Rudy, Mika and the Brouhaha Without the Ha Ha

From now on, beautiful women in high heels will no longer strut around the stage in bikinis on national television for the pleasure of gawking men.  Not during one iconic pageant, anyway.

And if you have a problem with that take it up with the people at the Miss America Organization, who just put an end to the bikini part of the contest, condemning it to the junk heap of history as a relic of things past.

And if you bash women who have sex in porn movies, mainly for the pleasure of gawking men, then you’re a woman-hating male chauvinist pig.

If you have a problem with that, take it up with Mika Brzezinski.

But before we bring Mika into this, let’s go to Tel Aviv where President Trump’s lawyer and longtime friend Rudy Giuliani had a few choice words about Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had sex with Donald Trump a long time ago, a claim – try not to laugh -- Mr. Trump denies.

"Excuse me, when you look at Stormy Daniels -- uh, I know Donald Trump -- look at his three wives," Giuliani said.  "Beautiful women. Classy women. Women of great substance. Stormy Daniels?" (Giuliani made a dismissive face after saying her name.)

“I respect women, beautiful women and women with value, but a woman who sells her body for sexual exploitation I don’t respect.”

(Later, in another interview, Giuliani said, “If you’re involved in a sort of slimy business, that says something about you, says something about how far you’ll go to make money.”)

Even after you factor in Rudy’s ulterior motive, that he obviously was trying to discredit Ms. Daniels, who has a lawsuit pending against President Trump for allegedly defaming her, what’s so wrong about what he said? That he doesn’t respect women who do what she does for a living?  So?

Still, this was too much for Mika, who displays her righteous feminism on “Morning Joe” every chance she gets.  After playing a clip of Rudy’s comments, she had nothing but disgust for Giuliani.

“You misogynistic fool,” she said looking straight into the camera. “Are you kidding me? 'Just look at Stormy Daniels?' Just look at yourself. Are you kidding me?  In this moment where we are in history with women, you are going to tell us to just look at her? Are you out of your mind? You know what, that’s your only excuse, and I feel really sorry for you. That is the most -- he was incredibly degrading. On top of the fact that you are hurting the president’s case on so many levels, so good on you, keep going, Rudy. I’m absolutely sickened about what I just saw."

And later in the show, she added this:  "Saying 'just look at her' and laughing derisively says everything you need to know about this presidency and their attitude toward women.  Everything you need to know. It was about as disgusting as it gets."

Maybe Mika was unfamiliar with an article that came out in June 2014 in Ms. Magazine that summed up the anti-porn argument.  “The pornography industry is a complex machine that turns sex into a commodity that is more about power and profit than pleasure,” it read in part. “Pornography is an apparatus of the patriarchy because of the way it is aimed at male consumers,” the article said.

If Mika wants to defend one particular woman in porn – (even if she may not defend pornography itself) -- that’s her business. But it doesn’t take a political scientist to figure out that this isn’t about porn.  It’s about what everything on “Morning Joe” is about:  Bashing Donald Trump.  It’s about liberal hatred of this president.  So if Mr. Trump’s friend demeans a porn star, Mika must defend the porn star.

Imagine if Barack Obama had said what Rudy Giuliani said – word for word. Mika and the rest of the “Morning Joe” crew would have nominated him for another Nobel Prize for upholding decency in the American culture. But this wasn’t about Barack Obama. It was about Donald Trump, which explains the outrage over Giuliani’s observation.

There’s an interesting test to determine how any of us really feel about a particular line of work:  Would we want our children to be in that business?  It’s a safe bet that Mika wouldn’t want her girls doing what Stormy Daniels does for a living. But why not?  Because Rudy Giuliani had it right, that’s why not.

I can’t say with certainty, but I bet Mika Brzezinski, reliable defender of women that she is, thinks the Miss America folks did the right thing by eliminating the bikini part of the show.  I mean, what reputable feminist would defend women showing off their bodies for the pleasure of gawking men?