Tucker Carlson started wearing a bow tie in 1984, when he was in tenth grade at St. George’s, a Rhode Island prep school with a dress code. He stopped wearing a bow tie on April 11, 2006, acknowledging the change in the final minutes of the show he hosted on MSNBC. “I like bow ties, and I certainly spent a lot of time defending them,” he said. “But, from now on, I’m going without.” The affectation had come to define him: Carlson was primarily known—and, in no small number of television households, reviled—as the self-assured young conservative who dressed like a spelling-bee champion. MSNBC advertised his program with posters that read, “The Man. The Legend. The Bow Tie.” He had been wearing a bow tie when, in 2004, Jon Stewart paid him a visit on CNN, to tell him that “Crossfire,” which Carlson was then co-hosting, was “hurting America,” and to call him a “dick.” And Carlson wore one again during a disastrous appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” in which he was eliminated after his first routine, a semi-stationary cha-cha.
