Three weeks later, the verdict came in: false alarm. No hole in the spine. Elation doesn’t even begin to describe it! But then it happened again.
At my twenty-week ultrasound, the doctor, looking grave, showed Casey and me a picture. “A normal brain would look like this . . .” Uh-oh, I thought, taking Casey’s hand and squeezing. I thought I was going to lose it. The doctor explained that our baby had “spots” on the brain, and this was often seen with trisomy 7, which the amniocentesis tests for. We’d cleared the trisomy 7 through amniocentesis, and even though the doctor assured us the spots on the brain would go away, we had to live with the uncertainty until he was born. They really mess with your mind with those tests. I told my mother, “If I ever get pregnant again, I’m not going to have any tests, because they serve no purpose except to scare the hell out of me.”
Other than the tests, it was a normal pregnancy in all respects. But even when Christian was born, the doctors hovered around saying he didn’t look right and his “tone” was off. He had a brain scan when he was a day old and was seen by neurologists, who worried he might have epilepsy. At the very least, they warned me that he might be a challenge.
A final false alarm. As it turned out, Christian has been an amazing kid, not difficult at all, but very high-energy. He’s also smart as a whip, and he makes me laugh every day. He has a boundless optimism. My favorite image of Christian is flat on his butt at the ice rink for his first skating lesson, yelling to me at the top of his lungs from the center of the rink, “Mommy, look at how fantastic I am at skating!”
I am constantly in awe of what unique individuals my children are. While Christian is the kidder, Kaia has always been a lot more serious, even when she was little. One night when she was four, I told her that I had to go into work extra early in the middle of the night because there was breaking news. “What time?” she asked. I said, “Three-ten.” That morning, as I tiptoed down the stairs, I heard Kaia’s small voice. “Mommy, you’re late. It’s three-thirteen.” Do you think she takes after her mom a little bit?
Having children is the most amazing experience of life. I find myself just looking at them when they are reading or sleeping and thinking how incredibly lucky I am and blessed to have them. The cherub faces never get old.
The most wonderful thing about children is their great curiosity and complete honesty. I would love to capture those priceless moments in the years before they grow up and become guarded and stop sharing every little thing that’s on their minds, even when the questions elicit chuckles or embarrassment on the part of the adults.
Like Kaia at three when we would end our nightly prayers with “Amen,” looking confused and asking, “Mommy, why at the end of our prayers do you always say, ‘Old Men’?” Or at five on my parents’ anniversary asking Grandma Karen, “Are you going to have any more babies?”
Or Christian at eight, observing that he thought a woman at the pool had fake boobs. When I picked myself up off the floor and asked him what he meant, he explained, “Well, I knew that they weren’t real because, um, like yours, when you bend over, they like fall all the way down. And hers, when she bent over at the pool, Mom, they didn’t move.” Christian is always bursting with curiosity, asking questions we don’t necessarily want to answer—like the time he saw an ad during a baseball game and asked, “Mommy, what’s Viagra?”
By the time my maternity leave with Christian ended, I was experienced at being a working mom, but this time it was different. I wasn’t just returning to work. I had a whole new gig: I was moving to Fox News.
Although I loved working for CBS, it was pretty clear that the higher-ups weren’t interested in giving me a five-day-a-week opportunity on the morning show in the foreseeable future, and my dream was to host a national daily morning show. That was a distinct possibility at Fox, and just as important was the prospect of working for Roger Ailes. I thought Ailes was brilliant. He was the first person in the television world to put opinion shows in prime time, and it was working. He figured out that viewers were getting their news during the day from a variety of different formats—TV, newspapers, radio, and increasingly the Internet. So by the time people were home from work and settling in for the night, they already knew a lot of the news of the day. Now they wanted to be entertained and to hear analysis and opinion, even if they didn’t always agree with what was said. Ailes successfully developed a powerful nighttime lineup for viewers that set cable on its head—and is still dominating the airwaves today.
In person Roger was razor sharp and inscrutable, and we seemed to have a real connection. He saw something in me that he liked—what he called my “killer instinct.” He once noted that I would stop at nothing to do the job. He got me. Over the years I’ve come to value our time together. He encourages me to be myself, to relax, and to not try so hard to look smart. “People know you’re smart,” he says. He was also the first person to urge me to talk about being Miss America. CBS had taken the reference off my résumé, and I had come to see it—unfortunately—as not especially good for my credibility. Roger insisted people wanted to hear about Miss America from time to time, and that was certainly a pleasant shock. The subject didn’t come up that often, but I no longer felt that it was a part of my biography that had to be ignored or hidden. From the start I realized that working at Fox News was going to be different than anything I’d ever done.
Chapter 9
Woman in the Middle
I like to joke that when I joined Fox News I hit the “bimbo trifecta”: Former Miss America. Blonde. Fox News host. I say that with tongue in cheek, but I may have achieved a Google record for being called dumb or a bimbo. I can joke about it, because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the characterization has more to do with silly attitudes and stereotypes than with who I am or whether or not I’m smart. I still scratch my head trying to figure out how being blonde became synonymous in some people’s minds with being dumb, or why attractive women are assumed not to be smart, but I don’t waste my abundant brain cells trying to figure these things out. I’ve learned that sometimes when people don’t like what you have to say, and don’t want to debate you on ideas, it’s just easier to call you a dumb blonde from Fox News.
