Womenron burgundyanchorman 2Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

'Real-Life Ron Burgundy' Considers Himself A Feminist

The Man Who Inspired Ron Burgundy Considers Himself A Feminist
Open Image Modal
By 

News Director, HuffPost Live

|

In Mort Crim's opinion, the misogyny and chauvinism that gets lampooned in the "Anchorman" movies is not emblematic of the real culture of newsrooms in the 1970s.

Why does Mort Crim's opinion matter?

The retired news anchor was at WDIV-TV Detroit from 1978 to 1997, and served as Will Ferrell's inspiration for his Ron Burgundy character. When asked about the "Anchorman" movies' humorous depiction of the TV news business on HuffPost Live, Mort Crim said that he considers himself a feminist.

Crim told HuffPost Live's Ricky Camilleri, "It's a misconception to say that we were chauvinistic in the sense of being gender biased. I don't think that was it at all. I've always prided myself in being a feminist and my daughter would tell you that she was raised in a home where we taught her she could be anything, go anywhere, do anything that she wanted to do."

Like the Ron Burgundy character, Crim was joined by a female co-anchor when Carmen Harlan, who happens to be African-American, was hired. But unlike the Ron Burgundy character, Crim was more welcoming.

"I was very pleased that news, like society was moving in the direction of inclusiveness," he said. "And I was really privileged, really blessed to work with an absolutely charming and effective and wonderful co-anchor, Carmen Harlan, a bright, intelligent, good reporter, good interviewer and just an all-around nice person."

There was, however, one scene from the first "Anchorman" that reminded him of his days in the news business. When Christina Applegate's "Veronica Corningstone" character was assigned a "fluff" story about the birth of a baby panda, he recalled another former co-anchor, Jessica Savitch, being pigeonholed due to her gender as well. But he said that Savitch resisted, and ultimately won.

Click here to watch more of the "real-life Ron Burgundy" Mort Crim on HuffPost Live.

Our 2024 Coverage Needs You

As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.

Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.

to keep our news free for all.

