Tucker Carlson Has Made This Bed

And now, he and his family must sleep in it. The rest of us have to.

This weekend, Fox News “personality” Tucker Carlson, on a family trip with his daughter, went to a fishing store called Dan Bailey’s Outdoor Company in Montana. There, a local fly fishing guide named Dan Bailey — amusingly, not the Dan Bailey of Dan Bailey’s Outdoor Company; he was somehow a different Dan Bailey entirely — saw Carlson and confronted him, telling the broadcaster:

“Dude, you are the worst human being known to mankind. I want you to know that. What you have done to this state, to the United States, to everything else in this world. I don’t care that your daughter’s here. What you have done to people’s families, what you have done to everybody else in this world.”

You can see much of the confrontation here.

This incident, as with just about anything with Carlson anymore, has led to headlines and outrage nationwide, with many celebrating Bailey and many others lambasting him, including Donald Trump Jr., reminding everyone once again that no person in the history of humanity has ever been more accurately named than “Donald Trump Jr.”

Putting aside Trump Jr.’s ever-droll “Pregnant Male” comment, the most common criticism of Bailey is that he “harassed” Tucker in public, specifically in front of his family. A Fox News spokesperson said, “Ambushing Tucker Carlson while he is in a store with his family is totally inexcusable — no public figure should be accosted regardless of their political persuasion or beliefs simply due to the intolerance of another point of view.”

Whatever one’s thoughts on Carlson, this argument is a persuasive one. In recent years in the age of social media, the line between public life and private life has become more blurry, but there is still a basic societal understanding that there is in fact a line. Yankees fans shouldn’t bother Red Sox players at dinner; you should leave celebrities alone when you’re sitting next to them at the…