I’m a big fan of those memes about “2018 was fifty years long” and “can you even remember what happened in March of this year?” Like, do you even remember that we had a Winter Olympics this year?? Do you even remember what won the Best Picture Oscar this year, without looking it up? Something else that happened this year: Laura Ingraham mocked a Parkland survivor over his college admissions. She cyberbullied a kid who survived a mass school shooting. Advertisers pulled out of Ingraham’s Fox News show in a steady stream, which was a reminder that many corporations do worry about aligning themselves with the nastier elements of the Trump era, especially when people notice that they’re doing it.
I have no idea what happened with Laura Ingraham’s show, long term, but I do know that Fox News continues to employ the worst of the worst, and then these terrible people say awful things every single day, on the public airwaves. So it with Tucker Carlson, a douchenozzle of the highest order. Carlson has a primetime show on Fox News, and he used it to bash ALL immigrants. Now advertisers are pulling out:
Tucker Carlson’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has compelled four companies to pull advertisements from airing during his prime-time Fox News show. The backlash came in response to Thursday evening’s monologue, when the host suggested immigrants make the United States “poorer and dirtier.”
“Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this,” he said, while name-checking Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). “We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement.”
Few advocates, if any, argue the economic merit of immigration, Carlson said in his opening. The nation needs skilled workers, but that is not who arrive here, he said. The segment ended with an advertisement for insurance company Pacific Life. The Fortune 500 company said in a statement Friday that it “strongly” disagreed with Carlson’s immigration comments. Several other companies have since followed suit. NerdWallet, a personal finance company, pulled its advertising and said that it will be reevaluating future airtime during “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” SmileDirectClub and Nautilus, the parent company of fitness training equipment brand Bowflex, also confirmed asking Fox News to refrain from running their commercials during Carlson’s show, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Employment search engine Indeed.com requested the same from the network more than a month ago, too.
A few companies have stood behind their ad placement, including Bayer, producer of Alka-Seltzer Plus, and Mitsubishi. Farmers Insurance also said it will keep advertising during the time slot, adding that “decisions made by Farmers should not be construed to be an endorsement of any kind as to a show’s content or the individuals appearing on the show,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
I’m not going to pretend that what Tucker Carlson said is shocking – I assume he’s said stuff like that every night he’s on the air. So why now? Why these particular comments? I usually believe that “liberal activists” aren’t super-organized, but I think there’s a campaign against Tucker, and I’m happy about it. He’s been one of the worst trolls in the Fox News troll farm for years. Why did he even have those big advertisers in the first place?
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Why now? It’s because these people have finally realised Trump & his supporters are toast.
The public gave Democrats the House and 333 other local elections. Come 2020, Democrats will regain Senate and Presidency.
Once Democrats officially takes over in January, every single person who is linked with Trump is finished.
These companies are trying to get ahead and probably also thinking people have short term memory.
@Maya, you have just written my exact thoughts. So it is written, so it shall be.
All the corporations pulling ad $ from Tucker Carlson just diverted the cash to other shows on FOX. FOX loses nothing and these companies can slink away claiming redemption but it’s a FARCE.
couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
“Few economists” argue that, eh? Would love to meet those unspoken masses of anti-immigrant economic specialists, since any Econ 101 class will tell you it’s a necessity for any industrialized nation with slowing birth rates.
Come on, everybody knows that importing crops whilst your own lie rotting in the fields due to having no-one to harvest them, and then encouraging any country that might have wanted your produce in the first place to slap on a 25% tarriff, and then having to pay your own countrymen billions borrowed from abroad in socialist-farmer-welfare-socialism, whilst spending even more billions to keep the people that would have helped you with the harvesting in privately-run $725-a-person-a-day tent prisons is good business.
Yep. CA girl here from the farmland of the central valley… They are still too many stupid California Central Valley farmers still supporting this crap. My almond growing parents had a huge drop in the price of their crop. And they are getting some of the reparation money. Only it’s not even close to what they lost. Little farmers are screwed. Remember not only is Trump giving this welfare money to the farmers, but it’s only really going to the big corporate farms it’s not the tiny family farms that really need it .
The whole thing is a mess. And yet, whenever I talk to one of these Trump supporting farmers, or my dad talks to them, all they can do is mention Hillary and Obama. One of them blamed Hillary for the dropping prices . Freaking absurd.
That’s utter BS. I live in TX, where the economic impact of immigration is well understood and documented. I sat down with the CEO of a construction company who has been actively fighting for immigration reform because his industry is dependent upon immigration – you can easily google many, many articles talking about the net positive impact immigration has on the economy. Immigration is good for business, period.
Omg Veronica THANK YOU. Seriously. Economics 101, Tucker, or are facts and history and policy too elitist for you? Racist garbage.
Honestly–something I always want to tell anti-immigrant blowhards is that they could conceivably shut their borders tomorrow, deport every brown immigrant they see (because you know that’s who they mean when they oppose immigration), refuse to admit any more immigrants, and it still would not solve their economic woes. It still would not solve their fundamental problems, because the problem was never immigration to begin with.
Maya, I think you hit the nail squarely on it’s head.
Of all the Fox pundits Carlson ( and this is sayin something ) is the most offensive. That incredulous glare he gives coupled with the demeaning laughter when anyone has the temerity to stand up to him and his bigoted views is infuriating! Please god, do us a solid in 2018 and punt him into oblivion
Just remember these advertisers were ok with everything else he said leading up to this.
Yeah exactly. Not giving them any kudos for this.
