Man Boobs and Raw Eggs: The Most Absurd Moments From Tucker Carlson’s Ball-Tanning Special
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The JFK assassination, alligator penis, and, of course, infrared ball tanning.
These are just some of the bizarre features of Tucker Carlson’s Fox Nation special The End of Men, which has been released to the public nearly six months after its alarmist, homoerotic trailer gained virality for its dubiously sourced claims about testosterone and an abundance of semi-naked men.
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Carlson’s long-standing obsession with masculinity — and tangentially, testosterone levels — is rooted not so much in a concern for the physical well-being of his viewers, but a right-wing worldview that centers physical ability as a cornerstone to the maintenance of a society on the verge of collapse.
Societal collapse weighs heavily on Carlson’s mind these days, and it’s a rare night on his primetime Fox News show if he doesn’t lob blame for the collapse of civilization (Western civilization, in particular) at one of his preferred targets, among them immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and George Soros. The End of Men seeks to connect the right wing interpretation of that collapse with the supposed social and hormonal emasculation of America’s male population.
The special exploits legitimate concerns over access to quality nutrition, environmental pollution, regular exercise, and appropriate time away from work to care for family and individual needs, while offering up physical dominance as a solution to those widespread systemic issues. Carlson provides plenty of cherry-picked, decontextualized data to back up his argument that society’s ills can be pinned on men just not being man enough to keep everyone else in check. If that sounds vaguely authoritarian, it’s because it is.
No amount of raw eggs, cold showers, and bullets through jugs of canola oil will remove microplastics from the environment, regulate PFAS use in commercial products, or fund studies on endocrine disruption, but that isn’t Carlson’s objective in the first place. The core argument — as detailed in the special’s closing montage — is that conservative men must work to reassert their dominance in the face of disorder, through physical might if needed, a message that is delivered to viewers through collage of conspiracy and voyeuristic body footage that extremely unsettling, yet at times inadvertently hilarious. Here are just some of its most notable moments.
Guys being dudes doing calisthenics on Alex Jones’ bocce court
Where did Tucker Carlson go to film a bunch of close ups of semi-naked men lifting the largest and heaviest things they could find? To a conveniently dubbed “ranch outside of Austin” that appears to belong to Sandy Hook truther Alex Jones. The revelation came from Jones himself in April, when the InfoWars founder bragged that Carlson’s team had filmed on his property and even used his guns.
Carlson has been a longtime defender of Jones, who has spent this year embroiled in a series of defamation suits brought forth by family members of victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. Jones called the shooting a “hoax” and accused both the victims and family members of being crisis actors.
Tan your balls? Freeze your balls? Idk, keep it in your pants maybe?
Whomst among us could forget the image of a man sticking his junk into what could pass as a knock off Tesla charging port. He’s back and he has a name now, or at least a pseudonym: online “beauty appreciator” and “raw egg slonker” Benjamin Braddock (no doubt a reference to the 1967 film The Graduate)
Braddock is engaging in what is known as red light therapy, which has been shown to have marginal, inconclusive benefits for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, but has not been tested on testicles and sperm production. We must, once again, urge the casual viewer to refrain from running outside to tan their testes — or freeze them, for that matter. The evidence of its benefits is scant and urologists caution that the more common, cost-efficient forms of red light exposure, such as direct exposure to the sun, could cause long-term damage to sensitive tissues.
The antidote to “soy globalism” is chugging a lot of raw eggs
The End of Men provides insight into the kind of online spaces and characters from which Carlson and his team are sourcing their grievance fodder. One account stands out among the rest: “Raw Egg Nationalist” who describes the “enemy” as “soy globalism” which seeks to control communities by sickening them through food.
The Raw Egg Nationalist recently released a cookbook (begging the question: how many ways can one eat a raw egg?) with the publisher Antelope Hill. According to reporting by the SPLC’s Hatewatch, Antelope Hill is a hub for extremist material and regularly produces content with the pro-Hitler white nationalist group the National Justice Party.
Man boobs are a sign of societal collapse
I don’t know what to tell you.
The Kennedy assassination ended our last best hope to keep the country lean
President John F. Kennedy is featured heavily throughout the documentary. Ron Jones, a “health fitness specialist,” lauds Kennedy’s interest in implementing a nationwide version of a mid-20th century fitness program established by the La Sierra High School in California. The special plays footage of Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas over a lamentation of the declining strength of the nation and lack of in-school fitness programs, with no mention of the decades-long funding crisis in public schools.
An appearance from Robert “Vaccines Cause Autism” F. Kennedy Jr.
Tucker’s unholy alliance with well-known vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once again reared its head in The End of Men during a segment on how “pharmaceuticals and the government are poisoning you.”
RFK Jr. gained notoriety as a prominent advocate of debunked conspiracies alleging that vaccines were responsible for increasing rates of autism in children. During the pandemic, RFK Jr. found an ally in Carlson, who notably alleged that Covid vaccines were responsible for thousands of deaths and called it “the single deadliest mass vaccination event in modern history.”
Claiming baby formula might be disrupting the gender development of your kids
“The world and the media have actually demonized doing things naturally,” says Mel Brown, shortly before being filmed pouring a can of baby formula into her garbage disposal. The influencer, who according to Carlson is known online as “Tiger Lily,” claims that breastfeeding has been demonized by a society that opposes natural maternity. Setting aside the optics of dumping baby formula down the drain during a national shortage, the segment was backed by a more insidious claim that formula contains “large amounts of corn syrup and other ingredients” that may “permanently affect” the gender development of infants.
This, unsurprisingly, is misleading. A handful of studies have found that babies fed primarily a diet of soy-based formula experience subtle changes in reproductive tissues that require more long-term analysis. These effects have not been identified in standard baby formula, and regardless, it’s more than a little absurd to insinuate it would contribute to the end of Western civilization.
“Bro science” (It’s not actual science)
What is bro science? Unclear. It can be anything from working out and eating a balanced diet to guzzling raw eggs, tanning your junk, and eliminating plastics from your home. According to Peloton user and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, it’s the prescription to the battle against aging and T-level declines — not necessarily because the research is there, but because it feels good to do it.
In Carlson’s mind, we are clearly in “hard times,” and to get an idea for what he thinks is needed to remedy the situation one need look no further than his nightly diatribes on primetime cable. The man who regularly espouses white nationalism, calls immigration a form of eugenics, encourages retaliation against LGBTQ+ advocates, and demands people of color fall in line and cease discussing the impact of white supremacy, is now on a campaign to restore “order,” and he’s looking for a bunch of chiseled men with glistening, rock-hard pecs to help him get it done. Honestly, testicle tanning is the least alarming of his proposals.
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