* Layla plays *

The ruthless (and hilarious) sacking of Tucker Carlson shows that no one not named Murdoch is a made man at News Corp

Previously: A wild ‘no one tells me what to write’
Your update on a rather common bit of hack self-deception.

UPDATE: an earlier version of this post had a typo for Joe Pesci’s name. We — I — regret the error and hope he doesn’t think I think he’s a 🤡

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  INT.  BASEMENT ROOM OFF THE GARAGE

               as TOMMY proudly walks into the room, followed by the TWO 
               WISEGUYS.

                                     HENRY (V.O.)
                         As far as Jimmy was concerned, 
                         with Tommy being made, it was like 
                         we were all being made. We would 
                         now have one of our own guys as a 
                         member.

               TOMMY proudly walks into the room. WE SEE a HOOD suddenly 
               appear behind him, put a gun to his head and fire. WE SEE 
               TOMMY inertly drop to the ground in a heap.

                                     HENRY (V.O.)
                         Except, they didn't make Tommy 
                         that day.

— GOODFELLAS by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorcese, based on the book Wiseguys by Nicholas Pileggi (Shooting Draft Script, January 3, 1989)

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Tucker Carlson just got Joe Pesci-ed. Like Pesci’s character in Goodfellas — the rage-filled, unstable Tommy — Carlson assumed he was a ‘made man’ at News Corp, the undisputed king of Fox News. But no one is a ‘made man’ at News if they don’t have the surname Murdoch, though there is one ‘made woman’: Rebekah Brooks, the daughter Rupert Murdoch wished he had rather than the daughters he actually has.

In his depositions during the Dominion defamation case (which centred on false claims that the voting machine company had stitched up the election against Trump) — settled last week at the 11th hour by News Corp who did not want to see Don Rupert in the dock — Carlson was an embarrassment to the family. While Murdoch made it clear in his evidence that Fox News is “not red or blue but green” (driven by money above all), the fact that Carlson soiled himself publicly with his evidence and embarrassed the boss meant he had to go.

Reports coming out of News Corp — little birdies tweet tweet tweeting to media reporters thirsty for gossip — suggest it was daddy’s sailor-suited boy Lachlan who completed the assassination of Carlson, the endlessly honking golden goose, on behalf of his old pa, and that he will have enjoyed it.

Lachlan wants total control of Fox News and having gotten rid of Roger Ailes — before that bilious bag of bile and liquid shit died — and cleared out other inconvenient monsters from the dungeons, he was no doubt keen to have Carlson gone. Carlson, with accusations of sexual harassment at his door (which he denies yadda yadda yadda), was making it hard for Lachlan to pretend Fox News is now a hidden camera, groper with a sense of impunity-free zone. How can the company pretend to change if a grown man with a bowtie fetish is spoiling that?

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INT NITE: LUNA AZURA TOILET (WINTER 1945)

	MICHAEL steps into the small bathroom; he is breathing very
	hard.  He actually uses the urinal.  Then he washes his
	hands with the bar of pink soap; and dries them thoroughly.
	Then he moves to the booth, up to the old-fashioned toilet.
	Slowly he reaches behind the water tank; he panics when he
	cannot feel the gun.  We see behind the tank his hand is
	just a few inches from the gun...he gropes
	searchingly...finally coming to rest on the gun.

	CLOSE ON MICHAEL; the feel of it reassures him.  Then he
	breaks it loose from the tape holding it; he takes a deep
	breath and shoves it under his waistband.  For some
	unexplainable reason he hesitates once again, deliberately
	washes his hands and dries them.  Then he goes out.

	INT NITE: LUNA AZURA (WINTER 1945)

	He hesitates by the bathroom door; and looks at his table.
	McCLUSKEY is eating a plate of spaghetti and veal.  SOLLOZZO
	turns around upon hearing the door, and looks directly at
	MICHAEL.  MICHAEL looks back.  Then he smiles and continues
	back to the table.  He sits down.

				MICHAEL
		Now I can talk.  I feel much better.

	The MAN by the far wall had been stiff with attention; now
	he too relaxes.  SOLLOZZO leans toward MICHAEL who sits down
	comfortably and his hands move under the table and unbutton
	his jacket.  SOLLOZZO begins to speak in Sicilian once again
	but MICHAEL's heart is pounding so hard he can barely hear
	him.

	The WAITER comes to ask about the order, SOLLOZZO turns to
	speak, and without warning, MICHAEL shoves the table away
	from him with his left hand, and with his right hand puts
	the gun right against SOLLOZZO's head, just touching his
	temple.  He pulls the trigger, and we see part of SOLLOZZO's
	head blown away, and a spray of fine mist of blood cover the
	entire area.

	The WAITER looks in amazement; suddenly his white jacket is
	sprayed and stained with blood.

— The Godfather by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, 3rd draft, March 29 1971. From the book, The Godfather (1969), by Mario Puzo.

