Cokie Roberts Assails Chris Wallace For Palin 'Lap' Joke: 'Appalling'

Cokie Roberts took to the airwaves today, joining in a terrific segment about the way female politicians seem to be able to exert some degree of self-control and do their jobs without getting enmeshed in crazy, news-making sex scandals.

[h/t: Think Progress] NPR contributor Cokie Roberts took to the airwaves today, joining in a terrific segment about the way female politicians seem to be able to exert some degree of self-control and do their jobs without getting enmeshed in crazy, news-making sex scandals. Roberts primarily discussed similar comments made by both Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who both have essentially made the case that women are far too busy tending to their jobs to have extramarital affairs. Along the way, however, Roberts fired a few shots at her colleagues in the media, holding out Fox News's Chris Wallace for special disdain.

Roberts played this clip from the Don Imus show, in which Wallace and Imus joked about whether or not Sarah Palin would be sitting on Wallace's lap during her "Fox News Sunday" interview. Roberts responded:

"It's appalling. It's just appalling. It really is. You know, it's the last place that men feel that they can just make jokes. They would never make such jokes about a minority, you'd be in terrible trouble. But you can still make sexist jokes about women and get away with it."

Roberts went on to say that these are the sorts of jokes that men make when they want other men to think they're "cool," which I gather is another thing that people like Kay Bailey Hutchison and Kirsten Gillibrand don't have any time for, either.

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