Ashleigh Banfield Claps Back Hard at Author of Aziz Ansari Sexual Misconduct Story Over Insulting Email

"Ashleigh, someone I am certain nobody under the age of 45 has heard of," Way wrote, which Banfield read on air. "I hope the 500 retweets on the single news write up made that burgundy lipstick, bad highlights, second-wave feminist has-been really relevant for a little while."

Banfield, who criticized the piece and the anonymous accuser on the air earlier this week, explained that she felt compelled to share the email because it goes against everything Way apparently believes in.

"The reason I want to share that is because if you truly believe in the #MeToo movement, if you truly believe in women's rights, if you truly believe in feminism, the last thing you should do is attack someone in an ad hominem way for her age, I'm 50, and for my highlights," the veteran journalist and anchor said.

"I was brown-haired for a while when I was a war correspondent interviewing Yasser Arafat, and in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank. Google those place," Banfield added.

The email was a direct response to Banfield's criticism of the writer's subject, code named, Grace, who claimed that her date with Ansari was the worst night of her life. Banfield summed the encounter up as a "bad date," not sexual assault or misconduct, arguing the recent Golden Globe winner should not be "blackballed" from the industry because of it.

"By your description, your sexual encounter was unpleasant. It did not send you to the police, it did not affect your workplace, or your ability to get a job. So I have to ask you, what exactly was your beef?" she said in her broadcast Monday. "That you had a bad date with Aziz Ansari? Is that what victimized you to the point of seeking a public conviction and a career-ending sentence against him? Is that truly what you thought he deserved for your night out?"

"What you have done, in my opinion, is appalling," she added. "You went to the press with a story of a bad date and you have potentially destroyed this man's career over it, right after he received an award for which he was worthy. And now here is where I am going to claim victim. You have chiseled away at a movement that I, along with all of my sisters in the workplace, have been dreaming of for decades, a movement that has finally changed an oversexed professional environment that I, too, have struggled through at times over the last 30 years in broadcasting."

"The only sentence that a guy like that deserves is a bad case of blue balls, not a Hollywood blackball," she concluded.