Long before I started working for Fox, I had to put up with the dumb blonde label, based solely on having been Miss America. Never mind that I’d graduated with honors at Stanford or studied at Oxford. The stereotype is as old as the pageant. Mostly I ignored it.
I tried to avoid the trap of doing things to “prove” I was smart, but when I was asked to be a contestant on Jeopardy! for the “Power Players” week shortly before I moved to Fox, I was happy to do it. It was a week of shows with news media and Washington, D.C., folks, with the money going to charity. Maybe a tiny part of me was thinking it would be a good opportunity to show that I could compete on the level of pure knowledge, but mostly I thought it would be fun. As you know by now, I love to compete.
I called the producers and asked what I could do to prepare. Their only advice was, “Watch the show.” But since I’ve always been big on preparation, I bought the home version, with thirty-four games and an answer book. During my lunch breaks at work, and on vacation in Arizona, I quizzed myself on the arcane details of sports, literature, science, American history, state capitals, land masses, authors, presidents, Shakespeare—the list goes on. I lay awake at night mentally scrolling through planets and state capitals. A friend kindly suggested that maybe I was going too far when I started listing state trees over dinner one night. (Minnesota? Red pine!)
Then I showed up at the studio and saw that I was up against two formidable—and experienced—contenders: MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Al Franken, who at that time was a comedian, author, and radio show host. (A few years later Franken would successfully run for the Senate in Minnesota.) Both had competed on Jeopardy! before—Franken twice. I was the newbie. But I made it through the practice round, and even won t
he practice Final Jeopardy.
The first thing I have to say about Jeopardy! is that it’s as much about finger work as it is about brainwork. Thank God for all that video game practice! The buzzer is the key to everything. It’s a nickel-sized white contraption, and your finger fits on top of it, allowing you to buzz in at the right second. It’s tricky. If you buzz in before Alex Trebek is finished reading the question, you get frozen out. Otherwise, you have a millisecond to beat your competitors to the buzzer. It’s all about the rhythm.
Al Franken won the game, and $50,000 went to the Congressional Hunger Center. I wasn’t embarrassed; it was all in good fun.
At one point someone suggested that I was deliberately “dumbing down” my material on Fox & Friends. Okay, so now I wasn’t really dumb, I was just pretending! Even Jon Stewart got into the act, chiding me by way of listing my impressive credentials. I actually got a kick out of that, because the subliminal message was that I was smart. But to this day, if I make the tiniest error, Twitter lights up with the dumb blonde narrative. I’m used to it.
It’s ironic that these so-called bimbo sightings happened so often during my seven years on Fox & Friends, because it takes considerable skill and smarts to be on live TV for three hours every day. It’s not just two males and a female hanging out on the “curvy couch.” For one thing, being on cable TV is a whole different experience than working for network TV. It’s far less scripted. You have to have a depth of knowledge to talk back and forth for three hours. The show’s definitely all about chemistry, and it’s not something you just walk into and know how to do the first day. You don’t. You can be the smartest person in the world and you could still be challenged by the format of the show.
But the “dumb” label was hard to shake. By the way, that’s true of all of my female colleagues at Fox News. I felt we were somewhat vindicated in 2013 by a blog post on the Web site PeppermintFarm titled “The Dumb Girls of Fox,” which hit the nail on the head. The introduction read in part, “The next time you hear someone criticizing Fox News for supposedly having a ‘bunch of dumb gals’ as eye candy . . . check out their qualifications . . . let them speak for themselves!” What followed was a rundown of the women of Fox News and their remarkable credentials, including multiple degrees and impressive achievements. The post ended with a challenge: “So liberals, progs, Alinskyites, when you want to throw rocks take a look at yourself in the mirror. Try to find that many highly intelligent women on your alphabet station. How many degrees do your women reporters have?”
The fact of the matter is, live TV means always being on your toes. Shortly after I joined Fox News, I was filling in on an afternoon show when there was breaking international news. Now, you have to understand that on Fox we cover much more international news than you’d typically see on the networks, and some of it was relatively obscure to the average person. So when I heard in my earpiece, “A fugitive wanted for questioning in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri was arrested in Brazil,” I can’t say I was knowledgeable about the story. When the producer then said in my ear, “Just go with this for three minutes,” it felt like being back on Bloopers and Practical Jokes. It goes to prove that it’s always good to stretch yourself, and that life is all about learning, experiencing new challenges, and always improving.
