RUBBING OUR FACES IN IT

We know that Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch has made clear that he won't rein in Tucker Carlson's racist talk. Last night, Carlson rubbed our faces in the fact that he can be an on-air racist with impunity by bringing on an old-school racist from Fox's past:

Glenn Beck has ramped up attacks on former president Barack Obama in recent days, capping the whole thing off by retracting an apology he once made for calling Obama “racist.”

During a Wednesday night appearance on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Beck said, “I take my apology back. I was exactly right and I even stated it right. You are a racist if you believe in critical race theory. If you think that what Dr. Martin Luther King said — that he envisions a country that is seeing people for the content of their character and not their color — if you think that’s wrong, then yes, you are a racist.”

In July 2009, Beck called Obama a racist and said he had "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." Companies that removed their ads from Beck's show included ConAgra, Geico, Procter & Gamble, and Progressive insurance. Beck was defended by Rupert Murdoch, and he remained on Fox for two more years. But this was seen at the time as an embarrassment for Fox, and while Beck's show remained on the air he was never again quite as blatant in his race-baiting of Obama. In 2016, The New Yorker's Nicholas Schmidle interviewed Beck and wrote:

[Beck] once ... accused Obama of being a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

That was the old Beck, he insists: “I did a lot of freaking out about Barack Obama.” But, he said, “Obama made me a better man.” He regrets calling the President a racist and counts himself a Black Lives Matter supporter. “There are things unique to the African-American experience that I cannot relate to,” he said. “I had to listen to them.”

So much for that.

The Murdochs know that we liberal elitist scum believe that the 2009 Beck pronouncement was possibly the most offensive moment in Fox history -- so Beck has now been brought back to reprise it. That's a big fuck-you to all of us. In 2009, for all its denials, Fox might have cared what we thought. Fox doesn't care anymore. The Murdochs and Carlson don't believe they have any reason to care, and they want to make sure we know that.