Tucker Carlson Is SO Butch

Tucker Carlson, the poor man's George F. Will, claims that he assaulted a guy who tried to cruise him in a public restroom in Washington D.C.

On the August 28 edition of MSBNC Live, hosted by MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams, Tucker Carlson, host of MSNBC's Tucker, asserted, "Having sex in a public men's room is outrageous. It's also really common. I've been bothered in men's rooms." Carlson continued, "I've been bothered in Georgetown Park," in Washington, D.C., "when I was in high school." When Abrams asked how Carlson responded to being "bothered," Carlson asserted, "I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the -- you know, and grabbed him, and ... hit him against the stall with his head, actually."

A couple of points to note here. First, if this is true, Mr. Carlson is admitting to aggravated assault. Second, Mr. Carlson went to high school at St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island, Class of 1987. St. George's, as you know from my own postings, is a boarding school, also the alma mater of Howard Dean, Class of 1966, and -- for one year -- yours truly, Class of 1971. I don't know what SG was like in the late 1980's, but when I was there and it was an all-boys school, well... let's just say that boys will do boys. (Alas, I was a late bloomer. I waited until college.) So his over-reaction then and his boisterous locker-room bragging now seem a tad forced.

Mr. Carlson's rather frenzied attempt to show how tough he is with people hitting on him reminds me of what the immortal Bard once said: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." People who overreact to being hit on make me wonder what they're worried about. People who are secure in their sexual orientation would shrug such a thing off, and I know a few straight guys who would take it as a compliment -- "Nice to know I've still got it."

I know Mr. Carlson is married with children. (So are a lot of the guys on gay dating sites -- you can tell them by the ads that say "Discreet/No Strings.") And frankly, I sincerely hope that Mr. Carlson is straight because, like Senator Larry Craig, I wouldn't want an uptight bully like him in our club. We have enough bitchy queens in the ranks as it is.

Now Mr. Carlson has come out (oops, sorry) with an update to his story and the eyebrows it raised.

Let me be clear about an incident I referred to on MSNBC last night: In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men's room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men's room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.

Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That's absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn't angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.

Ah, now he says he was physically assaulted. That's different than being "bothered." And now he says he and a friend "seized" him and waited for the security guard.

Sounds like someone needs to get their story straight. So to speak.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.