After the mainstream media pilloried Vice President Mike Pence over his principle about not eating alone with women other than his wife, it turns out that most Americans agree with him, according to a New York Times poll.
Media outlets seemed to take immense pleasure in tarring Pence as misogynistic, sexist and medieval for his efforts to be a faithful husband, with journalists comparing his actions to Sharia law with its subjugation of women as inherently inferior to men.
Referring to Pence’s 2002 statement that he never drinks in public unless his wife is with him and doesn’t eat alone with a woman other than his wife, Erin Duffy slammed the Vice President in an article in Fortune, schooling him that “women are people, too” and accusing him of shifting the “blame for extra-marital affairs” to women. His “dumb dinner rule” puts women at a disadvantage, she huffed.
Writing in the Huffington Post, Emma Gray said that “in Pence’s worldview, men have no self-control, and women are either temptresses or guardians of virtue.” Moreover, the Pences’ Christianity is “part of a system that works to prop up male power and keep women subordinate.”
And yet as hard as the media tried to paint Pence as woefully out of touch for his antiquated views of marital fidelity, a new poll finds that most Americans actually agree with him.
It was none other than the New York Times, declared foe of the Trump administration, to publish the results of a survey showing that U.S. citizens believe that married people need to be careful in their dealings with the opposite sex if they want to be faithful to their spouses.
“A majority of women, and nearly half of men, say it’s unacceptable to have dinner or drinks alone with someone of the opposite sex other than their spouse,” writes Claire Cain Miller in her analysis of the poll’s findings.
Over all, “people thought dinner or drinks with a member of the opposite sex other than a spouse was the most inappropriate, with more people disapproving than approving,” Miller said. “Lunch and car rides were less objectionable, but more than a third of people said they were inappropriate.”
As Mollie Hemingway noted in an insightful essay following the poll, “How out of touch are newsrooms that they thought this position was Sharia-like, as opposed to what it turns out to be: completely normal?”
It is small wonder that the mainstream media were unable to fathom a Trump-Pence victory last November, since the bubble they live in excludes rank-and-file Americans who are trying to make a living, raise families and be true to their spouses and their friends.
It would seem like those who are truly out of touch with Americans are not the Pences, but the media that cannot abide them.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
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