Oh man, this is classic.  Many people have watched Gretchen Carlson on Fox & Friends and wondered how can she be so dumb.  Alex Koppelman at Salon:

Like many of her colleagues on Fox, Carlson often plays dumb. In her case, that means looking up words like “ignoramus” and “czar,” or at least pretending to in order to score some points against liberals — and look anti-intellectual in the process.

Turns out, Gretchen was her high school valedictorian, graduated with honors from Stanford, studied at Oxford and is a talented classically-trained violinist.  Jon Stewart called her out on the absurdity of her ‘troubled mom trying to figure out this confusing modern world’ act:

Aaron Barnhart at the Kansas City Star was unkind in his assessment of the larger ruse of which Gretchen is only a small part:

The rule they always tell you in show business is be yourself, right? But not in conservative populist talk radio and TV. Look, I have no problem with conservatives being themselves. Bill O’Reilly and Dr. Laura and El Rushbo and (of course) Saint Paul Harvey all became huge in radio because radio values authenticity, and their essence bled through every second that they were on the air.

But it seems for every Billo these days there are three people like Carlson, Glenn Beck and Steve Doocy — people who probably have some Republican in them but are simply (and obviously) overplaying to the right wing because they know it sells.

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