I'm late in writing about this, later than a missed period. Who cares? As I gather my thoughts, there are people way late in finding their way to the 21st century. (It's like their theme music could be that hippie Blind Faith song about looking through the grass and mud of Woodstock for a place to pee -- "and I am wasted and I can't find my way home.")
No, these dinosaurs are late and they're totally on a male period meltdown that the world no longer fits their fetishized fantasy world. You know that world? The place where it's 1950s White Male America all day, every day.
Who would have ever guessed that a couple of cock-a-hoop Fox "News" heads would get the clocks cleaned and have their balls handed to them by a woman?
It's not what I was expecting when I heard the promo on faux. I don't usually watch that network and neither it, nor CNN or MSNBC, are accessible or allowed on my home TV. But there I was at Firestone for a routine oil change (a female friend of mine changes her own oil) and the TV was on Fox. Hey, it's all you can get at the garage, the dentist's office lobby, the YMCA big screens...
The Fox broadcaster -- I would later learn her name to be Megyn Kelly -- appeared incensed over the Obama Justice Dept.'s secret seizure of AP reporter phone records. Since she was on Fox, however, I was skeptical over whether her umbrage stemmed from her role as a journalist or that the transgressions occurred under Obama's watch.
When I heard what the next story was going to be, it illicited the same kind of eye rolling from me as Ricky Martin's "announcement" that he was gay. (Really? You don't say?) A recent Pew study shows that women are the sole or primary bread winners in 40 percent of American households. You can guess how the good ol' fetishizing Fox boys took that. Like a song from REM's 1987 Document album. (Singing) "It's the end of the world as we know it."
"Watch society dissolve around us." "It can undermine our social order." It's "anti-science." "It undermines our social order."
That's what the men said.
I had no reason not to believe the female anchor would follow these misogynists lock, stock and barrel. Yeah, she was going to parrot the Fox party line. Doesn't everybody there hate feminists, gays and lesbians, liberals, immigrants, Muslims, evolutionists...I took it for granted that none of those talking heads had the gonads to upset the Fox applecart.
Sure I knew what was going to happen. My car was ready. I swiped my card, the cashier handed me my keys and I was on my way.
Much later I found out.
"Who died and appointed you scientist in chief?" Those were anchor Megyn Kelly's first words for commentator Erick Erickson.
A conservative blogger, Erickson had recently written a piece, suggesting that unless children will be harmed if they are not raised by heterosexual couples with the man as the primary breadwinner and woman as the primary nurturer. http://www.redstate.com/2013/05/30/the-truth-may-hurt-but-is-not-mean/
"I didn't like what you wrote one bit and I do think you are judging people," Kelly told him.
She called Erickson on his crackpot scientific ideas about how a female breadwinner was antiethical to biology and how children were in for harm if raised by anyone but male and female parents in traditional gender roles. She cited a 50-year study by the American Psychological Association refuting his antiquated ideas. But she went further and this is the where I was totally floored.
Kelly defended happily married same-sex couples, suggesting that their children are just as well off -- or no worse off -- than children of opposite sex parents. She went futher.
According to Erickson's psuedo-science, children of working mothers or homosexual parents are looking at harm. Kelly equated such outmoded ideas with long-repudiated, but once conventional American notions that children of mixed-race couples would be inferior.
"Tell that to Barack Obama."
What?
This was the intelligent, objective voice of someone who may or may not personally agree with Obama's policies, yet, nonetheless recognizes that he is a professional who has met with success in life. And he's the product of a black father and white mother.
How often do you come upon such impartiality on Fox?
Kelly's other guest was Lou Dobbs. The previous night, Erickson had been a guest on Dobbs's show and they had spewed their nonsense around like two ol' boys with their cocks in the wind. But after the spanking Erickson got from Kelly, Dobbs started distancing himself from his old buddy.
Oh he still held to his misogynist beliefs. He just did a round dance around it with circumlocution. But Kelly kept hammering into him and wouldn't let him get away with changing the subject.
It was a thrill to watch. I've learned this isn't the first time Kelly has called bullshit on her Fox colleagues. When Karl Rove disputed the figures of Fox's own number crunchers, showing Obama won re-election, Kelly asked him, "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better? Or is this real?"
by far the luckiest break of my life. She's smarter than me, much more organized and professional, and I'm not threatened. It's a good legacy she's leaving for our daughter, as well as our son.
And I've been around strong, smart women all my life -- my mother, grandmothers, step-mother, colleagues, mother-in-law, various mentors.
As a white straight male, I'm not threatened by blacks, browns, gays, lesbians, Muslims, Jews, atheists or whatever. Good luck to everybody. I believe in what the late author Stephen Covey called the "abundance mentality." There's enough for all of us. We can all be successful.
But going back to that interview, man, it totally rocked seeing such a show of balls --- no, ovaries laying the smackdown on a couple of dicks.
Okay, what the hell. One last thing. I want to show this video. This song became an anthem of the early '70s womens' movement, but it really has a human ethos that bridges gender.
Here she is, the original pop diva -- Dusty Springfield.
