Pundits unbound
Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, among others, are spiraling off into new dimensions of awful. Ace has the details of the Carlson story well-covered, in this post and in this one. The title of the former, just to give you a taste of what he’s talking about: “Taqiyya Qatarlson: The CIA Is Preparing a Criminal Referral Against Me Just Because I Was Acting as a Foreign Agent for Iran.” The title of the latter: “Axios ‘Journalist:’ The White House Says That Everything Tucker Carlson Is Saying Is B******t.”
As for Megyn, she’s in a feud with Mark Levin in which she said he has a micropenis. I am not making that up; that’s the level at whcih she’s operating these days. Well you might ask, how would you know, Megyn?
Micropenis Mark @marklevinshow thinks he has the monopoly on lewd. He tweets about me obsessively in the crudest, nastiest terms possible. Literally more than some stalkers I’ve had arrested. He doesn’t like it when women like me fight back. Bc of his micropenis. https://t.co/7cl3Efc3N7
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) March 15, 2026
But rather than get any deeper into the weedy details, I’ll just say that I think part of what’s happening is this (a quote from a response to Megyn on X):
Often happens to those who experience a very long and successful run. Something snaps and their ego’s invincibility trait goes haywire.
In other words, in the fight for clicks and without anyone setting external limits on them anymore, they get very full of themselves. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. For Carlson and Kelly, their previous employer Fox News used to act as the falconer and was a check on their wilder tendencies. Released from those constraints and wildly successful on their own terms, things fall apart, and those things are Carlson and Kelly. They’re not the only ones, either.
Over twenty(!) years ago I wrote about a similar phenomenon in connection with bloggers but also pundits in general:
But I think they (we) do need to be careful not to get carried away with the sheer brilliance of their (our) rapier wit and trenchant opinions.
Alone in front of the computer (or, increasingly less often, a pad of paper), the pundit/blogger sits. Inspiration strikes, and the need to be wittier, sharper (there’s that word again!), more opinionated–to be noticed–rises up in folks who tend to be pretty witty and sharp to begin with. “The pen is mightier than the sword” is a cliche because it has some truth to it–and the sharper the words the mightier they sometimes sound, especially in the solitude of the act of composition. And once put down and published, they can’t be recalled.
Then there’s the group aspect. Bloggers and pundits write in isolation, but they’re not really in isolation at all, except physically. Mentally and emotionally they are part of one huge mass shouting out at each other and at everybody else, the sounds of the exchange echoing and ricocheting and reverberating all over the country–and in some cases the world. As such, we influence each other greatly. It’s not even a case of following the herd, it’s more a case of being influenced by the opinions of others, a process we are all susceptible to no matter how independent we may think we are. We influence each other directly by our words, and also indirectly by the sense of competition that’s inherent in this pundit/blogger game–the need, for some at least, to try to outdo each other.
So what’s the result? Sometimes it’s wonderful–in fact, since I’m a fan of blogs, I’d say it’s often wonderful–a liveliness of writing and thinking and interacting that you just can’t get in the staid old MSM. There’s an energy here, and part of it is the energy that comes with a bunch of sharp (in several senses of the word) and verbal people mixing it up and trying to say intelligent things in a way that’s interesting to read. Sometimes it segues into a group of people trying to say outrageous things, either to amuse or to stir up or out of anger or the desire to call attention to themselves, or some of the above or all of the above.
When is the line crossed and it becomes a feeding frenzy? I don’t have the answer; each person has to decide that for him/herself. But when there’s a lot of blood in the water and people find that their own entrails, and those of their allies, are hanging out–that could be a sign.
The only thing that’s changed is that the ascendance of social media has made it worse.
ADDENDUM:
I wonder now if there isn’t something that has driven some bloggers and pundits absolutely mad. Cheese slipping off their cracker. Broken loose from their moorings. Swilling down something utterly unhealthy to their mental state. Not just Glen Beck, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson, who were prominent in establishment media anyway, before a descent into madness … but figures like Drudge. Charles Johnson, of LGF, who suddenly lurched into … an utterly unhinged state long before the above-mentioned. Did someone slip some LSD into their morning smoothie … or were they always slightly unhinged, but managed to conceal it?
Sgt. Mom:
They were the sort of people I had in mind back in 2005, when I wrote that post. Already certain bloggers had gone off the deep end, and I noticed.
