Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

In my day, never was longer.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

We still have time to mess this up!

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

šŸŽ¶ Those boots were made for mockinā€™ šŸŽµ

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

T R E 4 5 O N

Let there be snark.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Bark louder, little dog.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

This year has been the longest three days of putinā€™s life.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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Hooters Nation

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Another reminder that Fox News is not only a wingnut propaganda outfit that actively makes America dumber with every broadcast, it’s a hive of gross, entitled swine who use their power to harass female colleagues:

A Fox News spokesperson says they’re investigating the matter. Yeah, sure.

Fox News was founded by serial groper Roger Ailes, who took a dirt nap shortly after being ousted from his perch as network boss for sexual harassment. Fox News put up with O’Reilly’s revolting antics until the settlement payouts topped out at $13M-plus. Bolling is just the latest Fox News phone-fapper to be publicly outed.

But while it is horrifying that a prominent cable news network operates like a sleazy frat house populated entirely by giggling Martin Shkreli clones, it’s not surprising. The Fox News aesthetic was designed to appeal to leering old men from day one. It’s essentially an electronic Hooters where the servers read bubble-reinforcing propaganda from teleprompters instead of slinging greasy chicken wings and shitty beer at ass-slapping patrons.

Bolling is probably safe. After all, Fox News viewers elected a leering sexual assaulter as president. Why should Bolling be held to a higher standard than the president? It’s not like Fox News is NBC.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  2. 2.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    Fox News job interview:

    “Who do you see yourself harassing 5 years from now?”

  4. 4.

    Big Ole Hound

    Must be a job requirement for FOX on screen men. I think the statue of limitations has run out on this asshole unless of course he is still is showing his gray pubes.

  5. 5.

    Yarrow

    The Fox News aesthetic was designed to appeal to leering old men from day one. Itā€™s essentially an electronic Hooters where the servers read bubble-reinforcing propaganda from teleprompters instead of slinging greasy chicken wings and shitty beer at ass-slapping patrons.

    Roger Ailes’ own description of Fox, from Joan Walsh’s only meeting with him:

    ā€œI created a TV network for people 55 to dead,ā€ Ailes boasted to us. ā€œNobody believed it could be done, but I did it. Itā€™s for guys who sit on their couch with the remote all day and night.ā€ That seemed a condescending way to talk about his audienceā€”not to mention, much of the Republican baseā€”but it was fascinating anyway.

    ā€œAnd they donā€™t want to see anyone like you,ā€ he continued, looking directly at me. I wasnā€™t sure whether he meant a liberal, or a brunette newswoman in a dark pantsuit. ā€œThey donā€™t want to see youā€”they donā€™t even want to know that you exist!ā€ And he was obliging them: heā€™d created a world where women were blonde and wore short tight skirts, men were in charge, and articulate, principled, complicated liberalsā€”especially womenā€”didnā€™t exist.

  6. 6.

    Roger Moore

    I do like some of the comments I’ve seen on Twitter: does that shit even work? Because it makes no sense to me that a woman who has no interest in you is suddenly going to change her mind when she sees a picture of your junk.

  8. 8.

    cope

    I compare Fox News to fraternities on a campus…it’s good to have around so that we know where all the assholes are (no offense intended to non-asshole fraternity members).

  10. 10.

    bemused

    @Roger Moore:

    There aren’t many women that would suddenly be interested in a guy when he sent her pics of his junk. Really, it’s no different than some guy flashing/dropping his pants to unsuspecting women in a park or on a street. What is that weird, creepy compulsion all about anyway? An urge to shock, scare or demean women?

  12. 12.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Can somebody tell me what would make somebody send a shot of their dick to some woman? ā€™Cause I really, truly donā€™t understand this. Not only have I never done this, I’ve never even thought about doing it. For fuck’s sake, I’ve never even taken a picture of my dick for my own self. Shit. I know what it looks like. I’ve seen it every day of my life. Who needs a picture of their dick? Are they that insecure? What’s wrong with these people [sic]? Can’t they all just go take dirt naps with Roger Ailes?

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    @Baud: Now I’m imagining a Nigerian prince emailing people asking for help in moving dick picks out of his country.

  16. 16.

    Shell

    Fox News viewers elected a leering sexual assaulter

    Whenever anybody whines that “Just let Trump be Trump”, you wanna ask, you mean like that?

  22. 22.

