They have one! Her name is Gina Loudon, and her qualifications are…
Loudon, a tea party activist who became a reality star after she and her husband joined ABC’s Wife Swap
She also has a Ph.D. in a “psychology related field” from an online university, and has published in such distinguished journals as Breitbart, WND, and Townhall. I wonder if the APA would agree with her title.
She’s also using her lofty position as the Fox News Psychology Expert to dispense dangerous stupidity. She’s against transgender surgery because — I love this, coming from a Tea Party Reality TV star — it’s anti-science.
And the science is on my side of this,she remarked.I’m not sure why the other side is deciding to be science deniers now. Johns Hopkins University ended their program because they realized that people who go through with the sex change surgery have a 20 fold increase in suicide rates as opposed to those who don’t.
As is pointed out at the link, she’s referring to a debunked study to make that claim. She seems to buy into the idea that transgender men and women are just mentally disordered, who need more therapy to get over it.
There’s a video of Loudon. I haven’t watched it. I have a personal rule against watching videos of anyone chatting with Steve Doocy — I only have so many brain cells to spare.
“Expertise” is an extremely debased coinage at Fox. It’s reminiscent of what goes on with creationists, where “Dr.” Hovind is a “science teacher” and “Dr.” Baugh is an “anthropologist.” Mail-order and self-granted degrees are as good as those from accredited institutions of higher learning. Grad school — what’s that?
“Oh look,
Godscience picked me!GodScience is on my side! It’s a given, I’m sure, that she assumes the way transgender persons are often treated has nothing at all to do with issues such as depression, and an ongoing societal refusal to recognize people for who they are, well, that’s just incidental. Yep. What an idiot.Oh god. OH GOD.
http://drginaloudon.com/about/
She brands herself as “Dr. Gina”. And she actually has had some opportunities to be an idiotic right-wing pundit outside of the right-wing echo chamber. CSPAN, ABC, Al Jazeera, and BBC.
She doesn’t even consider herself a psychologist. At least not on her about page. At least not until it is convenient. This is how she describes what she does:
She consistently describes herself as a “politicologist” (which she spells wrong here), which is probably her handy way of acknowledging that she is just a pundit and not a psychologist, while still continuing to using her credentials to show off Authoritah.
Also, prepare to induce vomiting:
And more:
And more:
And the grand finale: She has received, and posted proudly on her about page, praise from Joseph Farah (of World Net Daily), Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, David Limbaugh, Ted Nugent, Palin, Breitbart, Pam Geller, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
That she is considered a Fox News psychology expert is telling, when she is essentially just a political pundit. But then again, their other, more famous and more commonly used authority on psychology, is WORSE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ablow
I’ll be glad to publically debate her. my PhD from Miskatonic is every bit as legit as hers.
Some people should really get out of their right-wing opinion bubble, because the War on Women “rhetoric” being “silenced” is news to everyone in the real world.
Tabby Lavalamp @ 5:
It was news to me, too. So I clicked over to B&N to eyeball the book. Interestingly, Loudon isn’t listed as the primary author, while the other two women are. (I vaguely recall Brittany was an actress during the 80s). Here’s the blather on the book:
And you wouldn’t want to miss the reviews!
To be fair, it was also easy to become a CIA expert on Faux Noise.
I’m pretty sure the qualification interview goes like this:
Faux Noise (FN): Do you agree with our position.
Random Person: yes.
FN: You’re an expert!
Oh, the publisher of said book is WND Books, Incorporated.
Is it weird that I’m most bothered by their claims that feminists who talk about the war on women have been “silenced”? For one, that’s a fairly hostile, censorious way to claim that you’ve discredited your opponent. For another, I’ve never even heard of that book, or its author, until just now. I think that she’s seriously overestimating her influence on the world. Feminists keep talking about the various injustices that women face that conservatives refuse to acknowledge, and there’s no sign that they’ve been “silenced”. The title is irritating too; “what women REALLY want” either refers to the idea that women are too stupid to realize that they secretly desire to be dominated by men, or that feminists have some secret evil agenda. It’s unbelievably condescending to claim that you know what someone wants better than they do.
I poked around the intertubes and have been unable to find the name of the institution where “Dr.” Loudon earned her PhD. Her personal website is strangely mute on this (although it proudly lists the places where she got her Bachelor’s and first Master’s).
Apparently her thesis contrasts “Sternberg’s theory of love with the Maslovian hierarchical needs”. I’d love to read some of it, just to compare to Kent Hovind’s style.
She gets goosebumps because she fears those invisible scientismical radio waves being beamed directly into her house must be the work of the devil.
Rich Woods @ 11:
I found Palin’s comment about radio interesting, because she was supposed to be reviewing a book. Maybe she doesn’t think there’s any difference.
There isn’t. Both have about the number of letters (you only need one hand to count ’em, which is very useful as that means you have a finger on the other hand to count with); and ah… looks at fingers…, ah, one, yeah, one, one, of them letters is even the same. That little round thing.