Should Glenn Go on Tucker Carlson?

with John McWhorter

Recently I agreed to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News for a long interview. As you’re no doubt aware, Tucker is a controversial figure. His political commentary has made him a lightning rod for invective from liberals and the left, and occasionally even from the right. He also happens to have a sizable audience of regular viewers, some of whom could be receptive to my own analyses of race, politics, and culture in the U.S. I’m on a mission to change minds, and there are a lot of minds tuning in to Tucker’s show.

Nevertheless, I recognize that some of Tucker’s comments have made him persona non grata for certain segments of the population. If going on his show could help get my message across to a new audience, it also risks making me appear untouchable to others who might otherwise be willing to hear me out.

It’s a tricky decision, which is why I turned to my friend John McWhorter to help me think through the pros and cons. (John also shares some news of his own below.) I’m interested in what you all think of this decision. Should we speak with whoever is willing to hear us out in order to further our cause? Or do we need to take broader pragmatic concerns into consideration? Let me know in the comments!

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GLENN LOURY: Glenn on Fox News. I need your advice, John. And we can perhaps conclude with this. We're going to record a Q&A response session after this for the $10 per month patrons who get to ask us questions at the Glenn Show.

JOHN MCWHORTER: But we do need to do this Fox thing, yes.

So Tucker Carlson has contacted me asking if I want to come up to his studio and sit down for a long form interview. And I've said yes. Laura Ingraham called me up and said would I come on and talk about ... yeah, I know. Look at your brow furrowing. That was the way my wife responded to the news as well. I went on Laura Ingraham for five minutes at the top of her show a couple of weeks ago.

My inbox has been hit on more than one occasion by people who said, “Are you crazy? What are you doing?” I took this appointment at the Manhattan Institute as a Senior Fellow, and I'm getting referrals and I'm getting inquiries and whatnot. And I have felt that I couldn't say no to all of them. It's a brand management question here. I have never said anything that I don't believe. I have not had words put in my mouth. I have said what I've always been saying, but I've said it on Fox News on more than one occasion.

It's not too late for me to pull back if the counsel that I get from my good friend, my wise friend John McWhorter were to say pull back. But I'm asking myself, why would I not be willing? If I were to go on CNN or MSNBC—by the way, they haven't called and asked—no one would be saying anything. I'm not endorsing Fox News by being interviewed by people asking me about matters that are of serious significance to the country. It gives me a chance, by the way, because I have integrity, of pushing back against some of the things that might be taken for granted by a Fox News audience. I'm not a puppet here being pulled this way or that by my masters. I'm my own man. But if Cornel West can go on Tucker Carlson, why can't Glenn Loury go on Tucker Carlson? I have heard nobody criticizing Cornel West for going on Tucker Carlson and holding forth.

Because he's speaking truth to power. You're seen as different.

Okay. So you're advising against it?

Well, that's interesting. Because I worked for the Manhattan Institute for 10 years and I was in that position. I never said anything I didn't believe, but I had that stamp on me, and I know what people generally said about it. Glenn, I feel two ways. The quick way is that when you're speaking to that Fox News audience about these issues, you know that they agree with you. And to me, it's too easy. I mean, life is busy. I bore easily. I hate to say this, because it's not the host's fault, but to talk to somebody where they already believe everything you believe and you're not going to be challenged? I don't find that very interesting.

After you have been in the media for a while, the novelty of the studio and seeing famous people in the green room wears off. And I'm always kind of thinking I have a book to get through, I have a book to write, I'm trying to be an academic, I've got stuff to do. Then after awhile, I have kids. And I'm sitting here just agreeing with this person. It's not their fault, but I don't find that much fun. That's not to say anything against Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham, personally. I have met both of them, interviewed back in the day many times. I did all those shows, O'Reilly included. On O'Reilly, I was usually cast as the leftish foil. But then on some of the other shows, I was on there to say what they wanted to hear, and if I believed it, I said it. But this is the other thing with Fox, Glenn. These days … everybody's watching this part, too. This is going to get around.

Be careful, be careful.

I think, you have to choose your battles. And the simple fact is this: there's a stink that is on a Black person who appears on Fox News. And I'm not going to give it any other word but that. There's a certain kind of person who, if they know that you were on Hannity, if they know that you talked to Laura Ingraham, you are automatically discredited because you were therefore being a right-wing shill.

Now that is bullshit. That is overgeneralized, non-reflective thinking. But I realized over my ten years that there's a certain kind of person where, if you were on O'Reilly, you're a pig. Now I can't fix that those people think that. Those people shouldn't think that, but that doesn't mean they won't. People have trouble with that sometimes. Those people shouldn't think that, but that doesn't mean that they won't. And in the world that I live in, where a critical mass of educated, liberal and left people think that way, it scotches my message to be seen on those shows.

Because what I'm trying to do is talk to the people who are running these schools, talk to the people sitting on the fence who are thinking they're supposed to listen to Ibram Kendi because he has dreadlocks, but they know that Coleman Hughes makes sense. The kind of person who could go the right way if they just heard the right ideas. That person, one out of two of those people, think that you suck the minute you have ever been on a set with Tucker Carlson. As far as I'm concerned, in the time that I have left, I would rather not do that.

