May 31, 2013

I was so hoping a few of these Fox hosts would give their male colleagues a very hard time over the stupidity of their comments about women in the workplace, and Megyn Kelly did not disappoint.

First, Erick Erickson walked back his caveman remarks. Via Media Matters:

KELLY: So I'll start with you, Erick. What makes you dominant and me submissive, and who died and made you scientist-in-chief?

ERICKSON: Oh, it doesn't have anything to do with submissiveness per se, and it was certainly poorly constructed how I said it. What I meant by that was, when you look throughout society, look at other animals, the male of the species tends to be the protector, the dominant one in that regard, and we've gotten to a point in this country where you have a lot of feminists who think that the male and female roles are completely interchangeable, that there is no need for a man to support his family. You've got men walking away, you've got women becoming single mothers not by their choice, you've got a lot of people thinking it's a lifestyle choice. This isn't healthy for society when we think that roles of gender are completely -- can be interchangeable. No one's saying women can't be or shouldn't be a breadwinner or even the primary breadwinner. It's just that when we forced ourselves to this point in society where they have to be, that's not a good, healthy thing for society.

There is so much wrong with that statement I don't know where to start. As I write, I'm watching the male great blue heron build up the nest for the two nestlings so they don't fall out of the nest when they test their wings. That's biology right there. I don't want to take Erickson on point by point, but his overall judgment on women as breadwinners is based on myth and not fact.

Then Dobbs steps up, and confirms that nature is not always male-dominant just before he exerts what he thinks is his entitlement to be dominant by mocking Kelly while making an argument that has nothing at all to do with society and everything to do with conservative policies.

DOBBS: We are looking at a war on drugs which we're losing. We're looking at an economy in which jobs are not being replaced with either equal pay or near equal pay with a replacement job. We are watching classic, traditional jobs in manufacturing, in construction that have been male-dominated in the sense that they were the predominant number of workers disappearing. We are looking at a society in which change is the absolute hallmark.

And for people and for anyone in any discussion, in any debate on what is happening with women in the workplace to ignore the fact that we have marriages breaking up, shattering in this society and we know that reduces by at least --

KELLY: Why are you attributing that to women in the workforce?

DOBBS: Excuse me. Let me just finish what I'm saying if I may, oh dominant one. The fact is --

KELLY: Excuse me?

Dobbs was actually onto something when he talked about construction and manufacturing, but he missed the point entirely. That's not the fault of women; it's the fault of stupid conservatives and their penchant for austerity. We could have thousands of construction jobs if conservatives committed to updating our ancient infrastructure. We could have thousands of manufacturing jobs if they weren't offshored to line billionaires' pockets. Those jobs don't exist because conservatives have obliterated them. That's not women doing that. It's greed doing that.

This whole debate about the 'erosion of family' is just a distraction. It's another 'fire up the base' and play to the social conservatives to keep them interested and engaged. There's nothing new, and so-called 'liberals' like Juan Williams should be ashamed of themselves for participating in it with such earnest agreement.

Finally, if any of these people, Kelly included, gave a damn about women in the workplace, they'd be pounding on equal pay for women. One of the reasons women get jobs is because they're paid 3/4ths of what a man would get. Until that changes, none of this noise matters.

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