Stephen Moore, Trump's Pick for the Federal Reserve Board, Has Some Strong Bonnie Berstein Takes
By Kyle Koster
Stephen Moore faces a tough road to joining the Federal Reserve board. It seems not a day goes by without some of his past comments coming to light for inspection. Today’s comes courtesy of CNN, which it should be pointed out has been more than willing to have him come on as a guest for the past few years.
It turns out Moore’s role as a columnist for the National Review afforded him the opportunity to opine on women’s role in sports. And the man had some strong takes.
In one of his 2002 columns, Moore suggested changes to March Madness tournament to get rid of “un-American” aspects of it. The first rule proposed by Moore was “no women.”
“Here’s the rule change I propose: No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer venders, no women anything,” he wrote in March 2002. “There is, of course, an exception to this rule. Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein. The fact that Bonnie knows nothing about basketball is entirely irrelevant.” He later wrote that Bernstein, a CBS sports journalist at the time, should wear halter tops.
“How outrageous is this? This year they allowed a woman ref a men’s NCAA game. Liberals celebrate this breakthrough as a triumph for gender equity,” Moore wrote. “The NCAA has been touting this as example of how progressive they are. I see it as an obscenity. Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women? What’s next? Women invited to bachelor parties? Women in combat? (Oh yeah, they’ve done that already.) Why can’t women ref the women’s games and men the men’s games. I can’t wait to see the first lady ref have a run in with Bobby Knight.”
Even in 2002, the Wild West days of the internet, this was seen as problematic and Moore got blowback. Two weeks later he answered critics in an interesting way.”
Several readers (all women) have called and e-mailed complaining about my last column as ‘sexist’ because I said that women shouldn’t be permitted to ref the men’s game,”wrote Moore. “Their retort was: ‘Well then why should men ref the women’s games?’ Look, for all I care the women can use chimpanzees to ref their games. I hate women’s basketball.”