The smirk, the sideways glance, the sarcasm, the condescending touch of the shoulder, the painted on smile, the passive aggressive insults, the thin skin; these are the trademarks of a mean girl. Most people are familiar with mean girls from high school. They are the perky, pretty, well dressed girls who compliment you with their mouths and deride your Target clothes with their eyes. They are the girls who, with one flick of their acerbic tongues, can fill even the most accomplished students with shame. Mean girls strive for superficiality. Intelligence is a liability in their world.
One of the great things about graduating high school is that you get to leave the mean girls behind. It’s not that they disappear, it’s that as an adult, you aren’t trapped inside a school with them for eight hours a day. Well, I thought I’d left them behind. Then came the feminization of the Republican party. Republican women weren’t exactly a new phenomenon. In the 70s, the Republicans had mean women like Anita Bryant (a former beauty queen) and Phyllis Schlafly. But for the most part, the public face of the Republican party was middle-aged and older white men.
It started, I suppose, with Fox News. All news channels hire pretty women, but Fox News is famous for their own brand of pretty women, blondes who sell lies and propaganda from behind their perfectly white smiles and super short skirts. It’s clear that the goal of Fox News isn’t to inform, it’s to attract a certain *ahem* demographic, one who prefers to get their news while giving the cerebral cortex a rest. While most of their “newscasters” and “reporters” aren’t overtly mean, they have a stable of correspondents to cross that line. They have mean girls like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. Not all Republican women are mean girls, but it seems that all mean girls are Republican.
Mean girls became a topic of national discourse during the 2008 Presidential elections when Sarah Palin entered the scene with her nasally voice and snarky comments aimed at anyone with an IQ above 80. She even seemed to treat her own base with the type of contempt that is only visible to people experienced with mean girls. It didn’t work. The McCain/Palin ticket lost badly, especially with women, and Sarah Palin is all but off the radar.
Now, the Republican party is awash with mean girls. There is perhaps none so obvious as The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck. While Ingraham/Coulter/Malkin, and arguably Palin, only sort of attempt to hide their meanness, Hasselbeck is perhaps the worst kind of mean girl. She attempts a veneer of the sweet girl next door, but underneath is pure meanness and pure narcissism, coupled with a very thin skin, which couldn’t have been more apparent on Tuesday’s show with guest Bill Maher.
I’m not always a fan of Maher. I do find his kind of old school ‘edginess’ to sometimes border on sexism, homophobia and racism, but he is a comedian and he is famous for being “politically incorrect.” Unlike a mean girl, Bill Maher doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. He does offend, and like countless comedians before him, he’s proud of that fact.
At issue was a comment Maher made on his February 4th episode of HBO’s Real Time. The show was right after CBS’s Lara Logan was arrested and detained during the Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square: “New rule: now that Hosni Mubarak has released Lara Logan, he must put her intrepid hotness on a plane immediately. In exchange, we will send Elisabeth Hasselbeck.”
Several days after this joke, Bill Maher and the world learned that Logan was brutally raped.
For Hasselbeck, it was personal. Maher was asked about the Penn State scandal and essentially said that when you have a bunch of men together, they tend to do bad things and that women are a moderating influence. Hasselbeck, wearing a mean girl uniform super short skirt, took this as a moment to awkwardly dominate the interview by talking about the Lara Logan joke.
After reading the joke, the audience laughed. Hasselbeck responded that, ”That’s fine if you want to laugh, but I sit with the best comedians … you can’t tell me I’m wrong when I say that wasn’t that funny.” Apparently, knowing comedians makes her the judge of all that is funny.
Maher responded that he is a comedian and that his show attracts a different audience. He also said, “You are a public figure. It was not aimed at you personally, but when you are a public figure you are out there and you are fodder for comedians to make comments.”
What Hasselbeck and most Republicans fail to understand is that a joke about a person who happens to be a woman, is not anti-woman. On the other hand, holding back on pointing out someone’s absurdity because they are a woman is sexist. Hasselbeck is a public figure. She needs to develop a thick skin and embrace even negative publicity.
Even Barbara Walters found Hasselbeck annoying, ”I went through years of Baba Wawa and I survived,” she quipped.
Walters tried to get the interview back on track by talking about Herman Cain:
WALTERS: Okay. Herman Cain, you saw him this morning. You see the political candidates. Give me your overall view of him particular, and in general as a candidate?
MAHER: Well, first of all, I think it’s great that the scandal on Herman Cain has moved away from sex to the fact that he’s an idiot where it belongs. I misjudged the Republicans – they will vote for a black man if he’s a complete imbecile. I didn’t realize that.
WALTERS: How many people have we just offended? Okay, go ahead.
JOY BEHAR: He doesn’t care.
MAHER: I don’t care. But it’s true. I mean, you saw that tape. You know, I mean, it’s only a few days removed from the Rick Perry where he was the idiot of the week. I mean, you have to realize that the Republican Party doesn’t care about knowledge or knowing things.
HASSELBECK (bringing it back to her): That’s untrue, Bill. You know, because you’re so brilliant. Wow, I actually feel smarter sitting next to you.
MAHER: Really? I feel like I’m in high school sitting next to you.
HASSELBECK: How long ago was that?
Really, an age joke? The interview finally got back on track at about the five-minute mark, but even then, it’s worth watching the video if for nothing else, Hasselbeck’s facial expressions. Like Bill Maher, I felt like I was back in high school.
It’s still not funny and it’s still sexist, constantly remarking on women’s appearances and saying even if one is a respected reporter and one is a babbling airhead, they are interchangeable because they are both blond and white and pretty. It was a stupid joke that also did a disservice to Logan.
