Today is Monday, May 2, 2022. Fox News host “Fucker” Carlson receives the star treatment in The New York Times‘ penetrating study of the rise of an “American nationalist” in three parts, which began yesterday in Sunday’s edition of the paper. I even stooped to buy the paper yesterday when I usually never buy it since it’s so tremendous. Today’s segment on the despicable host was written by well-known Nicholas Confessore who is also an MSNBC contributor.

Confessore’s long study into the career of this country’s well-paid Trumpist is shocking for the lies that he uncovers that Carlson has told during his long tenure with the far-right network. Some of Carlson’s early figments of imagination were quite weird but “tapped into viewers’ fears of a trampled-upon American culture.” On one segment of his hate-filled show, Carlson devoted time to “Gypsy” refugees in a Pennsylvania town who left “streets covered with human feces.” This story was later debunked by local officials who documented only one instance resulting from a refugee child who had to pull down his pants outside because he couldn’t make it back in time. In Carlson’s demented mind, the streets were littered with refugee poop; everyone was pooping on the street, in his mind.

Throughout the Trump years, Carlson dialed up the intensity of attacks against immigration, stoking fears of America being invaded by “the other.” Carlson borrowed tropes from the far right that would come to define his show: failing birthrates among the native-born (read: white), big-city crime (read: people of color), lax immigration policies designed to forcibly alter American society – “all engineered or encouraged by a ‘ruling class’ desperate to censor public discussion of its own failures.”

Carlson’s popularity with Fox News soared since he took over hosting duties from the disgraced Bill O’Reilly and began to forge a close relationship with Lachlan Murdoch, the Murdoch’s family’s heir apparent, who would become his most public supporter at Fox. Carlson could do no wrong, according to his largest defender. Even with all the controversy his news shows generate with his more outrageous assertions. It seems that Carlson is inviolate no matter what garbage he spews on his program.

What is most egregious about this champion of white victimhood is his aggressive defense of the January 6 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on that day – an attack that Carlson has depicted as a false-flag operation masterminded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Another disturbing canard he’s embraced is whispers of a “great replacement” conspiracy theory, once relegated to the far-right fringe, that Western elites are importing immigrants to disempower the native-born. This guy is more dangerous than Dumpf, it appears, since Dumpf has no Twitter or Facebook account anymore, but this human powder keg is provided a platform every night that is watched by millions of gullible Americans.

All throughout the pandemic years, it was Carlson who promoted doubt about the vaccines’ efficacy, even though the Orange Menace had begun to urge his stupid followers to finally get vaccinated. The “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host even likened mandates to Nazi medical experiments, a queer obsession with repugnicans these days like Marjorie Taylor Greene et al. who love to take the Holocaust’s memory in vain. (They should be throttled for making such a false equivalence.)

Other stories that Carlson latched onto and never released his grasp on were the migrant caravans that his station took to covering for its millions of viewers on a nonstop basis as the 2018 midterm elections approached. This was the migrant caravan wending its way through Central America to the U.S. border that was composed primarily of mostly women and children, but in Fox News’ hosts like Tucker Carlson, this was considered an “invasion” of illegal immigrants. Commentators on the conservative station continued calling this caravan an “invasion” even after a man walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue in late October and murdered 11 people, leaving behind a trail of social media posts railing against immigrants and Jews and applauding how people were now calling illegal immigrants “invaders.” Would there be an acknowledgment of the channel’s accountability in possibly influencing this serial killer to do his dirty deed? Not in a million years!

Another story that Carlson made up from whole cloth was his reporting in 2018 about “farm murders” in South Africa, a story rarely reported on by other news outlets in the country. He began reporting on these reputed killings of white farmers by government officials with the sole purpose of seizing land without compensation. Carlson “claimed that officials were taking land that they hadn’t under a constitutional amendment that didn’t exist.” Of course, here in the U.S., white nationalists were applauding this series of segments, which echoed far-right narratives about a looming “white genocide,” which couldn’t be further from the truth.

So there you have it: the lowdown on a real putz like “Fucker” Carlson and his ascent up the Fox News ranks, which would make the late Roger Ailes, the founder of the network, mighty proud of him – even though in Confessore’s article, it was Ailes who was reportedly lukewarm on Carlson when he was given his start at the network. As you might recall, it was the piggish, rotund Ailes who was forced out amid a widening sexual harassment scandal in 2016 when former News anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him, which opened up an avalanche of similar allegations made by more than a dozen female employees at 21st Century Fox against the predatory guy in a suit. Russell Crowe played the disgraced Fox News bigwig in a 2019 television series called The Loudest Voice which covered those last years with particular gusto.

