When Tucker Carlson took his live show to Hershey, Pennsylvania, earlier this month, accompanied by GOP vice presidential nominee Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a local reporter who covered the event wrote that the arena where the men spoke was “more accustomed to hosting hockey games and rock concerts — not political theater.”
Sure enough, rapper Post Malone had performed the previous night at the 10,500-seat Giant Center, and it’s the home of the Hersey Bears Hockey Club.
But this wasn’t a case in which you could say one of these things is not like the other. Carlson’s live tour had a distinctive rock-star vibe to it, with music, cheering crowds and even people tailgating before the show and holding up lights in the darkened arena. All that was missing was a live band.
Welcome to the age of the rock-star conservative, best described — with apologies to Glenn Beck — as the fusion of entertainment and politics.
It is an American tradition that feels modern, the fulfillment of the late social critic Neil Postman’s vision of Americans “amusing themselves to death,” but in fact, this sort of tour dates to the 19th century. Then, there were parades and outdoor lectures related to politics, many organized by James Redpath, a Republican and abolitionist who was said to have “organized speech into a mercantile staple” by arranging lecture tours of electrifying speakers such as Frederick Douglass and Mark Twain.