And so I feel bad sometimes. The Fox bookers try to get me. Just this week, I finally said to one of them, you know what? I don't do Fox. I feel bad saying that because it's not fair. I mean, there are some terrible things said on Fox News, and I've been repulsed by how they approach the Trump phenomenon in particular. But the idea that everybody who works for Fox News is a moron or an idiot or malevolent is absurd. But at this point, if I want to reach a certain kind of person, I can't have that stink on me.

And honestly, if I may, you might be doing that to yourself. So it depends on who you want to convince. And the thing is, the people on the Fox side don't need convincing. It's the people in Park Slope. I openly admit that if the people in Park Slope think that you suck if you are anywhere near Hannity, but that you're somebody to contend with if you talk to Chris Hayes, I'm going to talk to Chris Hayes. Especially because it's more fun to talk to Chris Hayes, because he's going to push back. It gets the brain going more.

You're giving me something to think about. I don't know if there's any value in … you say they already agree. I don't think the typical listener to one of these right-wing shows on Fox has a very—at all—sophisticated understanding of what is creditable in the woke arguments. So one of the questions I get asked by these people is, "What do you think about critical race theory?” And I always say, I understand why it might've come into existence in the first place.

I knew Derrick Bell when I was at Harvard in the 1980s. He was not an idiot. Faces at the Bottom of the Well is not a good book in my opinion, and I've said so for the reasons that I have said. But on the other hand, the enterprise of trying to give voice to the frustrations and aspirations of African Americans in the wake of a long history is a respectable enterprise. And the concerns about disparity are real concerns. Now we can get into the reasons why. So I like to think that I'm adding something of an educational value to the thing.

So they're going to say, "He's the sensible Black." The Fox listener is going to say, "Oh, there's a sensible Black person. He agrees with me about critical race theory." But maybe some of them will hear that, while I am a Black guy who does share some of their views about critical race theory, I'm not a puppet. There's my book The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, my book Race, Incarceration, and American Values, et cetera, et cetera. My own biography, which I'm sometimes asked about, which is what it is. I won't go into it now.

But the Fox viewership are people, too. They're not all yahoos that are beyond the ability to influence how they think. I assume that's why Cornel West goes on there. But you're right, his schtick there is different from mine. He's an oppositionist when he comes on there, and Tucker has brought him on precisely to joust with him. Tucker brings me on presumably to get confirmation of what Tucker already thinks. My job is to make sure that I'm not a puppet who comes on, and not to say yes, yes, yes to the things that Tucker says, but say "yes, but" or "yes and" on occasion so as to broaden the conversation.

They have an audience. The audience is a part of the same country that we are. The idea that I don't want to talk to people who are Fox News listeners because they're a bunch of deplorable yahoos is not a very healthy idea, it seems to me. So that would be my defense, but you've given me something to think about.

Actually I should say here, I'm under-slept again and last week is just this blur. I don't think I've announced it here. I can finally say that this book, “The Elect,” that I have been excerpting on Substack, I can officially say now that that is going to come out as a book. It's going to be called Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. It's not going to be called “The Elect”—Woke Racism—and it's going to be coming out at the end of October from Penguin Random House. So everybody can look out for it. But Glenn, I mentioned that because—and this is going to seem snobbish, but I'm going to stand by it because life is short and I have a mission …

Go for it, John.

In the contract for that one, it is stipulated I am not doing conservative, right-wing talk radio. That is not what it's for. And we've both done millions of those shows. Now, I'll talk to some conservatives. I will pick and choose the occasional right-wing thinker, sure. But really the publicity campaign is going to be for Black and white and other colored people who are in the middle and read the New York Times and listened to NPR without flinching and are people who could go either way.

I'm going to try to nudge them onto the proper—i.e. our—side of the fence. Partly my policy here is because if those people hear me pushing Woke Racism with Rush Limbaugh Jr., they're less likely to listen to me or to take in the message. And folks, by that I don't mean less likely to purchase the book and help put my children through daycare. I just mean to hear the message. So yeah, there's no easy answer to these things. Because I hear what you're saying, too. And I'm not trying to imply that Fox News watchers and listeners are morons. It's not that. Nor am I saying that people like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham are morons, because they are not remotely.

That's a fact.

But there is a position that they stand for. And we live in a world.

Okay, well, we all, both of us, and everybody has to find their way through the morass here. We're doing the best that we can. I respect you. I especially respect the publication within the same calendar year of two, count them two, books from John McWhorter. Nine Nasty Words. Everybody should subscribe to Lexicon Valley, his podcast. It's really, really interesting. You're talking about the Chinese language in the most recent one, are you not? That podcast is over the top amazing. Nine Nasty Words is out there and coming from Penguin Random House is Woke Racism. Or Woke Antiracism?

Woke Racism.

Woke Racism. Bari Weiss will be happy to see that it's Woke Racism.

Yeah. Why I did that to myself ... two in a year? As you can imagine, this is tough. Because, you know, now Nine Nasty is out there. And Woke Racism, to get it out in October, means it really has to be finished now. So there is a lot going on. But we live in a society where some things need to happen. People need to learn about where curses come from and they need to stop treating Black people like babies. Those are my two missions at this point. So that is the formal announcement. But that ties into what you're saying about who to speak to. It's a tough one.