Little time elapsed between the abrupt exit of fake populist Tucker Carlson from his perch at Fox News and the publication of paeans to his supposedly heterodox coverage, especially on US foreign policy.

It’s true Carlson was one of the few voices in corporate media who allowed occasional on-air criticism of the military-industrial complex, injected any dissenting opinions about Washington’s strategy regarding the Ukraine war, and raised concerns about nuclear war (even as his coverage has also at times veered explicitly into “root[ing] for Russia,” as the host once put it). Astoundingly, Carlson may be the singular person responsible for stopping Donald Trump from starting an idiotic war with Iran four years ago.

The fact that it fell to Carlson of all people — a former CIA aspirant, Iraq War supporter, and someone who once called the brutalized people of that country “semiliterate primitive monkeys” who “can’t govern themselves” — to make these commonsense points on TV speaks more to the stunted conformity of corporate news coverage than Carlson’s political virtue.