When you listen to hours of speeches in a day, you really come to appreciate the guy that has a little fun.
That's what Tucker Carlson does.
Speaking to like-minded people is safe - you know your applause lines. If your speech is going a little flat, since this is conservatives you can bring 'em to their feet by praising the free market, embracing Individual rights, mentioning the name Reagan or hissing at a Clinton.
Tucker likes to have way more fun than that.
After applauding all day for speakers downing the Fairness Doctrine, Tucker walked to the microphone and announced he was for it. The crowd rumbled and booed, but everyone sat up in the chairs to listen.
Tucker asked the crowd to imagine if it had passed. Conservatives would have a great issue to rally around. We could fight on a point that we would be perfectly correct about. He asked them to imagine talk show hosts saying things like, "The can have my microphone when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers!" He asked them to imagine how nice it would be to beat liberals over and over on a Constitutional argument as the public rallied around us to protect their free speech rights. SLowly the crowd started to cheer his idea.
Tucker was in control of the crowd and he knew it. He has that little grin when he's having that much fun. He took them from booing to cheering on the same issue in the course of a paragraph.
It was fun.
He tried the same device again. He told them Conservative media needs to start really digging up facts and reporting them like ... The New York Times. The Times?!?! Conservatives' most hated of all publications? We should find "facts" as they do?
They were booing Tucker again.
Tucker tried to bring them back by explaining that much of Conservative media comments on news, they don't dig it up themselves. He would like to see Conservatives go out and find the news before anyone else.
As a conservative blogger I know what he means. I don't go to hearings in Washington or read in person everything that Congress is writing. I have to read news feeds first like everyone else. Tucker just wants Conservatives to BE the news feeds.
I'm not sure he brought the crowd back. If you make them think you just complimented the New York Times, they don't hear what you have to say after that. They are booing too loudly.
But it was fun!
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