The president of Media Matters, Angelo Carusone, was celebrating yesterday over his attempted takedown of Tucker Carlson:

Tucker Carlson red face ranting about Media Matters. He calls for us to be us shut down.

Not sure how that changes that he said that stuff in the past or changes that Fox News is toxic to advertisers.

We’ll just keep doing what we do. Onward!

— Angelo Carusone (@GoAngelo) March 13, 2019

Carusone is happy because his scoop on Tucker Carlson’s radio show comments from a decade ago is big news and that will allow him and his group to pressure advertisers to drop Carlson. These type of campaigns aimed at de-platforming people at Fox News weren’t very successful last year, but Carusone seemed confident that they would make an impact in 2019. From the Wrap:

MMFA chief Angelo Carusone was bullish about the prospects of future campaigns and insisted that boycotts have had a subtle but profound systemic effects within Fox News itself.

“We’ve seen faster responses by Fox, either with terminating people (like they did when a contributor called [Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey] Ford a ‘slut’) or by simply reacting to criticism and apologizing,” Carusone told TheWrap via direct message.

“Next year, the pressure will intensify,” he said. “Fox will either change and improve or they’ll start to face litigation from shareholders for incinerating cash in order to advance a political agenda.”

This is what he does for a living. And you can believe that Carusone wants to “improve” Fox News the way Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to improve capitalism. So what happens when Angelo Carusone is caught making some offensive comments a decade ago on his own blog? Does the glaring hypocrisy of it bother him? From the Daily Caller:

Carusone’s now-defunct blog included degrading references to “trannies,” “jewry” and Bangladeshis.

Carusone posted a lengthy diatribe in November 2005 about a Bangladeshi man who was robbed by “a gang of transvestites,” as Carusone described it. Carusone was offended that the gang was described as “attractive” in an article.

“Did you notice the word attractive? What the f**k 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 f**king 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 another post that same month, Carusone downplayed a male basketball coach’s alleged sexual and physical abuse of his female players, adding, “lighten up Japs,” using what is considered an ethnic slur.

A lot has changed since 2005 when Carusone wrote this. Mocking “trannies” and “Japs” might have seemed funny to him back then but I doubt he’d find it funny now. In fact, I think a lot of people who work for him would say it’s downright hateful and maybe that it reveals his white supremacy. I wonder if the people of color around him in the office feel safe? More to the point, should a group that raises money from progressive donors have some standards about who runs the organization? If Media Matters won’t change, maybe we need a campaign to make sure this material is seen by all of MMFA’s donors. Maybe they don’t want to support someone who, a few years ago, thought trans people were a punchline.

That’s how this works, right?

We could stop trying to de-platform people over opinions they voiced years ago, but then what would Carusone do with his days? The only consistent solution, if he plans to keep pressing for Tucker Carlson to be fired, is for Carusone to boycott himself. I picture him marching around the office with a sign saying “Stop supporting hate/Stop supporting me.” Seriously though, I wonder if any of the drones in the nearby MMFA cubicles have the guts to call out their own boss. My guess is they do not.

I suspect Carusone will keep doing what he does and everyone around him will pretend he’s not subject to the same criticism he dishes out day after day. Onward hypocrites!