Fox News has such deep and abiding respect for traditional marriage that their latest Fox on Sex column is written by an expert on open marriage and polyamory.
She also wrote this about Bristol Palin at HuffPo:
It’s because she’s Palin daughter that she’s getting the attention. But would she still be news if she hadn’t been knocked up? She needed a story. Now she has one. Aside from accidental pregnancy, a sense of being needed or valued is one of the primary reasons teenagers get pregnant. She’s a statistic, not a role model.
However, she is an attractive blonde, so at least that’s consistent with the rest of the Fox News brand.
Ash Can
LOL! I’m sure it’s all about the page hits, though. If Fox did this too often, they’d lose viewers. Getting folks all riled up every now and then is OK.
beltane
That’s just yucky, but at least it’s not yucky in the usual Christo-fetusfetishist kind of way. It’s the synergy of sleaze between Fox and HuffPo that is the most depressing.
SGEW
That’s a really fucked up statement to make about a seventeen year old single mother, yo. What the hell?
Starfish
Does she have a severe nose job? I have been watching television “news” for the first time since October, and a lot of the women on these shows seem to think the ideal nose belongs to LaToya Jackson.
beltane
@SGEW: It’s no different than saying she got pregnant to live like royalty on a $400 a month welfare check. Most statements made by conservatives about seventeen year old single mothers fall firmly into the fucked up category.
Pigs & Spiders
Ugh, I can’t talk about Fox this early on a Monday morning…now I’m going to need another coffee.
V.O.R.
Oh, she’s being a mean conservative by stereotyping? Ok. For a second I thought she was limp-wristed liberal for discussing a malefactor’s psychological motivations. Thanks for setting me straight!
mistermix
Read the whole Bristol Palin piece before labeling her a conservative. She’s actually a run-of-the-mill lefty sex columnist, which is why this is interesting. Here’s the end of that piece:
Michael D.
Hmmm, I always thought of Jenny Block as a pretty well respected GLBT writer.
I don’t see anything she wrote as untrue.
And, while god knows we all hate Fox, shouldn’t we encourage a little diversity in that shallow gene pool?
SGEW
@beltane: But stories like the “single mother living like royalty on their welfare checks” is in the same category as “bucks eating t-bones”: a zeitgeist narrative that is disconnected from individuals (and reality, natch). The quoted statement by Jenny Block, above (that Bristol Palin got pregnant for “attention”), is about a specific, named person. More akin to nasty character-assassinating celebrity gossip (and therefore perfect for HuffPo, I suppose).
Anyway, it’s gross.
AkaDad
Would our Founding Fathers™ have pre-marital sex? I think not.
beltane
@SGEW: What’s really gross is Sarah Palin exploiting her children in the way she has. If you throw red meat into the water, don’t be shocked when the sharks come to feed.
David
I don’t know if it’s a conscious effort on the part of Fox or perhaps it’s just my perception, but the role of the women on Fox is weird to me.
What’s it like trying to sit down in a skirt that’s too short to sit down in, with a camera aimed right up your skirt, and then be expected to talk about serious subjects? Then, no one (including the people on Fox) seem to care about what they say. They’re interchangeable — eye candy. Do they care? Perhaps they see that as their role.
thomas Levenson
Not to disagree with the comments about the craziness of calling out Bristol for the sin of being her mother’s
daughterprop (in effect), I just see this as full of win, a lovely way to start a Monday.I want popcorn as this percolates through the Fox News
ecosystemcesspool.SGEW
@beltane:
But I really can’t bring myself to place any blame or public disapproval on the children themselves.
And I’m not shocked. I’m saddened.
Cerberus
Jenny Block is good people, actually, but yeah, the hypocrisy of Fox especially in its views on sex and women is always funny to highlight.
Hell, it’s pretty much textbook patriarchy in the way Fox News tries to simultaneously sell safe, run-of-the-mill “titillation” and shame about sexuality (especially if you’re a filthy woman).
Jenny Block is pretty much working in the enemy’s stronghold here and her writing is generally pretty good lefty sex-positive LGBT-affirmative works.
