"Call me Caitlyn," the upcoming cover of
Vanity Fair says, over a picture of the woman who became famous as Olympic champion Bruce Jenner and had more recently been prominent on reality television as
Keeping up with the Kardashians' husband and stepfather. Jenner's decision to come out as transgender has been heavily covered by the media, but the
Vanity Fair cover represents the first time she has made the name Caitlyn public and asked to be referred to with female pronouns.
Leave it to Fox News to turn this into an occasion for mockery and ignorance.
Practically squealing in his effort to convey how totally ca-razy this is, Neil Cavuto opens by asking "What the hell is going on?" But what's going on isn't information you'd learn in the segment that follows, with reporter Dagen McDowell explaining that:
Well, that's how you transition Bruce Jenner—let's give him credit. HE is the only person on planet Earth who knows how to one-up his most famous stepdaughter, Kim Kardashian. [...] That's he unveiled his new identity, um, kind of, um, leaving his male identity behind with Caitlyn, I mean, he figured out an interesting way to spell it right now C-A-I-T-L-Y-N and Bruce, now Caitlyn, says, this is part of the transitioning, leaving that male identity behind, will use female pronouns from now on, but it isn't a [makes squeaking noise] ... what about the outfit? It's a white, satin, corset. Very Playboy bunny-esque, isn't it, Neil?
At which Neil Cavuto both pretended not to know what a Playboy bunny outfit looks like and ensured that viewers know how uncomfortable he is looking at Caitlyn Jenner, while McDowell teased him with a "He looks hot—or, she looks hot, rather." Hey! Look at that. Dagen McDowell gets the right pronoun after using the wrong one more than half a dozen times.
The whole tone of the segment is of pop-eyed disbelief, as if transgender people were some brand-new phenomenon no one ever heard of, rather than part of the world we live in and have lived in for some time. Somehow even the perfectly ordinary name Caitlyn comes in for disbelief, as if merely by association with its bearer's transition it's become exotic.
It's not just obnoxious and hateful. It's gleefully obnoxious and hateful, for its own sake.
(Video below the fold.)