A Fox News contributor managed to raise a real stink on Friday’s broadcast of “The Five” when he attacked ... the notion of taking showers.
Personal hygiene came up as a topic on the show, a day after a buzzy New York Post headline suggested that showering daily is “performative,” according to some experts. Panelist Charles Hurt took the opportunity to rail against the practice, arguing that taking showers is more about good manners than good health.
“You don’t want to smell bad for other people,” Hurt conceded, but added, “Showers are terrible for you. They’re awful.”
Hurt said that he only takes showers “when I’m going to be around people,” but he insisted, “This is why you live on a farm: You don’t have to take showers.”
That comment led panelist Shannon Bream to ask Hurt, “Are you slopping the hogs and then not showering?”
Hurt’s response probably won’t ease the minds of people who might pay his farm a visit.
“Sure,” he said, “it’s good for you.”
Hurt’s anti-showering comments didn’t win him many converts from his fellow panelists, and Bream pointed out that getting infected by a pathogen like E. coli could be worse.
“But I’m one to judge,” she said. She compared not showering to “eating bugs,” invoking a right-wing theory about supposedly widespread efforts to replace meat in Americans’ diets with insect protein.
“And they wonder why population rates are down,” she said.
Although Hurt’s colleagues weren’t convinced by his anti-showering speech, at least one study backs him up slightly.
According to Harvard University, bathing too frequently can irritate the skin and may prevent the skin from making antibodies.
Still, many people on X, formerly Twitter, didn’t seem excited about getting too close to Hurt.
Hurt is not the only person at Fox News who has claimed some rather gross personal habits, if in jest.
Back in 2019, network host Pete Hegseth claimed he hadn’t washed his hands in 10 years, and said, “Germs are not a real thing. I can’t see them; therefore, they’re not real.” He later insisted he was joking.