    Lurking Canadian

    @bemused: Yeah, it’s basically just e-flashing. The world contains multitudes: it is possible that at least once the tactic of sending an unsolicited dick picture to a woman succeeded in attracting her interest, but it’s not the way to bet.

  24. 24.

    jacy

    @Roger Moore:

    It’s a voyeuristic thrill. The act of sending the pics is the thing that turns them on. They don’t expect anything to come of it. In other words, sending the pics isn’t a means to an end, it IS the end.

  26. 26.

    JanieM

    A long time ago the daughter of an acquaintance of mine was being … pursued … by a boy in her high school freshman class. He would send her notes — the most memorable quote I remember is: “I want to fuck you — hard.” This, when she had already tried to make it perfectly clear that she didn’t want anything to do with him, never mind that.

    If there had been smartphones in those days he might have been sending her dick pics. But he was fourteen, so maybe he actually grew up in the end.

    Some people never grow up and realize that other people are both “other” and “real” and not the phantasms that run around in their own heads.

    This is my explanation for why they do it. The phantasms in their own twisted heads like it, so the women out in the world surely will as well.

    ETA: and/or what Jacy said.

  28. 28.

    Tenar Arha

    @Roger Moore: My thinking on it is that anyone who’d send an unsolicited dick pick, is confirming they’re going to probably be terrible because they literally can’t pick up social or sexual cues either from phone call or writing or in person interactions.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud:

    Like email scammers, you only need a tiny fraction of recipients to respond positively.

    It also requires a culture of impunity. That kind of low-probability, high-reward thing only works if the consequences for failure are negligible. If there’s any chance the target will go to HR and they’ll actually do something about it, this turns out to be a really lousy strategy. It’s clear there was a culture of impunity for harassers at Fox that gave them the justified belief they could get away with it.

  35. 35.

    Lurking Canadian

    @JanieM: Failure of imagination, too. Your average teenaged boy would probably be very happy to receive unsolicited naked pictures from his female classmates. You need a bit of ability to put yourself into someone else’s shoes to appreciate that those classmates might see the matter differently.

    But that’s kids. For adults in a workplace: just plain wrong

  36. 36.

    Suzanne

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    Can somebody tell me what would make somebody send a shot of their dick to some woman?

    For me, and for most women, I suspect, dicks are very form-follows-function. They’re not exciting on their own, and certainly not just to look at. The ultra-zoomed-in dick-pic……WHY? It’s more about how it is used, uh, to what end.

  38. 38.

    Jay C

    And speaking of dicks:
    the Big Orange One in the WH looks like he is going to be getting his way on another disgusting front:

    Trump ban on transgender military goes to DoD

    Unfortunately unable to leave the issue go at just another idiotic Presidential tweet, it seems like the WH are (finally) and disgustingly, following formal protocols, and sending Trump’s diktat about transgender people in the military off to the Defense Department for implementation.
    And it’s unclear what, if anything, can be done about it.

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    Itā€™s essentially an electronic Hooters where the servers read bubble-reinforcing propaganda from teleprompters instead of slinging greasy chicken wings and shitty beer at ass-slapping patrons.

    I will slam Fox News all day, every day. But while never a big patron. I got no problem with Hooters. The chicken wings were not that bad, and as far as I’m concerned, all beer is shitty. Patrons didn’t slap ass, cause that would be a crime.

    That said, yeah, I’m not surprised that a “news” organization that turned blonde white women into fetish totems would have a huge problem with this crap, especially since the boss was one of the worst offenders.

  42. 42.

    A Ghost to Most

    He’s a sick human being.

    Eric Bolling on A. Weiner’s peckerdillo

    Eta: Fuck autocorrect

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    @jacy:
    I can understand some people get an exhibitionist thrill from showing unsuspecting people their bodies, but I think there’s more in this case. Most flashers do so anonymously, at least in the sense that they try to pick targets who don’t know them. Targeting somebody the perpetrator knows, especially when there’s supposed to be a mechanism in place for them to report this kind of misbehavior, has an element of intimidation. The perpetrator is proving that the official channels for recourse aren’t working, hoping to intimidate their victim into giving in when the harassment proceeds to the next level.

  51. 51.

    Capri

    @Lurking Canadian: When I’ve asked the men in my life that is what they say. They would love it if a women they just met sent them boob pictures, so in their minds they are just returning the favor. It’s also really common. I’ve read some blogs by folks in HR for big companies. Dealing with dick pic senders is a constant in their line of work.