I think it’s often caused by writing in isolation, among other things. Bloggers and pundits tend to be high-strung, driven, and intense anyway.
Charles Johnson was a lefty who defended Bush and was generally on the right side since he saw the Islamic threat. I used to post on his blog.
Megan was pretty good for awhile there. I guess she was faking it.
Your point about having no external limits may explain some of this. I remember someone quoting Obama as saying, “Sometimes I believe my own sh*t.”
Re: Pundits unbound / Tucker Carlson / Megyn Kelly
Jenny Holzer was an 80s conceptual artist who would come up with “truisms” which she would propagate to the public in various ways. She is most famous for:
_______________________________
PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT
https://airheadzine.wordpress.com/2017/09/03/art-by-numbers-5-protect-me-from-what-i-want-jenny-holzer-1983-84/
_______________________________
I can’t vouch for all her work. But she nailed that one.
It’s not “something” – it’s the feedback process.
Someone had a diagram of how the LLMs (current AI) work and learn but it’s pretty much just how animals and children learn too – aim for a goal, get feedback on success or failure, modify efforts if failed.
If your feedback system gets corrupted (say you get surrounded by yes men) of course you go off the rails. You’re literally not hearing how what you’re doing is wrong.
And thanks to social media and filter/blocking, everybody can be a celebrity nowadays and get their own yes men. Heck the AI companies will so provide them for everyone.
Phil Ochs said it well too:
_______________________________
I’ve seen my share of hustlers
As they try to take the world
When they find their melody
They’re surrounded by the girls
But it all fades so quickly
Like a sunny summer’s day
Reporters ask you questions
They write down what you say
So play the chords of love, my friend
Play the chords of pain
If you want to keep your song
Don’t, don’t, don’t
Don’t play the chords of fame
–Phil Ochs, “Chords of Fame”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8qZQORjmzQ
Wow! And here I thought Megyn Kelly was a serious journalist. Now she displays behavior that would have gotten her canned from my junior high school newspaper. It’s sad, really.
@ Sgt Mom at 7:01pm: “Not just Glen Beck… before a descent into madness…”
Why have you included him in your list? I don’t follow him all that closely but the few times I sample his writing or videos, they seem reasonable enough for a Rightist oriented commentator, not really over the top in any meaningful sense. Perhaps even occasionally insightful.
What am I missing? 🙂
huxley:
Phil Ochs had a lot of good stuff. I always liked him.
Tragic ending, though.
Back when I was a kid I decided to develop my own philosophy, but gave it up after a couple of weeks. Why? It was too easy, one thought after another, heading towards madness. It scared me. I suspect some folks don’t put on the brakes and go full nuts.
As an aside, TIL that I am a Nietzschean, at least as to nature of consciousness. It startled me to see that my own thoughts on the matter almost exactly replicated.
neo:
Phil was like a complicated older brother, whom you loved, but worried about.
That album cover with his tombstone on it.
Brrr.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91d-BtzSBML._SL1500_.jpg
Related (not so curiously)…
“Al Jazeera Is Now More Positive on US-Israeli Strategy Than US Media”—
https://instapundit.com/783155/
Barry – not a high bar.
The listening to one’s own fame issue as a cause of deep-ending had never occurred to me. I’ll have to think about it.
It requires or required a lack of corrective feedback. Unless you figure out some way to avoid all INCOMING in this social media age, how can you avoid feedback?
I have thought, beginning maybe fifty years ago, that taking the minority position made you smarter than the lumpen who believe the generally-accepted position on anything. Believe the opposite and you’re an intellectual, a giant of thoughtfulness.
I wasn’t sure how many people I saw doing that actually believed themselves, as opposed to making a public image of intellectual depth and not caring about anything else.
But Carlson and Kelly went over the end so far and so fast that maybe something else was at play. What would make such a change, so far and so fast? I figured either bribery or blackmail, or perhaps savage threats. It’s one thing to have believed such stuff all your life. It’s another to do a one-eighty in public and act as if it were the most important thing in the world. And, apparently, to glory in the pushback.
Are they aware that fewer and fewer believe them? Does it matter? Are they setting the stage for something else?
We let these people into our life, we give them the benefit of the doubt from time to time when they say something a little out of the realm of believability then they start to talk really crazy and we wonder if we misread them the whole time. But it appears to be a process. They weren’t always nuts — but we have to be able to recognize when they begin to really go around the bend.
