Tucker Carlson is gone from Fox. Great, just what the world needs, another podcast

Until Monday, I had never heard of Don Lemon. Didn’t know him, didn’t know of him. No clue. The only Lemon I knew was Meadowlark.

But today, I feel so sorry for Lemon, because not only was he fired from his gig at CNN, he got fired on the same day as Tucker Carlson, which is like winning your high school science fair on the same day that Edison invented the electric light.

Two titans gone in one day. Whew. On days like this I’m glad I’m too insipid and too irrelevant for anyone to care what I say. It’s like being the Maria Bartiromo of print.

We all know Tucker Carlson, even if we never saw his show. He was everywhere, particularly on the social media feeds of outraged liberals who posted snippets of his show under the general mantra of “this is why we can’t have nice things.”

Unlike most conservatives who try and fall flat, Tucker Carlson really did own the libs, who were probably responsible for disseminating his comments more than Fox broadcasting itself.

I remember 40 years ago, there was a regionally syndicated columnist named Adam Kelly in West Virginia, who was quite conservative and pugilistic — mild by today’s standards. But when he sent his column, he would often attach a little editorial comment on his own commentary to the tune of “this will get ’em” or “they’re going to hate this one,” and I thought it curious at the time that his frame of reference was not focused on his fans, but just the opposite.

Tucker Carlson seemed that way too. It’s like tomato aspic; you don’t serve it to make people happy, you serve it as a way of scientifically testing your guests’ gag reflex.

This is the problem with the storyline that Tucker will reappear somewhere else with the same impact. It’s tough. Just ask Megyn Kelly or Chris Cuomo or Bill O’Reilly who are desperately trying to get someone, anyone, to pay attention to them.

And when was the last time you saw a clip of Glenn Beck talking about whatever it is Glenn Beck is talking about these days? Every time a major star gets laid off I think, "Great, just what the world needs, another podcast."

Tucker’s fans will follow him anywhere, but without the national stage, his enemies will stop caring, and without the oxygen of liberal outrage, he’s just one more sour, angry man talking to no one in particular in a bar.

Everyone has a theory about why Tucker is gone, but I’m waiting to hear what the far-right conspiracy theorists say. Since they watch Fox and thereby know nothing of the network’s recent legal unpleasantness, maybe they’ll hatch a wild story about how Tucker Carlson was forced out by some sort of back-room deal involving Dominion Voting Machines.

My own theory is this: What sent Rupert Murdoch over the edge was all the talk about how Fox viewers dictated coverage, forcing the network to amplify baseless stories of election-stealing instead of reporting the truth.

I’ve known a lot of rich and powerful guys. Not on Murdoch’s level, of course, but the one thing they have in common is that they don’t like being told what to do.

They might make allowances for a star or a relative peer, but there was no way Murdoch was going to let a bunch of Clems from Polecat Hollow tell him how to run his own network.

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Firing Carlson checked a lot of other boxes to be sure, but on a personal level, this was a titanic flipping of the bird to the rabble. The bona fide crazies might stop watching, but the normal viewers will stay, so If you want to go, go — and don’t let the trailer door hit you on the way out.

Likely? Nah. But it’s more interesting than the truth, and isn’t that what Fox and Tucker Carlson were all about?

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Conspiracy theories likely to grow with Carlson's canning