Is Fox & Friends host Gretchen Carlson "dumbing down" her on-air personality to appeal to Fox News viewers? Daily Show host Jon Stewart thinks so, and he points out that Carlson — who graduated with honors from Stanford and is a classically trained violinist — routinely makes a show of looking up words like "czar" and "ignoramus." (See video below.) Is her "troubled mom" schtick real, or is she just trying to score points against liberals?
Dumb? Gretchen Carlson's an evil genius: Sure, you could see Carlson's "dumb blonde' schtick" as another example of the "Eastern elites" who run Fox News "cynically playing up populism," says Irin Carmon in Jezebel. But it's better than that. She's cynically and "disingenuously playing into gendered soccer-mom, gee-whiz cliches" — the result is "evil brilliance."
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