Indie-rock artist Ariel Pink, who came under fire and was dropped by his label after controversy arose over his support for Donald J. Trump, went on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson
Tonight” Thursday night to answer the host’s questions about being
“stripped of his livelihood,” telling Carlson he is “destitute” as a
result of cancel culture.
In response to Carlson’s statement that
Pink is “a recording artist who can’t record,” Pink said, “I can’t tour
either at this point. So it pretty much leaves me destitute and on the
street. I’m sort of overwhelmed right now and I don’t know exactly what
to do.”
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“You’re
taking a huge risk coming on this show,” Carlson said, an implicit
acknowledgement that receiving the support of the conservative host may
not improve his battered status in his musical community. “Why are you
doing it?”
“I
don’t have any other recourse,” the singer-songwriter replied. “What am
I gonna do? Am I gonna be able to get my statement out in magazines?
Right now the narrative is being pushed, and there’s not very many
people that are gonna let a counter-narrative enter into the fold. I
mean there’s no nuance… I don’t know, man. I don’t know what I’m gonna
do,” he said, appearing on the verge of becoming emotional. “I had no
choice. There’s nothing else for me to do. I can’t even afford my lawyer
right now.”
Pink does still have legal representation, according to a story that appeared earlier Wednesday in Pitchfork,
which quoted an attorney for Pink, Thomas Mortimer. The Pitchfork piece
was about a L.A. County Superior Court ruling against Pink earlier in
the month. involving claims he and an ex-girlfriend — musician and video
director Charlotte Ercoli Coe — have made against one another accusing
the other of harassment. Pink’s bid to get a restraining order against
his ex was denied by the court, which concluded her claims against him
were “constitutionally-protected activities.” citing California’s
“anti-SLAPP” statute, which is designed to protect against intimidation
through frivolous lawsuits. The court also ordered Pink to pay Coe’s
legal fees, according to Pitchfork.
Carlson did not bring up
Pink’s legal slap-down in the seven-minute interview, nor did he bring
up any of the other controversies that have swirled around Pink over the
years, maintaining focus on the rocker as a typical musician whose
career was destroyed solely as the result of attending the Trump rally
on Washington, D,C. Jan. 6.
“When reasonable people like you are destroyed, all of us should take notice,” Carlson said in wrapping up the interview.
The Mexican Summer
label did cite “recent events” as a reason for announcing it was
dropping Pink from the roster Jan. 9 after a three-year run, although it
had been under pressure to do so from some of Pink’s many antagonists
in the music community long before the Trump controversy upped the ante,
for past comments widely viewed as homophobic and other issues of
personal behavior.
“When did you find out that your career had been destroyed?” Carlson asked at the beginning of the sit-down conversation.
“Two
days later,” he replied. In the immediate aftermath of Pink receiving
heat for attending the rally — but not the Capitol siege that followed —
Pink said that “my label had written to inform me that they were
getting a lot of heat and a lot of backlash for supporting me, and they
reassured me that they were not gonna drop me.”
“They always reassure you first, don’t they?” interjected Carlson with a bitter laugh.
There
were no such smiles from Pink. “I didn’t make any apologies,” he said.
“I felt like I hadn’t done anything. But these articles obviously placed
me at the siege, which I was not at. And of course I don’t advocate for
violence at all… I was there for a peaceful rally. That’s all it was to
me. but there was no fact checking or anything like that (as) 130
articles went out in the course of 24 hours. And the backlash was just…
they succumbed to cancel culture. Twenty-four hours later they wrote
back; they texted me telling me that they were going to go public and
drop me at that point.”
“So for going to a political rally,” said
Carlson, “not participating in violence, not seeing any violence, not
even being aware there was any violence — you went to bed in your hotel
(while the riot ensued) — for that, your career disappeared in one day.
Your livelihood gone.”
“Yeah. No apologies, no support,” Pink
said. “I mean, my family has been getting death threats. They don’t even
know that I’m here. I had to sneak away because they were so terrified
of me coming on TV. Because they’ve been getting (threats) all week… me
too. I mean, the hate is just overwhelming. There’s new articles being
written. People are so mean.”
Carlson: “You’ve lived in this country all your life. Do you recognize it?”
Pink:
“Not at all. I mean, I’m terrified. I mean, this is what I voted
against. I didn’t vote so much for Trump as against cancel culture and
this environment that’s been blazing for about four years and is about
to ramp up and get even worse.”
