This week, Bill O’Reilly protege Jesse Watters surprised and even angered some viewers by making a comment about Ivanka Trump that was grossly inappropriate. While watching a clip of Ivanka Trump speaking on a women’s panel in Germany, he turned to his co-hosts and said, "I really like how she was speaking into that microphone."
Watters live, on-air comment comes after all of the bad publicity and the rash of sexual harassment lawsuits aimed at Fox News and the badly behaved sexual predators it once (or still) employs. You’d think the man replacing a man who was fired for being a serial sexual harasser would be smarter than that, right? The backlash was swift and within mere hours, Watters had taken to Twitter to explain himself:
Ah! Makes total sense, right? Even though he never mentioned her voice, he totally wasn’t making a sexual comment about the microphone being a penis and liking what he saw. Nevertheless, last night Watters told his audience he was taking a previously unannounced vacation:
On Wednesday night he announced on "The Five" that he's going on vacation til next Monday... which means he's missing two days of his first week in prime time, plus his weekend show...
It was only two weeks ago his former boss announced he was also taking a surprise vacation, one he never returned from and was subsequently given a $25 million settlement to go on permanent vacation. Why won’t Fox News call these surprise vacations what they really are? These are suspensions and viewers deserve to know these men are being punished for their misogynistic behavior. If Fox News is serious about sending a message to employees, especially their female employees, and their audience as a whole that they are changing the culture and ridding the infotainment network of sexist, childish, harmful predator behavior, they have an obligation to make clear Watters was suspended for his inappropriate comment. It’s the right thing to do.
In the meantime, here’s a look back at O’Reilly and Watters have a good ol’ laugh about sexual harassment and political correctness.
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