  52. 52.

    Mary G

    I’m happy that I’m old enough to not be the target audience for these kinds of things.

  56. 56.

    Roger Moore

    @Lurking Canadian:

    Your average teenaged boy would probably be very happy to receive unsolicited naked pictures from his female classmates.

    I think that’s less true than stereotypes would have us believe. At the very least, most of those teenaged boys would discover they did not enjoy it if a girl they were completely uninterested in kept aggressively coming on to them and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I suppose they’d probably share any naked pictures they received with their friends, but quite possibly as much as a way of getting revenge as anything.

  57. 57.

    bemused

    @Lurking Canadian:

    The creeps have to know that majority of women would be turned off by their junk pics so the goal can’t be actually get women to date them. They must want them to be turned off and disgusted.

  59. 59.

    Mel

    @Major Major Major Major: The exhibit of modern Japanese ceramics is supposed to be excellent.

    Also, I there was an exhibit of rocking chairs of various sorts that make music when rocked. Not sure if the chair exhibit is still there, but it got high marks from a gallery owning friend and her grandson!

  60. 60.

    Roger Moore

    @Mary G:

    Iā€™m happy that Iā€™m old enough to not be the target audience for these kinds of things.

    If that’s true, it’s only because too few men your age have smartphones and working libidos. I don’t think it’s because they’re all grown up enough to know better.

  61. 61.

    Splitting Image

    I’ll have to defend Hooters here. The admittedly-small number of women I’ve heard describe working there have said that the likelihood of harassment isn’t really much higher than any other restaurant. Potential ass-slappers might find the idea of Hooters titillating, but when they get there it seems to dawn on them that food servers have several gross ways of retaliating that aren’t available to other women. The waitresses also deal with hundreds of men every day who don’t bother them, so when one manbaby eventually does, it’s harder for him to get away with arguing that he’s “just being a guy”.

    On the knuckle-dragging scale, Fox News is actually several steps down from Hooters. Of course, so is Donald Trump, since Hooters girls have to be old enough to serve liquor. Donny prefers a younger crowd.

  62. 62.

    Brachiator

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    Can somebody tell me what would make somebody send a shot of their dick to some woman?

    Men like to see pictures of naked women. Stupid men assume, hope, fantasize that women want to see naked men. The Internets and smartphones allows men with bad impulse control to indulge their fantasy. Some of these dopes might have been flashers in the old days.

    And because the Internets make it easier for like minded people to find one another, the women who like or don’t mind dick picks can satisfy their desires as well.

    Anybody see the documentary on Anthony Weiner. A sad, stupid man. But his exhibitionism was part of his sexting strategy. He clearly has a compulsion to expose himself and would look for women who would indulge him. And he clearly would engage in behavior that was criminal.

  63. 63.

    Suzanne

    @Capri:

    Iā€™ve read some blogs by folks in HR for big companies. Dealing with dick pic senders is a constant in their line of work.

    True story from my former company: The birthday of one of the IT guys was coming up, so one of his teammates wrote an email asking the guy’s teammates what they should do for his birthday. But instead of sending the email to just his team, he sent it to everyone in the company (except for the birthday boy). So then another teammate REPLIED ALL, and wrote, “We should get him a dildo so he can go fuck himself”. AND THEN like three other teammates responded with “LAWL” or something. And all of these emails went out to like 300 people.

    AND one of the dudes who chimed in to laugh is married to the head of HR of that company. I cannot even imagine the dinner table conversation that evening.

  71. 71.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    I know somebody who went to HR at a vitamins-and-supplements store about such an incident, and the guy was out within the month. Fox has lower standards than [unnamed supplement company].

  74. 74.

    Brachiator

    @Betty Cracker:

    I know a woman who used to work at Hooters. She tells a different story.

    Makes sense.

    Obviously, there are joints that pressure women employees to put up with behavior from customers that is demeaning or even criminal. There are other places, including some Hooters, that not only discourage bad behavior, but might break a guy’s hand, kick his ass and toss him out the back door.

  75. 75.

    Mandarama

    My sister and I have always thought that OF COURSE Hooters is a perfectly fine, family-oriented establishment. And we can prove it with our new restaurant filling a long-standing business void: Peckers! We will have a cartoon woodpecker as our mascot, and we will hire vigorously healthy young men only. Their strength and appearance is just part of our youthful appeal! They can wear comfortable Lycra biking shorts and UnderArmour shirts as a uniform. Our primary menu items will be hotdogs and brats, with choices from the “Little Weenie” to the “Whole Package.” We figure that will be a good appeal to families with kids, who usually love hotdogs.

