"What's it like to be a MILF?"
JetFM radio jockey Justin "Drex" Wilcomes was fired on Thursday for ambushing Premier Christy Clark with that question during a live radio interview on Dec. 19 (Vancouver rock station CFOX hired him for evening and overnight chores last Friday).
For those unfamiliar with the crass term, it comes from the 1999 coming-of-age comedy film American Pie and it means a mother that you'd like to have intimate relations with.
In a statement released Thursday, the Courtenay radio station said, “we treat employee matters as private and will not comment further, other than to say that this was an internal decision.”
Wilcomes had no comment Thursday when reached by the Citizen's affiliate newspaper, the Victoria Times Colonist.
But he told News 1130 radio in Vancouver that he “did what was expected of me” as a radio station host and said the station overreacted.
“I work at a rock station,” News 1130 quoted him as saying in its online story.
“We do entertainment and comedy interspersed with things in our community. I don’t think it was a bad thing. I think, more the media attention is what they were angry about.”
Clearly Wilcomes doesn't believe his comment crossed the line of good taste sufficiently to warrant being fired - and some would agree with him.
After all, Clark laughed off the comment and even shot back a remark about preferring to be considered a MILF than a cougar - slang for an older woman who actively pursues younger men.
Clark is a professional politician and former radio host herself, who is used to thinking on her feet. She handled the awkward situation with aplomb.
But she shouldn't have to.
After more than 100 years of the women's rights movement in Canada, it's clear that sexism still can rear its ugly head.
Wilcomes could have found plenty of other funny, irreverent things to ask the premier about to fit with his show.
Instead he decided to ask a question which had nothing to do with Clark's role as premier and, instead, sexually objectified her.
It's a type of question that Wilcomes wouldn't have asked former premier Gordon Campbell, NDP leader Adrian Dix or any other male politician.
It's not the first time Clark has had to deal with this type of sexist behaviour - and not just from a Neanderthal radio jockey trying to get a yuck out of his lowest-common-denominator listeners.
In October, 2011 former NDP MLA and political blogger David Schreck questioned whether Clark was showing too much cleavage in the Legislature. Clearly Schreck was spending more time looking into Clark's blouse than her economic policies.
And in May, 2012 British billionaire Richard Branson - founder of the Virgin business empire - invited Clark to go kitesurfing with him, naked.
Schreck and Branson are intelligent, successful men who should know better.
And it's not just women in positions of power who face discrimination.
Any woman whose tried to deal with auto salesmen or mechanics has gotten the "little lady," treatment at least once. As in, "don't worry your pretty head, little lady, just let us men folk figure this out."
Gender barriers and inequality exist in dozens, if not hundreds, of little ways - ranging from an unwanted leer or snide joke, to brutal domestic violence.
Unfortunately the pathetic, small-minded creatures who feel the need to treat women this way call themselves "men" - no matter how undeserving they are of the title.
This is Canada and it's the 21st century, it's time for the real men to stand up and put an end to sexism.
-- Associate news editor Arthur Williams
