Mike Huckabee says it's "trashy" for women to curse in the workplace
Mike Huckabee, culture warrior, is at it again.
In last week's episode, the former Arkansas governor criticized Beyonce and her "explicit" dance moves, suggesting the singer's "pimp" husband, Jay-Z, is "exploiting" her.
Now, Huckabee has found his next target: Women who curse.
In an interview on Friday with Iowa-based radio show Mickelson in the Morning, Huckabee, who's mulling a 2016 presidential bid, was discussing the "cultural divide" between middle America and urban areas like New York City. He noted he was immersed in the "hotbed of New York culture" for several years as the host of a weekly show on Fox News.
"For someone like me, I thought, man, this is a different planet!" he exclaimed of his time in New York.
One feature of his stint in the Big Apple particularly shocked him: the coarse language he heard in the workplace, particularly from women.
"In a business meeting that you might have in the South or in the Midwest there in Iowa, you would not have people who would just throw the 'f bomb' and use gratuitous profanity in a professional setting," he explained. "In New York, not only do the men do it, but the women do it! And you just are looking around, saying, 'My gosh, this is worse than lockerroom talk.'"
"This would be considered totally inappropriate to say these things in front of a woman," he added. "And for a woman to say them in a professional setting, we would only assume that this is a very - as we would say in the South, that's just trashy."
Huckabee ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 2008, but he turned in a strong second-place showing, propelled by social conservatives in the South and Midwest.
He left his show at Fox News in January, and he's since signaled he's likely to take another run at the White House. During a speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit last weekend, he joked about the fortuitous timing of his exit from Fox.
"I'll leave it to your imagination," he said, "but it wasn't just so that I could go deer hunting very Saturday, I can assure you of that."