As a coda to this massive story on him, “Fucker” Carlson weighed in on the Times reportage for The Hill in which he said “he has not read and does not plan to read the wide-ranging examination of his career arc,” published by The New York Times over the weekend.

Carlson denies that he’s obsessed over ratings, which Confessore included in his 15,00-word feature article on him. Carlson had these choice words for Times journalists in general: They “will say anything to please their bosses, they’re suck-ups, brown-nosers, lickspittles, not people you’d want to have dinner with.” And, I wonder, who would seriously want to have dinner with this divisive figure in America’s culture wars right now? Certainly not I; I would like to ask him how he is able to sleep every night, given how many people he’s bamboozled with his version of the truth every night. And possibly killed with his vaccine disinformation.

In a much lighter note, who has heard the endorsement made by the twice-impeached, insurrectionist former president of “J.P. Mandel” in the Republican Ohio Senate primary race when Dumpf misspoke the actual candidate’s name at a campaign rally in Nebraska. The candidate was venture capitalist and author J.D. Vance, not Mandel; maybe the Orange Blob was thinking of comedian Howie Mandel when he flubbed Vance’s name. Here the other name was probably borrowed from former state treasurer Josh Mandel, whose name was combined with Vance’s in Dumpf’s rendering. Actually, in a RawStory article today by Travis Gettys entitled ‘What planet is he on?’ Morning Joe mocks Trump for forgetting who he endorsed in GOP Senate race,” the ramifications of the former insurrectionist’s error are expounded on by the Morning Joe host.

Scarborough rightfully ponders, “Oh, my God, you know, you know, if the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had done that, there would be headlines for months. ‘Oh, he can’t remember,’ which, of course, underlines the fact, how funny it is, you have people, right-wing Trumpists attacking Joe Biden for his mental acuity, right before Donald Trump couldn’t remember who he endorsed.” Scarborough is speaking the truth here; God forbid if Biden made such a gaffe, it would be treated as if it were the end of the world, but this old fart’s continuing examples of looming dementia are overlooked very conveniently by his millions of supporters. How so hypocritical and just plain shitty.

Scarborough ends his musings, saying, Seriously, the guy – like, what planet is he on?”

Before I sign off, I would like to comment on a situation more close to home here: the rising tide of violence engulfing even quiet, respectable Queens neighborhoods like Forest Hills (where I live), Rego Park, and Forest Hills Gardens (where episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel have been shot). People appear to be frustrated and angry over the perceived rise in assaults and even murders. In today’s Daily News, an article, entitled “Shock Slay on Queens Street: Friendly deliveryman is gunned down on scooter; may have been stray shot,” by Nicholas Williams, Brittany Kriegstein, and Thomas Tracy, appeared on the senseless killing of a beloved Queens Chinese food deliveryman, Zhiwen Yan, shot while riding his scooter near 108th Street and 67th Drive by a crazed man firing off his gun in his direction about 9:30 p.m. Saturday night. The victim leaves behind a shattered widow and three children. Yan delivered food for a restaurant I was familiar with, the Great Wall Chinese restaurant on Queens Boulevard, just about a half-dozen blocks from where the killing took place. So many people interviewed for the article remembered Yan as a very friendly, pleasant, and respectful man. So shocking – that this senseless violence has inched its way up to our very own quiet, leafy section of Queens.

This is the second homicide to take place in our neighborhood, according to the article. The first occurred right before my trip to Los Angeles, and that was the murder of 51-year-old Orsolya Gaal, of Juno Street, on the outskirts of Forest Hills Gardens. Her home was just a mile away from this more recent shooting. Her body was found stuffed in a duffel bag on April 16 and found on Metropolitan Avenue near Forest Park, another area I’m familiar with. Now her ex-lover, David Bonola, was charged in her murder five days later.

People interviewed for the article in today’s paper say how stunned they are by the news of Yan’s killing, which left interviewees visibly upset and angry. One resident, Collarini Schlossberg, said this about the situation: “This doesn’t usually happen, so it’s very surprising. I’m here over 40 years, and nothing like this has ever happened.”

What is the solution then to this rising tide in crime, which has seen a nearly 50 percent rise in incidents this year? Is our new mayor monitoring the situation and is he doing something about it? It’s just very unsettling; if you can’t live here, where can you live? What other neighborhood is safer than Forest Hills? All neighborhoods have their ups and downs, it would seem. I will always maintain that there are too many guns in this country, and they need to be scaled back.

Well, it’s getting late here.

Stay safe and be well. Especially now!