And all they did was divert their investments to other shows on the network. This is not a boycott of the message, just the messenger. It’s some shit.
Saddest part of all this? I know far too many Trump supporters who are the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. These people don’t seem to realize that if Trump had his way none of them or their ancestors would be here. My grandma and mom immigrated from a country with no running water, no electricity, no indoor plumbing . That was in 1951, too. I lamented on the Facebook that my grandparents probably would be denied today . One of my Facebook friends with a similar background responded they wouldn’t have denied my grandparents because my grandparents were good people. And they did things the right way. Sigh. When are the supporters gonna learn that this really isn’t about legal versus illegal immigration ? It’s about keeping all immigrants out unless they are a certain demographic. They want merit based rules so that we can keep anyone who is not rich and white out of the country. My grandparents were farmworkers and would not have met any merit based rules. Trump admin is already denying legal due process for asylum-seekers and reviewing the legal status of people who’ve gone through legal process. When are these immigrant supporters of Trump going to realize that he doesn’t care about them? He would have denied them access to the US if he could have. This immigrant issue isn’t about following laws . It’s about racism. It’s about classism. It’s about maintaining the whiteness of America and slowing/reversing diversity .
Agree. +100000000000000. That’s exactly what it’s all about. Some whites are afraid of becoming the minority and losing their advantages. I’m white so don’t come for me people, I said SOME .
Of course they’re immigrants. We all are!
Right. I meant immigrants from countries Trump would consider “sh*thole” countries. I should have been clearer.
Exactly.
There is a very thin line between free speech and hate speech when Tucker Carlson opens his mouth. “Hate speech (n) – Speech that attacks, threatens, or insults a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability .”
Unless you’re Native American, we’re all immigrants. Fool.
I’m pretty sure he just has a problem with brown and black immigrants. The white ones are ok with him and Trump.
And Paul Ryan, who wants more visas for Irish people.
They forget that so quickly.
Native Americans are not native to the US. They crossed over what was a land bridge from Asia.
If they’re the first people to the region, then it belongs to them. By your reckoning, everyone’s an immigrant to every region of the globe except the spot where humanity originated in Africa.
@LivBigs:
The ancient ancestors of Native Americans crossed that land bridge and permanently lived in North America 14,000 to 15,000 years ago. That’s several MILLENNIA before European countries even existed, and longer still compared to the U.S., which is a young nation. Europeans didn’t begin “colonizing” (conquering) North America until 1492.
Natalie is right. The ancestors of Native Americans were the first people to live in what is now the U.S. The descendants of these people have remained here for thousands upon thousands of years, so they are NOT immigrants.
SMH. I can’t roll my eyes hard enough at the pointlessness of your comment.
Look in the mirror if he wants to see who’s really making America dirtier
BTW, is anyone noticing that there’s been a change in the anti-immigration rhetoric? It’s now less about jobs and doing things the right way and more about how disease ridden and dirty immigrants are. IDK, maybe it’s just the people that I see on my social media?
It’s the next phase of scapegoating and fear mongering over demographic change.
All about dehumanizing people. History is repeating itself.
Eerily similar to Nazi discourse on Jews in the 20s and 30s.
He lied about his door being cracked by protestors. I actually felt bad for his wife when I first heard that because that sounds terrifying.
He’s smart and a good writer and can be very quick and insightful but morally there’s just nothing there. He also has major issues with women and toxic masculinity. And he’s racist.
He’s a Kavanaugh-type of preppy, privileged toxicity.
He certainly sounds like someone who said similar things as a candidate and is now living in the White House….
Tucker is saying all the things a certain segment of society wants to hear.
He is one to keep an eye on over the next few years
Btw, for those that reject the idea consider this: three years ago could any of us predicted a twice divorced, multiple bankrupt, reality star be leader of the US?
As a woman who married an immigrant, anyone who bashes them enrages me. How do you think America came what it was without immigrants? Is he really that dense or just some self-absorbed mega douche like the rest of Fox News?
Here’s the thing – Fox News doesn’t consider losing sponsors a reason to change or moderate their rhetoric. It has happened to Laura Ingraham – repeatedly. Even after she lost more advertisers than they could replace with lower rates, all Fox News did was shorten the commercial breaks on her show, thus giving her more air time. I think they consider a few provocative shows – like Carlson and Ingraham – as loss leaders. They have accepted those shows will never pull in big advertising dollars but still have enough viewers that will stick around for their other shows that aren’t quite as controversial.
What will be interesting to see if that is sustainable, now that Fox News is being spun off as part of a standalone company after the Disney/21st Century Fox merger. If it’s a public company (I think it is, but not sure), shareholders may not be happy with a major business unit losing money when it could be contributing to their profits, even if the Murdochs still have majority ownership.
Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants on Twitter) has a lot to do with the advertiser pullouts you’ve been seeing with various vile wingnut pundits and sites. They launched after the 2016 election with Breitbart as their initial focus. They have been EXTREMELY effective, and have a lot to do with why Bill O’Reilly is no longer on the air. They’ve basically taken boycott pressure tactics that right-wing groups like The Moral Majority used like a sledgehammer in the 1980s, and weaponized them against the far-right.
I’ve never heard of them, I will check them out.
They are AMAZING!!! They will also help you with writing to a sponsor (in a “polite but pointed” way to get their attention.
I saw a great picture on CNN yesterday of a church in Oklahoma which had placed a chain link fence around their nativity display. It’s a great reminder that Mary and Joseph were also a migrant family. Priceless. In other words, Up Your’s Tucker.