Cokie Roberts: 'Men Are Just Lesser Beings'

In the "First Person Singular" interview in The Washington Post Magazine on Sunday, ABC and NPR news analyst Cokie Roberts expressed her female chauvinism loud and clear: "Men are just lesser beings." Strangely, her extreme take on the sexes came right after she proclaimed she was in the common-sense middle of political opinion:

I think that often where I am is just in the middle. The middle is often the common-sensical place to be. The notion that one side is right and one side is wrong is generally, as one finds in life, not the case. Women tend to be a lot more common-sensical than men are. In fact, when the Mark Sanford thing broke, I went tearing into my husband's office and said, "Okay, that's it. Women just are better. Men are just lesser beings." He couldn't argue at that point.

Her husband, former New York Times reporter Steve Roberts, might have noted that a woman was enabling Sanford to cheat on his wife. Or he could have matched Sanford with a female politician like Monica Conyers (wife of the House Judiciary Committee chairman), who just resigned from the Detroit City Council after pleading guilty to bribery charges. 

This isn't a slip of the tongue. Cokie also said women are better in agreeing with Sonia Sotomayor. If a man said something this flat-out sexist, would he face suspension from his network duties? David Shuster might have been suspended for less for suggesting Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" by her mother's campaign.