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| The infamous "Tuckface" |
Tucker Carlson's daddy was the president of the Corporation for Public Broacasting and an ambassador to the Seychelles. His stepmommy is a TV dinner heiress. He attended boarding school at St. George's School, an elite academy in Middletown, Rhode Island, which boasts Prescott Bush and several Astors as alumni, and then went on to Trinity College in Connecticut.
Anyway, Carlson would like to give us all a good talking-to about merit.
Carlson began by relating the sad tale of James Damore, who was tragically fired from Google for simply suggesting that women were incapable of doing their jobs there because of their ladybrains, and the equally sad story of Alex Jones, who was banished from YouTube for hate speech and glorifying violence. He then launched into a tirade about how, since Trump's election, things have gotten even tougher for white Christian men who wish to say terrible and discriminatory things about other groups of people,
No matter how qualified James Damore might have been, he made his workplace uncomfortable for others in it, and that can be just as bad for a company as having someone who sucks at their job.
Almost no one gets completely free speech at work. You can't go around insulting your coworkers, you can't stand up in the middle of a meeting and start going on about the particulars of your diverticulitis, you can't scream at your boss. If your political beliefs or your "Traditional Christian" beliefs involve insulting other people or creating a hostile work environment, then you must keep them to yourself. It's called "being professional."
America has always loved "merit." We love Horatio Alger-ish stories, we love to pretend we don't have a class system, we love believing the true reason white men -- particularly those who grew up very rich -- have led our country, our companies and our board rooms is simply because they were the most qualified. Men like Dan Quayle and George W. Bush and Donald Trump, all of whom definitely would have made it to the executive branch even if they had been born poor black women, because they had so much merit!
it's not just having money that provides privilege, though it certainly helps. It's what comes with it. It's the connections and the introductions and the ability to get an internship from the guy your dad plays golf with at the club, or from your fraternity brother's daddy. It's having your parents support you while you do an unpaid internship. It's legacy admissions to elite universities. It's getting extra points on admissions for extra-curricular activities that maybe not everyone else could afford to do.
If companies that have diversity policies are successful, that is a threat to people like Tucker Carlson -- who, you know, just might have had some non-merit-based help here and there in their lives. The very idea that it could even be possible to find any person of color who could do a job just as well as or better than a white man is a threat. It ruins everything.
Whine on, Tucker-- whine on!
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