On The Late Show, Patton Oswalt revels in being one of Tucker Carlson's evil Hollywood elite
Sporting a freshly-shorn salt-and-pepper mane (thanks to the home haircutting talents of wife Meredith Salenger), comedian, actor, author, and M.O.D.O.K. Patton Oswalt told Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s Late Show that sensible and responsible social distancing has its upsides. Finding out your spouse is okay at hairstyling is one, as that will save some money in the long run, even if her first efforts began with an unsettling “Whoops.” Discovering that even an audience-starved stand-up comedian hasn’t yet resorted to doing COVID-19 schtick to his bemused neighbors is also a load off. (Colbert showed a video Oswalt made of him doing exactly that, with Oswalt’s daughter Alice helping out with the verisimilitude by heckling her dad from the sidewalk.) So, not all bad, even despite—or indeed because of—the perfidiously pasty efforts of Fox News white supremacist fascism fan Tucker Carlson to sic viewers on him.
With Colbert commiserating at being on the Fox hit list of those show biz types who’ve dared call out Fox’s favorite president for being variously and simultaneously [checking list] a half-bright, racist, incompetent, sexually predatory, criminally negligent, unhinged-and-getting-worse blight on America and all it purports to stand for, Oswalt talked about what it’s been like coming under Carlson’s beady gaze of late. That at having recently made the onscreen crawl of celebs who, in Patton’s words, form the “evil, left-wing celebrity cabal” secretly bankrolling the still-growing Black Lives Matter protests. (He’s donated to protesters’ bail funds.)
Clearly gleeful at being on the shit list of the also increasingly unhinged and flailing Carlson, Oswalt (there to promote the true crime documentary series I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, about his late wife Michelle McNamara’s hunt for the now-incarcerated Golden State Killer) noted how the “K-Tel Records”-style onscreen crawl from Fox’s graphics department actually made it look like he was part of a “Hollywood power couple” with Harry Styles. (Oswalt seemed okay with it.) Revealing that, in addition to “dough-faced Il Duce” (Colbert’s words) failing to spur a pitchfork mob to the home of Oswalt’s family, Twitter has joined in to roundly roast the racist-rabble-rousing Carlson on the comedian’s feed, Oswalt also shared the tweet his mom sent saying that she always knew he was a good boy. So that’s got to feel almost as nice as having the bewigged thumb of the nation’s right-wing propaganda arm declare you his nemesis. To steal a quote from Hunter S. Thompson about being denied press credentials to another farcically corrupt White House, being publicly reviled by Fox News’ preppy propagandist probably feels “like being blackballed at the Playboy Club. There are definite advantages to having your name on the Ugly List in places like that.”
Oh, and should you want to join “worm in bowtie and a third-grade haircut” Tucker Carlson’s hall of shame:
Looking for ways to advocate for Black lives? Check out this list of resources by our sister site Lifehacker for ways to get involved.