On her Wednesday night show, Full Frontal host Samantha Bee ripped into HLN’s Ashleigh Banfield for defending Aziz Ansari, the left-wing comedian accused of behaving inappropriately during a sexual encounter with an anonymous 23-year-old woman.
Earlier this week, Banfield launched a feud with Ansari’s accuser, the woman who reported the story, and Babe.net, the website the published the lurid tale. On her absurdly low-rated HLN show, Banfield said, “What you have done, in my opinion, is appalling. You went to the press with a story of a bad date and you have potentially destroyed this man’s career over it, right after he received an award for which he was worthy.”
The woman who wrote the story, Katie Way fired back, mocking Banfield’s middle age (she’s 50), lipstick, and highlights. Banfield then returned fire by reminding Way that her hair was naturally brown when she interviewed Yassar Arafat.
As I wrote Thursday, “In her own narcissistic and hysterical way, Banfield is correct that the allegations against Ansari do not add up to a #MeToo accusation.”
Nevertheless, because Banfield is only capable of outrage, she is blind to the legitimacy of the Ansari story, which exposed a powerful public figure as a breathtaking hypocrite.
Ansari has been running around for years portraying himself as God’s gift to women, as a woke male-feminist. For years, he has stood atop a soapbox to lecture, scold, and shame others over their treatment of women. Therefore, within that context, the Babe.net story is not only legitimate, it is important, for it has revealed to the public the real Aziz Ansari — a pig who treats women like his own personal porn stars.
According to the story, which Ansari has not disputed, he did not pick this woman up for the date (she had to hoof it over to his place). He then rushed her through dinner, took her home, and proceeded to treated her like a piece of meat, like a sex toy. He also engages in sexual practices that can only be interpreted as a way to degrade women. This woke make-feminist is utterly void of honor or chivalry, and that is a legitimate story.
Just as it is important for the media to expose a televangelist as a womanizer and hypocrite, so too is it important to expose an evangelist like Ansari, who preaches about respecting women, as hypocrite who sees women only as repositories for his crude and demeaning sexual practices.
Banfield’s inability to grasp that nuance is what Bee took her to task over: :
The conversation about [the Aziz story] has been tentative and difficult, largely because a lot of women disagree about it, and women actually like to be careful with each other’s feelings, except, perhaps, Ashleigh Banfield.
It’s harder than you think to leave when you’re uncomfortable or scared. For example, you’re scaring the shit out of me right now, Ashleigh Banfield, and I can’t leave. And it’s not just Ashleigh. A lot of people are worried about Aziz’s career, which no one is trying to end because, again, we know the difference between a rapist, a workplace harasser, and an Aziz Ansari. That doesn’t mean we have to be happy about any of them. People like me had to wade through a sea of prehensile dicks to build the world we now enjoy.
And part of enjoying that world is setting a higher standard for sex than just not rape. And women get to talk about it if men don’t live up to those standards, especially if that man wrote a book about how to sex good [Bee is referring to Ansari’ Modern Romance]. …
I’m sorry you thought you got to choose what experiences we can share, or how we react to the shitty ways we have been treated.
Bee is wrong about almost anything, but exposing the powerful as indefensible hypocrites, most especially sacred cows like Ansari, is a responsibility so called journalists like Banfield surrendered more than a decade ago.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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