The first few minutes you spend looking at the Daily Caller, you may have the impression that it is maybe a high school or college spoof rag, but here’s the kicker … it’s not.
It is an extension of the freakish right-wing space between the ears of none other than Tucker Carlson, the college Republican all grown up to something part man-child and part 1939 Berlin throwback. Carlson moved into the internet political news space with the encouragement and support of a handful of moon bat right-wingers who believed that Carlson had enough gravitas and experience to attract real writers and real beltway inside information. That plan never worked. Instead, the site is better defined by the collection of almost endless OMG! caliber screw ups that have typically followed Carlson throughout his shaky involvement in the world of “journalism.” It is for example, the same Daily Caller that said they would hand out a 9 mm pistol with the Bill of Rights inscribed on the slide every day until Election Day.
It was also the same Daily Caller that hyped a completely bogus, manufactured story about Cubans, prostitutes and their relationship to Senator Bob Menendez. Carlson has created a home for a caliber of mangy stray cat contributors who find it virtually impossible to plant their stories with any other outlets except perhaps Alex Jones and Carlson’s Daily Caller.
Case in point is the riff raff Carlton recently hired to provide “coverage” in a trial where MSNBC’s Ed Schultz was being hustled in court by a celebrity hanger-on by the name of “Michael Queen.” Queen was suspect to the point that he often used an alias “Michael Anderson.” Tucker obviously believed that a nationally known liberal talker being sued for breach of contract was big news for his half wit struggling site. He allowed a random oddball blogger by the name of Evan Gahr to cover the incredibly frivolous breach of contract claim with breathless narratives about David meeting Goliath in a DC Federal Courtroom.
In reality, the case was only about a celebrity hound meeting Ed Schultz outside his studio for a first time meeting that lasted less than ten minutes. But in that ten minutes, the spooky little celebrity hound developed the delusion that he had become a lifetime business partner with Schultz. The delusion and fantasy developed so completely in Michael “Anderson’s” “Queen’s” confused mind that he believed Ed had at a first introduction, ten-minute meeting agreed to pay the odd little character a percentage of his Ed Show salary for the rest of his life.
Obviously, the case was dismissed by the trial court, but then when an overly anal appellate court judge determined that the borderline insane claim by Queen at least deserved a trial, the Evan Gahr Daily Caller team showed up to make the controversy appear to be a bonafide story. Fortunately, the jury had more walking around sense than Gahr, Carlson and the Daily Caller and found in Schultz’s favor in less than 40 minutes of deliberation.
But the bigger moral to the story is that if you waste five minutes of your life scanning the pages of Carlson’s publication, you will figure out their brand. It is a home to a collection of misfit oddities all the caliber of Evan Gahr delivering the vision of “journalism” they developed and never abandoned somewhere in that time between tenth and eleventh grade when they were stretching to write stories that seemed appropriate for their high school newspaper.
