What started out as a small section of a larger segment about elites claiming they were somehow oppressed during Tuesday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, blew up Wednesday after The New York Times and social media reporter Taylor Lorenz claimed the Fox News host directed online harassment at her. But during his show later that night, Carlson shot back at the newspaper for absurdly equating criticism to harassment when they were the ones who harassed his family last summer by trying to dox them.
And Carlson wasn’t alone. He teamed up with Federalist co-founder Sean Davis to mock The Times for standing with their ridiculous and embarrassing reporter, who claimed online criticism of her underhanded and creepy reporting had “destroyed my life.”
After noting that newspapers usually reserved making themselves the story unless it was something serious like a kidnapped reporter, Carson jabbed at The Times for speaking out earlier in the day:
But today, The New York Times made an exception to that rule and jumped ferociously to the defense of its social media reporter Taylor Lorenz. Now, we told you about Taylor Lorenz last night in a segment about how the most privileged in our society now consider themselves oppressed. And Taylor Lorenz is certainly a shining example of that principle. A New York report from Greenwich telling you what a victim she is.
In the statement in question, The Times claimed “Tucker Carlson opened his show last night by attacking a journalist” and described it as “a calculated and cruel tactic, which he regularly deploys to unleash a wave of harassment and vitriol at his intended target.”
“We were embarrassed for Taylor Lorenz. She spends her entire life on the internet, so, of course, after a while, you become a deeply unhappy narcissist. That’s what the internet does to people,” Carlson explained. “And we assumed her bosses would be embarrassed for her too. Little did we know, that they are all exactly like she is.”
After denouncing harassment and saying he would condemn a mob bearing down on her home (which happened to him), Carlson debunked what she claimed was harassment:
According to Taylor Lorenz, saying mean things about her on Twitter is, quote, “harassment,” disagreeing with her on the internet at all is, quote, harassment, failing to affirm her as she self-actualizes and attempts to realize her hopes and dreams in this world is, quote, harassment,” and so on. There is a lot of real harassment out there, this is not it.
Real harassment was what former New York Times staff editor Bari Weiss experienced last summer, when she was forced out by other Times staff who sent her anti-Semitic messages in open company forums with ZERO consequences.
Speaking of real harassment from The Times last summer, Carlson recalled how the paper sent a reporter to expose where Carlson and his family lived (Click “expand”):
It's a pretty good little scam the New York Times has going. They get to hurt you at will, but you’re not allowed to notice. Notice what they're doing, and you are “calculated and cruel.” We know this because we experienced it this summer.
The Times tried to send a reporter to my house just to make absolutely certain that everyone knows where my kids live. I called the paper and told them to back off, there’s not news value in where my house is. It's not even a big house. The whole thing was bizarre and creepy as Hell, but they ignored the request. The paper only stopped the story when we shamed them on the show.
To be clear, we would never even consider running a series on where New York Times editors live. Obviously, that’s disgusting. What country if this?
But they tried to do it.
Further in the segment, Davis called her out Lorenz’s style of reporting as “the journalism equivalent of the creeper cruising by the schoolyard asking the kids if they want any free attention in the New York Times.”
He added: “She stalks teenagers on the internet. And this isn’t my opinion, she says as much. And she even talks about how if she were a dude doing what she were doing, people would think it's kind of creepy.”
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight
March 10, 2021
8:34:24 p.m. EasternTUCKER CARLSON: Newspapers try to keep themselves out of the news. They don't weigh in to defend their own reporters, for example, unless something very serious has happened. You see it when a correspondent is being detained by soldiers at the Tibetan border, for instance, or when someone has been kidnapped by ISIS in Syria. But you generally don’t see it in response to criticism from a cable news show.
But today, the New York Times made an exception to that rule and jumped ferociously to the defense of its social media reporter Taylor Lorenz. Now, we told you about Taylor Lorenz last night in a segment about how the most privileged in our society now consider themselves oppressed. And Taylor Lorenz is certainly a shining example of that principle. A New York report from Greenwich telling you what a victim she is.
