You're EVIL because you don't watch our crap

Les Moonves has no shame.

The man who brought us:

* Howard Stern, who talked dirty with naked women in the studio, among other outrageous acts . . .

* And then Opie & Anthony, who got fired over encouraging listeners to get it on in places like, ohhhhhhhh, St. Patrick's Cathedral for fame and prizes . . .

* And then Opie & Anthony again after a few years but not firing them from CBS Radio after they chuckled their way -- on their XM show -- through a "guest's" graphic descriptions of how he'd like to rape Condoleezza Rice and Laura Bush . . .

This is the man who's now telling us we're sexist for not watching Katie Couric deliver a dumbed down CBS Evening News. That, my friends, is cojones grande.

From The Financial Times:

“I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don’t want news from a woman was startling,” Mr Moonves said of the audience’s reaction to Ms Couric, who this month brought ratings for the CBS Evening News to a 20-year low.

He reiterated, however, that he was committed to Ms Couric and that he believed her programme would succeed in spite of its last place standing behind rivals ABC and NBC.

Ms Couric’s gender has been a central issue since CBS poached her from NBC’s Today show a year ago and made her the first woman to solo anchor a network newscast, filling the seat of such legends as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.

CBS was hoping to draw younger, female viewers to a US television institution whose audience has halved in the past 25 years.

Ms Couric has managed a 2 per cent increase in women age 18 to 49 since her September debut. However, that has been more than offset by an 11 per cent decline among men over 55, who still constitute the bulk of the evening news’ audience.

Mr Moonves has previously chided critics for scrutinising Ms Couric’s wardrobe and personal life. However, his latest remarks, made during a breakfast sponsored by Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Communications, were his most explicit about gender bias.

They come at a time when New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is testing whether Americans are willing to accept a woman in another authority position – as president.

Linda Mason, head of standards at CBS News, last month told the network’s Public Eye blog: “I had no idea that a woman delivering the news would be a handicap,” and that the public seemed to “prefer the news from white guys”.

In the absence of specific research, some analysts took issue with that argument. “People get news from women all the time – on local news, on morning shows. I’m sceptical of his discovery of sexism,” said Andrew Tyndall, whose Tyndall Report monitors newscasts. He and others have criticised the style of Ms Couric’s newscast, which emphasised soft features over hard news – something CBS seemed to acknowledge this year when it replaced the producer.

OL' LES COVERED a lot of ground during his remarks today. Earlier, I blogged on his slimy, self-serving skewering of a straw man when, in the same talk, he went after former CBS anchor Dan Rather for alleged sexism in criticizing the Evening News.

Then we pick up The Financial Times, a British publication, and get a new angle -- that it's not just Rather who's evil and sexist. All of us are . . . or at least almost all of us, considering Couric's woeful ratings.

I'm a sexist, he's a sexist, she's a sexist, we're a sexist, wouldn't you like to be a sexist, too?

If for no other reason that it seems to torture a sleaze like Les Moonves soooooo bad.