It’s possible that now is the end of the line for Tomi Lahren. At the very least it appears that her attempted foray into the mainstream and away from the far-right bubble isn’t going to work out.
Legendary broadcaster Brent Musburger once said, in the 30 for 30 documentary “Pony Exce$$”, “once the local media turns its guns on you, you’re finished.”
With all politics being local, once your political brethren within the same niche turn on you- you’re through. With her fellow ultra-conservatives turning her back on her, Tomi Lahren may indeed be at 14:59 of her 15:00 of fame.
At a minimum, it appears that the millennial firebrand has seen her popularity plateau, and perhaps likely to dwindle in the future.
Salon.com has published a piece that essentially commences dancing on the grave of her career (not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
Why are we listening to Tomi Lahren anyway? That’s what I want to know. All she was doing, up to this point, was reinforcing extreme right-wing beliefs. For a woman who spends her time making herself seem like a hard-charging conservative willing to carry her armor into battle, she doesn’t frequently venture outside of her safe spaces: The Blaze. Twitter. The occasional Fox News hit.
As Matthew Sheffield points out, “Many on the right are now openly mocking and ridiculing conservative media for anointing grossly unqualified people as their thought leaders, largely on the basis of their being something other than older white Christian men, the demographic mostly likely to vote Republican.”
Of course, the far right media echo chamber has long supported and boosted plenty of people just as grossly unqualified as Tomi Lahren.
Look at Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, the list goes on and on. Yes, she’s unqualified, and yes all she’s known for his ANGRY ALL CAPS style hot-taking in web videos, but I have to disagree with Salon author Jeremy Binckes about Lahren and safe spaces.
She did appear on both Real Time with Bill Maher and The Daily Show, two programs on the opposite spectrum from her white nationalist and alt-right niche. The pro-choice comments that triggered her undoing came while guesting on The View, which is more centrist. While Binckes rightfully points out most of her failings, refusing to venture outside her ideological comfort zone is not one of them.
If anything, she might be over because she couldn’t hack it in anyplace but the bubble. Lahren shied away/shies away from the alt-right and white nationalist labels, but those are the only cross sections where she has any appeal. If she loses the Pepe the Frog crowd, she’ll have no fans anywhere.
It’s still possible that she could fail upwards from her firing at The Blaze. Fox News Channel has lost so much of their star power lately, and they desperately need a new up-and-coming pundit to vill the void. The opportunity is right there for her to step in and step up, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
Down the line, Lahren could have another and certainly much larger problem on her hands. How much of her act is “doing a bit?”
It goes without saying that no sane person could be as genuinely homicidally angry as she comes off in her anti-Colin Kaeperenick videos. That level of rage is clearly one of a “performance artist.”
What about her baseline of anger and everyday white supremacy though? Is she genuinely that bigoted racist? Or is much, if not most, of it “doing an act?” There’s “hot-taking” and then there’s just having no core principles and/or genuine beliefs, and where does Tomi Lahren the actual live human being end and Tomi Lahren the “Final Thoughts” cartoonish caricature begin? Only she herself and those extremely close to her professionally and personally can say for sure.
She most definitely comes off as someone who’s trolling, and we just learned it’s what Alex Jones was all about. As Jones learned, once that cat is out of the bag, it’s curtains for your career.
It’s not yet time to celebrate the end of Tomi Lahren relevancy, but that moment is drawing closer. There’s apparently multiple ways that we could get there and when we do, celebration will be in order. Her repugnant world-view (if it’s actually hers to begin with) and deplorable stances on issues (if she genuinely has any) we can all do without.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times and NBC Chicago.com, contributes to Chicago Tribune.com, Bold, WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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