A new study finds that college students can relieve stress through the simple act of petting a cat. It’s not exactly a revolutionary discovery — lots of studies have found that pets can relax people, which is part of the reason we let them live in our houses in the first place and why there are programs to bring dogs to campuses to help students chill out. Now maybe cats will be included in such programs, too.
Well, not if the folks on Fox News’s “Outnumbered” have anything to say about it. In one of the strangest and meanest segments of any television “news” show ever, the assorted panelists used the study as an excuse to attack student “snowflakes,” suggesting that they don’t need cats so much as they need a good “slap in the face!”
Say what?
Co-host Emily Compagno set the tone for the discussion with a sarcastic opener.
“College students have it so rough these days,” she began.
From climate anxiety to just the idea of a conservative speaker on campus. It is all so stressful! Well now, thankfully, a new study finds intervention with cats on campuses may help stressed-out students. I guess taxpayers picking up the student loan tab wasn’t enough.
Ba-dum, tish!
It just got worse from there, as the Daily Beast made clear in a story on the strange segment.
“This is another example of how we are raising snowflakes,” Fox News anchor Julie Banderas snarled, suggesting that any student who couldn’t handle the stress of college should “just drop out. … Do us all a favor.”
“I don’t think these kids need cats; I think they need discipline,” Compagno declared. “I think they need a slap in the face!”
No one on the panel took offense at the notion that students should be physically assaulted for wanting to pet a cat.
“These are kids that can’t even listen to a conservative viewpoint,” she continued.
They shout out speakers; they chase them off campus. But a cat will make everything better. That doesn’t work in the real world!
The hell it doesn’t. Why do you think Americans own 96 million pet cats?
The discussion rambled on with another of the panelists whose name I don’t know suggesting that giving students a dog or a cat to pet might distract them from studying — because I guess that is all students ever should be doing. “I don’t need to be coddling [sic] a puppy,” she practically shouted.
I need my Organic Chemistry book. … This is insanity! Give me a cup of coffee and a cookie and a stack of books, and I’m set. I don’t need a puppy in my lap to study for exams.
I’m stuck on the cookie. Aren’t you just coddling yourself with that kind of indulgent luxury?
“But they’re also getting free tuition, too,” Compagno jumped in to say. “The list is endless what these kids — kids! — are getting with our tax dollars.”
“It’s also part of the indoctrination,” Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce added. “They’re being trained… and told effectively by the university, ‘No, you need a puppy. This is what you need!’”.
She went on to tell the heartwarming story of how one day she was walking her dog on Wall Street — apparently, she lives next door — and some students asked to pet it. And so she told them that “instead of hugging my dog, you should go back and study.”
BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING ELSE STUDENTS SHOULD EVER BE DOING. No coddling, or cuddling!!1!
“Because it’s training for the real world,” she continued. “No one’s going to hand you a puppy in the real world.”
If you go to a shelter they will.
“These kids are the problem,” Fox News contributor David Webb added.
If you need a cat or you need a puppy, you don’t belong in college. … This is the idea of building a society of betas.
Fox News has become the Red Pill subreddit.
We achieve because we are a society of people that look forward to our entrepreneurs that go out and find something. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, all of the innovators, Bill Gates, they founded something in a garage instead of petting a cat!
Well, I don’t know if Gates is a cat petter, but here he is “coddling” a dog.
“They programmed a keyboard,” Webb continued.
They whatted a keyboard?
He went on: “Maybe someone started a manufacturing plant with an idea.”
Uh, in their dorm room? What the hell are you going on about? What does any of this have to do with kitties? Or campuses? What is your damn problem anyway? Half of the panelists seem to have pets themselves, so why are they picking on students for wanting to pet a dog or a cat once in a while?
In addition to being dangerous and unhinged and more than a little bit fascist, Fox News is just plain weird. Imagine getting this worked up over the idea of someone petting a cat.
By the way, no cats were harmed in the writing of this post. Indeed, one cat was petted on five different occasions and lavishly praised three times for bringing me wadded-up kleenexes she takes from the trash. She thinks she’s giving me a great gift, so I indulge her. Because she’s fucking adorable, and the panelists on Fox’s Outnumbered are the opposite of adorable. No petting for them!
Here’s the whole segment. I had to pause several times going through it because I kept getting so annoyed.
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The senior judge at my local court had the idea to get a bunch of dogs to help people chill.
Technically they’re for the witnesses; but we all play with them. Even the judges sneak out to see them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-42986959
A few judges bring their own dogs into court with them now. I love that.
So according to these people, petting cats makes you a “beta”. If you want to be an “alpha” like them, you have to become equally selfish, cruel and mean — and proud of it! These are people who read or watch A Christmas Carol and root for Scrooge before he reforms. I can’t even.
I seem to recall that Musk would pet emeralds from his family collection. The same family who funded his initial business ventures of course.
So if they are saying you will be more successful if you have a rich family than if you have just a cat then maybe they have a point?
Just another entry in the “the cruelty is the point” ledger. Because we can’t allow learning to be the point of college — everything must be an exercise in making life as miserable as possible, because any reduction in stress or improvement in quality of life is bad by definition.
@Alan Robertshaw
Allow me to be the first to say Aww.
