On the Fox News show “The Five,” in the course of a discussion of Ivanka Trump’s appearance at a conference in Berlin where  she was jeered  for defending her father’s record of supporting women, Fox News commentator Jesse Watters made the following comment in reference to the photo above:

I really liked the way she was speaking into that microphone.

Nice.

The degree to which Fox News is definitively exposed as a sexist, oppressive environment catering to over-aged sniggering frat boys where professional women both betray their gender and their self-respect by accepting paychecks to be abused, ogled and hit upon is inversely proportional to the time it takes for the network to fire this toxic asshole.

He made a fellatio reference regarding the President’s daughter, on the air, smiling broadly.  [Absurdly, news organizations are writing that “some commenters” are “interpreting Watters’ comment as a sexual innuendo.” Right: the commentators with eyes, ears, brains and integrity who aren’t paid by Fox News.] Then, after the predictable negative response (although Fox hosts apparently assume that all of their viewers are both mentally challenged and have been frozen in glaciers since 1956). Watters lied brazenly, telling BuzzFeed: “During the break we were commenting on Ivanka’s voice and how it was low and steady and resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ. This was in no way a joke about anything else.”

Sure, Jesse. So now we know you think we’re all stupid, and you’re a disgrace to your profession.

I want to salute my former colleague (he served on the board of my late theater company, The American Century Theater), conservative columnist John Podhoretz, who unleashed an unrestrained  barrage of appropriate venom on Watters via Twitter, writing…

Congratulations, Jesse Watters, you’re a disgusting pig as well as being a racist moron…Jesse Waters complains the Left doesn’t respect Ivanka Trump and then in front of 2.5 million people intimates Ivanka was blowing her mike….Jesse Watters is everything I loathe about everything…You know the good thing about Jesse Watters? Nothing….If I go to Hell, the only thing on my TV will be a show co-starring Jesse Watters and Dana Milbank…

After Watter’s Jumbo-esque denial, John tweeted,

You are so full of shit it’s coming out your ears, you disgusting creep.

I concur.

Imagine the complete lack of both ethics alarms and common sense required for Watters to make such a comment in the same week that Bill O’Reilly’s fall focused the spotlight—again—on the sick anti-woman culture at Fox News! This is a wonderful example of how, just as fish don’t know they are in water, and Watters doesn’t know he works in an environment where women are not respected, and because he works in such an environment, no longer knows what respecting women means—if he ever knew. There will be more examples of such conduct even if Fox News fires Watters immediately, until either Fox seriously addresses its ugly sexist culture, or the network is crippled by bad publicity and lawsuits.

UPDATE: From Redstate:

“Thursday morning, Watters announced he’s going on “vacation.”

That’s right. “The Five” couldn’t get a full week of programming in without losing somebody.

Said Watters in a statement:

“I’m going to be taking a vacation with my family, so I’m not going to be here tomorrow,” Watters said during his show, according to reports. “I’ll be back on Monday, so don’t miss me too much.”

So for the remainder of the week, as well as the weekend program, he’ll be off the Fox grid.

I can’t help but recall that before the axe fell for Bill O’Reilly, he took a “vacation,” too.

I’m betting that Watters will be back, not because he’s being given a pass. The network will not want to give the impression that the culture of misogyny is so engrained with Fox that they can’t go a full week without somebody saying or doing something offensive towards women, even after a major shakeup. They want people to believe that they’ve got things under control and Watters was just a hiccup.

Watters is probably going to spend his whole “vacation” in training seminars and getting his butt chewed on by executives with 21^st Century Fox.

If I’m wrong, the other alternative is Watters suddenly appears as O’Reilly’s wacky sidekick on his podcast.”

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Pointer: Mediaite