Support HuffPost

Before You Go

Male Champions Of Women's Rights
Alan Alda(01 of18)
Open Image Modal
A devoted husband and doting father to three girls, Alan Alda has been a steadfast and vocal advocate of women’s equality for more than four decades. He co-chaired the Equal Rights Amendment Countdown campaign in the 1970s (with then-First Lady Betty Ford), and has been fighting the good fight ever since. “Every right you have as a woman was won for you by women fighting hard,” he told the crowd at one of his daughters’ college commencements. ”Everything else you have is a privilege, not a right. You must maintain and extend the range of equality for women. The soup of civilized life is a nourishing stew, but it doesn't keep bubbling on its own. Put something back for the people in line behind you.” Here he is with his terrific wife of 50 years, Arlene, and their three daughters (from l. to r.) Eve, Beatrice and Elizabeth. (credit:AP)
Barack Obama(02 of18)
Open Image Modal
Barely two months into his second term, President Barack Obama has already established himself as a historic champion of women’s rights. Under his administration, he has fought for legislation that addresses such vital issues as reproductive choice, Title IX protection of equal educational opportunities, violence against women and the fight against ovarian and breast cancer. But it was the The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 -- signed into law just nine days after he assumed the presidency -- that best signaled his deep support of women. “Equal pay isn’t just an economic issue,” the President said at the bill-signing. “It’s a question of who we are and whether we’re truly living up to our fundamental ideals. It’s about justice.” (credit:AP)
Justice Harry Blackmun(03 of18)
Open Image Modal
Throughout his 24 years on the bench, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun codified into law equality for women in numerous cases, such as Stanton v. Stanton, which struck down Utah’s gender-specific definitions of adulthood (“No longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family,” he wrote), and Frontiero v. Richardson, which forbid military benefits to be dispensed differently to men and women. But it was his authorship of the Court’s landmark Roe vs.Wade decision in 1973 -- which declared a woman's decision to have an abortion constitutionally protected -- that has made Blackmun an icon of the women’s rights movement. (credit:Alamy)
Thomas Paine(04 of18)
Open Image Modal
His 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, secured his place in history as the man who helped turn the tide in America’s quest for freedom from British rule. But Thomas Paine was also one of the nation’s earliest advocates of women’s rights. “If we take a survey of ages and countries,” Paine wrote in his seminal An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex, “we shall find the women, almost -- without exception -- at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness. He has been at once their tyrant and their slave.” (credit:Alamy)
Frederick Douglass(05 of18)
Open Image Modal
Known primarily for his rousing anti-slavery oratory during the Civil War, abolitionist Frederick Douglass was also a passionate champion of women’s rights. “[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man…” he said at the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. “The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man.” (credit:AP)
L. Frank Baum(06 of18)
Open Image Modal
More than just a beloved fable, L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, is regarded as a feminist allegory that celebrates a brave little girl who draws back the curtain on a foolish (and patriarchal) little man -- one who claims to posses wizardly powers. The son-in-law of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a pioneer of the Women’s Suffrage movement, Baum imbued his other fiction with similar feminist themes, and in a newspaper essay, once decried antifeminist men as ''selfish, opinionated, conceited or unjust -- and perhaps all four combined.'' (credit:Copyright 1908 by Dana Hull)
Dick Gregory(07 of18)
Open Image Modal
One of the first comedians to bring racism into his routine (“A white southern waitress said to me, ‘We don't serve colored people here,’ and I said, ‘That's all right. I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken’”), activist Dick Gregory has also been an outspoken feminist throughout his career, joining the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment 35 years ago. He is no less ardent on the issue of violence against women. “If I'm a woman and I'm walking down the street naked,” he once famously said, “you still don’t have a right to rape me.” (credit:AP)
William Moulton Marston(08 of18)
Open Image Modal
When psychologist and comic book writer William Moulton Marston (seated in photo) came up with the idea of Wonder Woman, his intent went beyond merely creating a two-dimensional character. "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power,” he wrote in The American Scholar in 1943. “The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.” The first official issue of Ms. magazine featured Marston’s superheroine on the cover, beneath the headline, “Wonder Woman for President.” (credit:Wikipedia/Ms. Magazine)
Matthew Vassar(09 of18)
Open Image Modal
When merchant and brewer Matthew Vassar founded the college that bears his name in 1861, he envisioned a “fully endowed institution for the education of women,” one that would recognize the vital contribution of women to the nation’s ongoing story. "The mothers of a country mold the character of its citizens, determine its institutions, and shape its destiny,” Vassar told the college’s charter Board of Trustees. “Next to the influence of mother is that of female teacher.” The first of the Seven Sister’s Colleges, Vassar would remain a women’s school for 108 years, becoming coeducational in 1969. (credit:Photographer: De M. Brown, Margaret © Vassar College / Courtesy, Archives & Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries)
Woody Guthrie(10 of18)
Open Image Modal
In addition to writing the legendary This Land is Your Land, folksinger and songwriter Woody Guthrie was, according to a surviving granddaughter, “one of the earlier feminists,” composing hundreds of songs and prose about women -- about the beauty in what they bring to the world.” Indeed, Guthrie’s Union Maid -- a pro-union song, written from a women’s point of view -- would go on to become an anthem for the struggles of women and workers alike. “There once was a union maid, she never was afraid,“ the song begins, “and when the Legion boys come 'round, she always stood her ground.” (credit:Getty Images)