Given that the whole origin of her thing is how she understands the sort of closed-minded white suburban world we all pretend is the only face of America and tries to work convincing that subgroup to be more accepting of the heterogeneity of the human animal, it makes sense that she would accept this gig (aka, exploiting the privileges of being “one of them” to make the privileged them think more openly), though its funny that Fox News is on board.
But yeah, Jenny Block herself is definitely on our team.
Linda Featheringill
Bristol Palin – Used by Levi, used by her mother, used by lots of members of the press.
Scuffletuffle
@SGEW: Really? No public disapproval for a woman who got pregnant out-of-wedlock in spite of what we have been repeatedly told are deeply held religious beliefs about the sanctity of sex within legitimate marriage and nowhere else, who now makes a living shilling for abstinence only…like that should and is the only way to live (except for herself, of course)? None? You’re a better woman than I am, Gunga Din.
gnomedad
@mistermix:
The parallel construction here made me wonder what sort of artifact a “purity ball” is.
Cerberus
@gnomedad: They be creepy affairs.
Basically the gist of it is that underaged women and their fathers go to a ball on a “date” where the dad roleplays all of the functions of an “idealized male date” and their patriarchal undertones to affirm the daughters devotion to virginity and to being the father’s property until he finds her a good husband for her to marry.
They are about as frightening and a seeming boon to incestuous child rapists as you can imagine them being.
SGEW
@Scuffletuffle: I did a lot of stupid stuff when I was a teenager. I sympathize. Also, publicly shaming a teenage single mother really bothers me, no matter who her parents are.
If Bristol Palin continues to publicly advocate for abstinence-only education, sex only within marriage, etc., she should be called out and criticized for her hypocrisy. But not for the actual pregnancy, nor the decision to bring the child to term.
Cerberus
Coises, the inc.est moderation trigger.
One of these days I’ll remember all the triggers so I don’t keep getting messages stuck in moderation.
Cerberus
@SGEW:
The full post seems to be trying to link Bristol Palin’s thing to psychological theories for why women stuck in similar situations find superficially beneficial about being single teen mothers (the sudden assumption of adulthood and the attention) despite the known downsides and how a better full conversation about sex will decrease the weight of getting into those situations.
I don’t believe its her intention to be doing the standard “teen mothers are who.res who should have closed their legs” that FOX News loves to pimp, though I do agree that the phrasing is awkward in the excerpt.
But yeah, knowing what I know of Jenny Block, she’s a pretty strong third-wave feminist and has had a pretty good track-record against victim-blaming for the most part.
Scuffletuffle
@SGEW: I did stupid stuff, too, if by that you mean having sex. However, in spite of having no sex education to speak of from my strict Catholic mother and no deeply held religious beliefs of my own whatsoever, I managed to have plenty of sex, but no children or abortions. No kudos from me at all for her having, bearing, keeping the baby. That was her choice. Calling her out for hypocrisy is not the same as public-shaming, ie calling her a whore or saying she shouldn’t get government money to help her raise a child, as the vast majority of Republicans/Teabagger seem to want to do. That’s not what I am doing. Nor is it what I am seeing here.
SGEW
@Cerberus: @Scuffletuffle:
I admit to not reading the linked article, and I am unfamiliar with the author. I was reacting purely to the quoted section (“She needed a story. Now she has one.”).
I wasn’t making a statement about left or right. Nor, really, about hypocrisy, abstinence education, or Fox “News” (not to mention heteronormative assumptions or the patriarchy or whatnot). I was only reacting to seeing someone make an assumption about the personal motivations behind a particular teenager’s pregnancy in order to make a point on the Huffington Post. I just thought it was, like I said, gross.
Joy
I’m waiting for her to get a gig on Fox or MSNBC as a correspondent, a la Jenna Bush or Luke Russert.
Alice Blue
“Fox on Sex”? Eeeewwwww.
Mnemosyne
@Scuffletuffle:
Hypocrisy would be if she secretly had an abortion or gave the baby up for adoption while continuing to have a public image of virginity-until-marriage. What she’s doing is saying, “Don’t do what I did.”
