Glenn Beck's The BlazeTV acted out sexual propositions and labeled each skit “RAPE!” in an attempt to mock the prevalence of reported sexual assault.
In response to reports that the 22-year-old who went on a deadly shooting spree in Santa Barbara was inspired by a hatred towards women who had refused his sexual advances, The Glenn Beck Program attempted to debunk the statistic that one in five women have reported experiencing a sexual assault. The May 27 edition of Beck's program dismissed the number -- cited by the Obama administration during the announcement of a new initiative to protect college students from sexual violence -- as a “completely untrue statistic.”
As evidence, Beck presented a pre-recorded segment by The Blaze's Stu Burguiere, which featured skit performances of sexual assault scenarios in which network radio host Jeff Fisher propositioned another man in a blonde wig and skirt.
The skits purported to reenact questions from two studies on sexual assault -- the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Report and 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey -- ostensibly to show how the number of sexual assault victims is “massively” inflated:
BURGUIERE: Newsflash: I hate to say it, but it is possible to have consensual sex while drunk or high. Watch any beer commercial. What you'll see is a bunch of hot women and good-looking dudes drinking beer with a strong insinuation that they will soon be hooking up. Yes, it's true, it's true. When you drink alcohol, you lose your inhibitions. That is also why you drink alcohol. If you eliminate sex while drunk or high, you eliminate about half the sex in the entire United States. But this survey was designed in a way to massively inflate the number of victims. To illustrate this point, I'll bring in rape-expert Jeff Fisher. Here's some questions that the study actually used to determine whether a woman was raped. Jeffy, please act these out.
The scenarios featured Fisher asking for sex in a variety of manners, and a woman giggling an affirmative response. Burguiere would then jump in with a flashy, red placard reading “RAPE!” to mock the notion of sexual assault, saying, for example:
BURGUIERE: Guuuuesss what? That's rape! Repeatedly asking for sex to get sex is the same as rape. That's persistence rape.
He concluded, “Now are those things annoying? Yes. But is convincing someone to sleep with you because you're sad, the equivalent of a sexual assault? I mean that's just absurd.”
Read the actual questions presented to respondents in the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey here.