Walt Whitman(11 of18)
Open Image Modal
Writing in the mid-Nineteenth Century, Walt Whitman produced poetry and essays about gender equality that were perfectly timed for the women’s movement that had just begin to erupt. While his work also touched on subtler themes of gay liberation and sexual freedom, his feminist voice was unmistakable: “I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,” he wrote in his epic Song of Myself. “And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man / And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.” (credit:Getty Images)
John Lennon(12 of18)
Open Image Modal
John Lennon once acknowledged that his “feminist education” dated back to his childhood, and the examples set by his mother and his aunts -- “five strong, intelligent, beautiful women.” During his post-Beatles years, he was among the first celebrities to boast about his devotion to being a househusband, telling Playboy magazine, “I’ve been baking bread and looking after the baby, [which], as every housewife knows, is a full-time job.” And just three days before his murder in 1980, he explained the inspiration for his famous 1972 song, Woman, to a reporter from Rolling Stone: “One sunny afternoon in Bermuda,” he said, “it suddenly hit me what women do for us. What dawned on me was everything I was taking for granted. Women really are the other half of the sky.” (credit:Getty Images)
John Stoltenberg(13 of18)
Open Image Modal
As an author, editor and activist, John Stoltenberg has expressed feminist theory primarily through a fierce reevaluation of maleness and masculinity, often his own. His books and essays are equal parts trenchant and provocative (titles include The End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience and Why I Stopped Trying to be a Real Man) and he knows how to make a point: his controversial “Pose Workshop” required men to pose in the same manner as women who appear in pornography. Formerly married to the late feminist Andrea Dworkin (though both acknowledged being gay), he once remarked, “Pornography tells lies about women, but it tells the truth about men.” (credit:Facebook.com)
Eddie Vedder(14 of18)
Open Image Modal
His decades-long support of abortion rights has made Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder a hero of the feminist movement, largely due to the high-octane -- and highly public -- quality of his advocacy. He appeared in a 1992 MTV Unplugged concert with the word “Pro-Choice” written on his arm, and the same year wrote an essay in Spin magazine declaring that the abortion debate “is not just a women's issue -- it's human rights.” Also outspoken about violence against women, he frequently espouses his political viewpoints from the concert stage, and once told Rolling Stone magazine -- in true rock-star fashion -- “Men trying to control women's bodies are really beginning to piss me off.” (credit:Getty Images)
Don McPherson(15 of18)
Open Image Modal
On the gridiron, he was fierce and focused; off the football field, he’s no less tenacious. Since 1994, educator, lecturer and former NFL (Philadelphia Eagles, Houston Oilers) and CFL (Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Ottawa Rough-Riders) quarterback Don McPherson has been the inspiring team leader of countless community-based, corporate and national programs designed to address and eradicate domestic and sexual violence against women, as well as rape, stalking, substance abuse and bullying. He has testified twice before the U.S. Congress, and continues to bring his powerful message to the media. “I once saw a bumper sticker,” he said, “that read, ‘Feminism is the radical view that women are people, too.’ I thought, ‘Yes!’ That was the day I realized I was a feminist.” (credit:DonaldMcPherson.com)
Michael Kimmel(16 of18)
Open Image Modal
Although the lion’s share of his books focus on the topic of men and masculinity, sociologist and gender studies professor Michael Kimmel has been a loyal friend to women’s issues throughout his career. His groundbreaking 1992 history, "Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990" was hailed as a triumphant chronicle of the men who have supported women’s equality throughout the nation’s history, and “an inspirational sourcebook for both women and men” (Publishers’ Weekly). Kimmel is also a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, where his timely and thoughtful columns cover a wide range of women’s issues, from male elitism in college sports to the fight for gender equality around the globe. (credit:Aspen Ideas Festival)
Ryan Gosling(17 of18)
Open Image Modal
He is a sensitive heartthrob in many of his hit movies -- and, off-screen, Ryan Gosling is no less a friend to women. When the MPAA tried to slap an NC-17 rating on his 2010 film Blue Valentine (because of a scene depicting consensual oral sex between Gosling and Michelle Williams), he blasted the ratings board for sustaining a “patriarchy-dominant” cinematic culture that tries to control how women are depicted on screen. “The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture,” he said, “but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario. It’s misogynistic to try and control a woman’s sexual presentation of self.” The incident helped inspire the tongue-in-cheek blog site, FeministRyanGosling, and a book of the same name. (credit:AP)
Phil Donahue(18 of18)
Open Image Modal
I met Phil on his Donahue show, and from that first conversation I knew I had found a soul mate. His sparkling blue eyes didn’t hurt! But it was his understanding that women and men needed to have an equal seat at the table that won my heart. There’s a reason Phil tops almost everyone’s list as the consummate male feminist: because he is one. Since I’ve known him (and long before), Phil has lent his time and energy to countless women’s causes, giving them a voice on his programs, marching alongside us during those early days of the women’s movement, and continuing to fight the fight today, in whatever way he can. I was determined I’d never marry. It wasn’t until I met a man who knew how to be a real partner that I could make that amazing leap. (credit:MarloThomas.com)
Suggest a correction
|
Submit a tip