MARGARET SULLIVAN - THE GUARDIAN: Tucker Carlson became Fox New's biggest liability

 Tucker Carlson was Fox News’s biggest star. Then he became its biggest liability, Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian

Carlson has been far more than a cable-news host over the half-dozen years since he took that prominent evening slot and became Fox’s most-watched personality.

He has been America’s chief fomenter of populist resentments, its go-to guy for the politics of grievance and – despite his smarmy demeanor, and aging prep-school appearance – he’s been a twisted kind of working-class hero.

“Carlson has been uniquely dangerous and damaging – the leading figure in the right’s larger undertaking of making stuff up and inciting a hate-filled narrative against the educated, cosmopolitan elite,” said Linda Hirshman, an author and cultural historian who studies and writes about social movements.

Tucker Carlson was doing something different — and darker — than most Fox hosts, Andrew Prokop, Vox

And that’s why his departure really matters.

It might sound odd to claim that a TV host losing his program is seismic news for American politics, but with Tucker Carlson’s exit from Fox News, that claim is justified.

Like the rest of his Fox colleagues, Carlson’s main job was winning eyeballs to the network — and he was very successful at that.

But he was also engaged in a different and more ambitious project from, say, Sean Hannity. Rather than just cheerleading for Trump or the Republican Party or the Fox News company line, Carlson was articulating an ideology.

Some call it conservative populism, or national conservatism, while critics say it’s akin to white nationalism. It’s an ideology that panders to many Americans’ bigoted and xenophobic impulses, their resentments and their grievances. It welcomes in voices denounced by others as racist, and delights in mocking “woke” liberals. It promotes conspiracy theories. It admires foreign leaders denounced by others as authoritarians. It denounces “elites,” the traditional establishments of both parties, and the long-held commitments of US foreign policy.