If you want to remain edgy in comedy, the days are coming where the old fallbacks on race, gender, sexual preference, and whatever other stereotypes aren’t going to cut it because it’s old and lame. As much as this guy gets paid, he can afford something more than cheap laughs.
I was appalled by the many insults that Elizabeth Hasselbeck heaped onto Bill Maher on 11-16-2011 during his interview on The View talk show. She was rude, mean, and dead wrong about Maher. Hasselbeck said that his joke WAS NOT funny. I saw the show when he talked about Hasselbeck, and I laughed out loud, as did the entire audience. Hasselbeck was “out of control” and made The View appear to be a horribly condescending show. Barbara Walters attempted to intervene a couple of times, but Hasselbeck just ignored her. Hence, Ms. Walters was insulted by Hasselbeck too. What a disgrace that Hasselbeck had disrespected her own boss, who is the show’s creator. Hasselbeck should be reprimanded for her awful and unacceptable behavior. I hope that she’ll be punished soon.
I stopped watching when Hasselbeck treated Rosie O’Donnell so badly that day and Rosie quit. I was not totally with Rosie’s point of view, but I thought Hasselbeck was her usual rude self. Who wants to watch a television show where someone starts talking loudly to drown out someone else whose opinion she disapproves or dislikes? She refuses to make her point and shut the F up! Instead she verbally beats up those with whom she disagrees. I’d rather watch Jerry Springer Show – not nearly as mean.
You say several reasons for why you don’t always like Bill Maher, but that’s what makes me love him. I know him to joke and kid where jokes and kidding is deserved, but others are afraid to do it because, as you just admit, they hold back because it’s a woman, or a black person, or etc. and that’s actually sexist or bigoted. I’ve never found myself offended by him, but constantly impressed by him. Not one episode of Real Time goes by that doesn’t amaze me at least twice. We need to be unafraid to speak when we’re not hateful, and those who still find offense and decide to assume someone’s hateful because of a necessary joke is just doing harm to the sake of open discussion in this country.
Not everything he says is funny. Maher’s adoring fans watch his show and go to see hoping to hear something funny and are ready to laugh at anything he says. She was right to confront him. He was over the top with what he said about the sexual assault of the reporter. He was incredibly insulting when he said that Elisabeth should take the reporter’s place and be brutally raped as well . . . ostensibly because she is a republican? Suggesting that a woman be raped, or making fun of someone who has been sexually battered, is never funny, under any circumstances. At least it is not the those of us who are rational. He really doesn’t tell jokes. He says angry mean spirited things about conservatives and his equally hateful followers think he is funny; presumably because they see the world as being the awful place that he conceptualizes it to be. I wish it weren’t so, but it is pathetic how far we have fallen.
At the time Bill Maher made the joke, no one knew about the rape. That info came out about 10 days later.
Thank you… you beat me to the comment! LOL
Bill NEVER said any such thing. He merely implied that they should take her away. As Wendy points out, no one even KNEW what had happened to the reporter at the time he said that, so you IGNORING that fact simply proves that you have closed your eyes to the truth in favor of what you prefer to believe. Hasselbeck is one of the most annoying women on TV. She’s the reason that I don’t watch The View.
By the way, speaking of hateful, did you read the article today where the President of the Young Republicans club at a college in Austin, TX (little blonde bobblehead girl) got in a TON of trouble and might face legal repercussions for a tweet she made to her fellow Republicans just before Obama’s visit? Apparently she told them, “As tempting as it is, don’t shoot him, y’all.” The Republican VICE President said there was nothing wrong with what she said by implying that it would be “tempting” to assassinate the President of the United States. When confronted with her statement by a news crew, she just giggled and said it must be a slow news day. She has NO IDEA why her statement was taken as something horrible. THAT’S how far we’ve fallen. (She’s lucky the secret secret didn’t slap her into handcuffs IMMEDIATELY.)
I personally hear that sort of ignorant, hateful speech against liberals and the President EVERY SINGLE DAY. So, please put your “victim” card away when someone like Bill Maher says something about Republicans that’s HALF that bad. And don’t’ put words into the mouths of people when they DIDN’T say those words. We, his “equally hateful followers” are pretty tired of sitting back and just taking the abuse that comes at us from the right.
Make that secret service… not secret secret
You seem to be reaching for reasons to dislike Bill Maher. I don’t agree with every thing he says, but I respect his ability to see the truth through all the lies and not hide behind a thin veil of ‘correctness.’
If you had actually read and understood the entire story, you would realize that Maher never said anything about the sexual assault of the reporter, because that fact didn’t come to light until a few days after his comment. As a result, your statement that “He was incredibly insulting when he said that Elisabeth should take the reporter’s place and be brutally raped as well” is incorrect, erroneous, and as such, moot.
Hasselbeck comes off as more smug than Maher, which is a very difficult thing to accomplish, as smug as Maher can be at times. At least Maher has some facts on his side of the argument, whereas Hasselbeck just has bitchy barbs and condescending comments that make her look like every dumb, conservative Kool-Aid gulping Republican fool who shouts from the rooftops about how Obama is a socialist, secret Muslim from Kenya.
Bottom line on this is that Hasselbeck behaved extremely unprofessionally and was intentionally incredibly rude to Maher, who was a GUEST of the whole show, not just of hers. She made a complete ass of herself, which is nothing new. She does that daily. I just hope she was reprimanded and told to knock it off, or else lose her job. Then again, if Hasselbeck were to get fired, she’d somehow find a way to make it Obama’s fault. That’s just how Republicans roll – nothing they do is wrong, but they try to take credit for every good thing that the left has accomplished.
Hasselbeck, once again, proves one of life’s great truths – It only takes one Republican to ruin a perfectly delightful, intelligent conversation.