Joanna Weiss is a writer based in Boston and a former television critic for the Boston Globe.

Every TV morning show strives for a sense of realism—like you’re eavesdropping on a group of actual friends—and most of them fail. Despite all the smiles, we now know there was no real affection between Ann Curry and her tormenters on “Today.” Similarly, it wasn’t shocking to learn that tension lurked beneath the effusive happy talk of “Live with Kelly and Michael.”

Fox & Friends, however, was always a little bit different. Something felt weirdly true about the Fox News morning show with Gretchen Carlson as co-host, because the tension often wasn’t hidden. Instead, it was part of the mood of the show—a rambling, awkward conversation that dissected and distorted the politics of the day, including the politics of gender. It was as if you were watching a living version of your Facebook feed: friendly banter that, every once in awhile, threatened to cross the line into open animus.


And Carlson’s role for seven years, as the blonde seated between two vaguely-retrograde men, was part of the show’s DNA. Co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade complimented her looks and dished out jokes about her outfits. A string of male guests sometimes joined in the fun. Carlson pushed back often, but generally with a smile. (Her relationship with Kilmeade seemed the warmer one, a girl rolling her eyes at her dumb-jock brother.)

Now, Carlson’s lawsuit against Fox News chief Roger Ailes alleging sexual harassment casts a shadow over that mostly-benign idea—and makes you wonder whether gender battles, on the set, could ever have been benign. Carlson claims she faced repeated, blatant sexual advances from Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, plus a pattern of simmering harassment from Doocy, whom she accuses of “mocking her during commercial breaks, shunning her off air, refusing to engage with her on air … and generally attempting to put her in her place.” Fox News denies it all. But if Carlson is right, the “reality” on Fox & Friends was worse than artificial. It was an artful, insidious smokescreen.

If Gretchen Carlson is right, the “reality” on “Fox and Friends” was worse than artificial. It was an artful, insidious smokescreen.

Dissension in the ranks has always been a secret recipe of Fox News, a key to the network’s watchability: Beneath the “Fair and Balanced” sheen and the conservative point of view, the network has been surprisingly tolerant of infighting on the air. You don’t generally hear the anchors on MSNBC calling each other out. Yet on Fox, this happens with some regularity.

Shepard Smith is often the vessel, decrying the meanest political rhetoric: He issued a fierce extended rant in April 2015 against the gabbers on “The Five,” as they asked race-baiting questions about the Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore.

Fox & Friends, too, has aired complaints. It happened most memorably in 2008, in a week when presidential candidate Barack Obama had been forced to answer for incendiary statements by his controversial preacher, Jeremiah Wright. The hosts spent two hours dissecting an off-the-cuff Obama statement—and Chris Wallace, invited on to plug his Sunday talk show, used the bulk of his seven minutes to lambaste his colleagues. “Frankly, I think you’re somewhat distorting what Obama had to say,” Wallace said. “I feel like two hours of Obama-bashing may be enough.” The hosts, Carlson included, bristled visibly and tried to defend themselves. Wallace wouldn’t let go.

These episodes are not mistakes or accidents; Ailes has always understood, perhaps better than most, that conflict is entertainment. But Carlson’s role, as a speaker of truth in this arena, was clearly more complex. She may have chided her hosts, from time to time, for dwelling on the shortness of her skirts. But her smile was her armor, and also her uniform. She wore her “Miss America” past proudly and unapologetically. And she embraced her assignment—to be if not quite a dumb blonde, then an innocent, peering at the world with wide-eyed wonder.

She did yeoman’s work, but the artifice showed. Jon Stewart once brilliantly lambasted her for dumbing herself down, gazing into the camera with a glassy-eyed stare that belied her Stanford and Oxford education, purporting not to know the meaning of such terms as “double-dip recession,” “czar,” and “ignoramus.” “How do you get a job on television if you appear to be one of those people who need to pin their address to their coat so a stranger can help them find their way home?” Stewart asked. Unless, he suggested, the doe-eyed routine was all an act.

It now appears that brushing off the gender jokes, with generous good nature, might have been artifice.

It now appears that brushing off the gender jokes, with generous good nature, might have been artifice, too. The vigorous accusations in the lawsuit certainly make it seem that way—particularly the charge that, when she complained about Doocy’s behavior, Ailes called her a “man hater” who needed to learn “to get along with the boys.”

It all makes one look back with new perspective at one on-air moment when Carlson’s shell seemed to crack. It was 2012, and Kilmeade had made a low-grade sexist crack about the introduction of women into a military band: “Women are everywhere. We’re letting them play golf and tennis now, it’s out of control.”

Carlson, ever smiling, rose from the couch and walked off the set. “You know what?” she said. “You know what? You read the headlines, since men are so great.” The camera followed her for a few feet, capturing Kilmeade smiling, the crew laughing, and Carlson continuing to wear a painted grin.

It was an act of protest so gentle, so mild, so exception-that-proves-the-rule that a few years later, it turned up in Carlson’s Fox & Friends farewell reel. Watching it again is painful: You wonder what she truly wanted to say. And you wonder: How much do female anchors—on Fox News or anywhere else—feel they have to smile and play the game? How conflicted was Kelly Ripa when she returned from her ABC walk-out, last April, and made self-deprecating jokes about her bid for respect on the set? How free was Megyn Kelly to push back against her bosses over making nice to Donald Trump?

Dissension is allowed on TV news, but perhaps only so much. However authentic it might appear, as it did on Fox & Friends, we should know by now that all TV is not reality.