While romantic comedyveteran Jennifer Aniston has never quite fallen under the umbrella of culture warrior, the famous Friend has found herself in a snit with the tighty right and the family vaiues blowhards over remarks she made regarding a woman’s ability to have babies without a steady man in her life.
Upon hearing Jennifer’s remarks, conservative mouthpiece Bill O’Reilly and his panel of modern women, Fox News’ Margaret Hoover and Gretchen Carlson – both channeling Tammy Wynette circa 1971 – proselytized about the role of men in raising children, while simultaneously insulting Jen for being 41, single and childless.
Jen, who’s busy promoting her new film with Jason Bateman, The Switch, about a woman trying to conceive via artificial insemination, said the following about single mom-hood.
“Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child. Times have changed and that is also what is amazing… that we do have so many options these days, as opposed to our parents’ days when you can’t have children because you have waited too long.”
This apparently sent O’Reilly into a tailspin causing him to decry that Aniston is diminishing the role of the dad and that her opinions are dangerous for adolescents girls (likely because it’s bad for the family values coalition to teach girls to think for themselves and outside the norms of settling down dependant on a man and making babies for him, but that’s a rant for another day).
Here's O'Reilly on Jen's remarks:
"I want to be fair about this because there are millions of single mothers who do a great job with raising their kids. It's possible, but it's not optional. And that's where Miss Aniston makes her mistake. 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.”
Meanwhile, Hoover couldn’t seem to lay off the tabloid factoid that pits Jennifer as a 41-year-old single woman who seemingly has no choice but to have a baby on her own since she, according to the media fodder, can’t keep a man. Not unsurprisingly, the only fame he attributed to Aniston was that she was married to Brad Pitt and not that she’s built a solid career making her one of the highest paid women in Hollywood.
What O’Reilly and his pair of Tammy Faye Baker School of Beauty Heads of the Class failed to mention were Jen’s remarks that speak to the idea of alternative families in general.
At the press conference, Jen had gone to say:
“The point of the movie is what is it that defines family? It isn’t necessarily the traditional mother, father, two children and a dog named Spot. Love is love and family is what is around you and who is in your immediate sphere. That is what I love about this movie. It is saying it is not the traditional sort of stereotype of what we have been taught as a society of what family is.”
So while O’Reilly and his Stepford cohorts bemoan the diminishing role of the dad in raising children, they missed Jen’s point that family is what you make it. But Kudos to her for speaking out for all families, including -- arguably --LGBT families.
Still, the entire rant on O’Reilly Factor was worth it just to hear him spew the following:
“Dads bring a psychology to children that in this society is underemphasized. Men get hosed all the time."
Here's the official poster boy for marginalized straight white 'hosed' men taking pot shots at Jen.
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