Fox co-host rape remark
On Tuesday's edition of Fox News' The Five, the liberal co-host asked "when was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?"
"What are you talking about?" co-host Eric Bolling responded. "It's rampant." Added co-host Dana Perino, "In particular, date rape on campus."
Yahoo! reports that in 2010, the Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women "will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year period." The study also estimated that women between the ages of 16 and 24, will experience rape "at a rate that's four times higher than the assault rate of all women." In schools with more than 6,000 students "average one rape per day during the school year."
Beckel publicly apologized on the Wednesday edition of The Five for the comments he made the day prior. "It's a horrible, horrendous issue. And it's simply put, this, rape is rape. Whether it's date rape or it's somebody coming in off the campus trying to rape somebody else. I very strongly feel that way," he said. "And so, I just want to straighten the record out on that. I simply was trying to make -- there was not a distinction to make here. It simply was that date rape is rape. And that is, by any other definition, rape is rape."
Beckel's intial remarks, and subsequent apology, all stemmed from a discussion on the proposal to ban concealed weapons on Colorado campuses. Democratic Colorado Rep. Joe Salazar was slammed by many after he argued on the state House floor in support of the ban, saying that otherwise individuals might fire their weapons prematurely or without the proper information. "It's why we have call boxes. It's why we have safe zones. That's why we have the whistles, because you just don't know who you're going to be shooting at. And you don't know if you feel like you're gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone's been following you around or if you feel like you're in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop ... pop a round at somebody."
