HE'S JUST SAYING WHAT WE, THE BIGOTS, ARE REALLY THINKING!

I'm unlocking another Roy Edroso Breaks It Down newsletter issue -- this one about the mishegas around Michael Jackson. As you may imagine I'm not entirely convinced that people who have suddenly realized MJ was a child molester are acting in good faith. (By the way, I swear that you're missing a lot of other first-class material if you're not a subscriber -- go here and get on board.)

Speaking of people who have a strange reaction to explosive revelations, I'm not shocked that conservatives are uniformly defending Tucker Carlson's racist and rapist comments. Typical is this guy (formerly a famous Latin-pseud crackpot) at MAGA cult site American Greatness:

Let’s be completely clear here. Nobody—least of all the leftwing mobs attacking Tucker Carlson right now—cares what he said on the radio a decade ago. Except to the extent that his words can be wrapped around his neck like a noose. 

All the feigned outrage is exactly that: feigned. David Brock and his henchmen, along with their instantly mobilized Twitter mob, are not outraged. Not in the least. They’re giddy! And why wouldn’t they be? They’ve been looking for a way to get “Tucker Carlson Tonight” canceled since the show debuted. The search intensified as its popularity rose and its message caught fire. 

The imperative to kill the show reached a fever pitch after Carlson’s now-legendary January 2 monologue, which is the most searing indictment against a failed ruling class since Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

Three sputter-filled grafs (and about a dozen thereafter) and no mention of what Carlson actually said; you'd think he had defended motherhood and the flag rather than child rape and white supremacy.

But frankly the unearthed Carlson is just a more-upfront version of the Carlson we've known all along -- the Carlson who told Lauren Duca "stick to the thigh-high boots" and dog-whistles racists with alarming regularity. And more-upfront Carlson excites them for a reason. Someone on Twitter lamented that the right's solidarity with Carlson showed how devoted to "tribalism" people have become. But I say these guys aren't defending Carlson because he's of their tribe -- even some conservatives, after all, peeled off the Roy Moore bandwagon in the final days. No, they defend Carlson because they agree with what he said. Not to put too fine a point on it, they're white supremacists and misogynists, and only wish they could say such things themselves and get away with it. Well, as the Trumpification of the Right progresses, I'm sure they'll get their wish.

UPDATE. As usual, making everything worse, National Review's David French:

Here’s the way it works. If you’re a conservative or a Republican who attains any kind of prominence at all, then the hunt is on. Media Matters has its rolling list of allegedly bad or silly things I’ve said and written, for example. And the more prominent you are, the more diligent the hunt.

Being accurately quoted is persecution! Or, in the words of A. Ridiculous Pseudonym at RedState, "Maoist totalitarianism."

If only Lonesome Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd had tumbled to this racket! After embarrassing himself at the end of the movie, he could have attacked those liberals who were persecuting him by describing what he said.