The boobs kerfuffle

First of all, it was funny.

And it was hardly over the top. It didn't involve any bathroom humor or lascivious elaborations on his point. And he used the second most innocuous term he could have, after "breasts."

It was just the kind of jolting non sequitur required to inject a bit of levity into yet another ponderous talking-heads train wreck about identity politics:

Well, that was something.

During a panel discussion on the Jemele Hill controversy and the White House calling her to be fired, things took an entirely different turn when sports radio host and provocateur Clay Travis pointed out that he only believes in two things fully.

“I believe in the First Amendment and boobs,” Travis stated. 

It took a beat, but host Brooke Baldwin wanted Travis to clarify what he had just said, asking him specifically if he actually sad “boobs.”

“Boobs, two things that never let me down, the first amendment and boobs,” Travis said. “Those are the two things I believe in absolutely in the country.”

Further down the line, Baldwin still wanted to make sure that Travis was actually talking about women’s breasts and not booze. When she confirmed that was indeed the case, she ended the interview early.

“I’m done, I’m sorry. I’m done,” she exclaimed. “This conversation is over, yanking mikes, bye. Forgive me, live television happens and you think you heard something, you are not sure and then you realize it happened, so I apologize for him on that.”

It seems Mr. Travis's ideological leanings are fairly middle-of-the-spectrum. Besides, he'd trotted out the line before:

Baldwin claims that Travis's remark was unexpected, but according to Callum Borchers at WaPo, "Clay Travis used his ‘First Amendment and boobs’ line long before he shocked CNN." Travis was invited on Baldwin's show after he'd written:

I don’t believe Jemele Hill should be fired for tweeting Donald Trump was a white supremacist and for recently saying police officers are modern-day slave catchers. I also don’t believe Curt Schilling should have been fired for what he said about the North Carolina transgender bathroom law or any of the other conservative political positions he’s adopted over the years. That’s because I’m a First Amendment absolutist — the only two things I 100 percent believe in are the First Amendment and boobs — who is also capable of doing something that most in modern media seem incapable of — distinguishing between a person’s public job and their private political beliefs. (Which are also public thanks to modern-day social media.)

Borchers writes:

And that wasn't the first time. Travis wrote in June 2015 that “absolutism on either the right or the left is scary to me — which is why I’m a radical moderate — who believes in only two things absolutely: the First Amendment and boobs."

When Baldwin appeared stunned and disgusted by Travis's quip on Friday, he replied, “I say it live on the radio all the time.”

This is who Travis is. CNN ought to have known what it was getting.

All right then. I assume CNN did know. In which case, the whole hoo-ha is fake news. 

But Baldwin had to pen an opinion column for the CNN website expressing her outrage.

Why, per se was it demeaning?

Well, there is the aren't-we-more-enlightened-now-than-to-objectify-women take that, ironically, is shared by strident feminists and certain kinds of overly sensitive social conservatives.

Sorry, but as Dennis Prager has pointed out, men are more aroused by visual stimuli than women - that is, they objectify them:

1. It is completely normal for heterosexual men to see women to whom they are sexually attracted as sex objects.

2. That such sexual objectification is normal and has nothing to do with misogyny is proved by, among other things, the fact that homosexual men see men to whom they are sexually attracted as sex objects. If heterosexual men are misogynists, homosexual men are man-haters.

2. That such sexual objectification is normal and has nothing to do with misogyny is proved by, among other things, the fact that homosexual men see men to whom they are sexually attracted as sex objects. If heterosexual men are misogynists, homosexual men are man-haters.

3. One reason for this is the almost unique power of the visual to sexually arouse men. Men are aroused just by glancing at a female arm, ankle, calf, thigh, stomach — even without ever seeing the woman’s face. Those legs, calves, arms, etc. are sexual objects. That’s why there are innumerable websites featuring them. There is nothing analogous for women. Of course, a woman can be aroused seeing a particularly handsome and masculine man. But there are no websites for women to stare at men’s legs or other male body parts.

4. Every normal heterosexual man who sees a woman as a sexual object can also completely respect her mind, her character, and everything else non-sexual about her. Men do this all the time.

Let's turn the tables for a moment: Say the guest had been a female and the discussion was free speech, and, just to get a rise out of everyone, she said something equivalent, something like, "I like swim meets because you see all these guys' marvelous funpacks in detail," what would the reaction have been?

I daresay a lot of male viewers, anyway, would say, "My kind of gal!"

Now, to those who are at this point inclined to respond with, "The is just the kind of hedonism we need to turn away from if we're ever going to have a more. dignified, let alone God-inclined culture," I would refer you to what C.S. Lewis says on the matter:

It is not for nothing that every language and literature in the world is full of jokes about sex. Many of them may be dull or disgusting and almost all of them are old. But we must insist that they embody an attitude toward Venus which in the long run endangers the Christian life far far less than a reverential gravity . . . 

So what we have here is another case where basic fun, to be had by acknowledging the foibles common to most of us, cannot be permitted in the atmosphere of societal brittleness we now inhabit. We have lost all sight of the nuanced dimensions of being human.

Baldwin could have rolled her eyes and continued the discussion, especially since, as noted above, she probably knew Travis digs boobs.