so in the interest of image fairness(sic) the author of the original criticism gets top billing because it's all about style isn't it
Jonathan Chait opines on the meta-criticism of newsreaders on one US news channel, and
in other news, a Google exec dies of a heroin overdose administered by a sex worker. Such is life in the fast lane of the capitalist media's corporate superstructure.
Apparently another subject you’re not supposed to mention is the fact that Fox News has a lot of blonde female on-air personalities.
Fox News personality Kirsten Powers has written a column entitled “The Left’s war on Fox women.”
Kirsten "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" Powers
I turn out to be a soldier in this war. In 2010, at The New Republic, I wrote a short item consisting, in its entirety, of the following image and text:
Everything you need to know about Fox News is captured in this screenshot: the American flags, the fear-mongering image in the upper-right corner, the blond anchor with a facial expression that somehow combines sneering with absolute terror.
I headlined the item, “The Quintessential Fox News Image.”
I find it self-explanatory. Powers finds it offensive. “Kelly wasn’t sneering or looking frightened, though she is blonde and is on Fox which to the illiberal left means she’s a nameless 'blond anchor' and candidate for being objectified and dehumanized," she writes.
As Chait points out if it's about
the male gaze it's Roger Ailes's
Now, does the disproportionate occurrence of blonde hair among female Fox News personalities have any bearing on the substance of their journalism (or journalism-esque statements)? Not to me. It does, however, matter a great deal to Fox News. Roger Ailes, as my colleague Gabriel Sherman recorded extensively in his book The Loudest Voice in the Room, pays minute attention to the appearance and attractiveness of his female on-air talent:
Anchor Bob Sellers remembered Ailes once calling the control booth. 'I was doing the weekend show with Kiran Chetry. He called up and said, 'Move that damn laptop, I can't see her legs!' …
"He had admiration for her legs," a senior executive said. In one meeting, Ailes barked, "Tell Catherine I did not spend x-number of dollars on a glass desk for her to wear pant suits."
Around this time, he also considered poaching CNBC star Maria Bartiromo. "Roger passed on her," one executive involved in the talks said. "He wished she hadn't gained so much weight. He said she went from looking like Sophia Loren to Mamma Leone.