And cats definitely calm people down. Many years ago, my boyfriend and I had three cats. When all three slept together at the foot of the bed (Three Cat Night), their peacefulness was at its most powerful.
Finally, I once heard a radio show where the guest was pontificating about how people love their pets too much. I guess Jackie DeShannon was wrong: What the World Needs Now Is Less Love.
Fox News declares war on campus cats?
Of course they do. Not like not too long ago they were clapping and applauding a certain guy on Fox News talking about how Americans don’t eat dogs, they take care of them or anything like that…
“Cats are too good for the peasants!”
My college dorm just “happened” to have a food and water bowl hidden in some bushes, and just “happened” to have a cat who’d stroll in, sleep in our sunbeams, and accept attention from his subjects. None of us told the college, but everybody knew.
Despite the “no pets” rule, the girls in the next room had a hamster, who got to roll up and down the hall in his transparent ball. We had to keep the back door closed so he wouldn’t roll down the steps.
(They weren’t out at the same time!)
Both of these critters were very helpful, and I’m older than most of the hosts on Fox “news” (but not their audience).
There are a lot of young people of my acquaintance who only WISH college was free. None of them come from rich families, some come from verging-on-poor, and absolutely none of them had a daddy who enslaved people to dig up shiny rocks.
To be fair, if you live with a cat, you’re not the alpha of the house.
My boyfriend and I have a long-held rule about our cats: There will be no undue mollycoddling of them. Certainly, mollycoddling is fine. But undue mollycoddling? Not in our household!
I do beg your pardon! My cat is literally my happy place (a snowflake method of dealing with anxiety-driven panic attacks, not that this joker would know) and makes everything better, and I would not be able to study for my PhD* without him, which is a great deal harder than college, I will have you know! It works quite well in the real world!
Awww! 🥰 Mine plays fetch with thrown stuffed squirrels and balls, but only really specific kinds. It’s the weirdest thing.
@Crip Dyke
Truer words were never spoken.
*I am guessing that the counterpoint to this is that real studious PhD students never suffer anxiety and don’t even have time to feed themselves let alone a cat. Probably also need a slap in the face.
Unsurprising for the people who metaphorically shat on Fred Rogers after his death.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-fred-rogers-evil/
I’m enjoying a week of vacation and have spent many hours sitting on the couch, knitting, with my cat snuggled up against my leg. (He is not a lap-kitty. He is a snuggle-kitty.) His presence has done a lot to calm me down. Poor guy’s going to be pretty unhappy when I return to work.
These are the people who watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” and root for Mr. Potter.
Unfortunately, Fox knows the social context regarding cats. Sexist conservatives, the women included, have long feminized felines, seeing them as the pets of single women and gay men. Even small dogs get that treatment to some extent. For conservatives, a “real man’s dog” is something like a German shepherd, or a Lab if the man has children.
I for one study much better with a cat on my lap.
They are really invested in the idea that everyone should treat everyone (and everything) else poorly at all times. Not sure why anyone finds that idea attractive, but many seem to.
Famed linguist Yuri Knorozov and his colleague have no time for Fox commentators:
@Alan
I disagree with that illustration because my cat would defend his Designated Human (aka “source of food and pettings”) and Mr. Parasol’s cat (my cat’s littermate) would try to make friends with the attackers.
@ Vicky P
I was one having a relaxing bath. I came downstairs, in just a towel, to find a complete stranger sat at the kitchen table giving my late hound ear scritches. “Barry Richards?” “Er no, he’s the farmer across the way.” “Oh, I’ll be on my way then.”
Well thank you Sas for that excellent display of defending the hearth.
@Nequam:
Unsurprising for the people who metaphorically shat on Fred Rogers after his death.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-fred-rogers-evil/
I’m trying to picture any of those smug immaculately blow-dried Fox anchors milking the cow and weaving their own linsey-woolsey (as they describe Kids Back In The Day having done.)
On the petting an animal and relieving stress thing, it’s so true. I work with dogs so I get to pet a lot of dogs and that is great, but there is something being able to pet your own animal and bond with them that way. I love rodents in general and for the last couple of years I’ve had mice as pets but since they are so small it takes them a really long time to even allow a human to touch them so it’s hard to get the bond going, and also every time I accidentally did something that scared them, we would go back several steps. So bonding with them a half step forward then like 15 steps back. But my last mouse passed away in June and I got a rat this time. I had a rat before when I was 12-14 and we had a fabulous bond, so in the back of my mind I had this idea that the incredible anxiety I have now (recovering from an abusive relationship, takes a long time!!) was affecting the bond with my mice and it might have been some. But now that I’ve got Ratty (Arthur) we have an incredible bond and I think it’s because he is bigger and not afraid of me. He actually is trying to dominate me so we’re working on that but he loves to play with me and he will approach me and climb on my lap and stuff with prompting. I loved the mice but it is really nice to be loved back!
I know this is about cats but the pet thing definitely applies in general. I love cats and dogs but ratties are my favorites.
@Alan:
that’s awesome!
@personalpest:
They’re the kind of people who watch “Friday the 13th” and root for Jason Voorhees.
@Full Metal Ox:
Most Fox News anchors couldn’t even operate a pencil sharpener.