Taking a break from their annual screechfest bemoaning the fictional liberal War on Christmas, the brave generals over at Fox News recently dispatched two of their female warriors to a very different front… the not-so-fictional War on Women. Only these fierce combatants were there not to defend the sistahood, but to wage a war of — and on — their own.
First up was President George W. Bush’s White House press secretary — now Fox News host — Dana Perino, who, in a discussion on The Five about the murder-suicide incident involving Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher and the mother of his young child, asserts that women need to take responsibility for violence against them. Even while acknowledging that women “are victims of violence all the time,” Perino agrees with her co-host that the solution to the problem is for women to carry guns… but takes it into blame-the-victim territory by loftily proclaiming that they should also “make better decisions.” (Watch here.)
You pretty much deserve what you get, implies Perino: If you fall in love and have a child with someone who starts drinking heavily, taking drugs, “Constitutionally” acquiring a collection of deadly weapons and then makes the very bad decision to blow you away with one of them, it really is down to you. Not them. You. Thanks for that, sistagurl. Hopefully the next woman who’s attacked by a complete stranger will also heed your sage advice and “make better decisions” about… walking around in public.
Next to take the battlefield was author Suzanne Venker, who, in her second misogynist op-ed for Fox in as many weeks, opined that women should just stop being so gosh-darned stubborn and accept their lot in life — as subordinates to men. Let’s call a truce in the war on men, she harrumphs, and we’ll all be so much happier. She then trots out the old hunter-gatherer canard (men like to hunt, women like to nest and take care of everyone, blahblahblah), explaining that men are “content to mill about in their man caves. They like to hunt. They like to build things and kill things.”
“If the ultimate goal is lasting love,” she goes on, “women are going to have to become comfortable with sacrifice and capitulation.” Surrender to your femininity! Let your man be the man! Let him take charge! Reject the “feminist dogma” that tells you that you must be equal to men! Get back in your binder! And after several hundred words crushing women under her shoe like pesky insects, she delivers the coup de grace — diminishing your own accomplishments and submitting to your rightful masters is… liberating.
There’s no greater enemy than the enemy within. And in the very real war on women, at Fox News, it’s an inside job.
Big H/T: ThinkProgress.com; Photo: juliejordanscott via Flickr.com
