I guess I should be happy. There’s no prominent commentator in the American media whose stated views are more anathema to my own than Tucker Carlson. He’s a strident opponent of immigration, and endorsed at least one version of the “Great Replacement” theory. He opposes dense housing development, declaring that Democrats want to “eliminate the suburbs”. He pushed antivax disinformation so strongly that his own Fox News coworkers had to step in and complain. He staunchly opposes aid to Ukraine, supporting Russian propaganda narratives so strongly that the Kremlin orders Russian news outlets to use clips from his show. He’s made excuses for the storming of Congress on January 6, using misleading videos. From my point of view, Tucker represents pretty much the worst that mainstream American media has to offer. And as the most-watched cable news host, he had the biggest megaphone of practically anyone.

And now he’s out — fired from Fox News for unknown reasons. Theories abound. Perhaps it was related to a recent defamation lawsuit, in which Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million after spreading rumors that Dominion rigged the 2020 election. Perhaps it was because of a pending discrimination lawsuit against Tucker’s producers. Perhaps it was because Rupert Murdoch didn’t like Tucker’s religious-sounding language, or because Tucker scared away advertisers. There are other hypotheses as well.

A lot of people are cheering about Tucker’s ouster, and I guess maybe I should be too. Yet I find that I don’t really care at all, because I see Tucker as nothing more than a symptom of the deep unhealed wounds in American society.