILF” over Twitter once, for which he was permanently marked as suspect in his conservatism.

But that wasn’t quite enough to launch this sort of invective. It was instead a story by Daily Caller writer Chris Moody that sparked the backlash, after Palin demanded Moody rewrite the entire piece to fit her whims on Facebook, of course bringing up the “degrading term” Carlson used towards her in her Facebook rant about the project. That supporters of Palin would turn so ferociously on Carlson for that demonstrates the power of Palin’s cult of personality. It is strong enough to erode the memory of many internet conservatives, apparently, given they seem to believe that their hero, who famously tabled anti-abortion legislation and vetoed sanctity of marriage legislation as governor of Alaska, is a more credible conservative figure than the Daily Caller proprietor. Here is a quick refresher on why that meme just isn’t true:

He routinely uses the email address “Keith@KeithOlbermann.com” and has been quoted on the record on Olbermann being “the most disliked person at MSNBC.” He has called the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein‘s internet creation Journolist “bitchy.” He has done more publicly on the front of public education and bias in elementary school textbooks than most on television. And these are just examples occurring during Mediaite’s near 2-year existence.

Carlson’s television debut was on a program called The Spin Room with vocal liberal Bill Press, a program he happily touts in his book as being named “the worst show in the history of CNN” (note: this was long before reigning champion Parker/Spitzer polluted the airwaves). From there he went on to Crossfire, where the daily routine consisted in pushing back on claims by James Carville and Paul Begala, both among the most intimidating debaters on the left. His most famous exhibition on the program was against future Most Trusted Man in Fake News (then merely precocious Comedy Central brat) Jon Stewart.  Upon moving to MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was a regular guest on his program.

In other words, Carlson has made a career of proving he believes in his ideas enough to put them to the test against any commentator out there. In some ways, he is a relic of a time gone by when conservative thinkers didn’t have the safe harbor of Fox News from which to hit home runs off of deliberate softballs. In 2000, when Carlson made his TV debut as the youngest CNN on-air hire ever, CNN was the undisputed Mecca of cable news– anyone who was anyone had to debate there, and there was no room for hand-holding. It was a world in which a commentator like Palin– who hasn’t faced a true ideological liberal since debating then Senator Joe Biden in 2008– was inconceivable and, moreover, useless. Palin fans should take note of her compulsive seclusion from ideas she doesn’t like before deriding Carlson for being so open to them.

For Carlson’s part, he seems to have not noticed the backlash at all when Mediaite caught up with him yesterday. “I never Google myself and I don’t check myself on Twitter,” he admitted, though he also appeared surprised at the idea that conservatives would be upset with his site’s work on Palin. “Especially for conservatives and libertarians and people who are committed to free thinking,” he noted, “it would seem to be important to ask questions of their leaders frequently. If you support Sarah Palin, why wouldn’t you want to know if she had bad staff work?” As for the repeated, intensified criticism of him as a result, he understood to a certain extent why those who follow Palin for her person and not her ideas would find him somewhat grating. “I’ve never been particularly interested in being loyal to particular politicians. People are subject to change, and ideas and principles aren’t so much.” Which begs the question: what principles are Palin fans following that have them so incensed with the original cable news conservative? Whatever those principles may be, the lack of trust in government figures is definitely not one of them.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.