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On May 30, Lou Dobbs had a panel discussion with Fox News colleagues Doug Schoen, Juan Williams, and Erick Erickson over a Pew Research Center study showing that women are now the primary or sole wage earners in 40 percent of American homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dobbs views this phenomenon as a function of \u201csociety dissolving around us.\u201d Erickson, observing that all throughout the animal kingdom males \u201ctypically\u201d assume \u201cthe dominant role,\u201d remarked that \u201chaving mom as the primary breadwinner is bad for kids.\u201d Williams sees this correlating with \u201cthe disintegration of marriage,\u201d while Schoen characterized it as \u201ca catastrophic issue\u201d that threatened to \u201cundermine our social order.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bear in mind, while Erickson of redstate.com leans to the Right, Dobbs is an independent, and Williams and Schoen are both long-time Democrats. Yet whatever political differences they have over other issues were forgotten while discussing this one. As Williams asserted: \u201cLeft, right, I don\u2019t see how you can argue\u201d that Pew\u2019s findings are a good thing.<\/p>\n
Well, another Fox News celebrity, Megyn Kelly, did indeed try to do what Williams thought impossible. The very next day, she had Dobbs and Erickson on her show.<\/p>\n
Kelly wasted no time in getting to the point. To Erickson, she asked: \u201cWhat makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and made you scientist-in-chief?\u201d<\/p>\n
When the imperturbable Erickson replied that the much respected Pew Research Center determined that many in their own study were no less concerned about its findings than he, Kelly shot back: \u201cJust because you have people that agree with you doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s not offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
She continued: \u201cI didn\u2019t like what you wrote one bit. To me you sound like somebody who\u2019s judging and then wants to come out and say, \u2018I\u2019m not, I\u2019m not, I\u2019m not,\u2019 and now let me judge, judge, judge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly alluded to studies that supposedly suggest that children of homosexual parents and single mothers are just as well adjusted as the children of stay-at-home mothers. She also mentioned that once upon a time \u201cscience\u201d established that the offspring of interracial unions were inferior. \u201cTell that to Barack Obama,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Notice, Kelly didn\u2019t just disagree with her colleagues\u2019 assessment of the Pew study. She was angry at them for it. She found their comments \u201coffensive,\u201d judgmental, and, in short, \u201cdidn\u2019t like\u201d them \u201cone bit.\u201d From beginning to end, her exchange with Dobbs and Erickson was marked by sarcasm and hostility.<\/p>\n
Yet it was also marked by illogic and irrationality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It may come as a newsflash to Kelly, but the truth of a proposition doesn\u2019t depend upon whether she \u2013 or anyone \u2013 is offended by it. There are still other lessons that she would be well served to learn.<\/p>\n
In bullying one\u2019s interlocutor by making insinuations against his character, one neither strengthens one\u2019s own view nor weakens that of one’s opponent. Moreover, even if the charges are accurate, even if, say, one\u2019s opponent really is the jerk, idiot, \u201csexist,\u201d or \u201cracist\u201d that one suggests, he may still be correct.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The left-wing blogosphere lionized Kelly for combating \u201cthe sexism\u201d of her colleagues. If this is indeed the target upon which she set her sights, then Kelly must be deemed to have failed abysmally, for she only fueled the stereotypical image of the hyperemotional woman.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Dobbs and Erickson remained as calm as could be and in good cheer.<\/p>\n
That 40 percent of women are primary or exclusive wage earners is no cause for celebration. It is cause for concern. It may not be an occasion for tears \u2013 or it may be so. But this is the point: We simply don\u2019t and can\u2019t know for certain the effect that a shift this dramatic, this unprecedented, in an institution as central as the family will have on the fate of civilization. The prudent and wise would never think to treat any change of this magnitude as cavalierly as they would regard a change in bed sheets or lipstick brands.<\/p>\n
And they certainly wouldn\u2019t demonize those, like Dobbs and Erickson, who are reasonably pessimistic about such changes.<\/p>\n
But Kelly has proven that she is neither prudent nor wise.<\/p>\n
Nor, for that matter, is she particularly charitable to those with whom she disagrees \u2013 especially when they dare to deviate from the politically correct line on gender relations.<\/p>\n