When Carlson asked Pink what he
thought “the purpose” of his being canceled was, Pink responded, “I
think it’s desperation and feat that’s driving this whole thing. I think
there’s been a very big effort to unseat the president, or at least not
let him have four more years — which I think is fair. He lost, and I
think he lost fairly. I’m not disputing anything. Biden is perfectly
fine with me as president. But I think that they’re still scared of
something like that. It seems like they’re sore winners at this point.
And people seem to want to kick me down as well, much like they have
Trump. Kick us down when we’re down.”
The appearance of a one-time
favorite of the indie scene on the top-rated right-leaning show on
television was cause for cognitive dissonance for many.
“I
definitely had Tucker Carlson pretending to know who Ariel Pink is on my
2021 bingo card,” tweeted Phoebe Bridgers. Wrote A.C. Newman of the
group New Pornographers, “Ariel Pink is a guest on Tucker Carlson’s
show. Sure, why not… Am I the only person that’s liked Ariel Pink’s
music over the last decade, thinking it’s the great work of a disturbed
mind? This truly feels ‘on brand’.” Other tweets included remarks like
“Ariel Pink on Tucker Carlson used to just be a Cards Against Humanity
winning combo; now it’s real,” and “We’re only TWO WEEKS into 2021 and
Tucker Carlson is conducting a sit-down interview with Ariel Pink… Safe
to say this year will be one massive fever dream.” Also: “The fact that
MAGA people have to pretend to like Ariel Pink now is hilarious.”
Pink’s
statements to Carlson about the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election, and
his being “fine” with Biden as president, are at odds with contrary
statements he made on the Wrong Opinion podcast in late December, which
became more widely disseminated as the controversy over his rally
attendance grew.
On the podcast, Pink characterized Jan. 20 as
“the day of the guillotine” and expressed concern for the state of the
country if Trump was not certified as president for a second term,
against all odds. “I don’t see how things can go on,” he said then. “I
think that Trump being in office right now is the only reason we’re up
and running… We’ll never see another one like him (Trump).” He said the
Democratic side “did cheat. They’ve been on the path toward acquiring
these Dominion systems… in some sort of collaboration with China.”
He
also disparaged the intelligence of all Democrats, telling the podcast
host that anybody who can “still be a Democrat at this point… to me it’s
like all of a sudden all their intelligence just got shown to be a
complete farce. All the smarts in the world that they had, all their
artistic fucking genius… was just window dressing… Literally everything
the Democrats stand for, every single platform, is bullshit. So Trump
for me is an indictment on anything bullshit,” He concluded, with some
levity: “I’m so gay for Trump, I would let him fuck me in the butt.”
Those
comments in and of themselves — along with other remarks Pink made
about doubting climate science and COVID vaccines — may not have been
cause for dismissal from a label, but Pink had already been under fire
for years for earlier remarks in which he compared gay marriage to
allowing pedophilia and necrophilia. As far back as 2014, Pitchfork had
run an unsigned staff editorial urging fans and musicians to stop
indulging Pink after “trollish” behavior.
Pitchfork’s Wednesday account of the latest developments
in Pink’s legal proceedings retells the story of how Coe alleged that
he “physically and mentally abused [her] during [their] relationship,
including the 2017 incident at the San Francisco concert,” where she
said he “physically attacked” her on stage. Coe initially called the
encounter “having fun” but later claimed she was coerced to say so by
Pink, and that it actually constituted “battery”; Pink later apologized
for the incident. Coe’s statement to the court that ultimately ruled in
her favor cited a “a tumultuous relationship, characterized by a power
imbalance” because of their disparity in both fame and age (she was 19
and he was 38 at the time).
Coe acknowledged complaining about
Pink to the Mexican Summer label in mid-2020 after learning the label
“was adopting a zero tolerance policy toward abuse and harassment.” As
part of his attempt to get a restraining order against Coe, Pink
provided the court a copy of an email she wrote to his label in July
2020 saying that “he is 10000% a predator.”
In his petition for a
restraining order, Pink told the court that Coe had “directly
threatened… (and) attempted to blackmail him with false allegations of
sexual misconduct to his record label and financial supporters, to the
media, including Pitchfork and Variety, and to the general public.” (Variety staffers do not have any recollection of being contacted by Coe or her representatives.)
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