Photo from Gage Skidmore on Flickr Creative Commons
The head writer for Tucker Carlson has resigned following revelations he had authored racist and sexist social media posts, reports the Washington Post.
Blake Neff wrote he wouldn’t get treated by an Asian doctor, described Blacks as lazy and criminal and mocked a female college acquaintance by reposting all her Facebook messages and posts.
The writings came to light just 24 hours earlier in a story by CNN.
According to the Cable News Network, one post under the uncensored subject line: “Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?”, Neff wrote “I wouldn’t get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no.”
A Fox News spokesperson said Neff resigned shortly after the CNN story.
“Neff’s abhorrent conduct on this forum was never divulged to the show or the network until Friday, at which point we swiftly accepted his resignation,” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace wrote in a memo. “Make no mistake, actions such as his cannot and will not be tolerated at any time in any part of our work force.”
WAMU reports Carlson himself has come under criticism about his comments about immigrants, people of color and woman.
“I think his show is very close to what his writer, Blake Neff was doing, apparently anonymously for five years,” former CNN and NBC host Soledad O’Brien, said.
O’Brien described Carlson as “anti-immigrant, he’s frequently racist. He says despicable things about women, he says despicable things about Asians. He says despicable things about Latinos. He talks about the kind of people who ‘hate’ America.”
Many advertisers including Disney, Papa John’s and T-Mobile had pulled commercials from the program even earlier.
Carlson averaged 4.3 million viewers the second quarter of this year, a record for cable news.
Carlson recently questioned the patriotism of Sen Tammy Duckworth(D-IL), an Iraqi War veteran and Purple Heart recipient whose mother is Thai Chinese.
Carlson says he will address the controversy on tonight’s show.
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