Tucker Carlson Biography Dumped — Politico Columnist Argues Over Tanking Relevance
AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File
A biography about populist firebrand Tucker Carlson has been canceled by a major publishing house, according to a new article arguing that Carlson’s star power has waned since his ouster from Fox News.
Politico’s Michael Schaffer reported Friday that Little, Brown, and Co. publishing initially hired writer Jason Zengerle to pen the book Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unravelling of the Conservative Mind. The book was set to a be a nuanced but unsparing look at Carlson’s journey from mainstream conservative journalist to controversial right-wing pundit.
In his column, Schaffer attributed the book deal’s demise to Carlson’s diminished cultural relevance, writing that “the cancellation stems at least in part from the belief that Carlson, once the biggest name on cable, no longer has the kind of cultural footprint to warrant a pricey, complicated book by a top-shelf writer.” Schaffer also noted that a number of delays in the book as well as its even-handed tone may have also contributed to the publisher’s decision to kill the project.
Last year, Carlson was fired from Fox News soon after the network settled a $787 million defamation lawsuit over election lies by Dominion Voting Systems.
Since then, he’s released videos on X, formerly Twitter, and formed his own media company Tucker Carlson Network. While the videos have retained the attention of his audience and the news media, Carlson arguably does not boast the same audience he commanded from his perch on Fox News.
Schaffer also argued there is waning appetite for a book that doesn’t play to a partisan side. He reviewed a draft of the book from Zengerle, who writes for New York Times Magazine, and reported it to be a complex portrait of the controversial pundit:
I got a peek at a 60,000-word chunk of draft from Zengerle’s reporting, and it presents a nuanced portrait of a generation of conservatives who grew up in the Reagan era, came to Washington in the 1990s, and were pulled in wildly different directions as the Bush administration floundered and the new GOP embraced Trump. That’s fascinating stuff — if not exactly the kind of scathing hate-read whose scandalous allegations will send books flying off shelves in blue-city bookstores.
In a polarized country, fury sells. Beyond attracting readers hungry for outrage, it also snags the attention of the TV bookers and podcast hosts who can put a book on the radar screen. Complexity doesn’t work as well: The lefties who loathe Carlson might not want to spend 400 pages with a three-dimensional version of the guy, and the righties who hero-worship him still won’t want to shell out for something from a non-fan.
Carlson was the top-rated cable news host in the U.S. at the time Fox News fired him and has even been considered a possible VP pick for Donald Trump.
