Fox News contributor and the Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson apologized on Wednesday night to BuzzFeed reporter Rosie Gray for the behavior of Patrick Howley, a young reporter with the DC who caused a stir by attacking Gray's physical appearance with two egregiously sexist tweets.
Responding to another Gray-related controversy from earlier in the day — in which a writer at FireDogLake crudely attacked the BuzzFeed journalist by implying she got her sources through having sex with Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake, a charge he amended after BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith vehemently protested on Twitter — Howley joked, "Not to make an obvious point, but who the Hell would want to pump Rosie Gray?"
He followed up that slice of wit with another knee-slapper, tweeting, "'Pumping' @RosieGray must be the most traumatic experience since Somalia."
Huffington Post reporter Ryan J Reilly, among others, responded to Howley's tweets with outrage. The Daily Caller reporter at first ignored their protestations until the volume and intensity increased to the point where he decided to delete the tweets instead.
But Reilly had screen caps of Howley's jokes and, after receiving permission from Gray, tweeted them himself:
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Soon thereafter, Howley deleted his Twitter account entirely.
In a later tweet, Reilly reported that Carlson had responded to an email of his by saying both he and Howley had directly apologized to Gray for the latter's terrible behavior:
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Gray confirmed this and added that she'd accepted Howley's apology:
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Carlson and Howley did not respond to inquiries from Talking Points Memo as to whether Howley will be formally punished for the remarks.
This isn't the first time, however, that Howley has gotten himself into trouble for comments about women. In 2013, Howley penned a much-maligned Op-Ed at the Daily Caller in which he accused liberals of fabricating "rape culture" as an excuse to pit women against men and thwart conservative politics. Throughout the piece, Howley argues that it's natural for men to unabashedly stare at a woman's body and that many women like it that way, too.
"Women are like Indians now," Howley sarcastically wrote. "You can’t give them a once-over, a polite grin, and be on your way. You can’t notice the fruits of their several-hour morning project of preparing themselves to be looked at. Pretty soon, looking at a woman’s chest will legally be a 'hate' crime instead of a love crime."
Howley also wrote a piece in early 2014 about masturbating while imagining Ellen Page. He did this in response to Page's officially coming out as a lesbian. The article was poorly received by Daily Caller commenters and was subsequently removed from the site without explanation.
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