Tucker Carlson's "pre-planned vacation" came days after Fox News learned he was accused of harassment
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According to Salon, Fox News hosts—current and former—are facing new accusations of rape and sexual harassment. That’s according to a lawsuit filed this week against Fox News from two women named Jennifer Eckhart and Cathy Areu, with Eckhart (a former associate producer for Fox Business) accusing recently fired America’s Newsroom co-anchor Ed Henry of rape and Areu (a frequent Fox News guest) accusing Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Howart Kurtz of sexual harassment. The allegations against Henry are truly horrific, with Salon noting that the legal complaint itself contains a trigger warning, and Fox News has already issued a statement (below) noting that it promptly fired Henry after learning about Eckhart claims.
As for Areu, she claims she’s been the victim of a pattern of harassment and retaliation from hosts at Fox News, typically with Hannity, Carlson, and Kurtz doing or saying inappropriate things while she’s still hoked up to mics and can’t simply leave without assistance. During an appearance on Carlson’s show, she says a producer or writer told her to stick around until the show had ended, and when she did, she claims that Carlson invited her to a hotel room where “his wife would not be present.” When she refused, she says her invitations to appear on the show stopped. A similar thing allegedly happened with Hannity, with Areu claiming that he took out $100 and demanded that one of the men on his show take her out on a date while she was still attached to audio equipment, and while it sounds like none of the staff responded, Areu says she was never invited.
Salon makes a point to highlight the timing of this: Apparently, the law firm working with Areu informed Fox News of her allegations on July 9, just a few days before Carlson left on what Fox has repeatedly noted was a “legit and pre-planned vacation.” A spokesperson speaking with Salon said that the allegations have “zero to do with his vacation,” that he is still employed, and that the allegations against Carlson were “promptly investigated.” Presumably the reason Salon is pointing out the timing of Carlson’s vacation (and the reason Fox News is pointing out that he’s still employed) is because this isn’t the first time a Fox News host has gone on a vacation while facing a misconduct allegation. Back in 2017, Bill O’Reilly had also gone on a “vacation” right before being fired by the network amidst a series of well-publicized sexual harassment allegations.
There’s no reason to assume that the same thing is happening here, especially since O’Reilly’s “vacation” was also happening as a ton of his advertisers were pulling out due to public pressure to stop sponsoring his show, but that is at least probably why Carlson being on vacation seems notable to people.
Here’s the full statement that Fox News gave to Salon:
Based on the findings of a comprehensive independent investigation conducted by an outside law firm, including interviews with numerous eyewitnesses, we have determined that all of Cathy Areu’s claims against Fox News, including its management as well as its hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Howard Kurtz and its contributor Gianno Caldwell, are false, patently frivolous and utterly devoid of any merit. We take all claims of harassment, misconduct and retaliation seriously, promptly investigating them and taking immediate action as needed — in this case, the appropriate action based on our investigation is to defend vigorously against these baseless allegations. Ms. Areu and Jennifer Eckhart can pursue their claims against Ed Henry directly with him, as Fox News already took swift action as soon as it learned of Ms. Eckhart’s claims on June 25 and Mr. Henry is no longer employed by the network.
116 Comments
That’s a damn shame.(This is known as sarcasm for the ill-informed.)
Let’s play Marry, Fuck, Kill with Hannity, Carlson, and Kurtz. GO!…(Trick question, the correct answer is “turn all three into a nutrient slurry”)
My only issue is what “nutrients” you think we’ll be getting from them?
It’s Soylent Asshole.
Fuck no I wouldn’t drink Tucker Carlson slurry.
I forgot to mention, it’s a slurry we’d use to enrich the soil.
It’s also a powerful explosive and top notch engine coolant..
Mushrooms do thrive in shit.
It would only enrich 1% of the soil.
That slurry would kill every living thing in the soil where you spread it. There is no redeeming value of the slurry, it is still toxic.
Can it be used as a retaining wall for the new WTC? There’s a few towers left to build. They can do their patriotic duty!
I think they need to put it open a rocket and fire it into space and out of the solar system into the frozen depths of space.
