“So we’ve got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits. Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It's a mockery of the U.S. military. While China's military becomes more masculine as it's assembled the world's largest navy, our military needs to become, as Joe Biden says, 'more feminine.'"
– Tucker Carlson, on his Fox News program March 9, 2021, referring to new grooming standards in the Army and a program to develop a flight suit for pregnant military personnel
Once more, Tucker Carlson is on the attack. And, once more, he has provoked the ire of America for the sake of his paleoconservative agenda.
In response to Carlson, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the remarks inspired “revulsion,” while the Pentagon’s press secretary stated the institution wasn’t going to take personnel advice from “a talk-show host or the Chinese military.” On social media, both serving and retired military women took aim at Carlson’s message.
Department of Defense and Pentagon spokesman John Kirby wrote …
“I want to be very clear right up front, that the diversity of our military is one of our greatest strengths. I’ve seen it for myself in long months at sea and in the combat waged by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve seen it up on Capitol Hill just this past month. And I see it every day here right at the Pentagon.”
“One of the best decisions I ever made was becoming a Navy spouse myself, married to a terrific young naval officer who gave birth to our first child, and then went right back to work doing civil engineering for an air force base in Jacksonville.”
(Aaron Feis. “Pentagon, Tucker Carlson trade barbs over remarks on women in the military.” New York Post. March 11, 2021.)
Carlson evidently sees any sort of accommodation to female service members as evidence the military is going lax and soft, implying that womanhood is somehow incompatible with the determination needed to serve under hardship and fight when necessary. Carlson culturally marginalizes femininity with his mindless attack.
By ridiculing flight suits for pregnant women, Carlson inadvertently highlighted the exact kind of situation where the military has huge incentives to improve recruitment and retention of female personnel.
The across-the-ranks response also demonstrated why Carlson’s verbal disparagement of female service members is completely contrary to the needs of the American military and national security. Quite simply, the U.S. armed forces require all the smart and determined people they can get because the all-volunteer force is struggling to fill its ranks.
(Sébastien Roblin. “Women in the military are useless to Fox News' Tucker Carlson. The Pentagon wants more.” NBC News. March 13, 2021.)
But even before Carlson was propelled into the primetime Fox News lineup he had a troubling history of sexist comments, including the time he asked on Fox News’ morning show, Fox and Friends: “Are female breadwinners a recipe for disharmony within the home?”
In 2019 it emerged Carlson had described women as “extremely primitive” and “like dogs” in a radio appearance years earlier, suggesting his attitudes may have been present for some time.
(Adam Gabbatt. “Tucker Carlson's targeting of Taylor Lorenz follows pattern of berating female journalists.” The Guardian. March 13, 2021.)
Eric Lutz – freelance writer and contributor to Vanity Fair, Guardian, and Rolling Stone – says …
“Tucker Carlson, our nation’s oldest Young Republican, has risen to the top of the Fox News food chain by combining conspiracy-mongering, culture war grievance, and staggering smugness. But, in his quest to hold onto relevancy with Donald Trump now out of the White House, Carlson has seemingly managed to make his act even more noxious in recent weeks, such going to bat for the QAnon cult. And his most recent offense? A revolting, misogynistic rant mocking women service members and accusing Joe Biden of feminizing the United States military while China’s becomes 'more masculine.'”
(Eric Lutz. “F*ck Tucker Carlson: Fox News Host Plays Victim After Mocking Women In the Military.” Vanity Fair. March 12, 2021.)
Women In the Military
In 2017 a military study (Pentagon) found 71 percent of young people are ineligible to join the military. The reasons: obesity, no high school diploma, or a criminal record. In addition, only 11 percent of young people considered military service a viable option – with a much smaller fraction actually enlisting – a 10-year low.
According to a 2016 survey, while nearly 60 percent of recruits came from families with a history of military service, only 43 percent reported being likely to encourage their children to adopt the same career path, due to cuts in benefits.
At the same time, as jobs in the military become more technically demanding, it’s in the Pentagon’s interest to get the most talented personnel it can to fly and maintain combat aircraft and warships, code cybersecurity tools, communicate with tribal leaders in war zones and operate electronic warfare systems.
Right now, only about 1 in 6 of the U.S. military’s nearly 1.3 million active-duty troops is female. The Air Force has the highest percentage, hovering around 20 percent, whereas the Marine Corps has less than half that. A recent study found female military personnel were 28 percent less likely to re-enlist than men due to concerns related to family planning, child care, sexism and sexual assault (which also feeds a dynamic in which they are underrepresented in senior leadership positions).
(Sébastien Roblin. “Women in the military are useless to Fox News' Tucker Carlson. The Pentagon wants more.” NBC News. March 13, 2021.)
The Air Force has suffered a shortage in pilots for years – around 2,000 pilots at present, mostly due to inadequate retention. And the Air Force has spent between $1.1 million and $10.9 million to fully train each one.
