My letter to CNN

Why does Kyra Phillips hate her own sex? This morning I watched as within five minutes of each other, she made two comments that each on their own set women back decades.

First she covered the republican presidential debate in which it seems Michele Bachman did well. Kyra's words, paraphrased, were: "Do we even need Sarah Palin any more?" She then further explored this tragically sexist question by even calling up a guest and asking his opinion which, as an apparently straight, cisgendered, white man of privilege was: "NO."

What on earth makes a quesiton like that acceptable? When Mitt Romney did well, did Kyra say to herself, "Do we even need Pawlenty any more?" The question is based only in sex and when boiled down to its core is, Do we need this token candidate with a vagina any more now that we have this new token candidate with a vagina? I am not a Republican. I have no love nor respect for Palin nor Bachman. But so help me, there is room for more than one vagina in a presidential race, and Phillips not only insinuating otherwise but bringing guests on to further such a discussion is disgusting and pathetic.

Then she went on to a story about Weiner in which she became the first anchor, journalist, or newsperson of any sort that I have yet witnessed to turn the microscope around onto the women. I'm amazed it took this long, to be honest, but never suspected it would be a woman who went there first. She asked of her guest a question she appeared to be wanting to ask the women, and her words (and again I paraphrase except for the pivotal word) were: "Ma'am, why are you such a HO."

Ho. The colloquial term for WHORE. As in: a person who engages in sex acts for money. As in: the word that is slung at any woman as an insult more than any other negative word in the English language. And what is this "whore's" crime? Presumably none. We have no evidence that these women solicited or even wanted these photographs. And if we assume they did - which, by the way, is a huge assumption - ...so what? The Weiner story is exactly what Weiner, our POTUS, and many others have said: A Distraction. The man is only guilty of being an exhibitionist, being a little kinky. Who among us has never done a single thing that might raise a neighbor’s eyebrow? In the meantime, Senator David Vitter gets away with bribing his sex scandal into silence with $96,000 and illegal lobbying jobs. In the meantime, Senator John Ensign admits to using the services of prostitutes. And in the meantime, Kyra Phillips would rather call these anonymous, innocent women WHORES on her program, compounding this terrible distraction and committing a grave crime against her own sex.

Not long after her program, or perhaps still within it, a story ran about Tracy Morgan, and how he is going to return to Nashville to apologize for his harmful words against the LGBTQ community. What, if anything, will Phillips do to “make right” her truly horrible actions and words against all women this morning? Here’s a hint: an apology would not be enough. This woman honestly needs to take time off of her job to get educated on what is and isn’t acceptable to say about women. Nothing else can prevent future errors, which obviously stem from some much greater problem, a negative and disparaging attitude toward females. There are those who would argue sexism is dead in today’s society: I would encourage those people to only watch five minutes of Phillips to see that it is sadly alive and well and even perpetuated by its victims.