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 airport; if someone is out with their family, even if you recognize them from their particular field of pursuit, it’s polite to let them be. You wouldn’t want to be confronted with every stupid thing you’ve ever said online every time you leave the house, and I wouldn’t want to either.

But there is also a responsibility, when one is a public figure and has the power to unleash ideas into the public square and have them taken seriously by a not-inconsequential number of human beings, that you not be lying. Being wrong is one thing: Being wrong is common. (I’m wrong all the time. So are you.) It is quite another to be purposely deceitful so that you may personally profit. Generally speaking, throughout human history, those who constantly lie, without shame or reproach, tend to face some sort of comeuppance. Their dishonesty is exposed, people want to stop working with them, they become, if they still have any sort of platform at all, a fringe figure. People can spin the truth all they want: There’s a whole industry built around that very thing. But until recently, flat-out lying, all the time, wasn’t a long-term business plan. Eventually, someone would call you out, and the bill would come due.

This has changed in the Trump era, and no one has benefitted more tangibly from it than Carlson. Carlson’s long history in cable television is well-documented, and he has proven a dutiful, resilient survivor, always finding a new network, a new angle, to peddle his wares. He has been in television for so long, in fact, that the inherent phoniness of the medium — the way everyone, even people who host shows that no one ever watched, is different when the camera light is on than they are when it is off — has become an internalized modus operandi: The television cameras are pretend land, for show (something Carlson’s lawyers have explicitly stated), and cameras being turned off is the only thing that’s “real.” But, of course, that’s not how Carlson’s audience, or any of us, actually experience our television personalities. We believe them when they tell us who they are, because why would anyone use such a massive pulpit just to lie? Why have your name front and center on something that you do not believe? To change one’s persona and beliefs when the camera is turned off, to shed them like a jacket, isn’t having a professional boundary: It’s being a huge phony.

It is a living embodiment of the great Kurt Vonnegut quote: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Whether or not Carlson truly believes the terrible, harmful things he says on his television show is a point of discussion — though that he has clearly been vaccinated yet spreads misinformation about vaccines is a strong point of evidence for the prosecution— but it’s also beside the point. When you say something on television, you do not just get to store it in a closet and act as if it is off limits when you enter the real world. Carlson tried to get away from Bailey saying his daughter was there, which is a fair point, except it’s one that will fall on pretty deaf ears to anyone whose sister (or any loved one) died of Covid-19 because they didn’t get vaccinated because of what Carlson and people like him say. Carlson doesn’t want people like Bailey invading his real life, except that’s exactly what he’s doing every weeknight, whether people are watching him or not. Carlson wants the shield to only be for him. But it doesn’t work that way.

Look, I get it. I wouldn’t want someone who disagrees with this column to track me down in public when I’m with my family either. But then again: Uh, I’m not telling people not to get a life-saving vaccine to boost my ratings either. I would hope, if someone asked me about something I’d written with my son around, that — assuming the person is not physically threatening, which Bailey was not to Carlson — I’d be confident, even proud, to defend what I wrote in front of my son. I might not want to do it in a Montana outdoors store, but the point stands: If I write something here, when you are not standing in front of me, I need to be able to defend it even if you are. That is the contract. Those are the rules.

I think about this constantly. The very first piece I wrote for Medium was about trying to document this particularly tumultuous time in human history, and being vividly aware that everything we say and do, right now, will someday be looked back upon by our children and our grandchildren. What will they think of how we acted? Will they be proud of us? Or will they be ashamed? Carlson has made the very public bet that the financial benefit he and his family garners from spreading misinformation and telling lies will offset how poorly history will judge him for it. Maybe he’s right. I doubt it. I think his grandchildren will be haunted by what he has done during the pandemic well into their old age. But maybe he’s right. Even if he is, though, you still have to answer, today, for what you say and how it affects people’s lives. Tucker Carlson wants all the good of what he does and none of the bad. The world doesn’t, and never has, worked like that.

I am not saying Dan Bailey, not the Dan Bailey of Dan Bailey’s Outdoor Company, a different Dan Bailey, should scream in Tucker Carlson’s face every time Tucker Carlson goes in public. But I am also not saying that Tucker Carlson should be in the least bit surprised when this happens. Our actions have consequences. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Because people believe Tucker. After all: When the camera is off, they live in this world just like he does. And they can talk to him, just like he can talk to them. Through his show, Tucker has changed this world. He cannot now complain for having to live in it too.

Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of five books, including the novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.