Megan displayed some crazy during Trump’s first run. She even did a wierd masculine hair style. Then she appeared to pull it together until she didn’t. She can join Ann Coulter in the irrelevant crazy bin.
I don’t know what to make of Tucker:
1. Great talent who unraveled
2. A fool being used by foreign actors
3. A traitor
4. A patriot running a complex double op at the risk of career and reputation
I have no idea. Fascinating to watch.
I read an essay by a conservative Episcopal priest on how a clergy person of various types would approach Tucker’s claim of demonic attack. Unfortunately, Tucker says he doesn’t trust any clergy and instead read the whole Bible on his own, without any guidance or commentary, and came to conclusions which either Christian or Jewish scholars would regard as seriously in error. Launching into these depths without anchor can have very negative results.
This would be another angle on the “no external limits” argument for Tucker and these others. Listening only to oneself can cause some very distorted echoes.
I haven’t paid too much attention to the Tucker descent, but I do tune into to Kelly every morning so this weekend’s blowup was quite a surprise. Overnight she went from a mature person, to a 14 year old middle school harpy. Wow.
I agree with R2L, Glenn beck should not be included in the list. Just by chance, I caught a bit of Levin Sunday night. While his speaking style is off putting (he comes across as the angry old man shaking his fist at the sky), he presented a carefully researched presentation of previous war time president’s views; especially FDR. What was impressive is how the previous president’s views resonated with what Trump is saying. It seems the left has achieved its cultural revolution as how those president’s statements were received versus how Trump’s message is received.
I saw a photo of Megyn Kelly recently with that ding bat Carrie Prejean and I must say that Kelly is anorexic looking and I also believe her to be an alcoholic. I recall seeing her a few times when she was on Fox and her show was ending (it was the lead in to Sean Hannity’s show) and she had a couple of minutes left and she was giggling like a school girl, flirting with the camera man and her speech sounded slurred.
One of thebloggers who went off the deep end was Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs which I used to love to read. He went full on flaming Leftist once Barack Obama was inaugurated.
Btw I am glad that Ann Coulter has pretty much fallen by the wayside.
Of course, the most influential (unfortunately) and pervasive pundits are the main stream media.
They have perfected the art of being able to lie and deceive and make it appear they are merely reporting the news.
yeah beck was a little crazy in the first years of the Trump term, but he sees the bigger picture, (its a gamble admittedly, but to ignore the upside) ah Megyn, descending to the crazy vector of the Hawt/Crazy index most recently defending the Hezbollah brothers, the first time I heard about the threat oft he Iranian nuclear program, was a piece by Carlson pere, in the Spectator
Coulter is another with a stalkerish personality, she blows hot and cold, some of her recent work, on the cutting room bits of the Epstein imbroglio have been interesting,
but Caveat emptor, ah Carrie has gone over to crazy town, same neighborhood as Candace, forced her removal from the religious liberty commission,
now our previous expeditions into this region, have been deleterious to the cause of Christians in the region, one should consider that, but that is not the argument they have made, its Hezbollah are the innocent party, after Beirut Buenos Aires, and October 7th, thats not sustainable,
Candace: I always had reservations about her, mainly because she is not a deep intellectual but she wanted to be in that sector of the commentariat. I saw her stretch her POV further and further in any direction necessary to give the impression that she should be taken as someone on the level of a Ben Shapiro.
Tucker: Liked him a lot because he was smart and well-informed and not afraid to take controversial stances—all while staying in touch with his playful side. Now, he’s possessed by SOMETHING. Probably the ego unbound, as Neo has speculated. But also, possibly demons.
Megyn: really shocked. As a fellow attorney, she always impressed me with her ability to spot issues, drill down, and ask the perfect cross-examination questions when interviewing. She now seems to be obsessed with her ego and thus any suggestion that she has been personally insulted.
JohnTyler @ 9:18 am makes an excellent point: that the Media is the MAIN insanity accelerator.
With a comment from Wretchard:
“SUCH ERRORS DO NOT HAPPEN ORGANICALLY:”—
https://instapundit.com/783134/
– – – – –
Related (compare and contrast)…
“The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why.”—
https://instapundit.com/783255/
“’Pressure from Israel:’ US counter-terror center chief resigns over Iran war;
“Joe Kent, the Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation today in protest against the war with Iran, which he blamed on Israel and pro-Israel lobbyists in the US.”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/424103
+ Bonus:
“IDF INTEL: We destroyed Iran’s base for attacking satellites to keep space supremacy.”—
https://instapundit.com/783062/
— Richard Aubrey
You don’t want to avoid feedback. That’s another road to crazytown or worse.