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Lachlan may have left the gun and taken the cannoli — he won’t eat it though as he’s one of those insane rich people who have carefully determined diets in an attempt to live forever and extend their chance to ruin living for the rest of us — but like Michael Corleone taking out Sollozzo, there is blood splatter and there will be consequences.

The defenestration of Fox News’ chief fuckhead does not free News Corp from the legal consequences of his on-air claims or his alleged off-air behaviour. The stink of Carlson is on them. Add to that the screams and howls of the bunker-dwelling, multiple-shirt-wearing Jabba the Hutt stunt double Steve Bannon now Carlson has been canned that Fox News is done as a place for ‘conservatives’ to spew their invective and Lachlan has problems.

A lawsuit by Abby Grossberg, a producer fired by Fox News last month, played a major role in Carlson’s ouster (there’s a word that American media hacks love to use); she alleges she was bullied, and subjected to antisemitic comments while on the staff at Tucker Carlson Tonight. In her deposition, she said she was also coerced by News Corp lawyers to give misleading answers in the Dominion defamation case.

No one with knowledge or experience of News Corp’s actions during the phone hacking scandal will be surprised that they continue to try to orchestrate cover-ups and pressure relatively junior staff to lie on the company’s behalf. Mafia tactics are a Murdoch speciality; a key ingredient in the family’s acrid-tasting secret sauce. Fox News denies her claims and says she was “terminated for disclosing privileged company information”. But then it would.

Carlon’s exec producer Justin Wells was also shitcanned.

The line being swallowed by even Murdoch critics — the liberal kind that will still find ‘nice’ things about him on the glorious day when he finally dies — is that old Rupes was unsettled and angry about Carlson’s propagation of conspiracy theories about the January 6th insurrection. That’s horse shit. Murdoch had no issue with Carlson spewing all kinds of dangerous conspiracy theories while the advertisers were still booking slots in his commercial breaks and the money was still rolling in. Carlson was employed to be a boggle-eyed paranoid conspiracy freak purporting to be a man of the people while being a scion of privilege making millions to lie and terrify on a nightly basis.

Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, which tracks a lot of the insanity broadcast by Fox News, nailed it:

[Carlson] served as the bridge between Fox News and the most extreme parts of the rightwing base – laundering anti-trans paranoia, Infowars nonsense, election lies and venomous rhetoric including the great replacement conspiracy theory nightly. The Fox News audience is primed and ready to believe whatever lies and vitriol the next eight o’clock hour host comes ready to spew. Ahead of Carlson’s departure, Fox has already been leaning into toxic hate as a business model by elevating extremists like Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro who now stand ready to try to capture [Carlson's] audience.

The Fox News statement said it and Carlson had "agreed to part ways" but there was no plan; Carlson’s last show on Friday was not billed as such and he had no opportunity to say goodbye to the frothing maniacs who make up the core of his audience. Instead this “parting of the ways” was more like a failing general being left a pistol on his desk and encouraged to do the honourable thing lest he have to be taken to a basement and dispatched that way.

Of course, Carlson is leaving hooting, hollering, and hiring a glass-chewing, mega-fee-earning lawyer (the same one as Don Lemon who got booted from CNN yesterday after years of being a primo uomo). The celebrations about his booting are presumptuous; he’ll be picked up by another more insane network — the US has several — or relaunch himself as a huge YouTube/Rumble star with a prepackaged audience and a brand new grievance/cancellation narrative (cancelled by the woke forces of… Rupert Murdoch!)

A News Corp source — wiping the splatter off their face — told Semafor:

This is just classic Murdoch assassination — you’re their closest friend, their favourite child and now you’re dead.

Media executives love a dramatic line but this is pretty accurate; like I said, if you aren’t a Murdoch, you’re not a ‘made man’ in News Corp and, even if you are, it’s not guaranteed you won’t end up as Fredo in The Godfather, the pissy little disappointment that dad could not rely upon (hi James aka Kendall from Succession without the cool sunglasses!)

There are various media critics, observers, and reporters acting as though the sacking of cash cow Carlson is shocking or baffling. The fact is that Murdoch tolerates things until he doesn’t. He had done with Carlson who had been fucking up in public and increasing threats to the company. The Family is all and no star is bigger than that. Yes, Carlson was a big draw for Fox News but other ‘stars’ have been pulled from the firmament and flung into the dumper before.

Hyperventilating commentators asked, “What now?!” when Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, previous ratings-getters, were removed. Their replacements — The Five and… uh… one Tucker Carlson — easily replaced them and even grew the audience. There is no shortage of boggle-eyed, bad-faith monsters to put in front of Fox News cameras. Tucker Carlson wasn’t special; he was no ‘made man’ and that he came to believe that he was is what resulted in Murdoch giving the nod for his time at the network to come to a bloody end.

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