A little sexism with your coffee?

I like to watch morning news programs while I'm getting ready for work. I do this for two reasons:

1. I much prefer sitting down and leisurely putting on my make-up to awkwardly leaning over the sink peering into the foggy bathroom mirror.
   
2. I like 'lite' news in the morning, especially on Fridays. It makes for good water cooler fodder and it's usually entertaining to get little slices of Americana/(the equivalent in the UK).

All of my roommates past and present are very familiar with this habit.

In the US, NBC's Today Show was my preference, which is not unrelated to my mild crush on Matt Lauer (did you see his Paris Hilton Halloween costume?!). I now watch BBC Breakfast, which is OK. The "hall of fame" presenters are pleasant with the glaring exception of one woman who makes such strange off-the-cuff comments that her colleagues (and the audience...and the people she interviews) are more often than not left wide-eyed with shock. I've found that the newscasters here tend to editorialize slightly more than their American counterparts, which is actually a little surprising. All-in-all it's fine for the 15 minutes I eat breakfast and put on my face. That is, until this morning.

Breakfast was doing a feature on the shortage of spaces in secondary schools (high schools) in the UK. Apparently some schools are initiating a lottery system to assign the limited number of spots, which has caused some families concern. Or something. I actually couldn't pay attention because not only did they decide to interview two "mums" on location in the kitchen, they filmed the interview WHILE they were doing dishes. And I am in no way exaggerating. It's as if the producers told these two woman that under no circumstance where they allowed to stop doing their household chores, so up until the point where the newscaster asked direct questions, the two woman were actively washing and drying plates. When it comes time for Mum #1 to speak, she is forced to answer awkwardly over her shoulder with her hands submerged in the soapy water. Mum #2 says her piece and then immediately turns away from the camera and returns to her drying duties. The newscaster then strolls out of the kitchen to the living room where father and son are reading together on the couch. (What in the world would they have done if the child was a girl? Where would they have put her??) The whole thing could have been on The Colbert Report.

BBC, I will take this post down, if the next story on sub-prime lending features a dad, beer in hand, watching a football game on the couch. Or maybe taking out the trash.