“The Stronger Women Get the More Men Love Football.” That was the name of a book my friend Mariah Burton Nelson wrote a while back. An updated title might read, “The Stronger Women Get the More Fox Loves Smut.”
With Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, and Senator Hillary Clinton not just a candidate for President, but the front-runner to win, the sexist orgy that passes for Fox channel programming has flipped into overdrive. It wasn’t enough that any on-air female had to look like a talking mannequin. Even the brilliant Greta Van Susteren scalpeled her face into compliance before taking over a show that started with promise, but has turned into one more Foxified tele-tabloidization.
Now Fox is going further, using the most objectified, smutty and often inane images of women during the video feed that accompanies stories. Fox producers seem to be following one overriding mantra: no matter the story, illustrate it with lots of (pardon the Fox-y vernacular) tits, ass, thongs and bikinis, the more nubile or pre-pubescent the better. How better to keep women down than to hold them up as objects of sexual fantasy? The message is clear without Fox talking heads saying a word: women are only good for one thing.
Thanks to filmmaker Robert Greenwald, you don’t have to stomach watching Fox to see the evidence of their bias. Greenwald has put together a terrific little film. , championed by Keith Olbermann, (who, like Stephen Colbert, has a keen eye and ear for media sexism). Watch it and fume. Watch it and wonder why women aren’t walking off their jobs at Fox and picketing. Watch it and think about running as a woman for President, or as a small-town mayor, or as a woman trying for a job promotion or being taken seriously anywhere, anytime.
Fox is the channel for people threatened by the idea of gender equality. The people who tell pollsters they wouldn’t vote for a woman for President under any circumstances. The people who are most comfortable thinking of women in one way only — as objects for their sexual fantasies or exploits.
The stronger women get the less willing we are to settle for anything less than the full right to be who and what we choose. And that idea just drives Fox crazy.
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