Tucker Carlson to Sean Hannity on Fox, via Daily Caller
At the time there were reporters in the room. I had a show on another channel, and I covered the remarks that were released. But it turned out that most of the print reporters writing on this story were writing from the prepared remarks given them by the Obama campaign.
. . . Obama goes off-script repeatedly and ad-libs and says things that we can't find him saying to any other audience in the course of this campaign. Remarkable thing.
'They don't like you because you are black.' That is the theme of the speech from front to back, from beginning to end, they don't like you because of your skin color. That is shockingly, that is a nasty thing to say, it's a divisive thing to say, a very clear case again on the basis of his racial solidarity with this audience that they are getting shafted by a racist federal government.
. . . Let me just be totally clear for anyone who just watched it and who has seen Obama speak in public over the last ten years will note, this accent is absurd.
This is not the way Obama talks — at least it’s not the way he’s talked in the dozens, the scores of speeches I’ve watched him give, or public appearances I’ve seen him make. This is a put-on. This is phony. That’s issue one. The second issue is he is telling a predominantly black audience something very clear: The federal government doesn’t like you because you are black.
. . . This is not a dog whistle, this is a dog siren. These are appeals to racial solidarity. . . . he said 'our people, our young people should have got the construction jobs to rebuild after Katrina but instead they went to Halliburton.' Right? So look, he's making a very clear case again on the basis of his racial solidarity with this audience that they are getting shafted by the racist federal government.
Barack Obama was talking about a quiet riot today. And no, it was not a reference to a 1980s heavy metal band, unfortunately. The senator waded into the controversial waters of race during a speech Hampton University in Virginia. He said the Bush administration has done little to quell a brewing storm among some black Americans. He compared the current tension to what fueled the L.A. riots in the wake of the Rodney King verdict.
~ Tucker Carlson on MSNBC in 2007, via Politico
In a transparent attempt to change the subject from his comments attacking half of the American people, Mitt Romney’s allies recirculated video of a 2007 event that was open to and extensively covered by the press at the time. The only thing shocking about this is that they apparently think it’s wrong to suggest that we should help returning veterans, children leaving foster care and other members of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent get training that will allow them to find the best available jobs. If the Romney campaign believes that Americans will accept these desperate attacks tomorrow night in place of specific plans for the middle class, it’s they who are in for a surprise.
~ Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt, via Taylor Marsh
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Tucker Carlson Wants You To Enlist In Race War Against Jive-Talking President
. . . Having clearly become tired of waiting for the Romney Camp to do a GAME CHANGE its own inept self, Matt Drudge and Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity took it upon themselves to release shocking never-before-seen-or-reported-on video of the “president” talking like a common negro about Katrina and poverty and the LA Riots. (We are sure the Romney campaign is just thrilled with them.) How unreported was this story? Well, here is your Wonkette’s story reporting on it at the time. And how does Tucker Carlson know it was unreported back then (in 2007)? That’s easy. He knows it wasn’t reported on then, he told Sean Hannity, because he reported on it then.
~ From Wonkette
It's old news. This is well-covered ground. There's nothing in the speech, it seems to me on the surface of it, that's going to reset anything in the race. What it will do is create a conversation in conservative media about this event - the old tape here - as opposed to the expectations game that Mitt Romney's trying to control ahead of a really high-stakes debate performance.
~ John McCain Strategist Steve Schmidt on Rachel Maddow
What’s the ‘So what’ of this video? I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere.
~ Republican Congressman Allen West on Fox News, via Politico
Tucker Carlson Fails at Trolling
. . . Carlson's descent from reasonably credible magazine journalist to inept race hustler is well mapped territory. He has not been the same man since Jon Stewart took him down. The ethering reverberates through the years with such force that we now find its recipient slathering yesterday's nothing-burgers in weak sauce, and serving them up as the daily special.
~ Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Atlantic
Obama's black. Who knew. Next thing you know the bow tie wrapped around a stupid will have an expose that FDR was in a wheel chair.
~ comment by No_Gravity on Wonkette
Watching Tucker's long, slow, excruciating fall from his never-deserved one-time quasi-celebrity is the freude that keeps on schadening.
~ comment by prommie on Wonkette
Jive-ass dude don't got no brains, anyhow.
~ comment by TheGyrus on Wonkette
The Decline and Fall of Tucker Carlson
. . . All that Carlson did is clip it to get an "angry black man" in the minds of Americans. It's at once one of the most desperate and lame and vile plays of the race card I can remember - an obvious recognition that the 47 percent tape can only really be countered emotionally with race-baiting.
. . . Carlson used to be a brilliant writer. He's now a racist demagogue. He's a story in one person of how degenerate and disgusting much of American "conservatism" has become.
~ Andrew Sullivan on The Daily Beast
