Chelsea Handler may be childless, but she’s currently warding off her fair share of temper tantrums. During her recent stint as Daily Show guest host, Handler filmed a “day in the life of a childless woman” segment, in which she joked about the freedoms of her tot-free existence.
That was apparently triggering for conservative pundits like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro, who devoted the subsequent days to tearing into Handler. Carlson, who is six years Handler’s senior, called her an “aging, deeply unlikeable woman who never had kids,” while Shapiro insisted that it’s “written all over her face how miserable she is.”
Discourse got particularly sexist during Tuesday’s episode of Carlson’s show, when right-wing radio host Jesse Kelly said that “feminists like Chelsea Handler” have been “lied to by their society forever that you can be a girlboss, and you can do anything a man can do—which everyone who’s ever seen a woman back up a vehicle knows that’s not true.” He said that women like Handler have wombs that “resemble a dried-up tumbleweed blowing down an old western town, and your Valentine’s date for the tenth year in a row is a ten-year-old copy of ‘Magic Mike’ and a half-full bottle of Xanax, and you’re trying to pretend like you’re happy, but you’re not happy.”
“Wow,” Handler said in a video response to the backlash. “Why would I even need my own children when I get to hear these crybabies all the time? You guys seem so triggered by me.”
The late-night host then aimed a few individual slams at Carlson and Shapiro, respectively. “I mean, my goodness, Tucker, I think it is time for you to ask yourself a serious question: Are you really upset about how much freedom I have? Or are you upset that you haven’t been able to take it away from me yet?” She then gave a “quick shout-out” to Shapiro: “Thank you for helping my cause of not having children. Who needs the birth control pill when your voice is 100 percent effective?”
In the interim, Handler said she will devote all her free time as a childless woman to making Carlson’s life just a little more difficult. “I think we both know that you are hate-masturbating to me,” Handler concluded. “And I’m down with that!”