They should throw it in a blender along with some Big Macs & Diet Cokes send it along with Trump on NASA’s first manned mission to the sun. No one will have ever seen anything like that before. Truly a way for our favorite President to earn his place in the history books. I think that the technology is ready to go right now. No need to wait any longer. Tell him that we’ll have a huge parade & celebrate him when he returns.
I thought about sending him to the sun, but I would be afraid of him destabilizing the sun far sooner than it is projected to and turn into an orange dwarf (instead of red). I see him sort of like the Loc-Nar from “Heavy Metal”.
Okay, how about Mars? He would definitely like for his presidency to be associated with a Mars mission. He could also take his 3 grifter children along so that they could spend the holidays together. I bet we could put a rocket together pretty quickly. As long as they have enough fuel & supplies to get them far enough past the moon, I’m sure that everything will turn out fine!
But we are going to Mars so I don’t think we want to taint it. I think the only planet worth sending him to is Jupiter, a large planet covered in gases, just like he is. /fastfoodfarts
Just send him ANYWHERE that isn’t in North America & I’ll feel better. Maybe not Russia though, I could definitely see Putin setting up a Trump TV show just to fuck with western democracies.
Look at the guy. The “slurry” would be a mixture of felt, yarn, polyester, cotton batting, and cocaine. It would be totally biodegradable, but it would be very difficult to suspend in liquid.
Do you want a Pet Semetary? Because that’s how you get a Pet Semetary! Ayuh.
Enrich the soil? But the soil is brown.
Wouldn’t that just the soil barren?
But wouldn’t that be like salting the earth?
I’m okay with it being used to enrich the soil as long as it’s first thoroughly diluted with manure and, even then, only used at former EPA superfund clean-up sites.
I bet one of his parents wanted to name him “Fucker”.
Why would any parent (yes, I’m looking at you, cousin Liza) ever name their child Tucker? Hasn’t it occurred to them that their child will be referred to disparagingly as “Fucker” for at least the first 2 decades of their lives?
you need to watch George Carlson making fun of the name “Tucker”
This would be the kind of slurry you keep behind a containment pond at an AEP Superfund site.
Either that or the answer is Kill – yourself. Because marrying or fucking any of them is to horrible to imagine
I mean… the only thing I find unbelievable about this story is how believable it is.
And all the projection from the Q people accusing Democrats of being pedophiles makes it even more telling
It’s cheap to accuse people of being the thing they claim to detest, but in this case it’s not an accusation. It’s just a statement of fact.
It’s a rightwing tactic at this point.Step 1: Accuse your opponent of the thing you’re planning to do
Step 2: Do the thing you were planning
Step 3: Defend yourself “Both sides do it”
Accused harasser encourages harassment of reporter.
Clever of him to claim self-defense by accusing the NYT of planning to dox him first.
It’s literally the only thing in their playbook. Am I about to do something heinous? Accuse the other guy of doing it first.
I was so confused by this as has the New York Times actually ever doxxed someone? I can’t think of a single story they’ve ran where they published a home address for the jollies, not least because they probably realize what a huge legal liability that would be for them.This was such an absurd claim that the only real explanation I can come up with, and this is pure speculation, is that Carlson found out that the NYT was working on a bigger article regarding accusations against him and is trying to attack the journalists involved in this way.
They were accused of doxing/realnaming a blog writer earlier this year, effectively killing that blog. So not never, but that’s the only time I know of.
Yeah, but while that was a tricky situation, it was including the blogger real name in the post, not any street or personal information aside of that. So unless Tucker Carlson is not the dude’s real name, I don’t know what they would be doxxing about him?
I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist. I assume his claim they were going to dox him by providing his address was, in the mind of his fans, the whole threat. I assume he doesn’t have his address public on purpose.
…What conspiracy theory? New York Times has apparently never published someone’s home address in the way Tucker Carlson is suggesting. Hence it is reasonable to question why Carlson would make such a claim about a threat here.
I guess that might have read differently than I meant it. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist” = I’m not a Tucker fan, so I have no idea what threat they were looking for in an alleged NYT doxing. I was saying I have no idea what threat they expected, but the chiron on his show reads as the whole threat. I don’t think they needed more to be motivated to attack, because that’s been the fox news fan MO for a while.
The New York Times didn’t actually reveal Scott Alexander’s real name. They told him they were planning to, so he shut down the blog to prevent them from writing the article. Even if they’d published the article, that would have been nothing like revealing Tucker Carlson’s street address.
