Violating The Preppy Code

Tucker Carson is a child of privilege. So is Lisa Birnbach. In The Washington Post, she calls him out:

Oh, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson. I feel I know you. I have known guys who look like you, sound like you, played like you and lived like you. I’ve tousled hair like yours since I was a child. We were both educated in Rhode Island. You prepped at St. George’s, the beautiful oceanfront boarding school in Middletown. I attended the more bohemian Brown University, but this is all about you, not me.

In so many respects you could not be more prep. And yet. As the de facto commissioner of prepdom, it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say you have violated our trust to be nice, polite, benign, sporting and somewhat forgetful. We, your school chums at the country club, the beaches of Nantucket and the garden clubs throughout New England, are painfully disappointed in who you seem like you’ve become: a mendacious and malicious money machine. You’d be dangerous even if you had only three names.

Carlson's violations of the preppy code have been many:

Your words these last several years — in particular, your reckless comments about the coronavirus vaccines — have been wrong and bad. And you know it, Tucker. At St. George’s every fall, students take the Honor Pledge and sign their names in the Honor Book, signifying their understanding and acceptance of the daunting responsibility that comes with it: “I pledge to be truthful in my words and honorable in my actions. I pledge to treat respectfully the person, reputation and property of all members of the community and our surroundings. I pledge that for any academic work, all work is my own and that I have upheld the spirit and expectations of Academic Integrity.”

When you book guests on your TV show who see the world differently than you do, is it respectful to mock them — making that “WTF?” facial expression — while they are doing their best to defend their points of view, all in service to your ratings and income? You know the answer, Tucker. Even some Republicans don’t want to appear on your show, for fear that you will shred them with your steroidal incredulity.

You sneak white-nationalist ideas like “replacement theory” into your rhetoric, and then you deny it. You said making children wear masks while they play outside is child abuse and that seeing vaccinated people masking up outdoors is equivalent to “watching a grown man expose himself in public.” You mused on TV that maybe the coronavirus vaccines don’t work “and they’re simply not telling you that.” When journalists have asked you if you’ve been vaccinated, though, you have answered with, “When was the last time you had sex with your wife and in what position?” and “What’s your favorite sexual position and when did you last engage in it?”

Integrity -- academic or otherwise -- is not for Tucker. Money and ME are what counts.

Image: Vanity Fair