In my rant of yesterday, I mentioned my utter surprise that FOX News seemed to be silent on the issue of Playboy magazine’s reprehensible article.  While this appears to be accurate with regard to the FOX News website, the FOX News channel did have a response.

In case you do not have a spare 10 minutes to listen, allow me to share a few excerpts.   I’m pulling each snippet from a full conversation, so if you want the context, you’ll have to listen to the video.  I made every effort to be accurate, however since I am not a stenographer and am also a bit distracted by my temper, any quoted text in this post may contain one or two word errors.

• FOX News Commentator 1:   Now isn’t being on the list kind of a compliment because he’s saying that although he despises your ideology, he’s obviously still wants to be with you?  (he does laugh after this remark, but I believe he is laughing at what Mary Catherine Ham is saying in response to his question and not at the absurdity of what he said.)
• FOX News Commentator 1:   They could only do this list with conservatives, because they couldn’t come up with 10 on the other side.  It’s a fact.
• FOX News Commentator 2:  Who uses terms like this except serial rapists, and it’s classic Hef, and I don’t know if he’s a serial rapist but he surrounds himself with you know these brainless, boob-enhanced sycophants who are probably too stupid to consent.

Oh thank goodness FOX News took a stand against misogyny.  I’m not sure what women would have done if they hadn’t.

I hope that I am mistaken, but it seemed to me that the FOX commentators were not too disturbed this was said about women in general, but that it was said about conservative women.   Perhaps they were simply reacting because some of the women on the list were their friends, but this didn’t seem to be a “fair and balanced” report to me.

FOX was able to obtain a statement from Playboy.  Andy Levy reports:

I did speak to Theresa Hennessey, the Vice President of public relations for Playboy Enterprises, Inc. and she sent me the following statement:

“Playboy has a long and proud history of supporting women’s organizations and has been an advocate of equal rights for women since its inception more than 55 years ago.  The feature on Playboy.com was by no means intended to insinuate or encourage violence against women, something the organization adamantly abhors.”

She told me the article was pulled because of the insinuation of violence.  I asked her well how did this slip through the editing cracks, you know, and she said it actually didn’t, it’s just that nobody realized it would be misinterpreted.

So I asked her since it was being misinterpreted what was it intended to be, as you just asked, Greg.  Uh, and she said it was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek article like they do with sexiest women sportscasters, etc., but when they realized it wasn’t coming across like that to a lot of people, they took it down.

Well thank you Playboy for the apology (insert sarcastic tone here).  If this article had not been interpreted to insinuate violence, it would have been perfectly acceptable?

Sigh.

Yes, I know that there is a good chance this article was published strictly to create buzz – a tactic ala the radio shock jocks. After all, they distributed press releases about this trash to some conservative media sources. Some say by writing about it I’m giving them the attention they seek. Perhaps that’s true, but I really could not remain silent. I’m stepping away now, though. I fear if I do not my blood pressure just might cause the top of my head to explode. 

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 2:32 pm and is filed under In the News, Misogyny. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.