Female Fox News Contributor Told to "Know Your Role and Shut Your Mouth"

Three weeks ago, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelley smacked down her fellow Fox contributors when they tried to tell her that working mothers were hastening the downfall of American society. Kelly quickly and easily demolished their sexist notions with facts and research, but it seems Fox contributors insist on sticking to their sexist ways.

Last week, former Ohio assistant attorney general Bill Cunnningham and Chicago attorney Tamara Holder were having a debate on Hannity Live about the charges of perjury against Attorney General Eric Holder.

The discussion escalated quickly, with both parties getting visibly angry, but Cunningham seemed particularly determined to win the argument using any means necessary. He threw out far more verbal assaults, calling Tamara Holder a "liberal stooge" who was looking for a way to "excuse criminal behavior" as well as suffering from the "incurable fatal condition of liberalism." None of these are effective arguments in a debate, but it soon became clear that Cunningham wasn't trying to win on an intellectual level. He was just trying to drown Holder out.

When Holder mocked Cunningham for jabbing a finger at her to make his points, stating "You finger does not make your point" while mimicking him, he angrily retorted, "Whose finger is in my face right now?" She replied, "Mine, because I'm telling you to shut up." Cunningham snapped.

He yelled back, "You shut up! Know your role and shut your mouth."

Holder repeated disbelievingly, "My role as a woman," before Hannity took control of the conversation.

But the sexism didn't stop there. After yet another verbal assault from Cunningham, Holder merely paused, causing Cunningham to sneer, "What, are you going to cry?" 

"No, I'm not going to cry," Holder stated, before returning to the actual debate.

Cunningham's treatment of Holder, not as a successful attorney in an intellectual debate but as a lowly woman who was out of the kitchen, is disgusting. And the fact that he refused to reason with her on a rational level but resorted to ugly name-calling, raising his voice, and verbal attacks to shut her up is equally chauvinistic. By refusing to treat Holder as an equal, Cunningham is toeing the same party line that tells women that they don't know if they've been "legitimately" raped and that calls female politicians (even in its own party) "street walkers" simply for working.

Conservatives keep insisting that they don't have a war on women. But it seems that the women on their own news network might have something to say about that.

See the video for the full exchange between Holder and Cunningham: