The Men Of Morning Joe Mansplain Women Issues To Mika

Filed in National by on October 18, 2012

How Mika didn’t pull a Tagg Romney is beyond me.  This morning Mika brought up the fact that Mitt Romney lied about the binders.  Here’s the lie:

ROMNEY: And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men.” They said, “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.” And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?”

And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.

I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.

Mika pointed out that this was a lie.

Whoa!  That was simply too much for the men of Morning Joe.  How dare she bring up something that the men declared unimportant; how dare she point out that Mitt lied again.  Joe Scarborough declared the women in binders topic ridiculous and desperate – which tells me that he’s afraid of it.  Mark Halperin stated that “that’s not what this election should be about” and how they “shouldn’t be parsing individual statements said live during a debate” and asked, wistfully, if we could just talk policy for the next three weeks.  I intend to hold him to that.  Let’s start with his policy filled twitter feed and move onto his policy filled blog.

But the comment that actually had me stopping in my tracks was this bit of mansplaining by Joe Scarborough.  Joe was scolding Mika, telling her how abortion wasn’t a big issue outside of Los Angelos and Manhattan, that most women are concerned about the economy.  Here’s who Joe cited to show how unimportant abortion is in this election:

“I talk about the waitresses.  I could talk about the single mom who’s a school teacher in Des Moines who’s raising three kids on her own.”

Take a good look at that example and ask yourself if maybe, just maybe, controlling whether or not she has a fourth child will effect her economy.  Right there – there’s the disconnect.  Access to birth control and abortion are economic issues to women.

The men of Morning Joe are a clueless embarrassment.  All of them have cited things like gas prices, the cost of college, electric bills, etc. as economic issues facing the middle class, but they suddenly refuse to put having/raising a child and the cost of contraception into their economic cost analysis?  Are they really this stupid?

Keep talking about Mitt’s “women in binders” comment because, judging by their outraged reaction and over-the-top rudeness this morning, it’s resonating.

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A stay-at-home mom with an obsession for National politics.

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  1. The War On Women « kavips | October 20, 2012
  1. cassandra_m says:

    Does anyone think that Joe Scarborough is talking to waitresses or single moms about abortion or economics or whatever?

    And Halperin not wanting to be in the “binders” conversation was choice. He actually said this in defense — “I don’t think that we should be parsing individual statements in a live debate”. O RLY? This is Mark Halperin talking — one of the worst pundits going and one of the most married to the narrative of the day. He can’t have the career he has had without focusing on parsing statements in any context.

    Mika had a great point about this story showing that Mitt’s interest in women’s issues is awfully thin if he had to make up a story about how he did this in the past. Unfortunately Scarborough and Halperin couldn’t engage Mike on her concerns, then could just condescend to her.

  2. V says:

    Joe talking to Mika about anything is routinely a reason i scream at my tv before 8am. He’s so condescending to her sometimes that I have to put on the weather channel. The only thing the show allows her to talk about are 1) childhood obesity 2) women in the workplace and 3) her Daddy. Of course she isn’t helping posing like a burlesque dancer on tables.
    http://jezebel.com/5942572/vanity-fair-photoshoot-features-mika-in-bizarre-tabletop-dancer-pose
    the “liberal fox news” indeed.

  3. V says:

    the first comment that article pretty much totally encapsulates my feelings about Mika:

    I would say something about this, but Joe just interrupted me to talk about his fleece jacket and this one thing that happened this one time when he was still in Congress, and then he forgot I was here while he and the rest of the men talked about sports and politics. Maybe I’ll be able to chime in later when some lady shows up to discuss “work-life balance” or some other lady-centric issue. Or if my father, the former Secretary of State, shows up to draw attention to me. Hold on — I’ve got to go call my dad.

  4. cassandra_m says:

    Dick Polman over at Newsworks provides the right clue to the guys who think this is no big deal. I’m sympathetic to this point:

    And if, by his own (false) telling, he had to gin up “binders full of women” at the outset of his tenure, what does that say about him? The guy had been in the business world for several decades; hadn’t he worked with any women, enough to have a list of his own? Apparently not.

  5. heh, yeah, V, that photo is insane. Wimin’s got a seat at the table amounts to a pussy-shot on the tabletop….

  6. socialistic ben says:

    It’s pictures like that that make it so i can have no sympathy for Mika on that show. She really seems to relish her role as “poor me”. Not at all the way a female co-host should be treated… not at all deserving of her job.

  7. pandora says:

    It just astounds me that the money women pay out for birth control, pregnancy and a child is not considered part of the “real” economy. It’s like Joe and Co. think women use Monopoly money.

  8. anon says:

    Admitting that birth control and aborton are an issue for over half of the US population means that eventually they’ll have to admit that they’re on the wrong side of the issue.

  9. V says:

    These are the same people that ignore arguments that allowing gay marriage will be a boom for the local economy. Because the wedding industrial complex totally isn’t a thing.

    Everything needs to fit in a particular issues box you guys. AND ONLY THAT BOX.

  10. jaym says:

    For starters, Obama claims that Republicans have waged a “war on women” because they won’t support subsidizing birth control in Obamacare, a position many women in America actually agree with. He also claims that no one has done more to advance women in the workplace than his administration. But what he doesn’t tell women is that female employees on his staff are paid 18% less than their male peers, or that women account for more than 90% of the job losses that have occurred since Obama took office.

    http://www.policymic.com/articles/6859/president-obama-s-war-on-women-hypocrisy-female-white-house-employees-paid-18-less-than-men

  11. liberalgeek says:

    Or you could look at female unemployment over the past 5 years…

  12. Jason330 says:

    Obama claims that Republicans have waged a “war on women” just because they won’t support subsidizing birth control… and just because they want to overturn Lilly Leadbetter….and just because they want to force every woman to carry every pregnancy to term… and just because they think trans-vaginal ultrasound should be used to scare women out of having premarital sex… and just because he doesn’t think that women lie about being raped in order to get abortions.

    Where did this crazy idea that there is a GOP war on women ever come from?

  13. heragain says:

    Okay, everything’s wrong about that picture but…
    seriously Sweet pumps. 😉

  14. SussexAnon says:

    Add to Jasons post:

    …and because the GOP believes the HPV vaccination will lead to more premarital sex.

  15. Romney was a condescending ass and we’re not supposed to mention it. Every woman watching noticed how surprised Romney was that there were a bunch of qualified women and he didn’t know any of them. I love that his idea of equal pay was letting women leave earlier to cook for the family.