Woooow, that shit is beyond the pale. I’m guessing this will become the new norm for right wingers any time they learn that someone is doing a story on them — get it front of it, claim the journo is trying to murder your kids or whatever, them let the mob go to work for you.
That’s not new, it’s been going on for years.
“Going on vacation” during a pandemic? Bullshit.
Not that I want to defend him but a lot of us have taken stay-cations during this pandemic just to not have to work for a while. In fact at my job they forced us all to take 5 of our vacation days before June 30th. They said it was for our mental health but everyone knew it was because they didn’t want people going on mass vacation when it’s safe again. Ironically this was a few months ago when the idea that the late summer may have been safe. At this point I don’t think anyone sane is planning any actual vacation travel this year.
Yeah, I took one in mid April, stayed home the whole time, and it was probably the nicest week I’ve had in the past five months.
I am pretty sure all Fox news hosts perpetually have a vacation scheduled for “Next Week.” If they stay out of trouble, it gets cancelled. This way you always have a paper trail of proof that the vacation was planned ahead of time. (as well as 52 other vacations that don’t get mentioned). This has happened way too many times to be a coincidence.
I hope Tucker Carlson and his whole family get cancer. The really, really, really bad kind.
Last Monday, it was assumed that Tucker Carlson went on his “vacation” because it was revealed that his head writer, Blake Neff, had left many anonymous messages using racist, and misogynistic slurs.If asked to choose if a Fox anchor is anti-science, racist, or a sexual harasser, the answer is yes.
Hey, you can’t pigeonhole the multi-hyphenates at Fox News! They do their very best to check all the disgusting human behavioral boxes..
I’m surprised The A.V. Club didn’t report on how his head writer had to resign because it was discovered he’d been posting on an alt-right website for years: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/media/tucker-carlson-writer-blake-neff/index.htmlMy favorite part of the article is where it says he’s “widely revered on the forum.” Better to rule in hell…
I thought posting on an alt-right website was a prerequisite for working for Fox News.
Tucker literally openly supports white supremacy on his show, it’s weird that this is a deal-breaker.
It’s kind of like how most NFL teams are happy to keep players who beat women on their active roster even after seeing video evidence, but then they make a big public show of releasing the player once TMZ gets a copy of the video weeks or months later. They view it as a problem with PR, not a problem with women being beaten.Fox is an entire network dedicated to promoting white nationalism, but in a sly “respectable” way. They fire employees when they create PR problems by being a little too explicit with either their extremism or misogyny, but Fox has zero interest in fixing the culture that produces this behavior.
While Fox easily has the most racist dog-whistles of any major news organization, they’re also terrified of connections to actual racist groups since that would confirm the worst things critics say about the network.
I imagine after Obama was elected, they had a meeting with the N-word written at the top of a dry erase board and they were like: “We can’t say this under any circumstances! Okay? Okay. Now everybody brainstorm replacements. Kenyan? Good. Exotic? Eh, bottom of the board.”
The Root did most of the heavy lifting on that topic:
https://www.theroot.com/tucker-carlsons-top-writer-resigns-after-being-revealed-1844355273
I’m shocked, simply shocked that a writer on a political talk show whose host is one step away from being an open white supremacist turned out to be racist. That is the most surprising thing that I’ve ever heard.
kinda funny how whoever holds the top spot at Fox ends up involved in sexual harassment scandals. Almost as if the rightwing knobs are all pieces of shit, or at least become pieces of shit once they have an iota of power.
It’s the culture in which they were raised to be a piece of shit. Donald Trump is the immaculate piece of shit.
Less immaculate and more mother lode.
A short while ago I described right wingery as ‘performative assholery’. Its sadism dressed up as a political philosophy.
Check out Carlson’s obsession with that writer for teen vogue who made him look like a clown. Cute brunette, fucking whip smart and on-topic as hell on the issues, thrashed him during her appearance on his show when he tried to ambush her, and he’s been fixated on her ever since. He thought that because she writes for young women that he’d be able to push her around and she savaged him.
Check out Carlson’s obsession with that writer for teen vogue who made him look like a clown.I never heard of this so I looked it up. This picture really says it all, doesn’t it?
