Daily Caller blogger Mickey Kaus quit his job after, he said, Tucker Carlson (pictured above), the news site’s editor-in-chief, pulled Kaus’ column criticizing Fox News, Politico reported on Tuesday evening.
Kaus told Politico that Carlson removed the piece because it was critical of Fox News, where Carlson hosts the weekend edition of “Fox & Friends.”
“I wrote a piece attacking Fox for not being the opposition on immigration and amnesty — for filling up the airwaves with reports on ISIS and terrorism, and not fulfilling their responsibility of being the opposition on amnesty and immigration,” Kaus told Politico. “I posted it at 6:30 in the morning. When I got up, Tucker had taken it down. He said, ‘We can’t trash Fox on the site. I work there.'”
Carlson said that there’s a rule at The Daily Caller against bashing Fox, according to Kaus.
“He said it was a rule, and he wouldn’t be able to change that rule. So I told him I quit,” Kaus said. “I just don’t see how you can put out a publication with that kind of giant no-go area. It’s not like we’re owned by Joe’s Muffler Shop, so we just can’t write about Joe’s Muffler shop.”
Kaus said he will now publish his work on his blog, Kausfiles.
In a statement to Politico, Carlson said he was “sorry” to see Kaus leave.
“Mickey is a great guy, and one of the few truly independent thinkers anywhere,” Carlson said.
Kaus told Politico that a reverence for Fox News has become an issue for all conservative media.
“It’s a larger problem on the right: Everybody is scared of Fox,” he said. “Fox is their route to a high-profile public image and in some cases stardom. Just to be on a Fox show is a big deal. And I think that’s a problem on the right, Fox’s monopoly on star-making power.”
Mickey no doubt is headed to the world HQ of bloggingheads.tv, where, in the course of shedding no light on anything beyond confirming his brain still resembles a ratnest constructed within a labyrinthian maze, he will discuss all this with Georg- uh, Robert Wright, in an effort to rationalize his several positions to the viewer. From comments posted on that website by that viewer, it will turn out not to have gone well for Len- uh, Mickey.
Mickey, you were working for the Daily Caller. You were expecting journalistic integrity?
Fox as the route to money and power has created a Hate-Beast that will consume the right. They will never go back to being sane, because the money is in the crazy. There is so much money to be made feeding the Hate-Beast that they can NEVER again be a party of constructive change. They are stuck being parodies of cartoons of pro-wrestlers posing as serious statesmen. Fox built that.
And that the country functions at all is a tribute to the dems like Reid, Pelosi and PBO. They are like the Sober Moms who keep the family running despite the GOP’s Drunkard Dad act. The upside to Dem efforts is that the union keeps working, more or less. The downside of remaining functional is that Dad thinks he’s doing great and that things would work even better if he drank more.
“But there is no place for independent thinkers at the Daily Caller or at Fox News”, he added.
Duh?