THE CARLSON TEXT

Much has been made in the media of the Tucker Carlson text about his observation of a J6 video showing "three white men" beating up “an Antifa kid". The media have focused on two aspects of Carlson's screed: i) the text demonstrates Carlson is a racist, and ii) if the text were published to the jury, it would severely injure Fox's position in the Dominion case that was about to be tried. 

So that you will know what I'm talking about, let me refresh your recollection: In his January 7 text to a Fox producer, Carlson said, among other things:

"A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It's not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it."

Then Carlson's brain switched channels and examined the thoughts he had just expressed:

"Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn't good for me I am becoming something I don't want to be. The creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I am sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn't gloat over his suffering .…”

It was essentially these excerpts that gave the Fox Board and management pause and led them to conclude that because of his obvious racism, Carlson was such a detriment to the forthcoming Dominion jury trial, that he was  “more of a problem than an asset."

But I suggest the media missed the boat. It was not simply Carlson's racism that panicked the Board and the management. That was already common knowledge. Anyone who had seen Carlson's shows knew that he was a racist. Indeed, Fox kept him on because racism is Fox's chief commodity, and it's what keeps Fox in the lead in the viewership contest. 

I suggest what the Carlson text shows, and the Board and the management finally realized, is that Carlson is a thug. It's not just that three against one is not "how white men fight". It's the balance of that paragraph that raises the hair on the back of your neck:

"Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man hoping they would hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted to hurt the kid. I could taste it."

These were the thoughts of the crocodile brain of Fox's leading money-making anchor. Yes, he does go on to say that when he realized what he wanted, what he was hoping for, set off an alarm in his brain: perhaps on odd-numbered days the Antifa “creep” (Carlson said he hated him even though he didn’t know him) was, after all, a human being and not just croc chum.

But lawsuit or not, no sentient manager could take the risk of employing, indeed making company flag-bearer, a creature who on the flip side of his brain would enjoy watching men beat somebody to death for no reason other than, at best, political disagreement. You would not want to meet such a person in the supermarket, and, one would think, you would not want to put your brand label on such a person who spoke to 3 million of your customers every night. 

In my judgment that is what blew the minds of the Fox Board and led the management to conclude that Carlson was quote “more of a problem than an asset." That problem was far greater than his racism or his referring to women in "crude and misogynistic terms." 

The real risk was that the public would see the Board and the management as being like-minded. The croc-mind risk was too great and Carlson had to go. Instantly.

Second, how could it be that, as the Times reports, the Fox Board first learned of the Carlson Crocodile Text one day before jury selection?

Fox was represented at this trial by two reputable law firms, and I'm sure that means, given the stakes, there were a dozen lawyers involved on the Fox team. Nobody told the client what was in the discovery? Nobody told the management about the existence of the croc-text until the day before jury selection?  Hardly likely. The text was the subject of testimony in Carlson’s pre-trial deposition, weeks, if not months before trial. I practiced law for 50 years and I never heard of a sentient lawyer keep important stuff secret from his client.

Did you see any discussion of this issue in the press? I didn't, Given the identity of the parties and the subject matter, this case was high on my list of interesting items in the news and I saw no reporting suggesting i) that outside lawyers kept it from their client, or ii) inside counsel hid it from management, or iii) that senior management consciously hid it from the Board. The press has neglected to pay any attention to the issue.

One of the reasons corporations have Boards of Directors is to watch out for gross management failure, such as this one, but the Board can only do that when it knows the truth – a commodity not held in high regard at Fox.

When the Board learned of the croc-text, it immediately hired an outside law firm to investigate Carlson. But now that croc-brain is gone, what happens to that inquiry? If I were a member of the Board I would keep the outside counsel on the job and just change the mission: the new issue is how did the breakdown in communication inside Fox occur? The question is hardly moot. While the Dominion suit is over, there are other litigations, some or all of which involve Fox management's handling bad stuff, i.e. Smartmatic ($2.6 Biilion,) Grossberg, possible shareholder derivative suits, and who knows what else?

Hooray for Fox. The country may be facing an economic recession, but not for the lawyers who have anything to do with Rupert Murdock’s entity.

Wahoo!

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