Tucker Carlson took a moment on Thursday evening to rail against the politicization of science, bemoaning the growth of “feminism” in the field.
“How did we wind up with a country in which feminists do science?” Carlson asked, after telling viewers about a new study by Dr. Aaron Brough of Utah State University (published on the Journal of Consumer Research) that blamed global climate change on toxic masculinity.
“I mean, isn’t that sort of bound to get a study like this, right?”
On set with Carlson, frequent friend of the show and conservative commentator Mark Steyn, offered his vociferous agreement.
“I think in fact it’s very difficult to tell with social science — as with climate science — whether or not it’s an ingenious parody. It’s almost impossible to tell in fact.” Steyn said. “You can go and take tree rings samples in the middle of nowhere if you want but that’s for losers. The big bucks are doing a survey where you decide that what’s heating up the planet is men.”
“If you look at half the stories you cover every night, toxic masculinity is the source or underlying subtext of it,” he added.
The banter was par for the course for Carlson, but will likely not help alleviate a brutal advertiser boycott that has seen dozens of sponsors flee his show in recent months. Carlson’s remarks about women specifically in the past have been partly responsible.
In January, Carlson’s argument that social ills in the United States were caused in-part by women making more than men led to the departure of Red Lobster as an advertiser.
“Red Lobster’s advertising buying guidelines reflect our core values and commitment to supporting programming that represents the highest standards of good taste, fair practice and objectivity,” the company told TheWrap in a statement at the time. “We reserve the right to make changes to our purchases when the dialogue is no longer in line with our criteria.”
For their part, team Fox has consistently vowed to stand behind Carlson.
“We cannot and will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the likes of Moveon.org, Media Matters and Sleeping Giants,” a spokesperson for the network told TheWrap in December.