Stuart Varney is bad enough, but Stuart Varney and Andrea Tantaros are just evil trolls, side by side. On the day before Thanksgiving, when so many are struggling to have anything to eat, much less nutritious food, Tantaros and Varney mock them.
How charitable. How utterly noble. Not.
In a discussion about Cory Booker's food stamp challenge, Stuart Varney asked his guests if they could live on $133.00 per month for food. Tantaros responds with "I should try it because you know how fabulous I'd look? I'd be skinny..."
I'm sorry, did I just hear a highly-paid Fox talker belittle food insecurity for poor people? I think so, don't you?
Susie already covered this part of the video, so I won't spend as much time hammering Tantaros as I might otherwise. But there was something else disturbing about that whole segment: The fetish around the "new Democrats" or what we might call corporate Democrats.
When Don Peebles is presented as the "Democrat" (for fairness and balance, doncha know) and leads off his praise of Cory Booker with his disastrous defense of Bain Capital while acting as an Obama surrogate, you just wonder what the heck they think they're doing? Peebles describes the "new generation Democrat" as someone who loves free enterprise but supports Dems' social positions.
More Third Way nonsense, and particularly odious in the context of a discussion about the social safety net. Notice that Peebles giggles right along with Tantaros and even joins the joke while talking up his wife?
That's not a Democrat. At the risk of sounding like an ideologue, I'll just say that Peebles is a Republican who happens to believe in birth control and maybe likes women more than the current Republican party does. While I appreciate the fact that he isn't crazy like the current group of Republicans are, I think we owe our principles more than laughing dismissals. And for Democrats, our principles include respect for people in need, including people on food stamps.
At least Peebles had the decency to say he couldn't live on $133 per week, unlike Tantaros and Varney, who made a big joke out of the whole thing. My challenge to them is to try that "food stamp diet" for a few months while donating their fat paychecks to food banks. Let's see what happens. After all, Varney could stand to lose "ten pounds on camera" and Tantaros would just love to be "skinny."
As for Don Peebles, maybe next time he could muster a tiny bit of compassion for the people who truly do depend on those food stamps to live?
Happy Thanksgiving.
