The results of the recent election show that the single ladies didn't have their hands raised for Mitt Romney. But rather than thinking about ways to appeal to them, Fox is trashing them with the claim that the Obama vote was based on wanting free stuff - a meme Fox is also is using to trash minorities. There was some rich irony in Friday's "Culture Warrior" segment which had the unmarried mother, Laura Ingraham, presiding over a discussion which was, in sweet and subtle tones, another attack on single women. Given that right wing icon (gag) Phyllis Schafly seems to have been the genesis of the unmarried woman as welfare slacker meme, it was fitting that right wing female "culture warriors" would be carrying the battle standard in the right wing media battalion otherwise known as Fox News!

Laura Ingraham reported that President Obama's share of the women's vote was larger than Mitt Romney's especially among single women. After introducing her "culture warrior" guests, Jeanine Pirro and Gretchen Carlson, she asked Carlson about this gap between married and single women. Carlson dismissed the parenting ability of unmarried women with her comment about how "married women think about the future of their children more so when they go to the polls." (So unmarried women with children think less about the future of their family when they vote? Or does Gretch think that only married women have children?)

Gretch's 50's Ozzie and Harriet meme continued with, perhaps, a slight racial "dog whistle:" "If you're in a traditional marriage maybe you want the same things that you grew up with, you want those same cultural ideals for your kids, you're thinking about the economy in that way as well, you're thinking about the future of your kids and the debt." (So single moms come from non-traditional backgrounds and have different "cultural ideals" than married women? Which women might these be? Funny, I suspect that some single moms might be divorced, middle-class white women)

She expressed the belief that "married women think less about abortion, so even if you're pro-choice you would tend to vote more on the economy because when you're married...abortion or contraception isn't a huge part of your life." (So married women don't care about the right to control their bodies? Really? Here's the thing, there are many married women who, unlike you, aren't living in comfortable circumstances. For them, access to abortion and birth control is important given that that an unplanned pregnancy could have serious economic ramifications for them. And Gretch, the majority of those who have abortions are married women with children).

Single mother Ingraham validated her: "If you're married you tend to be more settled, you're thinking about the kids, thinking about how the country is going to be when they grow up, maybe some of the cultural issues, maybe not abortion, but how they sexualize culture and that makes you think more traditionally." (WTF?) Pirro blamed the abortion obsessed "celebrity driven culture" which causes single women to want "to connect with them." She referenced Romney's comment about Planned Parenthood and Todd Akin's statement as the basis for Obama to claim that "they hate women." (Ya think!) She noted that for many women abortion equals health care. (Ya think!)

Gretch said that was "depressing" and "shortsighted for women if they only looked at that one little message about the war on women" without looking more at "the details."  She then, sweetly and not so subtly, brought out the single-women-want-stuff with her comment that married women are "less likely to be looking to the government for help." Pirro provided validation: "A lot of women are married to the government." (Actually, low income couples are eligible for subsidized child care and married couples get tax breaks.)

Ingraham claimed that Romney was "successfully and malevolently framed" by Obama. "on this war on women thing" and accused the administration of  "using" Sandra Fluke. She whined that Romney should have brought together Christian minority women who "don't live and die for abortion rights." After Gretch noted that the exit polls didn't reflect that the majority of Americans are pro-life, she recommended that the GOP "look very seriously at abortion moving forward and how this affects single women." Ingraham responded that they need to speak about it with "compassion and understanding, not vilifying."  (She might want to talk to Bill O'Reilly and Greg Gutfeld about that).

The culture warriors' belief that single women (including the elderly) are a bunch of welfare slackers is insulting to all women regardless of economic circumstances. Talk about "compassion and understanding." Stay classy, Fox "News!"

And we know that Laura Ingraham would never think about abortion; but I do suspect that she does think about her kid's future when she votes!