Of Course Fox News Had This To Say About Caitlyn

Like a Disney villain, whenever anything right and good happens in this world, Fox News is there to squash it. Such was the case Monday, when Fox Business host Neil Cavuto mocked Caitlyn Jenner for her gorgeous Vanity Fair cover, aka the only good thing to happen to your Monday. "Look at the time!" Cavuto joked — not to become aware that it's 2015, as you'd hope, but instead to make a hilarious joke about him wanting to end that segment real quick. Oh, and onscreen reporter Dagen McDowell misgendered Caitlyn more than once, because it's Fox News and who needs to be right about anything anyway?

The segment, brought to light by ThinkProgress' Judd Legum, began with the good decision of spotlighting Caitlyn's Vanity Fair cover — a brave, powerful, history-making moment — and went sharply downhill from there. Begins Cavuto, "What the hell is going on?" in a mocking tone. "Let's give him credit," responds McDowell (who on earth is not giving Jenner credit?), joking that Caitlyn is the only person alive able to upstage news of Kim Kardashian's second pregnancy. Let's give McDowell credit: It's not a terrible joke. Everything else about this segment is.

"'I can do you one better than that,'" is how McDowell goes on to describe Jenner's thought process upon hearing Kim's news. (Oh, yes, and it gets worse.) "That's how he unveiled his new identity, um, kind of, leaving his male identity behind with Caitlyn."

She spells out C-A-I-T-L-Y-N like it's hilarious. "He looks hot!" she says. "She looks hot, rather," she corrects herself.

"Look at the time," continues Cavuto darkly. "He... yes, OK." He introduces Charles Payne as "Charlene," because what's more hilarious than purposefully misgendering two people in one ten-second moment on live television? Nothing, right? Payne goes on to note that the Caitlyn cover is a byproduct of "the era we live in" — as though being transgender is a newfangled invention — and, perhaps most offensively at all, Cavuto ends the segment by saying, "Rome, final days."

What's most disturbing about this segment is that it's clear Cavuto and McDowell aren't trying to out themselves as bigoted — they're honestly trying to maintain what they think is a reasonable discussion about a news event, and they just can't help showing their true colors. McDowell's take is at least supportive of Jenner, if still offensive, but Cavuto quite literally said on live television that Caitlyn Jenner's transition spells the end of the world as we know it.

You know what, though? When Fox News and its affiliates are mocking something, you know that something great has happened. Fox, as ever, is that bully in the corner waiting to make fun of something that everybody else is applauding. Like when Fox "forgot" to screen the breaking news that DOMA had been struck down for several minutes, according to America Blog, and then awkwardly asked its guests not to talk about it (but managed to be offensive anyway). Or when host Stacey Dash (of Clueless fame) reacted to Patricia Arquette's incredible Oscar speech about equal pay by saying that she'd been left "appalled."

Really, Fox's abject disapproval of you just means you're doing something right.

Images: ThinkProgress/YouTube