Santorum’s Super PAC Backer Makes a Sexist Gaffe, Walks It Back

Posted on Feb 17, 2012

Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)

Foster Friess addresses an audience in Phoenix last year.

Entirely missing from Foster Friess’ old-timey zinger about how the ladies did the contraception back when he was a lad, other than class, was any sense of male accountability in the procreation process. But Rick Santorum’s moneybags super PAC funder attempted to clear his name—which does sound a lot like a soft-serve frozen dessert, but we digress—by apologizing and admitting on his website that the joke didn’t work. No kidding.  —KA

“Political Hotsheet” on CBS News:

“Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives,” Friess said on MSNBC on Thursday, adding: “The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”

The implication was that women held the aspirin between their legs, which left them unable to open them.

In a statement on his website, Friess said the “joke bombed,” writing that “many didn’t recognize it as a joke but thought it was my prescription for today’s birth control practices.”

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