    We are open to new ideas AND investors.

    *No dick pics from applicants, though, because we have Class.

  85. 85.

    Robert Sneddon

    letā€™s not leave out the Cerne Abbas Giant.

    A friend had a clock featuring an image of the Cerne Abbas Giant with a risible second hand. Well, not a hand as such, more an “indicator”.

  86. 86.

    Wapiti

    A couple years back I had jury duty. Some loser busted for public exposure, wanking while watching the women in a drive-up/walk-up latte stand.

    I don’t see much difference between the two cases, just that this one still needs to be proven.

  87. 87.

    Mandarama

    @germy: Well, damn, there’s nothing new under the sun. ?

    Jon Glaser was hilarious in that skit. He’ll always be Jeremy Jamm to me!

  93. 93.

    sharl

    A long time ago I heard an interview – I’m thinking it was probably This American Life – with a pimp, who described how he brought young women “into the business”. He basically said that he would offer a woman so much money to do one of his friends in the bedroom, and if she accepted, it was usually pretty easy to take it from there.

    I assume a similar dynamic is in play here. In Ailes’ case, even he had to be aware that his junk was not a thing of beauty, even if he could only view it in a full-length mirror (one woman’s description used the phrase “raw hamburger”…blech). But if a woman agreed to do…whatever…when being presented with the horrible organ, he would know he basically owned her services for some time to come. If and when her services became unnecessary or inconvenient, well that would be matter for HR and Legal to deal with. Bolling is a smaller fish, and with Daddy Roger now feeding the worms and Rupert’s kids apparently in charge, his continued employment may not be so certain, though I’m sure he’d get a fine buy-out (though certainly not as good as Bill O’Reilly’s).

  94. 94.

    A Ghost to Most

    Colorado GOP weighs whether to cancel its 2018 primary election, a move that would shut out unaffiliated voters

    Prop 108 would then allow Russpublicans to ratfuck the Dem primary.

    those fucking people

  97. 97.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Yashar Aliā€Verified account @ yashar 27m27 minutes ago
    Breaking: Per Fox News Spokesperson, Eric Bolling has been suspended. An investigation will be conducted by law firm Paul Weiss.

    He’s denied any “unsolicited” communications of that nature….

  98. 98.

    No Drought No More

    Also, And Lest we Forget: Before being busted by law enforcement, hillbilly heroin addict Rush Limbaugh had cruelly mocked Jerry Garcia in the immediate aftermath of that wonderful musician’s death, on account of his well known struggle with drug addiction. Needless to say Limbaugh has never seen fit to apologize, and never will. It’s not in him. He’s bad guy, the pied piper of America’s birdbrains, and a wretched excuse of a human being. He’s a typical republican, too, and what he shovels on a daily basis is more offensive than any dick-pics anyone might share..

  100. 100.

    JPL

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Let me guess… It didn’t happen, and if it did I don’t remember it happening. Now he’s saying he never sent “unsolicited” communication.
    No wonder why he is such a fan of the president.

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    I suspect that the atmosphere of a Hooters in California, where we have very strict workplace harassment laws and a manager could be fired for allowing customers to harass the waitresses, is very different from places like, say, Texas, which have very few workplace protections.

    I had two (female) friends who lived in Texas in the 90s who used to eat at Hooters because the wings were good and dirt cheap, and the waitresses gave them great service because they were so glad to escape an ass-pinching at at least one table.

  102. 102.

    Barry

    @Roger Moore:

    “I do like some of the comments Iā€™ve seen on Twitter: does that shit even work? Because it makes no sense to me that a woman who has no interest in you is suddenly going to change her mind when she sees a picture of your junk.”

    ‘Work’ in the sense that you get to make her look at the pictures, and she can’t do squat about it.

  103. 103.

    SiubhanDuinne

    NPR is reporting that Fox News has suspended Eric Bolling.

    Is our foxes learning?

  104. 104.

    Sunny raines

    fox news is of, by, and for puny white men. That is their business plan. They will never change. Inexcusable that a woman would take a job there.

  105. 105.

    "Guess who?"

    Oh, yeah? Well, all the ladies want to see pictures of MY dick, because I have the best dick, I can tell you that!

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