The service therefore needs to find ways to persuade these highly trained individuals to stay in the service. Trimming away hassles are one sensible and cost-effective way of doing that. That explains why the Army recently modified its grooming standards to allow a number of conservative hairstyles and adornments compatible with duties, such as wearing nail polish — which is actually used by some male soldiers to protect against chemical exposure and wear and tear in the field.
“Every day, the most watched shows of the most watched cable network in the country (Fox) – a prime-time destination more popular than ESPN – take the familiar idioms of American democracy and wear away at their common meanings. The result is disorientation. The result is mass suspicion. Like a vengeful God bringing chaos to Babel, Fox has helped to create a nation of people who share everything but the ability to talk with one another.”
– Megan Garber, The Atlantic
Carlson and Fox and Their Audience
Forbes reported in June 2020 that Tucker Carlson closed out television’s second quarter with one for the record books: his “Tucker Carlson Tonight” finished the quarter as the highest-rated program in all of cable news for the first time since the show’s launch, delivering an average total audience of 4.331 million viewers.
Despite the fact that Carlson has been accused of hyperbolic, vicious and unfounded claims about women, people of color and immigrants in the past, he maintains the backing of Fox Corp. Executive Chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch.
In April of that same year (2020) Pew Research reported that around four-in-ten Americans trust Fox News. Nearly the same share distrust it. And, the same study said
Fox News consumers tend to have an especially positive view of Donald Trump, which may not be a surprise given that 93% of those who name the network as their main source of political news identify as Republican or lean to the party.
One striking example is in perceptions of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. In a March 2020 survey, 63% of those whose main source of political and election news is Fox News said Trump was doing an excellent job responding to the outbreak.
“It wouldn’t be Fox if America’s problems were not being blamed on some conspiracy theory featuring a foreign, nonwhite villain.”
– Eric Alterman, The Nation
Survey after survey has consistently demonstrated that Fox viewers are among the worst-informed of all sentient citizens. One team of political scientists addressed this question in December 2016 with a detailed multivariate analysis of the level of accurate information individuals possessed about current events. After surveying more than 3,000 people, the researchers concluded that “relying on Fox News as a major news source significantly decreased a person’s score more than relying on any other news source.” In the past, that made them sound stupid and self-satisfied. This time it might kill them.
(Eric Alterman. “Fox News Has Always Lied to Old People. This Time It May Kill Them.” The Nation. March 20, 2020.)
Megan Garber, staff writer at The Atlantic, says …
“You are under attack, Carlson tells his viewers, with his signature furrow of the brow. They are coming for you, he insists. Carlson does what he wants, and says what he wants, because he can. And he suggests that his audience, through the transitive powers of television, can enjoy a similar freedom from accountability.
“Critics might talk about Fox as an 'information silo.' They might dismiss the network’s skewed stories as alternative realities. But even the insults, in their way, inoculate. They imply that Fox can do what it does in isolation. It cannot. Its outrages are atmospheric. Its definitions of the world are communal, even if they aren’t commonly shared.
“The events of 2020 have been tragic reminders of that. When cruelty is refigured as “free speech,” and when expertise becomes condescension—and when compassion is weakness and facts are 'claims' and incuriosity is liberty and climate change is a con and a plague is a hoax—the new lexicon leaps off the screen. It implicates everyone, whether they speak the language or not.”
(Megan Garber. “Do You Speak Fox?” The Atlantic. September 16, 2020.)
Tucker Carlson is a major part of Fox News and their campaign of hatred and the advance of twisted and unreliable opinion. In his last misogynistic attack, Carlson denigrates women in the Armed Forces and shows he completely misunderstands the vital role of women in the defense of America. He should be ashamed of himself.
Brookings President and retired Marine Corps General John Allen pointed out, at times, the U.S. military has been one of America’s most progressive institutions. Women are no less suited to braving austere conditions than men and have proven that in combat.
It took a long time to make the military fully accessible to women. Today’s military is much more integrated along gender lines than at any time in the past. Women are no longer excluded from any type of combat mission: They are pilots and vehicle drivers and mechanics and infantry officers.
Easing rules on women's hairstyles and redesigning women's flight suits are simple, necessary changes, especially in times when so many are ineligible to join the service and when jobs have become increasingly more technically demanding.
As for Tucker Carlson, Fox News bows to his opinions because of the almighty dollar. What a shame such a large audience follows this man on Fox and acknowledges his views. Many of these people accept the opinion of this huckster on a news show that features about the same integrity as a talk-radio show hosted by a shock jock.
Federal judges find Carlson to be a grand-stander who plays loose with the truth.
In September 2020, a federal judge, in dismissing a defamation lawsuit regarding statements Carlson made on Tucker Carlson Tonight, cited her acceptance of Fox News' defense that, given that the "general tenor" of the show is to "challenge political correctness and media bias," Carlson is not "stating actual facts" on its show, but instead employs "exaggeration" and "non-literal commentary". The judge also agreed with Fox News' defense that reasonable viewers would have "skepticism" over statements Carlson makes on its show.
(David Folkenflik. “You Literally Can't Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox's Lawyers.” NPR. September 29, 2020.)
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