~Basil

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/04/no_author/the-crime-of-talking-to-tucker-carlson/

The Crime of "Talking to Tucker Carlson"

By Dr Naomi Wolf

... I remember of DC in the 1990s as being what Mr Carlson probably also remembers: a time and place for a young, ambitious intellectual, or a young, brash, public figure (as we both then were), in which a sincerity of inquiry, a seriousness of interrogation, and a regard for the verifiable truth, were all taken for granted as being what journalists and commentators were supposed to pursue.

Whatever “side” we were on, we journalists and commentators all took pride in that mission. Truth existed. We would hunt it down, by God, and make our case for it.

Journalists were supposed to challenge the State, and not take press releases from Presidents or White House spokespeople — or corporations for that matter – as Diktats. Arguments had to marshal evidence and to play fair.

We assumed that this need that our profession was supposed to fulfill — for serious public inquiry, intense public debate — was the great indispensable thing in a Republic; we assumed that this basic underpinning of our roles as journalists would be seen by our society, our nation, as being valuable, forever; that the ethics of journalists and commentators in America would last forever; that these ethics would outlive us, as they had outlived President Jefferson.

So I was not hugely surprised that in about March and April of 2021, when I was a Fellow at AIER in Great Barrington (home of the Great Barrington Declaration), and as I had started to raise questions about side effects women were experiencing with the MRNA vaccine — as well as raising questions about why our First and Fourth Amendment rights were being upended, why we were all being held under emergency law, why kids were being masked with little scientific evidence to support this abusive practice, and why pregnant women were being told the injections were safe when there was no data to back that claim up that I could find — that Mr Carlson’s booker reached out to me. I appeared a few times on his show, to air my concerns. ......