Conservative media has ranged from empathetic to hostile since Olypmic gold medalist Bruce Jenner, who now goes by Caitlyn, was featured Monday on the cover of Vanity Fair with long hair and wearing a woman’s corset.
Some of the most prominent conservative voices greeted Jenner with well-wishes.
“I wish you happiness,” said conservative radio host Glenn Beck on his show Thursday. “I don’t hate Bruce or Caitlyn and I don’t know anybody who does.”
In an interview with Women’s Wear Daily, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who calls himself a “traditionalist,” expressed indifference toward Jenner as a news topic, but said, “If he’s happy, I’m happy.”
“[O]nly a brute wouldn’t feel compassion for her doubts and fears and insecurities, for literally being uncomfortable in her own skin,” Matt Labash, a writer for the right-leaning Weekly Standard, wrote on Friday. “Agree with her choices or don’t, but hers is a tough row to hoe…” (The Weekly Standard is the sister publication of the Washington Examiner.)
Others were less enthusiastic about Jenner and her Vanity Fair debut.
Todd Starnes, a social conservative commentator on Fox News, said media attention on Jenner, which was largely positive, is “about advancing an agenda.” He said in an online column, “It’s about deconstructing gender and radically transforming the American family. And sadly — many conservative commentators have proven themselves of late — to be switch hitters on the issue, advancing the idea that somehow God makes mistakes.”
Conservative author Ann Coulter compared Jenner to the controversial performer Emma Sulkowicz, who has gained notoriety for her violent sex-infused artwork. “Now the [question] is: Who commits suicide first: Bruce Jenner or ‘Mattress Girl’ Emma Sulkowicz,” Coulter wrote Saturday on Twitter. “Both Jenner and Mattress Girl being egged on by liberals to the abyss,” she said in another Twitter message.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh inspired headlines from online media outlets when he said last week that Jenner’s transition wasn’t healthy.
“We should not be celebrating this, we should not be lionizing this, we should not be encouraging this,” he said on his show. “These people have a very serious problem, and they need treatment. They need help, not encouragement.”
