From today's Washington Post online discussion:

Tucker Carlson: “Wise Latina” is such a trendy/phony/stupid formulation, too. What does it mean exactly?

[...]

“What does [wise latina] mean exactly?”: It means she thinks she is wise, due in part to growing up a poor female minority. Why is that so hard to understand?

Tucker Carlson: Why does that make a person wiser than having grown up a middle-class Italian? Or a working class Greek? Or a rich Dane? The whole idea is so stupid it shocks me that people say things like that in public. I'd love to hear a real explanation of the theory.

Tucker Carlson knows perfectly well that Sotomayor was saying that, in discrimination cases, a minority who has experienced discrimination may have greater wisdom on the topic than a white male who has not. And he knows perfectly well that, whether you agree with Sotomayor or not, there is nothing particularly controversial about her contention. So rather than argue with it directly -- rather than arguing that he, a wealthy white man, understands discrimination every bit as well as a minority woman -- he pretends she was speaking more broadly than she was, and pretends that he really wants an explanation. He doesn't. He knows what she meant. He's just afraid to confront it directly.

Carlson's love affair with straw men and his commitment to disingenuous arguments is a shame, really. In many ways, he's more willing than most media figures to criticize his own “team.” But it's impossible to take him seriously when he regularly behaves this way.