When local television talk show host Amy Kushnir expressed revulsion this week at gay NFL draftee Michael Sam’s public display of affection, she showed she has what it takes to get some face time on Fox News.
Kushnir stormed off the set of her Dallas morning show earlier this week, creating footage that went viral. The incident was apparently enough to get her a trip to the Fox studios in New York to be interviewed for Thursday night’s broadcast of “The Kelly File.”
“It was actually over the top. ESPN used it as an opportunity to put out shocking video when ESPN is a sports network that families watch,” Kushnir explained to fill-in host Shannon Bream. “I mean, we’ve got children that play sports. They watch ESPN all the time. So it bothered me that they used it as an opportunity to promote their left-wing agenda, in my opinion.”
Kushnir said since she stormed off set, she’s been persecuted for defending “traditional values,” and was subjected to death threats, rape threats and petitions for her to be fired. (Her Dallas TV station has stood behind her.)
“If you are trying to maintain traditional values and views in your home and if you share them,” she said, “you’re going to get lambasted because it goes against what’s politically, it’s politically incorrect.”
During a segment earlier this week on “The Broadcast,” a local morning talk show in Dallas clearly inspired by “The View,” Kushnir grew angry with two of her co-hosts over disagreements about Sam. She said that the NFL draftee’s on-air kiss was “being pushed in faces.” The discussion turned so heated that Kushnir eventually announced that she was “gonna go to Midland” and stormed off set. Since it aired on Tuesday, the segment has gotten plenty of attention (including here on TPM).
Kushnir could probably find a sympathetic ear among Fox’s personalities.
Host Bill O’Reilly, for example, didn’t much care for Sam’s kiss, saying the “gay thing is way overplayed and annoying.” Similarly, Andrea Tantaros thought the kiss was “overly affectionate,” though Tantaros, like Kushnir, claimed she would feel the same way about PDA from a straight couple. Fox News Latino columnist Rick Sanchez wrote that “Sam’s behavior was an affront to the NFL’s culture,” but assured that it had “nothing at all to do with his being gay.”