If anyone else is wondering like I was, her name is Lauren Duca. Here’s the interview mentioned as well, if you can stand to hear Fucker Carlson speak that is (it’s definitely tough).
https://youtu.be/FhU7mRYvM28
I just can’t care about this beyond hoping it finally ends Tucker Carlson’s career (but the devil protects his own.). Its professional liars making claims against professional liars. Its incredibly hard to know who to believe. Yes the slogan is “believe the woman” but usually its not being applied to woman whose living is based on their ability to lie effectively and constantly for professional and thus personal gain.
The world as it is, you must care. This chode and his ilk influence the minds of our loved ones and co-workers. There are so many people you interact with daily that lack simple critical thinking skills you think would be necessary for survival, but somehow are not. We have to care about the lies these assholes peddle.
Plenty of room on the White House staff right now.
after reading what ed henry is accused of, i’d say they’re probably also sadistic.
and not in the healthy consensual way.
Wait… You’re saying a network that shamelessly peddles Nazi or Nazi-adjacent propaganda employs sociopaths to put their faces to nationalist rhetoric for easy money would allow those same depraved personalities to engage in a culture of workplace violence and harassment that persists for years?Seems dubious.
Hard to believe, I know. Maybe we’d get it after taking one of these red pills I’ve heard so much about
also the network itself was founded by one of the most prolific pieces of shit who ever lived, so it’s part of their DNA
And no conservatives have called out any of these people about how they treat women, and why Fox News has a problem with harassment.
Fox News Director of HR: “Ok damn it guys, let’s do this the easy way: please raise your hand if you’re not a rapist….Come on….anyone?… Seriously? Guys?”
This begs the question, why isn’t there public pressure for advertisers to stop sponsoring his show?
because hes the number one show on Cable on Mondays sadly
I remind people that NPR ‘Morning Edition’ gets a consistent 12x the listeners as Faux News gets viewers on its best day. Cable news show ratings is a contest for world’s tallest midget.
and you can wonder where all those people went on Nov 4th
I believe he’s the number one cable host, period. Because … America …
Does he have any left that would respond to that kind of boycott? He already lost T-Mobile, Disney, and Papa John’s in June, and he was hemorrhaging advertisers throughout most of 2019 following comments about immigrants in December 2018. The MyPillow guy is a big Trumpy, so he’s not going anywhere.
And yet, advertiser boycotts are what killed O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. The question is where’s the magic invisible line. Ratings only matter insofar as you can use them to sell the time, and none of these fuckers are principled. Disney doesn’t give a shit about immigrants. At some point your accountant just tells you’re really overpaying to be associated with a sexual predator, and that’s the end. I don’t think this will be enough to get him, but who knows.
Confirming a source would require precious seconds of Googling, but I read recently that some outrageous percentage of his adspace is purchased by MyPillow. I don’t think he has many advertisers to pressure.
Which makes sense as the mypillow dude is a “recovered” crack addict Trump loving dbag.
Because sexual assault and white supremacy is quite popular with Americans.
that’s “asks the question,” “begs the question” means there is circular logic
Don’t a lot of advertisers just not advertise during a controversial show like Tuck’s and just move their ads instead to daytime?
There has been for a while. He’s lost a lot of the bigger name advertisers but still has the My Pillow guy apparently.
Sleeping Giants have been doing just that and have been fairly successful.
A flash from the past. Remember the day Epstein went to jail for sex crimes? Another instance where Carlson ‘went on vacation’ abruptly, and didn’t return until after Epstein was dead.
Wait…are you saying Tucker is a high level political assassin?! Because even that doesn’t make him seem the slightest bit impressive.
Can you imagine that face being the last thing you see before you die? (Shudder)
He’s saying that Jeffrey Epstein and Tucker Carlson are the same person!!!!
Just a reminder that we all need to consistently type Fuckers name wrong “on accident”. See I did it right their. Totally not on purpose.
I’m sure Cucker never gets someone’s name wrong on purpose.
Yes, you forgot the apostrophe. Otherwise I don’t see any mistake.
