No good deed on Fox News goes unpunished by the perennial hysterics of the progressive media.
Here, for example, is Sandra Smith of Fox & Friends interviewing Jill Jacinto of WORKS, a career-consulting company. The subject: How women often sabotage their on-the-job images by coming across as too apologetic or diffident in office e-mails. Smith starts out:
Ladies, do you ever feel like you're not getting the respect that you deserve around the office? Well, it could actually just be your fault. But we can fix all of this for you with the help of a special expert that we've got here this morning. An answer may be in your emails….
I want to start out with an example of what you might write in your email that could be really bad. For example, "Dear Mr. President, I'm just writing to say that I'm sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I think I have a plan for the strategic direction of the company in the coming year. I'm no expert, but …" — it's those qualifiers, right, Jill?
JILL JACINTO: Exactly. It's those filler words, it's that lack of confidence you're conveying when you're sending emails like this. You really need to think and reread and know that you are an expert. You have that confidence. You've been hired to do this job for a reason.
SMITH: And so you can actually hold your mouse over the word that's underlined revealing that it's a bad word to use, and it will explain why it's bad. For example, using "sorry" frequently in an email undermines your gravitas and makes you appear unfit for leadership.
JACINTO: Exactly. And women have a tendency to apologize for things that are completely out of our control. So what you want to do, remove that sorry and say, "I know about this situation, I'm taking care it and I'm solving the problem for you."…
SMITH: So for some reason — and maybe this is men too — but women are afraid of putting an idea out there and getting shot down and turned down for it, so oftentimes we'll write, "I'm no expert but …"
JACINTO: Yeah, writing "you're no expert" essentially sends a red flag to whoever is receiving your email. And they're starting to think, maybe she is not an expert. Maybe I should be passing along this assignment to someone else. When, in fact, you are an expert. You've been hired to do the job. You've been put in this position because of your expertise in this industry.
Sound advice, don't you think? We women like to be nice, and we can sometimes come off as too nice, which can undermine bosses' and co-workers' confidence in our competence.
Except that the easily disturbed social justice warriors at Media Matters go ballistic. MM plops a video and transcript of the segment onto its website with the headline "Fox & Friends Tells Women Why They're to Blame for Lack of Respect Around the Office: Segment on Office Email Confidence Only Addresses Women."
Actually Smith did mention shy men, you'll note–but reading comprehension is not part of the Media Matters skill set.
Next, excitable feminist flame-thrower Amanda Marcotte, who seems to depend on Media Matters for everything she knows about the world, writes this for Salon, under the headline "Sexist Fox News Loves Blaming the Victim: Says Women Disrespected at Work Because They Suck at Email":
Undermining women used to be such a simple art. Getting women to sit down and shut up and feel ashamed of themselves was just a matter of telling them their place was in the home, their brains were smaller than men’s and perhaps that their uteruses did something to them to make them too weak or stupid to compete with men.
But nowadays we live in the age of “girl power,” where even conservatives reluctantly sign off on the idea that women are equal and deserve to pursue their career ambitions with the same vigor as men. Nowadays, woman-undermining wolves present themselves in pseudo-feminist sheep’s clothing, pretending to offer helpful advice while still advancing the same line that sexists have always been telling women: It’s not that the world is sexist, but that women are inferior….
The notion that sexism, i.e. an irrational belief in female inferiority, is real is but a simple hallucination generated by the notoriously hysterical female mind. The belief that women are inferior is entirely rational, and we have some bona fide ladies — you know they don’t have an ulterior motive! — here to explain how. But fear not! Because the fault lies not with anyone who irrationally discredits women because they are women, but with you for sucking so much, the solution is simple: Don’t suck so much, and you may trick them into thinking you’re not a woman at all.
Take a deep breath and calm down, Amanda. Fox News is hardly the only outlet to observe that women tend to apologize far more than men–a tic that can work to their detriment. Here's Sloane Crosley at the reliably liberal New York Times:
For so many women, myself included, apologies are inexorably linked with our conception of politeness. Somehow, as we grew into adults, “sorry” became an entry point to basic affirmative sentences.
True, this affliction is not exclusive to our gender. It can be found among men — in particular, British men — but it is far more stereotypical of women. So, in the words of a popular 2014 Pantene ad, why are women always apologizing?…
So we should stop. It’s not what we’re saying that’s the problem, it’s what we’re not saying. The sorrys are taking up airtime that should be used for making logical, declarative statements, expressing opinions and relaying accurate impressions of what we want.
Uh, isn't that what Sandra Smith and Jill Jacinto were saying? But they were saying it on Fox News–and we good progressives can't have that.