Some people see sexism, misogyny and homophobia everywhere. They are not everywhere — but they do exist. The Carlson brothers — Tucker and Buckley — provided a particularly gruesome and loathsome example last week.
One brother responded to a woman just doing her job with extreme objectification and porn-ification of that woman. The other brother thought this response was perfectly fine.
Both brothers should be ashamed — and they should feel a bit badly, too, for hurting the conservative cause just a little bit more among younger people and single women.
What happened? Well, what started the mess was that a person who works for former Crossfire star Tucker Carlson at his conservative Web site, the Daily Caller, wrote an article with a mistake about Mayor de Blasio. The author wrote that de Blasio wasn’t happy with President Obama’s infrastructure plan, when what the mayor said is that he is semi-happy.
One of the mayor’s media people, Amy Spitalnick, wrote to ask for a correction. The author of the piece responded with a respectful disagreement. When Spitalnick held her ground and provided more supporting evidence, an editor told her to stop being “whiny.” Spitalnick complained to Carlson about his staff’s unprofessional response.
It was Tucker Carlson — the boss, and the guy who sets the culture for the Web site — who decided that this was a good opportunity to defend the workplace against female whininess by lecturing a woman on, you know, her comportment.
What the editor had “complained about was your tone,” Tucker wrote to Spitalnick, “which, I have to agree, was whiny and annoying.”
Continuing “in the spirit of helpful correction,” Tucker said that “adults” write “cheerful” e-mails, “something to keep in mind.”
There are two problems here. First is the factual issue of whether Spitalnick was whiny and annoying. Nope — she was perfectly polite (she even said “please” twice, like all good little girls).
But what she didn’t do was back down. She kept quietly requesting her correction — and she was direct, firm and even blunt in doing so.
The second problem is that — yes, it’s true: In a man, this is called being assertive and doing your job. In a woman, it sometimes means that you’re rude and uncooperative.
Of course, a mature adult just ignores one instance of perceived rudeness, no matter the gender of the offender — it’s generally unproductive to escalate misunderstandings or bad moods. But it’s hard to imagine Carlson e-mailing his lecture on tone to a man.
They are by far not a majority, but there are still plenty of powerful men out there who expect women in the workplace to be flirty (but not, you know, slutty), cheerful, subservient and quiet. If the women aren’t like that, it probably means they are lesbians, sex addicts or frigid. Insane?
Consider how Tucker’s brother, Buckley, praised Tucker’s missive to Spitalnick to be more ladylike in his own e-mail (it’s not exactly clear why it takes so many grown men to deal with one unruly lady, but nevertheless).
“Whiny little self-righteous bitch,” Buckley said.
The rest of his response is unprintable in a family paper, because it involves subjecting Spitalnick — in the heads of the two brothers, at least — to degrading, submissive oral-sex images that come straight from watching far too much online smut (at least no one can get pregnant that way; Republicans’ birth-control problem solved!). Buckley then signed off with a lesbian slur.
What was Tucker’s response? He didn’t say that his brother has a poor tone and should be more polite and cheerful.
No, Buckley was just being “nice.” One supposes that womenfolk should be obsequiously grateful that the less famous Carlson brother sees them only as unwilling porn stars.
Most bad behavior is best ignored. But this isn’t boys will be boys — many men pointed out online that this behavior is extreme. Still, though, Tucker Carlson is a conservative figure. The Daily Caller is a big conservative Web site.
And so here we have a conservative celebrity — one who has written admiringly of the idea that unmarried women should be sexually virtuous — saying that it’s “nice” to treat a woman just doing her job as a mindless sexual device.
There’s no way to varnish it: The Carlson brothers behaved disgustingly and inexcusably. Their failure to express some public remorse is deviant — even in a porn-numbed culture.
And Republicans wonder why they have a problem with younger women voters. The answer isn’t to argue that “Democrats do bad things, too.” It’s to hold your own side to a higher standard.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.