Tucker Carlson: Where Is Her LSAT Score??
"Meritless to the point of demagoguery"
I understand that Senate confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court nominee should be rigorous and in-depth. After all, we’re talking about a lifetime sinecure with virtually no mechanism for removal. So, yes, the questioning of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson should be tough and hard-hitting. And she should have to answer difficult questions about her judicial philosophy.
That said, she should be treated no differently than a White male nominee, yet the fact that she’s Black AND female has been enough to give some Conservatives a raging case of apoplexy. Tucker Carlson’s demand that Judge Jackson disclose her LSAT score is apropos of nothing other than a desire to find something that Conservatives can use to discredit her.
It’s no secret that (White) women have to be twice as good as men to get half the credit. So what does that mean for a Black woman? Even one who, like Judge Jackson, is eminently qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. That Carlson and other Conservatives are in a dither about a Black woman being nominated to the Supreme Court says more about them than it ever could about Judge Jackson, who could run circles intellectually around Tucker Carlson.
His contention that Conservatives aren’t allowed to care about who sits on the Supreme Court is patently absurd. Of course, they’re allowed to care, just as any American is. They shouldn’t be allowed to create obstacles that they wouldn’t for a Conservative White male candidate, whom they’d undoubtedly wave through without question.
Conservatives like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Lindsey Graham have turned the confirmation hearings into a three-ring political circus. They’re more concerned about building their brand and generating sound bites they might use in their re-election campaigns than in eliciting the truth from Judge Jackson. Their attempts to paint her as soft on child pornography have twisted the facts and bent the truth into something unrecognizable. Fact-checkers have easily debunked their arguments, which has hardly stopped Cruz, Hawley, and Graham from trying to smear Judge Jackson. Even the Conservative National Review debunked this issue, calling it “meritless to the point of demagoguery.”
To her credit, Judge Jackson has maintained her composure even as Cruz, Hawley, and Graham have preened and performed for the cameras. They have little interest in discerning the truth, only in trying to embarrass and fluster her. That they’ve not succeeded reflects well on her maturity and composure. Likewise, it reflects poorly on the immaturity and lack of decency that characterize her inquisitors.
As for Judge Jackson’s LSAT score, I’m not certain what Tucker Carlson feels they’d prove, just as if FOX had demanded his SAT score as a condition of hiring him. He’s talking about something that may have been relevant 20-30 years ago but means absolutely nothing now.
Instead of finding ways to put more barriers in front of Judge Jackson, perhaps Carlson would do well to examine why it is that he feels qualified to comment on her bona fides. Carlson isn’t smart enough to carry water for Judge Jackson, much less pass judgment on her qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court.
Of course, wealthy Conservative White men will always feel the world is theirs and that the intrusion of those not like them is a travesty. When you’ve enjoyed a privileged existence, equality feels like oppression. I suspect Carlson feels as if his world of White privilege is crumbling around him, which probably leaves him with a sense that his comfort zone and prerogatives are under attack.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was nominated by a President who wanted to help create a Supreme Court that looks more like America. One Black woman won’t accomplish that, but it’s a step in the right direction. In a court that, until the Reagan Administration, was the domain of White men, having three women on the court is, while not proportional to the population, an improvement.
Tucker Carlson is mourning the days when Conservative White men ruled the world and could do what they wanted when they wanted and in whatever manner they chose. Now he’s learning that being a member of the Lucky Sperm Club no longer connotes automatic entry to a life of wealth, privilege, and political power. Those things are still within reach, but there’s competition out there, which, I suspect, is what has Carlson’s jock in a wad.
Perhaps his problem is that he knows he’d come up short in any competition, so he’s going to demand wealth and power the old fashion way. Of course, for Tucker Carlson, that’s easy- he was born into wealth and with a silver foot in his mouth (apologies to the late Ann Richards).
He’s yet to figure out how to remove that silver foot from his mouth.
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