Stephen Moore, one of President Donald Trump’s picks to serve on the Federal Reserve Board and a former campaign adviser for Trump, wrote a series of sexist articles in the early 2000s particularly demeaning women in sports.
In one article, Moore wrote that women should be banned from refereeing, announcing or even beer vending at men’s college basketball games.
He also wondered in the same piece if there is any place “where men can take a vacation from women.”
The comments came when Moore said the March Madness tournament should get rid of the “un-American” aspects of it – namely: women.
“No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer vendors, no women anything… 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.”
Moore also said that Bernstein, a CBS sports journalist, should wear halter tops. In the same article, Moore said that a woman refereeing an NCAA game was “an obscenity.”
In a 2000 column, Moore attributed his wife voting for Democrats to women’s weaknesses. “Women are sooo malleable! No wonder there’s a gender gap,” Moore wrote.
In another column also in 2000, Moore said female athletes wanting equal pay was “equal pay for inferior work.”
“The women tennis pros don’t really want equal pay for equal work. They want equal pay for inferior work. There’s a very practical reason why Pete Sampras, for example, makes a lot more money than Martina Hingis does,” Moore wrote. “He’s much, much better than she is. The day that Martina can return Pete’s serve is the day she should get paid what he does. If there is an injustice in tennis, it’s that women like Martina Hingis and Monica Seles make millions of dollars a year, even though there are hundreds of men at the collegiate level (assuming their schools haven’t dropped the sport) who could beat them handily.”
Moore also went after Venus Williams, one of the successful female tennis players of all time, and seemed to completely miss the meaning of pay equity.
“Venus Williams is a multi-millionaire not in spite of the fact that she is a woman, but precisely because she’s a woman,” Moore wrote. “She receives much higher pay than an equally skilled man. Isn’t that precisely the opposite of what is meant by pay equity?”
The comments were put together by CNN’s KFile from when Moore published articles in the conservative National Review magazine.
According to CNN’s KFile, Moore said the comments in the articles were a “spoof” and that he has “a sense of humor.”
However, many people are not getting Moore’s sense of humor as he comes under fire for past comments. Moore has not been officially nominated by Trump yet for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors but Trump said in March he intends to nominate him for the position.
Trump hasn’t had much luck with his choices for official positions — his other pick for a seat on Fed board, Herman Cain, withdrew from consideration after he was accused of sexual harassment.