The problem is what kind of feedback, and from where.
The fundamental problem goes way beyond the Internet and broadcasting, it’s just amplified and sped up there. The real problem is that the kind of feedback that is most useful to us, that we benefit more from, that we need more, is precisely the kind we least like. Negative feedback.
Positive feedback certainly has a place and is necessary, but negative feedback is more important. Negative feedback (from parents, spouses, offspring, kin, friends, boyfriends/girlfriends, fellow employees, bosses, the law, strangers, God above all else) is what keeps us on track, keeps us from plowing into the wall or into a morass.
Which is not to say that all negative feedback is justified or beneficial. There are certainly times when it’s right to ignore it. But in general you have to have it, you need it.
But it’s unpleasant. It’s no fun. It’s a buzzkill. The only reason to value it is that ignoring it overall is a good way to ruin your life and other people’s lives too.
But fame, wealth, success, tempt one to do just that. ‘Yes men’ are more pleasant company than honest critics, no matter how much we insist otherwise. Successful people often become that way by ignoring some specific negative feedback and succeeding at it, and that tempts you to think you can do it forever and in all cases.
(Which is a lot of why so many successful entrepreneurs build a profitable company, and then have to be forced out to keep them from wrecking it. The risk-taker personality often doesn’t translate well when it’s time for the company to turn into a boring normal outfit.
People who succeed and more or less stay successful are usually the ones who don’t ignore negative feedback, but are good at discerning valuable warnings from simple negativity.)
Positive feedback feels awesome, and it has a legit place. But you’re far better off with too much negative than too much positive. Too much positive feeds the ego, swells false self-confidence, closes off your perceptions of possibility and danger.
Positive feedback, in excess, causes you to put the accelerator peddle down and just keep accelerating…until you hit that sharp turn.
One of the things that went wrong with the Star Wars prequels was precisely that during the filming of the first trilogy, people could push back on George Lucas when he was wrong. He got valuable negative feedback from his wife, from the actors, etc. When he filmed the prequels he was GEORGE LUCAS, Genius, and negative feedback had a harder time getting through.
Negative feedback doesn’t always flow, of course. Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson may at times have been reigned in by FOXNews, but FOXNews is also a branch of the Establishment. Remember that first big GOP debate in 2016: Kelly opened her question to Trump with the ‘War On Women’, a big Dem talking point. That wasn’t just her, it was also FOX, the Murdochs oppose Trump’s immigration policy. Afterward, they had a rigged focus group of ‘Trump supporters’ ready to announce that he had lost their support in the debate with his answers, and Charles Krauthammer was there to point out Trump’s failure.
Of course, a week later Trump had pulled further ahead in the real world. FOX tried to take Trump out that night and failed. (At heart, I suspect the FOX ruling powers wanted Jeb or Rubio, and failing them, Hillary.)
RigelDog
In retrospect, Tucker looks a lot like an overall opportunist. He started out with the persona of a bow-tied Libertarian. Then he morphed into Tucker On Fox, now he’s Tucker the Warner Against the Israeli Threat. I doubt he fully believes a lot of what he’s saying (at any stage), but it gets him that sweet, sweet positive feedback and clicks and profits.
Which is not to deny the smartness. He is smart. In some ways that makes it worse.
— RigelDog
Yeah, she can do that. But like Tucker, she has a history of morphing as the current Big Thing changes, too. She’s definitely smart, but she’s a shapeshifter.
Which isn’t unusual. Almost all public celebrities, including newspeople and pundits, project a persona that we interact with, which may or may not reflect the values of the real person. We should always keep that in mind when analyzing these people.
There’s also a ‘death spiral’ effect that can set in when a public figure gets famous and popular by being edgy and ‘out there’ and contrarian. It alienates others, and then once that happens, if you then lose the fans of ‘edgy contrarianism’, you’re left with nothing.
So you MUST hold onto your new audience, because you’ve alienated your old one.
I suspect Tucker is in that trap now, whether he knows it or not.
Short version:
We don’t need no steenkin’ OODA loop…
Hmm … perhaps Glen Beck is not off the rails so much. I never followed him, and still don’t pay much mind. I just had a vague impression that he had gone a little off the rails after about 2011 or so. Didn’t hear much about him anywhere that I hung out in real life or on the internet after that.
