One of these is a Fox News Anchor … the other is retired. I miss Brit Hume! I miss Fox News! What Fox is now offering is both transparent and insulting.
Oh, I want a girl like the girls on Fox News
Everyone is beautiful, anyone you choose.
Whoever does the hiring knows how to light my fuse
I want a girl like the girls on Fox News.
– “The Girls on Fox News” by Austin Cunningham
Somewhere along the way, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch spent a weekend together watching Basic Instinct and came up with a new business model: Sharon Stone reading the news.
I don’t know about you but I’ve always preferred watching news without feeling that I need a roll of singles and a two drink minimum.
There have been a flurry of articles on the phenomenon that are the “Fox News Babes,” pointing out that, as ratings rise, so do their hemlines. There are more than a half a dozen websites, Facebook pages, and YouTube videos, as well as a country song devoted to The Girls on Fox News, but something tells me that no father ever dreams that his daughter is going to grow up to be a junkie, a prostitute, or a Fox News info-tart.
Look, I love beautiful women but if I really want to mix news with scantily clad women, I’ll read the Wall St. Journal at Heavenly Bodies, or better yet, have Scarlett and Porsche read it to me. Is that too harsh? I guess it depends on whose Fox is being gored.
Unless the board of Frederick’s of Hollywood is discussing a merger with Victoria’s Secret, no woman enters a business meeting dressed like a Fox-Tart. Ivana Trump is truly a beautiful woman with both brains and beauty, yet you would never see her enter the boardroom looking like she’s hopping between 1 Oak and the Kiss and Fly. She enters retaining her dignity, her femininity and her fashion sense and she’s taken seriously.
“Brains and beauty” will be the argument from my detractors and there are many Fox personalities that have both, but do we really have to settle for news that is delivered and analyzed by a vintage cigarette girl or a homecoming queen in a “Naughty Nurse” costume?
Ann Coulter, who often does don the little black dress, is immune to the Fox-tart stereotype on the basis of her weighty ideas and a wit that’s sharper than her 4” stilettos, but women like Ann are the exception, not the rule, but could someone like the brilliant Gertrude Himmelfarb even get a spot on the network these days? Maybe, Greta still has a show. And if there are two things that you’ll never see on Fox News, it’s Greta in a mini or Megyn in a pants suit.
Greta works behind a desk that just might be a remnant of the Berlin Wall with her cameramen instructed never to pan below the Mason/Dixon line; whereas Megyn works from a champagne glass, her legs usually leading every segment.
If they really were “Fair and Balanced,” they would have the men dress like Chippendales. Hannity could probably pull it off, and Shep would add to both the “lonely housewife” and the “confused and questioning” demographic, but I tremor to think of Cavuto, O’Reilly and Beckel – sans shirt and bow tied.
Unless you believe that Kristol, Krauthammer and Bret Baier would command the same respect – sleeveless, showing leg, and covering their junk with but a postage stamp, the hypocrisy is as clear as the insult. Rupert Murdoch, the man that birthed the Page Three girls, has chosen to spice up his network by giving the Pussycat Dolls an internship.
I expect the groupies to come out of the woodwork arguing that they only tune in to Fox for the content and that it’s probably just a coincidence that The Five always stations Kimberly Guilfoyle on the edge closest to the camera; but then again, most men read Playboy for the articles.
Conservative toadies dwelling in their mother’s basement may be partial to a glimpse of stocking in discussions on the effectiveness of the Laffer curve, but those of us who don’t have Porky’s and American Pie stashed under our mattress want our news to at least live up to the standards of Ludacris – “a lady in the street and a freak in the bed.”
As a viewer who used to have Fox News on around the clock, after the ousting of Glenn Beck, I rarely tune in anymore. I’m not saying that MS-CNN is a viable alternative, but once O’Reilly became Ron Burgundy and Rove and Christie became the voice of the GOP, it was time for a membership to The Blaze. What’s so disappointing is that the majority of these women really do have something to add to the discussion only to show up on set with everything but the stripper pole.
If at this point you question my point, go to Google and type in the name of your favorite “Fox News Babe” and then pause and see how Google fills in the ellipsis. Do the words “Legs,” “Body,” “Hot” or “Photo-shoot” follow the name? I rest my case!
I’m sure there are more than these exceptions, but Heather Nauert and Dana Perino are at least two who haven’t gotten the Fox-tart memo. Both of them act and dress like professionals and they are both stunningly beautiful and extremely bright.
And at least the Fox website has gotten the message. It used to be that every time I surfed the “Fox Nation,” their “Pic of the Day” would showcase Kate’s “Uptons,” Kim’s money-maker or Miley’s latest twerk-a-billy. If you wanted the news of the day, you had to ignore the peep show in the right column.
Again, it’s not that I don’t love a beautiful woman, but the breaking news that “Kate Middleton Looks Radiant in a Little Black Dress,” does little to comfort a man who is watching Barack Obama burn his country to the ground while Republicans toast marshmallows.
Why does Fox have such high ratings? Consider their opposition. Fox is still the only watchable news on television but that doesn’t excuse its slide into pandering mediocrity.
