I Don’t Think They’re “Friends”

From THE IMPROPER:

Fox News loudmouth Bill O’Reilly is taking on actress Jennifer Aniston, claiming her recent remarks about motherhood are damaging to 12- and 13-year-olds who may get the idea that they don’t need a husband to start a family.

O’Reilly was reacting to recent comments by Aniston in which she said there’s nothing wrong with an unmarried woman wanting to raise a child without a man.

Original DVD cover

“Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child,” she said while promoting her new movie “The Switch.”

…snip…

“Times have changed and what is amazing is that we have so many options these days, as opposed to our parents’ days when you can’t have children because you have waited too long,” she added.

Aniston clearly wasn’t directly her comments at teens. Rather she was referring to older women like herself and her character in the movie, who may be considering having a child in their 40s.

But that didn’t stop O’Reilly from exploiting the issue.

“She’s throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that, ‘Hey you don’t need a guy. You don’t need a dad.’ That is destructive to our society,” he shouted.

“Jennifer Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her. But she can’t hire a dad. Dads bring a psychology to children that in this society is under emphasized. Men get hosed all day long in the parental arena,” he added.

Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson agreed. “She is glamorizing single parenthood,” she said.

“Any man who leaves their children is not a man. Let’s make that perfectly clear. But the fathers that do try hard are under appreciated and diminished by people like Jennifer Aniston,” O’Reilly added.

Any man who leaves their children is not a man? Will you mention that to Newt Gingrich when he’s on your show next time, BillO? After all, he left his children, and their mother had to go to a church to get food for them, because Newtie wouldn’t give her any child support after he hooked up with his mistress.

(Video at THE IMPROPER link)

Everything old is new again. From TIME (June 1, 1992):

IF FOR NOTHING ELSE, DAN QUAYLE DESERVES POINTS for audacity. In modern America taking on a popular TV character, even a fictional one, is politically more precarious than taking a clear stand on a substantive campaign issue. And yet the Vice President dared to argue last week in a San Francisco speech that the Los Angeles riots were caused in part by a “poverty of values” that included the acceptance of unwed motherhood, as celebrated in popular culture by the CBS comedy series Murphy Brown. The title character, a divorced news anchorwoman, got pregnant and chose to have the baby, a boy, who was delivered on last Monday’s episode, watched by 38 million Americans. “It doesn’t help matters,” Quayle complained, when Brown, “a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman” is portrayed as “mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘life-style choice.’ ”

Quayle, aides explained, meant to “stir a debate” over “family values” and Hollywood’s treatment of them.

…snip…

[…] critics suspected that the Vice President’s remarks fit into a calculated strategy to suggest that L.A.’s rioters, who were mostly black and Hispanic, have in common with feminists and other Democrats a shoddier moral standard than nice people (who therefore should vote Republican). But Quayle denied any such intention, and the subsequent flip-flopping by the White House looked anything but calculated.

Hmmm, too conspiracy-theoryish to think that this has something to do with Ben Quayle, Dan Potato-With-An-E Quayle’s son, running for Congress in Arizona?  By the way, have you heard about little Benny?  From POLITICO:

Republican congressional candidate Ben Quayle’s glossy campaign photos and polished talking points paint for voters a portrait of a longtime Arizonan, accomplished attorney and family man who will bring a “new generation” to Washington.

The claims reflect the small biographical exaggerations that often accompany a political newcomer’s first campaign. The reality is that Quayle has held three jobs in four years, posed for pictures in campaign literature with children who were not his and grew up in Washington with a famous father, former Vice President Dan Quayle, whose influential friends have given generously to the younger Quayle’s campaign.

But Quayle, 33, has had to confront a much bigger credibility issue this week after a blogger revealed that he had once been a contributing writer for Dirty Scottsdale, a raunchy, sex-themed website that covered the club scene in his adopted hometown before morphing into the national gossip site TheDirty.com.

…snip…

Quayle’s connection to the site has undercut the carefully honed image of a conservative with strong family values, and his inept handling of its disclosure brings up a different association with the Quayle name — his father’s gaffe-prone history.

Maybe little Benny would have turned out better if Marilyn had raised him without Dan Potato-With-An-E.