Erin Gloria Ryan, a senior editor at The Daily Beast, writes of Fox News in light of so many harassment allegations against Fox News hosts:
At this point, Fox News seems to be functioning less like a news organization with a sexism problem and more like a sexism organization with a news hobby….
For a certain slice of its viewers, Fox is fantasy. I should be able to spend all day hanging around skinny blonde Miss America types. I should be able to talk over these women, tell them they’re dumb but fuckable, and suffer no social consequences. I should demand physical perfection. I should have my needs catered to and feelings tiptoed around, while ironically decrying others who demand basic human politeness and consideration.
This sort of viewer demands being the central focus, taken seriously at all times except for when they are deliberately joking, and then celebrated as a comedic visionary. They can demand sweetness and beauty and give none of it.
See Fox News Is Like Porn for Aggrieved Men.
(In these paragraphs, Ryan is describing some Fox News viewers (‘a certain slice of its viewers’), but elsewhere in her post she describes the Fox hosts who create what others view.)
Everything Ryan writes (accurately, I think) is about people who want others to be seen, and to behave, in a certain obliging way toward them. They’ve firm expectations of others’ deference and delicate regard. Ryan’s right to call it a fantasy (albeit, of course, a sometimes malevolent one).
By contrast, there’s always a fair chance that one will listen, express a view, reply to other views, and thereafter find a tomato flying in one’s direction. That’s one of the reasons there are laundries. So much the better not to expect a fawning reception from others (or worse, impose one on them).