Yes! I LOVE it! Or a tiger maybe... pic.twitter.com/B3sjL8Zbyh
? Andrea Tantaros (@AndreaTantaros) June 16, 2015Memo to Andrea Tantaros: Your cat crack wasn't funny, let alone worthy-of-a-meme funny.
"Yes! I LOVE it! Or a tiger maybe..." the Outnumbered co-host tweeted out a pic of herself with drawn-on cat ears and a cat nose, a response to her so-called question about racial and gender identity.
But let's start at the beginning: The slope was already made slippery during today's edition of the Fox News show when the Outnumbered crew brought up Caitlyn Jenner at all during a discussion about Rachel Dolezal, the former head of the Spokane, Wash., chapter of the NAACP who resigned after she was accused of purposely lying about being biracial.
"If you took the exact questions Matt Lauer posed to this woman and if you posed those to Caitlyn Jenner, there would be national outrage...if he said to Caitlyn Jenner, ‘when did you start deceiving people?'" co-host Kennedy (yes, of onetime MTV VJ fame) opined during the discussion.
While Kennedy said that Dolezal "seems like a nut," she also clarified, "But I don't think that has anything to do with how she feels about herself and where she feels most comfortable. And if the person identifies as something other than what she was born as, I don't have a problem with that."
"What you're saying is that we were lied to by Caitlyn and I don't think that's the case," co-host Harris Faulkner objected. "I've never read that Bruce Jenner ever said anything about his gender to get a job..."
"She feels at home as a woman," Kennedy sought to clarify her comments. "That person is a woman on the inside and now gets to express that on the outside, and people have been incredibly charitable—as they should be—about that transformation. I just think it's slightly hypocritical that people are so outraged that someone might feel more at home in a different race."
Added guest Bernard McGuirk, "[Dolezal] committed fraud, unlike Caitlyn Jenner, she committed fraud on applications. You can't do that."
OK, so...not the same issue, but no one has said anything patently offensive about Jenner. Yet.
"She's toggling between races when it's beneficial for her and I think that's the issue," Tantaros chimed in about Dolezal. "If she was honest and upfront...I think people would be a lot more sensitive. However, it does open up the question because of Caitlyn Jenner."
Sigh.
"If I self-identify as a cat, a feline, do I have to pay income taxes?" Tantaros said. "I'm just wondering because—Harris, you're giving me the side-eye—but I'm asking the question because this opens the door."
At least Harris tried.
"Animals don't pay taxes though," Tantaros continued. "I just think we're opening the door to a very, very crazy debate where people who might not be mentally stable [and] some who may be, are going to come out and say ‘I self-identify as a 'insert animal, insert race, insert, whatever, a spaceship.'"
And some people think that was hilarious, which is a shame.
Now we're talking! pic.twitter.com/Go3VwIaJBf
? Andrea Tantaros (@AndreaTantaros) June 16, 2015