Tool Of The Week

Frozen-foodie Tucker Carlson, at it again.

The primary story the Caller piece was going to attack was Mayer's piece on the Koch brothers, billionaire industrialists who've spent years funding conservative-libertarian organizations and think tanks, and whose organizations helped birth, organize, and train the Tea Party movement. According to a knowledgeable source, Tucker Carlson was heard saying that the reason the story needed to go up this week, specifically on Monday or Tuesday, was because the National Magazine Awards submission deadline was on Thursday. Apparently, Carlson wanted to throw the New Yorker into enough of a panic that they wouldn't submit the Koch story for an Ellie.

If this is true, the Caller story looks a lot more like a political smear campaign than "traditional" reporting. (Someone has, after all, reportedly hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Mayer.) That's why it wouldn't necessarily matter that the "victims" of the alleged plagiarism didn't think there'd been any wrongdoing -- the point would've been simply to introduce the accusation, spread uncertainty, and catch the "opponent" off-guard.

The problem with the scheme, of course, is that no one really cares about the National Magazine Awards, or remembers who won them and why. (And it should also be noted, again, that even if he made the decision reluctantly or out of embarrassment, it was still obviously laudable of Carlson to spike the Mayer story, instead [of] following through on his original plan, running a politically motivated smear based on phony accusations.)

You just read the dictionary definition of damning w/ faint praise. Enjoy it. Tucker's Breitbart in a bow-tie, although Tuck's ability not to flap his gums triumphantly before all (or any) of the unedited facts are in may make him worthier than BB of being lauded. (Not really. Insufferable twits, the two of them.)