Earlier this week, Taylor Lorenz sent a tweet asking America to celebrate International Women's Day by supporting her specifically, as she faces what she describes as a year-long campaign of harassment. That harassment, Lorenz wrote, has, quote, “destroyed my life.”
Now, normally we’d be deeply sympathetic to this. Harassment is awful. Harassment is a crime and it should be a crime. If the mob of screaming lunatic showed up at Taylor Lorenz’s house and threatened her, we would condemn that mob immediately, no matter what political position they claimed to represent. But that's not even close to what Taylor Lorenz is talking about.
According to Taylor Lorenz, saying mean things about her on Twitter is, quote, “harassment,” disagreeing with her on the internet at all is, quote, harassment, failing to affirm her as she self-actualizes and attempts to realize her hopes and dreams in this world is, quote, harassment,” and so on.
There is a lot of real harassment out there, this is not it.
So, you can see where we included Lorenz in the script about the most privileged in our society pretending to be the most oppressed in our society. We were embarrassed for Taylor Lorenz. She spends her entire life on the internet, so, of course, after a while you become a deeply unhappy narcissist. That’s what the internet does to people.
And we assumed her bosses would be embarrassed for her too.
Little did we know, that they are all exactly like she is. Well, of course, they are and that's the problem. The people who run the New York Times believe that anyone who disagrees with them are committing assault. Here is their official statement on our segment: “In a now familiar move, Tucker Carlson opened his show last night by attacking a journalist.”
Oh, a journalist! The one protected group left in America. Journalists make their living trying to destroy your life, but if you say a single word about it, you're a criminal, a moral monster, you must be stopped.
The statement goes on – and keep in mind as we read this, we're not making any of it up – criticizing Taylor Lorenz was, quote, “a calculated and cruel tactic, which Carlson regularly deploys to unleash a wave of harassment and vitriol at his intended target.”
It's all pretty amusing when you think about it. Reading a tweet on television, that's fine when it was it was written by say Donald Trump. It's called reporting! But when that tweet was written by a New York Times reporter, reading it out loud is a, quote, “calculated and cruel tactic.”
But calculated to do what exactly? Presumably, calculated to get most people to disagree with Taylor Lorenz, which they've already established is harassment.
It's a pretty good little scam the New York Times has going. They get to hurt you at will, but you’re not allowed to notice. Notice what they're doing, and you are “calculated and cruel.” We know this because we experienced it this summer.
The Times tried to send a reporter to my house just to make absolutely certain that everyone knows where my kids live. I called the paper and told them to back off, there’s not news value in where my house is. It's not even a big house. The whole thing was bizarre and creepy as Hell, but they ignored the request. The paper only stopped the story when we shamed them on the show.
To be clear, we would never even consider running a series on where New York Times editors live. Obviously, that’s disgusting. What country if this?
But they tried to do it.
The best part though is what happened after. The Washington Post jumped in, naturally, with a piece claiming this show had incited dangerous harassment by asking the New York Times not to write a story about where my house is. We are, quote, “endangering reporters.” The very same reporters who are trying to write a piece about my house. It was all so passive-aggressive and crazy that we were happy when the whole thing ended.
But then just today, the official New York Times Twitter account sent out that same Washington Post story. The New York Times described it as a, quote, “anatomy of attack by Carlson that had real-world consequences.”
It was pure insanity.
But that’s still not the most amazing part of the Taylor Lorenz story. The greatest irony of all is what Taylor Lorenz, herself does for a living. According to the New York Times statement today, quote, “Taylor Lorenz is a talented New York Times journalist doing timely and essential reporting.” Timely and essential. Okay. Thanks for the adjectives. But what kind of reporting is it exactly? What does Taylor Lorenz do all day?
Ah. We could answer that question at some length. But we decided to back off a little bit and invite Sean Davis of The Federalist.
(…)
