Radio personality Adam Carolla is facing criticism for “sexist” comments he made on television regarding Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Carolla, 57, was speaking with Sean Hannity, 60, on Fox News, when he asked: “Here’s a quick thought experiment: if AOC was fat and in her sixties, would anyone listen to another thing she ever said?”
Hannity encouraged Carolla to elaborate, telling him: “Oh boy, you’re gonna step in that one. What exactly do you mean by that? Is it because she’s young, and? What?”
“She’s young, she’s vibrant, she’s beautiful, and everyone is always putting a camera and a mic in her face,” Carolla said. “...I don’t think if she was a middle-aged, heavy-set woman, anyone would care what she had to say.”
Clips of Carolla’s exchange with Hannity circulated on social media as viewers reacted to Carolla’s remarks.
“Women can’t exist in public without offending misogynists like Adam Carolla,” one person tweeted. “First AOC was too young, then she was ‘just a bartender,’ and now people only listen to her because she’s cute? F*** Adam Carolla.” (Before she was a US Representative and after graduating from college, Ocasio-Cortez used to work as a bartender and waitress to supplement her mother’s income as a bus driver and house cleaner.)
Political scientist and writer Norman Ornstein shared: “I had words: if Adam Carolla were thin, good-looking and young, he would still be a flaming a*****e.”
Another person described the clip of Carolla and Hannity as “a 57-year old man and a 60-year-old man discuss how irrelevant they would find a woman if she was their age”.
