Tucker Carlson took a brief pause from fearmongering about vaccines and progressive Democrats on his Fox News show Wednesday night to let everyone know he finds bisexuality “confusing.”
In a segment dedicated to criticizing Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s COVID-19 response, Carlson pivots to talk about her status as the United States’ first openly LGBTQIA governor.
“Kate Brown was first elected governor of Oregon all the way back in 2015,” he said, although she was actually appointed to the position when the then-governor resigned. “At the time, there was not a whole lot going on in Oregon, so voters did not ask many questions. The one thing they did learn about Kate Brown, over and over again, is that she is a self-described bisexual.”
First of all, it’s ludicrous to say that nothing was happening in Oregon or any state in 2015. Does Carlson really think the people of Oregon had zero concerns just because antifa wasn’t out making national headlines?
The election of an openly bisexual governor is a representation milestone, but it’s far from the only thing Brown had going for her, having served nearly 20 years in the state legislature and two terms as Secretary of State. But if you ask Carlson (no one did), the only thing “the media” cared about was her “sex life.”
So naturally, Carlson dedicates an entire segment to discussing her sexual orientation as a way to criticize other outlets’ decision to … discuss her sexual orientation.
“Kate Brown’s sex life was shattering ceilings. Woo-hoo,” Carlson sneered before revealing he doesn’t actually understand what it is to be bisexual in the first place.
“And yet, if you looked a little closer, you noticed something a little weird. Actually, Kate Brown was married to a man,” Carlson continued. “Yes, he had a different last name, but he was still, as they say on TikTok, ‘binary,’ he was a dude.”
Carlson says this is “fine” (I’m sure Brown appreciates the permission) but that it “was also a little confusing.”
“How does having a groom at her wedding make Kate Brown an official member of the LGBTQ exclamation point community? No one bothered to ask,” Carlson said.
“That kind of curiosity was forbidden,” he continued. “It was like wondering why we don’t call Barack Obama half-white, which he is. It’s not allowed. ‘Stop with the questions! Celebrate!’ So voters in Oregon dutifully celebrated.”
In reality, a study of media coverage of Barack Obama found that about half of all coverage referred to him as biracial rather than Black. Plus, there’s the fact that Obama identifies as a Black man so no one would refer to him as “half-white” unless they were trying to make some sort of asinine contrarian statement, as Carlson is here.
But then, Carlson has built a career on asking questions whose answers are already readily available. It’s his way of deflecting responsibility for the disinformation he’s spreading. When people take his hateful, bigoted rhetoric at face value, he can claim he was just “asking questions,” not spreading lies or pushing conspiracy theories.
Never mind the fact that the “questions” he’s asking have already long been answered. By posing them to his audience, it implies that there is no answer. They’re suspicious mysteries. What’s in the vaccine? Why are Democrats so invested in mask-wearing? What does the “bi” in bisexual really mean? Don’t Google it, just listen to Carlson’s scary, snarky tone and assume there’s a conspiracy lurking in there somewhere.
(via The Daily Beast, image: screencap)
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