Fox News host Megyn Kelly took fellow host Lou Dobbs and Fox contributor Erick Erickson to task for their anti-women, anti-gay comments about a Pew poll which found that in 40 percent of U.S. households with children, women are the “breadwinners.”
“What makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and made you scientist in chief?,” Kelly began, as she took Erickson out to the woodshed for a well-deserved verbal “beating.”
“Now, there is data, in the scientific community, to suggest that children of homosexual couples who are happily married and good parents fare no worse than children of heterosexual couples, and there’s plenty of data to suggest that children of working moms — as opposed to stay-at-hme moms — wind up just as healthy and able to thrive in society than the children of stay-at-home mothers,” Kelly pointed told Erickson.
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Erickson then went on to use the flawed and disgraced Regnerus study as supposed proof of his claims that gay parents are bad parents. Erickson claimed the “left has tried to undermine” the study, not noting that it’s fatally flawed.
Just this week, the Southern Poverty Law Center released an interview with the chief reviewer of the Regnerus study, who called it “deeply flawed†and called Regnerus himself “disgraced.â€
Erickson claimed he’s “not judging” families with working moms — to which Kelly interjected: “You are judging them.”
“Megyn, I don’t view it as judging, I view it as a statement of fact,” Erickson responded — which sums up his world view entirely.
“Just because you have people who agree with you doesn’t mean it’s not offensive,” Kelly added.
“I don’t think I’m an ’emo liberal’ and I don’t describe myself as a feminist but I will tell you I was offended by your piece nonetheless. I didn’t like what you wrote one bit and I do think you’re judging people. To me you sound like somebody’s who’s judging but wants to off as ‘I’m not I’m not I’m not, now let me judge judge judge. And by the way it’s science it’s science it’s science it’s fact fact fact.'”
“I have a whole list of studies that say your science is wrong and your facts are wrong.”
Kelly then turned her attention to Dobbs, and slammed him for his comments linking declining marriage rates, increasing divorce rates, and a failed war on drugs to working women. “Why are you attributing that to women in the workforce?,” Kelly demanded to know.
Kelly turned her ire back to Erickson.
“American Psychological Association, 2010 study. According to a review of fifty years of research. ‘Children whose mothers work are no ore likely than children whose mothers stay at home…. Your fact, and your science, Erick, is not supported by the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Columbia University study, University of North Carolina study — I mean, why are we supposed to take your word for it, Erick Erickson’s science, instead of all these experts?”
Erickson claimed all those studies were “politically motivated.”
“In this country in the ’50s and ’60s there were huge, huge numbers of people that believed that the children of interracial marriages were biologically inferior and that is why it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in some states in the country up until 1967,” Kelly told Erickson. “And they said it was science and fact if you were the child of a black father and white mother or vice versa you were inferior and you were not set up for success. Tell that to Barack Obama.”
Kelly’s takedown of her two male colleagues was rare, and epic. Kelly has stood up for good American values before on Fox, risking her credibility with their hard right viewership, but this was historic.
You can thank her on Twitter.
Hat tip: Think Progess