Save Tucker

By TheHill.com associate editor A.B. Stoddard

Earlier this week fellow blogger Brent Budowsky bagged on my friend Tucker Carlson in his post, upset because Tucker said Al Gore and George W. Bush have much in common and because he had shown contempt for Gore in his “sneering” comments. Budowsky’s post, of course, invited the adolescent pile-on about Tucker, where readers called him everything from tool to weasel to twerp.

I respect that this may be some low-grade national pastime, and Tucker is no stranger to the trash cans of cyber space, but today I rise to offer my bias and an alternative, an outlet for his fans to channel their gushing support. I received an e-mail this week from Friends of Tucker, probably because these “friends” know I am a regular guest of his show. They have come together to try to save the show, which is in jeopardy, according to The New York Times. These residents of Florida — John Bertran, who is a Cuban-American Republican, and Alain Jean, who is a Democratic activist in the Haitian-American community — mean business. Their catchy mission statement sums it up: “liberals want to save the whales. Environmentalists want to save the Everglades. Conservatives want to save the Confederate Flag but we just want to SAVE TUCKER … Tucker Carlson is a conservative who brings a tone of civility and his unfailing good humor to political television. Quirky and unpredictable, we love Tucker.” They want you to visit www.SaveTucker.org.

Sure, I agree with Budowsky that Tucker’s views on global warming are a bit whacko, and I can’t say I agree with Tucker on this whole pro-prostitution thing (The Washington Post will keep you updated on his efforts to bring brothel owners on board the Ron Paul revolution), but who doesn’t respect libertarians? They respect the rest of us. And Tucker does too. More importantly, he is an original — to use an unoriginal word — and they are hard to come by these days. Sorry, but the twerps, tools and weasels of this world cannot claim him as one of their own.