Fox News’ gritty 3 AM talk show Red Eye has been described as “being at a bar with your friends and hearing all their opinions” — if your friends are all the kind of people who want to be Fox News contributors enough that they’ll take the 3 AM slot. Wednesday morning, the Red Eye gang tackled the topic of Caitlyn Jenner, and the results were fairly disastrous.
Matt Welch, editor in chief of Reason Magazine, segued into the discussion by attacking “this weird like Twitter mob thing” that happens: “Bruce becomes Caitlyn Jenner, then there’s a thousand people saying whatever the mores are right now, which will be totally different a month from now, everyone has to follow it right now or else they’re all human monsters.” These mores likely refer to the simple acts of respecting Jenner’s preferred name and pronouns, mores this particular panel had not yet adopted.
Comedian Tom Shillue jumped in to say, “I keep calling him Bruce and people act like I’m trying to be politically incorrect.” After commentator Andy Levy tried to correct him, Shillue persisted: “Andy, if you changed your name, I would forget and I would keep calling you Andy, but it wouldn’t be politically incorrect.” He then added, “I dated a girl named Bruce; she was fantastic,” but comedian Mark Normand pointed out, “That was a guy. You were a top.” Normand, continuing the panel’s use of male pronouns, offered, “Bruce Jenner, look! He looks great now. You got to admit he looks good. She looks great, but is it worth the paycut?”
Before the conversation ended, there had also been a suggestion that children might somehow be at risk from transgender people in the restroom, an insistence that bathroom stalls should no longer have gaps at the bottom, and a few references to Larry Craig’s “wide stance” and foot-tapping.
Watch the segment:
Beneath all of the crassness, however, were a few nuggets of wisdom in the segment. There is truth to Normand’s point that transgender people experience not only wage disparities but outright discrimination in the workplace — such that they’re significantly more likely to live in poverty. Host Jedediah Bila said that she doesn’t have any concerns. “I personally couldn’t care less who’s in the stall next to me,” she explained, “as long as I don’t have to see what you’re doing in there.” Shillue pointed out that because parents generally accompany young children to the restroom anyway, it doesn’t make sense that they’d somehow be at risk. And Levy concluded the conversation by suggesting, “If we can use conservatism’s evolution on gay issues as a guide, in about 30 years, most of y’all will stop using the transgendered [sic] as a punchline.”
When Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover photo was first published online Monday, Fox News reporter Dagen McDowell repeatedly misgendered her, and Neil Cavuto muttered, “Rome, final days. But that’s fine.”