Nobody Sold Out Harder Than Tucker Carlson

Generation X—the relatively small and cynical generational cohort when compared to its predecessors, the Baby Boomers, and successors, the Millennials—came of age when pop culture decreed there was absolutely no lower form of life than “the sellout.”

Chuck Klosterman devoted extended passages of his book, The Nineties, to Gen X’s existential anxieties about selling out. The “happy ending” of 1994’s Gen X romantic comedy touchstone, Reality Bites, is when Winona Ryder’s lead character rejects the kind but douchey corporate “sellout” played by Ben Stiller in favor of the mean, manipulative, and cerebral “authentic” dude played by Ethan Hawke. The greatest of all Gen X cultural avatars, Kurt Cobain, even made his shame over selling out the central theme of his suicide note.

Tucker Carlson has mixed feelings about his Generation X heritage, but there can be no question over the fact that he’s a sellout of grandiose proportions. Born rich, raised in an elite boarding school, and well-connected in media from the moment he decided to pursue a career in journalism, Tucker’s never missed a meal or dirtied a fingernail in his life.

Read more at The Daily Beast.