Insurrection? Let Tucker Explain What You Think You Saw
“Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes.”
That old, popular quote has been attributed in one version or another to a variety of funny men, according to the Quote Investigator website.
I’ll settle for the video clip on YouTube in which Chico Marx utters the line in the classic 1933 Marx Brothers comedy, “Duck Soup.” He’s disguised as Groucho in the scene.
Anyway, that old movie line came to mind as I watched a more recent moment of confusion: Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s release Monday of never-before-seen footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters, which Carlson describes at one point as “mostly peaceful chaos.”
News accounts were more likely to describe it as a “deadly insurrection.” But Carlson insists, “Everything about that phrase is a lie.”
“Very little about Jan. 6 was organized or violent,” he says, which immediately reminded me of all the times I have heard from Carlson and his fellow TV conservatives lambaste news media for noting that most of the Black Lives Matter protesters also were peaceful. Sometimes, it appears, fairness and balance depend on whose windows are getting broken.
I only find it darkly amusing that the right wing’s ferocious demands for strict “law and order,” especially regarding hoodlums who attack police, remarkably soften when confronted with cases of such lawbreaking by fellow right-wingers.
“The crowd was enormous,” Carlson said. “A small percentage of them were hooligans. They committed vandalism. You have seen the footage of them again and again. But the overwhelming majority of them were peaceful. They were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers.”
Right. Tell that to the police officers who were attacked — and their families.
“These were not rioters,” Carlson said. “They were people who wandered over from a political rally.”
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