Unless you think it’s hypocritical for a recovering alcoholic to stand up at an AA meeting and say, “Don’t do what I did,” I don’t think you’re using the right word.
The real hypocrisy is that the abstinence-only people have embraced her as a spokesperson even though she broke every one of the rules they claim she should have followed.
Cerberus
@SGEW:
I will agree that the excerpt is inartfully phrased. But yeah, the piece wasn’t intending to make that accusation, but rather to use her pregnancy to note why girls in similar situations may turn to certain paths. The perils of communication being what they are though, the price of inartful word choice can cause nasty friendly fire as how you were hurt by the excerpt.
But yeah, she’s not on Team Slut Shamer nor was that her intention if that makes it any better.
SGEW
@Cerberus:
There is much collateral damage in the rhetoric wars.
[Cue joke about “we have to burn the Village to save it.”]
rickstersherpa
You have to understand Rupert. Its all about the money (and messing with your enemies). Just look at the NY Post, his British and Australian tabloids, and the line-up on the Fox network. Not much “family values” there if you define such things as prudery. Sex sells and Rupert has always known this and pimped it. Further, the sex stories on Fox Noise (or Faux News) have always had a “double thrust” to excuse the pun. There is the joy for the viewer to induldge in outraged self-righteousness, while at the same time enjoying the thrill of watching something that is usually a lot of T&A that sometimes verges on soft-core porn (think of the Hannah Giles in those ACORN vidoes – she could indulge in a “bad girl” fantasy while serving the Conservative & Family values cause.)
Scuffletuffle
@Mnemosyne: She is saying “don’t do what I did” while at the same time benefitting greatly from doing what she did, in spite of her message/beliefs/whatever. Therein lies the hypocrisy for me.
Cerberus
@rickstersherpa:
Actually that’s the same desires of the “family values” brigade as well. It’s textbook patriarchy, really. The point of the “prudes” is they want a world where women are kept nice and “pure” before they are given to a man so they don’t fully believe their body is their own and thus look for things like meeting their sexual needs or prioritizing them.
But that same prude is expected when they marry to suddenly turn into a monogamous horndog who will always be sexually available and know all the techniques of a “slut” in order to meet the needs of a man, but lack any comparison or knowledge so that the man is totally all she needs and she’s worn knackered by his masculinity.
This is the model that women are asked to fit in in the patriarchal “family values” model and if they fail to fit that, then they are at fault when their husband ends up cheating on them with other women, because “they didn’t do enough to keep him at home” i.e. she wasn’t sexually “good enough”.
Women as sexual object that never asserts itself and woman as personalityless house slave that never has “bad naughty unapproved of sex” are the two sides of the same patriarchal coin and its little surprise that FOX would find its home there as well.
Hell, less split personality, the madonna/who.re complex is key to the patriarchy and the same districts filled with churches spouting prudery and family values are also filled with strip clubs and prostitutes with often the exact same customers. A madonna to keep your home and raise your kids and a who.re to dominate and “punish” with your pe.nis.
Brachiator
@rickstersherpa:
In other words, not much different than any other TV station, especially during Sweeps Week. Or your average TV soap opera, or Jerry Springer or Maury Povich show.
LT
GOD DAMN IT – I SAID PHOTOGRAPH MY LEFT SIDE!
LT
Oh for fuck’s sake. Here’s the link I’ve been trying to put into my last comment for ten minutes.
Fuck a duck
asiangrrlMN
@Scuffletuffle: Yes. I agree with you on this. It bothers me that Bristol is making money from having this child and by telling other kids to do abstinence-only. If Bristol wasn’t Palin’s daughter, she wouldn’t be held up as a role model. I agree with the author. This is Bristol’s narrative that will help propel her (if she wants) onto the wingnut dole. I didn’t interpret the author’s comment as a ‘teen mother as welfare queen’ remark, but that could be because I am less traditional about marriage than most. In fact, I thought mistermix was quoting her as a conservative (FOX) which surprised me because what she wrote was pretty sensible.