One day I had a dramatic experience along with my old friend and colleague from Cincinnati, Bill Hemmer. I was filling in at the anchor desk when we started covering one of those heartstopping car chases. When Bill came on the air, we tag-teamed it, ping-ponging comments across the studio. The video was on the car chase, with our voice-overs doing a blow-by-blow. We had to keep up a constant banter, and believe me, it wasn’t easy. It’s called “going wall to wall.” Suddenly, everything else is blown out. Behind the scenes they were scurrying to find guests we could talk to so we wouldn’t just be sitting there. I remember having a second to look up and over at Bill, who was sitting at another desk, raising my eyebrows like, “What are you going to say?” I didn’t have a moment to breathe, but later I thought how surreal it was that Bill and I were back together at Fox. A long way from Cincinnati.
• • •
I had been at Fox News for a year when I was tapped to replace E.D. Hill on Fox & Friends, Fox’s signature morning show. All I could think was that I had big shoes to fill. E.D. had been with the show since its inception in 1999, and she was loved by the viewers. Like me, she had a strong journalism background, and she did many important stories and was a great interviewer. It was a fast switch. E.D. left the show on a Friday and I was there on Monday. I had finally achieved my lifelong goal of doing a national morning show five days a week.
When I first started on Fox & Friends I only did the 7:00 to 9:00 hours, and it was somewhat manageable, but when I signed a new contract they told me, “We have good news and bad news. The good news is you’re doing a great job and we’d like you to now start at 6:00 a.m. and do three hours. The bad news is we’d like you to now start at 6:00 a.m. and do three hours.” At first this was a bit of a struggle for me. A lot of TV people would have jumped at the chance to have more “face time.” But I had two small children at home and was barely getting enough sleep as it was. We’d moved to Connecticut, so my commute went from rolling out of bed and being at the office in five minutes to a fifty-minute drive—when there wasn’t traffic. Getting up an hour earlier seemed like too much, so I developed a plan that allowed me to get up only a half hour earlier. I moved all of my clothes home so I could get dressed there instead of at the office, thus saving time. And I had my prep papers waiting for me in the hair room, so I didn’t have to go down to the newsroom first.
Strategy was everything when it came to my schedule. I had it down to split-second timing, setting three alarms to be up at exactly 3:50 a.m. (I never once overslept.) I showered, brushed my teeth, pulled my wet hair into a ponytail, threw on the clothes that I’d laid out the night before, grabbed my bag sitting at the front door, and was out of the house in nine minutes flat, where a car was waiting. I studied like crazy on the drive into the city, arriving at 5:00 for hair. While my hair was being done, I kept studying, going through massive piles of newspapers and articles, throwing what I didn’t need into the trash can beside me, scribbling notes in the margins like I did in class at Stanford. Into makeup at 5:30, where no studying could happen. She needed my eyes. Listened to music and got into a good frame of mind for the show. At 5:55, after the last eyelash and lip gloss—lots of it—was applied, raced out to the freezing cold set, and at 6:00 on the dot said, “Good morning, everyone. I’m Gretchen Carlson. Thanks for sharing your time with us today.”
I was always confident, knowing I had a strong team behind me. I can’t emphasize enough how doing great TV is all about that team—the floor crew, the producers, the bookers, the directors, the assistants, the hair and makeup people. They made the show every single day. I’ve always had a good relationship with everyone behind the scenes, because I respect how much they do. Viewers only see the people on camera. They have no idea what goes on beyond camera range. I always love bringing guests to the set so they can see a terrific team at work.
The essence of live TV is that once it’s done it’s in your rearview mirror. We walked off the set and were already thinking about tomorrow.
After the show there were meetings, interviews, and prep for the next day before I could finally start my long commute home. If I was lucky, I’d get out of the office by 1:00 p.m. But I always had lots of extra stuff to do. For example, there were stacks of requests for autographed photos, and I made a point of personally responding to every one of them, including addressing the envelopes myself. It’s a practice I continue to this day. It takes discipline not to get behind. When I told a friend about this, she said, “Oh, I always assumed you used one of those autographing machines or had an intern do it.” Not so. Every autograph is from my own hand.
I also believe it is very impo
rtant to write letters and notes. Really, even in this age of texts. It’s a habit that goes way back for me. When I was Miss America, doing an appearance at a mall in Ohio, they wheeled in a man who was quite disabled and confined to a cot. It meant so much for Jim Demuth to meet me. He had trouble speaking, but when he asked if I would be his pen pal, I was so moved that I said yes. I corresponded with him every month for twelve years until he died in 2001. It was meaningful for both of us.
If you want to make a difference in people’s lives, write to them. A few years ago, when my executive producer’s brother died unexpectedly, I wrote her mother a letter, even though I didn’t know her. When my executive producer went home last Christmas to help her mother after she had a stroke, she noticed that my letter was still sitting there next to a photo of her son. It mattered to her. I hope to instill in my children that it matters to people when you make the effort to reach out to them. And it’s also a piece of advice I share with young people in the business. Always send a note, write a letter—let people know you mean it by taking the time to make that special effort. I was pleased to find out that Roger Ailes is also a big believer in handwritten notes. To honor that, I still write him notes frequently instead of e-mails.
Ever since I was a child musician and had to be efficient about using every hour of the day, I’d never napped, and I didn’t now. So I had to plan an early bedtime in order to get enough sleep to power through the day with a full-time job at Fox and a full-time job as Mom.
Getting Real Page 20