If this were the 19th century, Fox News' reigning talking head Tucker Carlson would be an old-school phrenologist. For those who don't keep track of racist pseudoscience or other tropes of social Darwinism, phrenology was the discipline of measuring the contour of human heads to predict mental capacity and predisposition toward criminality. It was used to establish the intellectual hierarchy of the races.
For its adherents, it was a metric that always confirmed the inferiority of Blacks and the superiority of whites based on bumps on the scalp. Who could argue with a rigorous scientific method?
Because Tucker Carlson is a phrenologist at heart, he still sees the world in terms of skull sizes, even though he knows he can't run his fingers across Black scalps with the same impunity white supremacists of earlier centuries took for granted.
That's why we're grateful Carlson only demanded to see the LSAT scores of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden's nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, instead of assuming he had the right to examine the scalp under her braided hair on national TV. Even revanchist white supremacists like Tucker Carlson know better than to touch a Black woman's hair uninvited.
"So, is Ketaji Brown Jackson, a name that even Joe Biden has trouble pronouncing, one of the top legal minds in the entire country?" Carlson asked on his Wednesday night show while purposely mispronouncing her name to show his contempt.
"We certainly hope so. It's Biden's right; appointing her is one of his gravest constitutional duties. So it might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown-Jackson's LSAT score was.
"Wonder how she did on the LSATs, why won't he tell us that?" Carlson said ginning up a previous nonexistent controversy. "That would settle the question conclusively as to whether she is a once-in-a-generational legal talent, the next Learned Hand. It would seem like Americans in a democracy have a right to know that and much more before giving her a lifetime appointment, but we did not hear that."
It's almost a relief to encounter racism in such unadulterated form. Tucker Carlson long ago gave up hiding his racial bias, especially since it has worked so well to make him America's No. 1 cable news host. He's an unapologetic white supremacist who says white supremacist things every week, because it is good for ratings, period.
In his brief rant that assumed Biden is capable of nominating a moron to the Supreme Court in the name of "identity politics," Carlson was able to slather on sexism, historic micro-aggression and classism on an old-fashioned racism sandwich.
Even though Ms. Brown Jackson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and cum laude from Harvard Law, and was voted editor of the Harvard Law Review, Carlson's skepticism implies that Judge Brown Jackson skated into Harvard Law on the basis of affirmative action run amok. How many much smarter white people did she elbow aside in ascending to an academic place of honor where she didn't belong?
Judge Brown Jackson also worked for private firms in New York, Washington, D.C., Massachusetts and California, passing the bar exams in each state. Why isn't Carlson demanding to see her bar exam scores along with her LSATs?
For that matter, I'm sure the fair-minded Americans who watch Fox News religiously would love to also see the LSAT scores of former President Donald Trump's confirmed justices, if only to demonstrate their inherent superiority and worthiness to be on the bench.
In Tucker Carlson's world, there's no such thing as "legacy babies" at top American schools. No one can bribe their way into a good college. Whoever heard of such a thing? Admission to the best colleges and universities are the result of pure meritocracy in the paranoid white imagination, except when it comes to minorities who get in either on sports scholarships or taking the slot of far more deserving white students.
That's why questioning the intelligence of Black people, even those who have excelled academically and professionally, is never a tactic that goes out of style for old-school phrenologists like Tucker Carlson. He's just "asking the question." He's not assuming all Blacks are stupid.
No one ever lost a job by resorting to hoary racist stereotypes on Fox News. A few weeks ago when Biden first nominated Judge Brown Jackson, Carlson said she was nominated for sinister reasons.
"Do you want to live in that country?" Carlson asked looking like a man who knows his pact with the devil will be up soon. "Most people don't, of all colors. They think you should be elevated in America based on what you do, on the choices not on how you were born, not on your DNA, because that's Rwanda," he said.
"Now, maybe she's great," he said after eviscerating the nominee as presumptively unqualified, "that's not the point. The point is she was picked because of how she looks, so what does that tell you not about the nominee, but about Joe Biden?
"It tells you that he is absolutely happy to defile a system built by other people over hundreds of years. This is the best system in the history of the world, and he is happy to destroy it. Doesn't care at all," Carlson said the moment his soul permanently left his body.
There's a reason Carlson has become the embodiment of the angry, disgruntled trust fund baby in recent years. He knows that even if the fabled "meritocracy" he pays so much lip service to actually existed, he wouldn't be a member of it. He's the heir to a frozen food empire, so he's able to get away with being the worst this profession can offer. He won't starve no matter how bad he is for America or our democracy.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will sail through her Senate confirmation hearings and perhaps pick up a decent amount of Republican votes to become America's first Black female associate justice. Carlson isn't a serious enough person for her to ever worry about acknowledging.
Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson, ever the phrenologist, will continue running his hands through his own hair wondering why someone born with such a superior scalp now has to deal with both the heartbreak of psoriasis and two horns that can't seem to stop growing no matter how much he combs over them.
