The Path To Tucker’s Masculinization

(The following Docu-drama uses facts from Wikipedia to dramatize the events that led Tucker Carlson to stop wearing bow-ties.)

On April 1, 2006, a producer of MSNBC’s conservative talk show "The Situation with Tucker Carlson" confronted the show’s WASPy namesake:

MSNBC Producer: Let’s face it, Tucker, your ratings suck. Turns out Paul Begala was the guy we should have hired, but we didn’t realize the Conservative movement would crater so badly.

Tucker Carlson: Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove...who knew such capable, peace-loving, honest guys would let the effete, liberal intellectuals on the coasts get the best of them?

MSNBC: Yes, well, we need to talk about that.

Tucker: About what??

MSNBC: Tucker, you don’t seem to grasp that you embody the traits of the people you always demean and stereotype.

Tucker: What are you talking about? What traits?

MSNBC: Well, let’s take effete. I just looked it up in Websters. It means “soft or decadent as a result of over-refinement of living conditions or laxity of mental or moral discipline.”

Tucker: Really?

MSNBC: Yes, and your presentation screams over-refinement and softness and mental laxity.

Tucker: Is it that obvious?

MSNBC: I’m afraid it is. Hell, your middle name is Swanson, as in Swanson frozen foods. And even worse, nobody on television today looks more like a stereotypical intellectual.

Tucker: But I...I...I never even graduated from college!

MSNBC: You went to an elite private prep school in New England for God’s sake! And sure, you bailed from college in your fourth year, but it was Trinity College in Connecticut. It doesn’t get any preppier than that.

Tucker: Nobody knows. I've never mentioned it on the air, and please don’t tell any of the staff--

MSNBC: Viewers know you work in liberal, blue-state New York. If word gets out that you were born in San Francisco, it could be devastating.

Tucker: But I’m not gay. I swear. I have a wife and kids! I just bought a $4million second home in the District of Columbia!

MSNBC: Jesus, don’t mention that either! No matter what, never draw attention to the fact that the elite conservative ruling class has a ton of money and nothing in common with average Americans.

Tucker: Right. By the way, I’ve always planned on living in the Midwest someday, I swear.

MSNBC: I hate to say it, but you’re getting a reputation as a priss, a brie eater, a quiche lover, a cappuccino drinker, a prig, a weasel, a limp-wristed Yuppie--

Tucker: But I try so hard to talk tough. I always call people wimps and whiners and ghouls. Crime victims should suck it up, no mercy for perpetrators, psychology is a crock, every lawsuit is frivolous, global warming is baloney. I’m so manly, don’t you think?

MSNBC: More like...so deluded. Were you teased as a child?

Tucker: Yes. Those bastards. So?

MSNBC: We have to make big changes. For starters, we have to make you meaner.

Tucker: Like, Coulter-mean?

MSNBC: A few notches down. You don’t want to piss off the 9/11 widows. But insult your guests, stereotype them, interrupt them, ignore their logic.

Tucker: I already do that.

MSNBC: Well...do it more. Do it louder.

Tucker: What else?

MSNBC: This is going to hurt, but you have to get rid of those bow ties.

Tucker: Screw you! That’s outrageous. It’s my signature.

MSNBC: Only ivory-tower academics and gay decorators wear bow ties. Name a single regular-guy type who wears one?

Tucker: G. Gordon Libby.

MSNBC: Who is regularly mistaken for a member of the Village People. You’ve proven my point.

Tucker: But without the bow ties, I’ll just be another pale, sarcastic pseudo-conservative whose positions are wildly conflicted and unsupportable by reason. I’ll be another O’Reilly. God, I feel like crying.

MSNBC: Either get rid of the bow ties or get ready for cancellation. Nobody wants to watch a conservative talk-show hosted by a fussy New England elitist.

Tucker: Okay, okay. I’ll get rid of them. I never want to go back to pitching shows--it was hell on my arches, and my pedicures never took. But I still think my audience sees me as a tough, swarthy military type. A playground bully who kicks butt and never gets shouted down. A virtuous crusader--

MSNBC: Just shut up and do it.

Tucker: Yes ma’am.