Anyone who spends enough time online comes to learn that there are two immutable laws of the internet:
1) Rule 34 (if you don’t know what this is, consider yourself lucky. Don’t google it. Trust me.)
2) Never, ever, ever, tempt the wrath of the stans.
To that second point, there are few stan forces that can compete with the mighty BTS Army, the legion of devoted K-pop obsessives whose devotion to the seven-piece boy band rivals — and perhaps even surpasses — the hysterics of last century’s Beatlemania. Which is all to say: Only an enormous, irredeemable world-class moron would even consider poking the BTS bear, lest they reap that particular harvest, and suffer the consequences.
Enter: Tucker Carlson, who on Tuesday evening courageously took it upon himself to test the BTS Army’s mettle, mocking their brief visit to the Biden White House earlier that day as part of a longer segment full of his usual race-baiting and non-sequitur ad hominem attacks.
“Things have gotten very bad for Joe Biden, both public-facing and internally,” Carlson declared. “What are they doing about it? Well, they broke glass in case of emergency and invited a Korean pop group to speak at the White House today.”
He then played a brief clip of BTS member RM speaking during the White House press briefing, where the band addressed anti-Asian hate, and called for more AAPI inclusion.
This, to Carlson, was simply a bridge too far for a White House he claimed is rife with racism and ineptitude.
“Yeah, so we got a Korean pop group to discuss anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States,” he snarked. “Okay. Good job, guys.”
Now, to give you a sense of just how dumb an idea it is to mock BTS, consider that their brief, non-musical appearance alongside Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre launched viewership numbers into the quarter million range — for a White House press briefing!
Suffice it to say, Carlson’s glib dismissal of BTS earned him some immediate rancor from the band’s fanbase, who have spent the past day flooding Tucker’s TL with messages of support for the group and their message of AAPI inclusion. And while it’s unlikely-to-the-point-of-virtually-guaranteed that Tucker does not actually check his Twitter mentions, or really care about what people are saying about him online, incurring the wrath of a millions-strong fan base that’s already flexed its online social justice muscles with real-world impact seems like the sort of thing where if anyone has a shot at making his life even marginally more miserable, it’s the BTS Army.
If Carlson were smart, he’d spend some serious airtime on his next broadcast scrambling to apologize before it’s too late. I wouldn’t bet on it though.
