Tucker's Thoughts

About

Tucker's Thoughts refers to a series of exploitables based on a segment of the news commentary TV series Tucker Carlson Tonight. In the segment, host Tucker Carlson attempts to explain the commonality of slavery in the world prior to the Civil War by using four digital panels to help highlight his main points. People online then photoshopped different words on the panels to mock and parody the segment.

Origin

On August 15th, 2017, Tucker Carlson devoted the first part of his series Tucker Carlson Tonight on the Fox News network discussing the Durham Statue Toppling, in which a group of activists forcibly removed a number of statues commemorating Confederate soldiers and generals.^[1] During the segment, Carlson argues that the slavery was common during the time of the Civil War, using a series of digital panels (video below) to highlight his main points, which read "Slavery is evil," "Until 150 Years Ago, Slavery Was Rule," "Plato, Mohammed, Aztecs All Owned Slaves," and Slaveholding Common Among North American Indians."

Spread

During the broadcast, Twitter ^[2] user @benjacobs tweeted a picture of a television with Tucker and the four panels on the screen with the caption "Fox News just now." The post (shown below) received more than 4,100 retweets and 6,800 likes in 48 hours.

Shortly after the picture appeared online, Twitter^[3] user @McJesse tweeted a screen cap from the segment with the words on the panels missing, creating a template for the meme. He captioned the tweet "Twitter…have at it." The tweet (shown below) received) more than 950 retweets and 3,600 likes.

People began replying to the tweet with photoshopped versions of the screenshot. Essentially, they would replace the original text with absurd or politically satirical jokes about Tucker, U.S. President Donald Trump or the current state of race relations in the United States (examples below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

^[1] YouTube – Tucker: If we erase the past, prepare for the consequences

^[2] Twitter – @benjacobs' Tweet

^[3] Twitter – @McJesse's Tweet