Yesterday, Fox's Outnumbered show set its sights on smearing Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. The excuse was Gillibrand’s decision not to report or name any of her male colleagues who had commented on her weight. However, it’s a safe bet that if she had, the same talking heads would be accusing her of being a feminazi.
From People magazine:
In Off the Sidelines (Gillibrand’s book), Gillibrand, 47, shares a sobering incident in the congressional gym, where an older, male colleague told her, “Good thing you’re working out, because you wouldn’t want to get porky!” On another occasion, she writes, after she dropped 50 lbs. one of her fellow Senate members approached her, squeezed her stomach, and said, “Don’t lose too much weight now. I like my girls chubby!”
Gillibrand isn’t especially offended by her coworkers’ remarks. “It was all statements that were being made by men who were well into their 60s, 70s or 80s,” she says. “They had no clue that those are inappropriate things to say to a pregnant woman or a woman who just had a baby or to women in general.”
Gillibrand has also explained why she didn’t name the coworkers: because she was trying to make a bigger point about women at work.
“It’s not about any one insult or any one person, because that’s not why I shared the details. I specifically shared them because I want to talk about these broader challenges. This happens to women all the time in every industry every day.”
Not good enough for Outnumbered co-host Harris Faulkner. She all but called Gillibrand a liar: “Did anybody vet the book? I mean, if this is really true, why didn’t she go to the Ethics Committee? And, by the way, if she can cuss like a sailor, why didn’t she cuss him out?” Faulkner asked. Not that she had any real evidence for the allegation, mind you.
Co-host Kennedy, perhaps reprising her role as a Fox News psychologist, was all in: “Exactly! Have a snappy comeback!”
“I don’t know, blah, blah, boring. She’s boring to me,” co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle complained. “I didn’t mind her so much before but now she’s kind of annoying. …You know what? You didn’t take the opportunity when you had the chance so now I just find the whole thing...” She waved her hand in disgust.
Faulkner piled on further. “As a leader, as a lawmaker, I would think that she would want to – no matter how fresh and new she was on the job …she would say to herself, to protect the other young women in the offices here on Capitol Hill, I should go and put on record that there’s an abuser in our presence,” Faulkner said self-righteously.
Ironically, it was Outnumbered's “one lucky guy” Arthur Aidala who was the lone defender. He said that when he was young and inexperienced, he was “walking on eggshells” at his job. “As offensive as it was, I can understand her at that point, holding her tongue,” he said.
But co-host Sandra Smith agreed with Guilfoyle, saying she’s “kind of bored of the conversation. If you didn’t do something about it then, why are we still talking about it now?”
“She had her chance,” Guilfoyle complained. “Now she’s trying to sell books, OK? That’s the reality?
No, the reality is that Gillibrand is a Democrat and that means “malign her no matter what” on Fox. Either that or some people on Outnumbered have had a sudden change of heart. Remember how just a few weeks ago, the women were defending catcalls from men? “Let men be men, I just love ‘em,” Guilfoyle said then. “Men are going to be that way. What are you going to do? They mean it in a nice way, I think.” That is not so different from the behavior exhibited toward Gillibrand. Nor her reaction.
Similarly, Fox & Friends co-hosts have complained about the “wussification” of American men and have even suggested that feminism is a threat to national security.
So excuse me if I find this sudden desire for Gillibrand to rat out her colleagues a bunch of baloney.
Watch the unmitigated bias below.