When I grew up in the evangelical ghetto good manners about all things sexual were the gold standard of both my evangelical upbringing and our ideas about what it meant to be a conservative. The thought that abuse of women, and sexually predatory antics would be defended by conservatives would have been as unthinkable as imagining Russian Communist leaders extoling the virtues of capitalism.
Had a 1950s or 1960s version of Bill O’Reilly or Roger Ailes (the former Fox News chairman) manifested in the news having sexually abused women, the right—and the religious right in particular—would have led the nation in loud angry denunciations.
Not anymore. What’s the “conservative” response been to the rash of Fox News-sexual predators? Silence.
“Fox Breaks Ties With Host Bill O’Reilly” was all the bastion of conservative “values” (rooted mostly in Roman Catholic-style pro-family tradition) the National Review could manage. As for Breitbart they rose to try and make sexual predation all about politics with “Activist Left Gets Monster Scalp.”
In other words Bill O’Reilly’s problem was that he’d been a victim of liberal activists.
Aren’t conservatives pro-decency anymore?
Then again with 81 percent of white evangelicals as the most solid Trump-voter bloc (other than KKK members) how can evangelicals lead in a rallying rejection of sexist behavior toward women from conservative media personalities and outlets? Their president is an unrepentant “P——grabber” who bragged he could do what he wanted to women because of his celebrity status.
A core value of conservatives like my preacher dad and missionary mom used to be their emphasis on personal responsibility and moral culpability.
After all a belief in a literal hell was part of the deal for the likes of woman abusers. Conservatives like my old friend William F. Buckley (Dad and him used to have tea together from time to time) said that a good society depended on people taking responsibility for their actions. For Buckley or my good personal friend the late Congressman Jack Kemp, every policy solution began and ended with each person acknowledging his or her personal responsibility.
Yet I see little to no admission of moral error from O’Reilly nor from Fox News. O’Reilly blamed others, and his victimization. He used to mock liberals as the “whiny left” when it came to blaming society for crimes by–say–black youths. O’Reilly said his “departure” was not his fault but the cost of being a media personality.
Nonsense.
William F. Buckley or someone like Tom Brokaw or Anderson Cooper are high-profile media males, and they have never been dogged with multiple sexual harassment accusations… and nor for that matter was the much-hated and hounded President Obama. And you know that if there had been even a hint of such behavior the right wing media would have redoubled its 8-year effort to lynch the first black president.
Ailes too never took responsibility for the rotten culture he created and sustained. And Fox News’ corporate rape-culture has not changed. It took them years to do anything about their in house molesters.
The fact is that American conservatism is anything but moral, conservative or even decent. It is sexist, violent, abusive and hates women.
Fox News’ embedded misogyny isn’t the exception. It is the rule. Period. And this Fox News leering brand of male libido-rape-culture “conservatism” must be exposed and then destroyed- mercilessly.
Please WATCH my video commentary on the sexism of the evangelicals… HERE
https://www.facebook.com/frank.schaeffer.16/videos/1016661855130587/
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[…] a new blog post, Schaeffer slams conservatives for tolerating and enabling a toxic culture of sexual harassment at Fox News, the flagship […]
In the fifties and sixties, women were kept quiet and men just winked at each other. So called moral people never expressed outrage because they never needed to know. The actual amount of boorish offensive behavior was just as great, but it was much easier to ignore.
[…] a new blog post, Schaeffer slams conservatives for tolerating and enabling a toxic culture of sexual harassment at Fox News, the flagship […]
I am in NO WAY a conservative, In fact, I’m a bleeding liberal, but today Sir, I have no problem in saying that I enjoyed reading your spot on commentary.
Bravo to you!
And to think father and son have both appeared at Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church
Misogynistic culture is likewise what rotted out the core of the 1960’s Counter-Culture movement. “Freedom,” for a certain kind of man (and occasional woman, too) equates with “acting out,” becoming indifferent to boundaries and other people’s rights and preferences. Media was a major force in feeding this sexual license mentality in the 60s, also, and — to take issue to what you say about the mainstream cultural norms of the post-war era — movies have been owned and managed by sexual predators since film and vaudeville merged during WWI. “Keeping the lid on” used to be the rule, not better morals or respect for other people. Our problem, socio-culturally, is the idea that “I can disrespect you and not pay a price for doing so.” It’s rooted in the concept that we are not all in this thing (life, the universe) together. Call it “God’s children” or call it “the Tao;” most of us do have a sense that we are all woven into a single fabric, but until our legal system is updated to reflect this fact (of physics, not just theory) — and enforced, by financial liability and cultural norms, from TOP to bottom, impartially and with an insistence on EVERYONE disclosing what we’re up to — then, the “smart money” remains on ignoring and/or denying this reality while grabbing all the pussy, perks and power that you can. This just won’t happen unless it’s joined to a material system that’s a great deal more egalitarian than the present, because the cost of telling the honest truth (in material terms) is, under the present system, way too overbalanced in favor of bulling through or keeping up a front: Everybody has to be more or less safe and secure (really God’s loved kids!) for it to be OK to admit when we are (or have been, or intend to be) quite wrong. Insecurity and intolerance need to be reduced and generosity and minding one’s own business (instead of finding fault in others), increased. That’s fellowship, right? Amen.
Hi, Frank,
I grew up in the Evangelical, conservative American Midwest, and I’m about your age. I don’t think the current attitude toward people like Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly is different now than it was when I was growing up. “Decent women,” by definition, did not work outside the home. Women who went to work, whether in a career or just a job to make a living, were “asking for it,” just like prostitutes.
Exceptions were made for women who worked in a family business (chaperoned by fathers, brothers, husbands, or located at home, like small family farmers), and for nurses and teachers. In the case of teachers and nurses, they attended all-women educational institutions and worked at mostly-women jobs until they got married.
Women who were not “decent” were not worthy of respect, so insulting and degrading comments were just statements of fact. Sexual assault on such women might be a lack of self-control, but not a moral lapse, because the women “asked for it.”
When I went to my state’s engineering and agricultural college, (86% male students), the veterinary school had a quota–they accepted 2 women a year (and 98 men). Professors in animal science used pictures of naked women marked up as cuts of meat, the same way cattle and hogs were marked. Engineering professors slipped slides of the Playmate of the Month into slideshows on bridges and buildings, “to see if anyone was awake.” These decent family men didn’t think they “did anything wrong.” Simply attending a marginally co-ed college was seen as “asking for it” by male students, by faculty, administrators, and local police. Women who “asked for it” had no cause for complaint, and the workplace was not much different in the sixties and seventies.
Quotas are illegal now, and sexual assault and harassment are taken more seriously in some places, but I think the sort of moral decency your parents exemplified has not ever been the norm. I think the Evangelical community stopped talking about it for a decade or two, but there’s a new readiness to identify women who are “asking for it.”
Hi Rebecca, Thank you for sharing a bit of your story. It rings true and overlaps my experience as one raised in a “godly” home by women and men you lived out the world you describe. Best, F