During Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox News’ Outnumbered, reporter Jesse Watters was the “One Lucky Guy” on the panel. The conversation turned to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision. A clip of Hillary Clinton decrying the ruling was played during the segment. The clip shows Mrs. Clinton telling a large crowd in Aspen, CO that the decision created a slippery slope and could lead to companies and employers trying to further restrict their employees’ behaviors and choices. The panel of Fox women, as one would expect, claimed that Clinton was lying and that the Hobby Lobby decision would do no such thing.
However, things only got worse when Watters was allowed to respond. Watters, who is most known for his trollish ‘investigative’ pieces for The O’Reilly Factor (like Monday’s report where he was shown making sexist comments at the 2014 NOW conference), made sure to be as offensive as humanly possible when discussing Clinton’s statements and the Hobby Lobby case. Watters first spouted off some false equivalencies about guns and 2nd Amendment rights and overstated Clinton’s statements. At the same time, he also trotted out one of the new conservative memes that birth control only costs $9 at the drugstore. (Right-wingers are talking about ‘the pill’ when they mention this cost. Emergency contraception can cost $45 without insurance and an IUD, when factoring in exams and the procedure to insert it, can cost over $1,000.)
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Finally, Watters decided to paint all single women as lazy moochers on society. He pointed out that the vast majority of them voted for President Obama in 2012. He then called single women “Beyonce voters” who “depend on government because they’re not depending on their husbands.” He then declared that they want government to provide health care and contraception and that they like to complain about equal pay. Rather than receive any pushback from the all-woman panel, they all just basically laughed and told Watters he was right. Which is pretty much the way Fox News likes to portray women — deferential to the strong, opinionated white male.
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of Media Matters:
You have to love the outreach being done by conservatives in the wake of this decision. On Monday, far-right men rubbed this ruling in the faces of women everywhere, taking to Twitter and the airwaves to make offensively sexist statements. A day later, it appears that conservative males are still having a field day with this, going out of their way to let women, especially single women, know that the far-right came out on top Monday. In the end, though, Watters is just another example of an obnoxious right-wing man letting women know that the Republican Party has no room for them.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
