Categorical Aperitif

It's a floor wax! It's a dessert topping! It's an exciting new game show that will occur to anyone who keeps up with media matters in America! Today's special guest: Tucker Carlson.

Referring to a February 24 Newsday article about then-private attorney Hillary Clinton's representation of an indigent man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson said on his program the next evening: "Now their defense is, 'Well, that's what lawyers are supposed to do.' In other words, it's legal, therefore it's allowed. I guess my response would be, it's still repulsive and immoral."

At first I was going to go with Idiot! here, as it seemed at first glance that Tucker Carlson had simply failed to grasp one of the most basic concepts underlying the American legal system: defense attorneys are required to, you know, defend their clients, as prosecuting attorneys are expected to prosecute them, and the accused is to be presumed innocent until their guilt has been determined through the adversial process of courtroom argument. But then I took a closer look at that "in other words." Notice how swiftly, how deftly, how almost unnoticeably, Carlson uses those three simple words to equate two statements that do not mean the same thing:

1. "Defense attorneys are supposed to defend their clients."
2. "It's legal, therefore it's allowed."

Do you see the problem? Statement 1 enunciates a professional responsibility: Someone who is working as a defense attorney is professionally required to do what they can, within the law, to defend their client. Statement 2 enunciates a kind of libertine license: Whatever is legal is allowable, even if it's not moral. The one is not even close to being the other, "in other words." However, by so swiftly and surreptitiously equating them, Carlson manages to move the listener from thinking "Hillary fulfilled her professional responsibility as a defense attorney" to thinking "Hillary immorally supported a rapist." The more I look at what Carlson did, the more it looks like some top-notch whorin'.

Tucker Carlson: Idiot or Whore? You make the call.