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Tucker Carlson has been one of my favorite conservative TV personalities since CNN's "The Spin Room" in the summer of 2000: I respect his libertarianism, his willingness to stray from the party line (against the war in Iraq, for example, or against the war on drugs), and his general avoidance of being dogmatic and judgmental. He's also entertaining and tends to have intelligent and entertaining people on his shows. But I was appalled by his interview with the "Arabic Assassin", an amateur rapper who was fired from his day job as a baggage screener at George Bush Intercontinental airport in Houston for writing lyrics about flying planes into buildings. (I'm also pretty appalled that there's an airport named after GHWB, but that's a different issue.) The rapper, Bassam Khalaf, a "Houston native of Palestinian descent", was competent at his job; he was fired solely because of what he wrote. Apparently he wrote lyrics about a lot of other sordid things, like necrophilia and child molestation, which Tucker said was "over the line" and caused him to heap scorn on Khalaf to his face, which continued into the next segment with his panel where no one wanted to come anywhere close to defending the rapper. Khalaf didn't do a great job of defending himself either, although he did protest that he was just an entertainer, and that of course he didn't condone killing innocent people and would never let a bomb onto a plane. Unfortunately the topic didn't come up in the later segment "The Outsider", where Max Kellerman plays the contrarian and does a surprisingly good job at debating the opposing viewpoint for various topics that Tucker thinks are "common sense". I think there are two ways to defend Khalaf: one is the obvious (or should be obvious) point that a rap (or any other piece of art) can be about something without condoning it, and in fact is often an effective way to condemn it. In this case, though, it's not that clear that Khalaf has that noble a purpose—he said that he rapped about disturbing things for shock value, as a way to get publicity. But this leads to the second defense, which is much more important: it doesn't matter why he wrote what he wrote, because it's not a crime and it doesn't affect his ability (or desire) to do his job. If his raps are truly repulsive and have no redeeming value whatsoever, then no one will buy his records; it's not the role of his employer (especially a government employer) to punish him for making unpopular art. Portraying taboo subjects in art is not a threat to our national security; the freedom to do so is in fact the source of our national pride. And I'm disappointed that Tucker forgot that.
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The point isn't whether his art is immoral or illegal, it's that it actively works against the interests of his employer--interests he probably signed an agreement to uphold. I think my employer would probably fire me if I managed to get airplay for a song claiming I'd modified their spam filter to introduce viruses into customer intranets. I wouldn't blame them.
Anyway, he wanted attention, and now he's on national TV! Kudos.
And seriously, "against the war in Iraq" is a reason you respect Tucker Carlson? Because, long after he advocated for opening the barn door--a position he later said was "against his instincts" while he was publicly supporting it--he admitted maybe we shouldn't have let all those horses out? (On the same day (http://mediamatters.org/items/200406170002) he echoed the moronic "flip-flop" charges against John Kerry?) I'll agree he's not the worst of conservative TV personalities, but you're setting the bar pretty low.
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About the baggage screener thing, I still don't understand why it would necessarily undermine travelers' confidence. But I guess it's already shaky enough as it is.
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Bush Jr., on the other hand, is an embarassment to us all.
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That's just a very bad ground for the employer to be on, particularly given that I'm sure many other people would be just as suited for the job and Khalaf would probably find some other job anyway. Tucker probably didn't forget about the freedom to express yourself, and it sounds like he didn't also forget the freedom of employers to exercise judgment, particularly when their own livelihood and reputation could be on the line.
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Also, has Khalaf sued the government, then?
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He did say that he was looking for legal representation.
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Legal is not the same as acceptable in social or business situations.
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