But the others that I mentioned – I knew of them, and now hear all about the craziness manifested. I wonder if Neo has a point, that so many bloggers/commentariat are a bit isolated. And that others – the more prominent ones, especially – have their feedback loops interdicted by people around them. Perhaps it is that those of us who do have a healthy real-life support system, and a wide circle of friends with differing opinions have escaped the deadly feedback loop. Something to wonder about, anyway.
I recall a Tucker Carlson interviewing someone. Last Summer, or perhaps early Fall, when I was not feeling well.
The guest casually said something like needing a new addiction or something like it. And Tucker replied with enthusiasm for his own nicotine addiction!
I was amazed. And I wondered if this would bite back at him later.
And not nicotine via chew or smoke. But via nicotine patches. He and hiscwife swear by it, he said.
As he enthused, I felt a grandiosity coming out from him, like some Gnostic Belief system.
Clearly, a hubristic vice, it seemed to me. Anyone know nic fit addiction? Because I sure don’t.
RigelDog,
Agree Candice was never deep. She had potential, as an attractive young black woman who was skilled verbally and fearless. She could have increased her depth with age, but went a different direction.
apparently Candice married some English Duke, but she had late stage Kanye disease, Tucker annoyed me in the early 00s, then he helped found the Daily Caller, and then gained some respects, and has lost in the last 6 months, imho, was it qatari influences (even they are gettting a clue) or maybe just contraryness for the sake of it, ‘like the argument clinic’
Megyn has really lost the plot, if she reacts this way to Levin, the last time she went on this wave, was when she sought the NBC big time, which turned out to be a poison chalice, and then some years later she gained some respect with her podcast, then madness has set in,
the prequels, (which were Lucas’s outreach to his kids) aren’t as bad as the sequels, ‘teh horror’ but unbounded by Kasden or others, he had a very simplistic world view, Nixon (Empire) bad, Vietcong (Good) the Andor series tried to exact nuance from that, (the series was Oscar quality, compared to the drek, that was awarded on Sunday)*
*some of the commentary from the writers suggest they are similatly simple minded about current events,
Joe Kent, from his previous statements, held a strong anti interventionist viewpoint, but anyclear eyed viewer, knows that Iran poses a major threat, not merely in the region,
a cynic might say the new wife heather hauser, has strong leftwing sympathies as her one byline with Max Blumenthal suggests, but he is ultimately hia own person,
Chuck on March 17, 2026 at 12:38 am said:
“As an aside, TIL [today I learned?] that I am a Nietzschean, at least as to nature of consciousness. It startled me to see that my own thoughts on the matter almost exactly replicated.” I scanned this essay quickly and now will plan to examine it more thoroughly tomorrow. Thanks for bringing it forward.
Kate on March 17, 2026 at 8:55 am said:
“This would be another angle on the “no external limits” argument for Tucker and these others. Listening only to oneself can cause some very distorted echoes.”
HC68 on March 17, 2026 at 1:36 pm said:
Great overall comment, especially:
“You don’t want to avoid feedback. That’s another road to crazy town or worse.
… The real problem is that the kind of feedback that is most useful to us, that we benefit more from, that we need more, is precisely the kind we least like. Negative feedback.
… There are certainly times when it’s right to ignore it. But in general you have to have it, you need it.
But it’s unpleasant. It’s no fun. It’s a buzzkill. The only reason to value it is that ignoring it overall is a good way to ruin your life and other people’s lives too.”
It turns out Chuck’s link about the nature of consciousness, and Kate’s and HC68’s comments reminded me of the adage from Dr. David Brin, which is abbreviated CITOKATE, or “Criticism is the only known antidote to error”. Brin applies this to legal, scientific, and related evidence based analyses, as a means to step outside of any individual’s idiosyncrasies to obtain a wider “consensus” view. But he realizes a consensus may also be in error and can still justify further criticism.
I have my own issues with Brin, but he’s right about the role of negative feedback.
One of the most important aspects of negative feedback, if you’re willing to listen to it, or compelled to listen, is to force you to think about your own premises and arguments. Maybe you’re right and the critic is wrong…but in figuring out why the critic is wrong, you’ll understand your own POV better, too. You might decide that he’s wrong and you’re wrong too, or you might refine your own arguments, improve them.
At the very least, it forces you to ask yourself why you want what you want.