According to the Drudge Report, this picture of former ABC News anchor Elizabeth Vargas from the December issue of Marie Claire magazine is a fake:
A source close to the anchor says Vargas’ is disappointed but has a sense of humor about the whole thing.
“Elizabeth was more than happy to sit for the interview but was disturbed that the magazine would set aside basic journalistic standards to photoshop her head onto a fake image. Vargas did joke that her real baby is cuter, that she is proud to breastfeed her newborn but wouldn’t do it at the anchor desk and that she wouldn’t be caught dead in that ugly gold blouse!”
In the accompanying interview, Vargas acknowledges that NOW, the Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Counsel of Women’s Organizations protested her hurried departure from ABC, but she suggests that these organizations should have consulted her first. Vargas said, “I salute 100 percent these organizations. But I will tell you, nobody from any of them ever spoke to me. No one ever asked, point blank, ‘What happened to you? Did you get pushed out because you’re pregnant, and are you upset about it?'”
Vargas suggests that the validity of feminist charges of sexism somehow hinges on her own subjective perception. Yet she hasn’t shared her views. We don’t know (should we care?) whether Vargas thinks she was passed over for the evening news anchor position because she was pregnant. But Drudge’s “source close to Vargas” did let us know her opinion of the gold blouse. I definitely don’t care about that.
-Posted by Bridget Crawford