I thought Carlson went on his totally legit vacation because the top writer on his show had to resign after secretly posting racist and sexist remarks in an online forum, turns outs it’s for suspicion of sexual harassment. I guess it really can be two things A.V. Club…
Someday people are going to look back on these bloviating Fox News assholes and say “THESE were the masterminds brainwashing America?”
I can’t believe that this far in – with Trump still getting 35% or higher approval ratings – people are still surprised at how dumb and/or hateful Americans are, in general.
Not that I wish for a harassment allegation to be true, but…in a way, I’m glad something has finally come out about Tucker.. I really need that asshole off the air. Let’s hope something good comes of this.
Next up: after he gets fired, Trump defends him, makes negative comments about his accuser, makes all of us feel like our brains are getting fried like eggs in a pan.
Wait, so his “pre-planned vacation” wasn’t because they decided to take him off the air because it was discovered that his lead writer was a racist, which is like the the 5th time someone working for Tucker Carlson was outed for racist/white nationalists ties. That’s kinda a lot. You know, its like they, say birds of a feather wear the same white hoods.
I never thought of Tucker Carlson as someone having even a drop of sexuality.
Yeah, I always just assumed he had a Ken doll smooth situation in his pants and in place of genitals he has a lumpy swastika that hardens when he says rascist and biggoted things.P.S. I apologize for the mental image I may have created…
Oh, not even that. He truly has the most genuinely pitiiful ‘resting fuck-face’ facial expression on television. It’s strange seeing clips of him where he’s completely calm and educated. He’s not a complete idiot. The allegations against him pending and aside, he always struck me as that snarky, determined Facebook debate guy, but in 2020*. I don’t know if people like that ever get to experience normalcy, which is sad.
*I’ve embarrassingly been elements of that guy, but far back enough that the cringe feeling is gone.
“Pre-planned” is a stupid term. If you didn’t plan for something before it happened, when else could you have planned for it?Although Fox and Tucker do sound like the sort of employer-employee situation where the former tells the latter that he’s on a vacation he hadn’t planned on taking – the “oops, I meant to do that” of workplaces.
Unintentional plagiarism on my part. I think I saw all of Carlin’s specials, but it was ages ago and I’d forgotten all about this bit.I’ll just go ahead and haul my Vanilla Ice ass outta here.
This isn’t nearly as smart as you think it is.
Isn’t Tucker Carlson’s whole entire life a vacation?
the saddest of these three is Howard Kurtz. He used to have real credibility, now he makes Chris Wallace look like Rachel Maddow.
I miss the days when Tucker Carlson’s biggest sins were wearing bow-ties and trying to get Jon Stewart to be his “monkey”.
I know whenever I take a regular old vacation, like the weeks in May and October when I use the family condo on Dauphin Island, both my co-workers/bosses and myself will squawk endlessly about how it’s LEGIT AND PRE-PLANNED. That’s just normal business stuff.
This depressing on so many levels. In addition to the story itself, which provides yet another example of abuse in the workplace, and Fox’s unwillingness to address its corporate culture (or less likely its incompetence to do so) – the overarching message is here. “As long as the gold in them there hills, we’re going to defend everything that isn’t a legal slam-dunk.” Also, I need to brush up on who the next junior fuckwits in line at Fox News are, because eventually when enough sponsors do leave Carlson and human-big-head-cheat-mode Sean Hannity, they’ll be unceremonious dumped and that next crop of assholes who haven’t been widely outed yet will get called up to the big desk.
“Based on the findings of a comprehensive independent investigation
conducted by an outside law firm … we have determined that all of Cathy Areu’s claims against
Fox News … are
false, patently frivolous and utterly devoid of any merit.”yes, i definitely believe you.Fox News™ has always just been so up-FRONT about all their scandalous, shady shit. that’s what i like about them.they’re just so trustworthy.
i mean, why would they lie? what have THEY to hide?after all, Donald’s unprecedented interview – both carried out and aired on their own damn network – just went so damn well!yes, the Republicans certainly have nothing to worry about in November, so Fox News™ must be breathing easily these days. things are definitely looking up for their kind of honest, level-headed, bi-partisan thought pieces.
I hope he fucking gets fired. This man is about as vile as they come and partially responsible for ginning up the feeble minded.
I wish these 2 women would share publicly some of the comments they’ve been getting from people for everyone who thinks they’re in this for a settlement