Happy Monday.
Fair warning: Sometime today you may hear that Tucker Carlson featured a guest who recommended using “testicle tanning” to raise flagging testosterone levels.
You will be tempted to think this is a joke.
It is not.
Fitness professional Andrew McGovern told Carlson: “If you want to optimise and take it to another level, expose yourself to red light therapy…”
“Which is testicle tanning,” the presenter asked.
Mr McGovern continued: “It’s testicle tanning, but it’s also full body red light therapy, which has [a] massive amount of benefits. There’s so much data that isn’t being picked up.
“It’s not crazy to seek solutions, and I was recently exposed to a term called ‘bromeopathy’, and I think there’s a lot of people out there right now that don’t trust the mainstream information.”
You may also hear about a certain homoerotic promo for Tucker’s docu-whatever on Manhood.
You will also be tempted to think it is a parody.
Critics… were taken aback by the striking homoerotic nature of the trailer for his upcoming “documentary” about what he calls the “collapse” of testosterone levels in men.
The steamy trailer for the first episode of his new season of “Tucker Carlson Originals” features a series of shots of half-nude, muscular (white) men. They’re pumping rubber, chopping wood, grilling, firing a gun — and wrestling — accompanied by the soaring, thumping musical theme “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” which was widely popularized in the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Oddly, many of the men’s faces are blurred out or hidden. In one scene, a naked man stands with arms outstretched and genitals illuminated behind what one observer said looks like a Tesla recharging station.
The only thing missing from Tucker’s fantasy-montage is a shirtless Vladimir Putin, which is surely an oversight. (For some context, here’s something I wrote about the right’s increasing obsession with its idea of “manliness.” There’s a history here.)
But Carlson’s hard pivot toward oiled up manly-manliness is also more than a bit ironic, as the Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona noted:
Exit take:
Mike Lee: bad lawyer, terrible liar.
Via Aaron Rupar:
But that’s why you have the Bulwark.