Media Matters president Angelo Carusone on Wednesday explained to CNN’s Brian Stelter that the bigoted content that appears on his old blog was intended to serve as a “parody of a right-wing blowhard.”
Carusone’s old blog posts, which contain mocking references to “Japs,” “Jewry,” and “trannies,” were unearthed by the Daily Caller after his liberal opposition research group, Media Matters, used decade-old audio clips of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on a shock jock radio show to organize an advertiser boycott of his program.
Carusone explained to Stelter that the content “was intended to be a giant, obnoxious right-wing caricature, a parody of a right-wing blowhard living my life.” Carusone’s right-wing satire explanation, which appeared in Stelter’s newsletter, does not account for the liberal positions he espoused in other blog posts. As the Caller noted, Carusone used the blog to attack Republicans and express support for former Vice President Al Gore.
In one of the posts, written in 2005, Carusone mocks a Bangladsehi man who was robbed by what Carusone refers to as a “gang of transvestites,” and expresses outrage that the man was described as “attractive” in an article about the incident.
“Did you notice the word attractive? What the fuck is that doing in there? Is the write[r] a tranny lover too? Or, perhaps he’s trying to justify how these trannies tricked this Bangladeshi in the first place? Look man, we don’t need to know whether or not they were attractive. The fucking guy was Bangladeshi,” Carusone wrote. “And while we’re out, what the hell was he doing with $7,300 worth of stuff. The guy’s Banladeshi! [sic]”
In the wake of the Media Matters expose published earlier this week, paid advertisements on Tucker Carlson Tonight have fallen by more than 60 percent, according to The Wrap. However, the program remains the highest rated in cable during its time slot.