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 By Corky Siemaszko 
 
 Baby, it’s really, really cold outside for Frank Loesser’s Oscar-winning song this Christmas season. 
 
 Under fire amid the #MeToo movement from critics who say "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is sexist and hints at date rape, radio stations in Cleveland and San Francisco have dropped the holiday staple from their Christmas playlists and others in the U.S. and Canada are following suit. 
 
 Susan Loesser says her father would be furious that his song is being banned from the radio. Courtesy Susan Loesser 
 
 This is not sitting well with the daughter of Broadway legend Frank Loesser, who said she has heard complaints in the past about her dad’s ditty but blames Bill Cosby for turning it into something fiendish. 
 
 "Bill Cosby ruined it for everybody," Susan Loesser told NBC News on Thursday. “Way before #Me Too, I would hear from time to time people call it a date rape song. I would get annoyed because it’s a song my father wrote for him and my mother to sing at parties. But ever since Cosby was accused of drugging women, I hear the date rape thing all the time.” 
 
 Cosby was convicted earlier this year of drugging and sexually assaulting one woman and has been accused of doing the same to dozens more. And the link between the song and disgraced actor was even reinforced in a memorable SNL skit — from 2015. 
 
 Loesser, 74, said she understands why women nowadays might bristle at the song, which features a man trying to convince a woman to spend the night because the weather outside is frightful — and includes the line, “Say what’s in this drink?” 
 
 "Absolutely I get it," she said. “But I think it would be good if people looked at the song in the context of the time. It was written in 1944.” 
 
 How would her dad, who died in 1969, react to his song being banned from the radio? 
 
 "I think my father would be furious at that," she said. "People used to say 'what’s in this drink' as a joke. You know, this drink is going straight to my head so what’s in this drink? Back then it didn’t mean you drugged me." 
 
 Broadway composer Frank Loesser and his wife and musical partner Lynn Garland in 1956 in New York. Anthony Camerano / AP file 
 
 "It was a different time," Loesser added. 
 
 “Flirting was a whole different thing back then,” she said. “It was 1944 and my father wrote it because when he and my mom had parties where everybody had to have an act to entertain the guests.” 
 
 The song became a widespread hit after Loesser, who also wrote the music and lyrics to Broadway classics like “Guys and Dolls” and “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” sold the rights to MGM and it was included in the 1949 movie "Neptune’s Daughter." 
 
 In that movie, Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams perform the duet together, as do Red Skelton and Betty Garrett, with the gender roles reversed for laughs. 
 
 While the song won the Academy Award, Susan Loesser said her mom, Lynn Garland, was not happy that her father sold “their song” to MGM. The marriage ended in divorce in 1957. 
 
 The duet went on to be covered by numerous artists, ranging from Johnny Mercer and Betty Carter in 1949 to the version millennials will know best, the 2003 cover performed by Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel from the Christmas movie "Elf." 
 
 "I always thought my parents' version was the best," Susan Loesser said. "I think it’s adorable.' 
 
 But adorable isn't one of the words dozens of callers used recently when they called WDOK Christmas 102.1 in Cleveland to demand that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” be yanked off the playlist. 
 
 "I gotta be honest,” Glenn Anderson of Cleveland’s Star 102 radio wrote on the station’s blog after the decision was made. “I didn’t understand why the lyrics were so bad ... Until I read them.” 
 
 But the song has its defenders. 
 
 Karen North, a USC communications professor whose great uncle was a producer of “Guys and Dolls” and several other Loesser shows, said the song has been misinterpreted. 
 
 “It’s about a man pursuing a woman and a woman pursuing a man and it’s sung in both directions,” she told NBC News. “It’s not about a male predator.” 
 
 If you look at the lyrics, North added, the lines sung by the woman are not "no, no, no." 
 
 "What she’s saying is 'I ought to say no, no, no,'" said North. "It’s all about how women in that era were not allowed to be unchaperoned with a man. The song is about two people who are mutually attracted and want to find an excuse to stay together." 
 
 As for the “what’s in this drink” line, North said “it’s not about a date rape drug being put in a drink.” 
 
 "It's about a woman coming up with an excuse to stay because she’s had too much to drink and is referring to alcohol," she said. 

 CLOSE In the wake of many sexual harassment claims, is 2017 the year we retire ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’? USA TODAY 
 
 Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel in a scene from the motion picture Elf. --- DATE TAKEN: rec'd 10/03 By Alan Markfield New Line Productions HO - handout ORG XMIT: ZX7656 (Photo: ALAN MARKFIELD, NEW LINE PRODUCTIONS) 
 
 The "Baby, It's Cold Outside" controversy continues. 
 
 The daughter of the song's original composer is speaking out against critics of the song, arguing that her father, Frank Loesser, had no ill intentions when writing it. 
 
 "Bill Cosby ruined it for everybody," Susan Loesser, 74, told NBC News on Thursday. “Way before #MeToo, I would hear from time to time people call it a date rape song. I would get annoyed because it’s a song my father wrote for him and my mother to sing at parties. But ever since Cosby was accused of drugging women, I hear the date rape thing all the time." 
 
 The 1944 holiday song has become increasingly controversial in the past few years. Debate sparked again last week, after a radio station in Cleveland announced they would no longer play it and several other stations around the country followed suit. 
 
 Some argue the lyrics have not aged well in the aftermath of #MeToo, like the woman telling the man "no, no, no" and asking "what's in this drink?" 
 
 Loesser said her father would have been "furious" at the radio stations' decision. 
 
 "I think it would be good if people looked at the song in the context of the time," she said. "People used to say 'what’s in this drink' as a joke. You know, 'this drink is going straight to my head so what’s in this drink?' Back then it didn’t mean you drugged me." 
 
 More: More radio stations ban 'Baby It's Cold Outside' amid #MeToo controversy 
 
 More: 'I'm so irritated by this': A heated Gayle King defends 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' 
 
 More: Here are the lyrics to 'Baby, It's Cold Outside,' the Christmas song facing a radio ban 
 
 "Saturday Night Live" previously linked the song to Cosby in a December 2015 episode that aired just days before the comedian, accused by 60 women of drugging and assaulting them, was charged with criminal sexual assault. The sketch depicts Cosby (Kenan Thompson) in one of his signature sweaters singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" while sitting with a woman on a couch. 
 
 "Say, what's in this drink?" asks the woman, played by Tina Fey. 
 
 "Oh, well there's vitamins for when you're, like, bummed out about your career," Thompson's character explains. "Or just to make you smile and help you reach your goals." 
 
 "Yeah, something's up with that," she counters, before handing him her drink and walking out. 
 
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– A new person is weighing in on the controversy over a Christmas classic: the daughter of the man who wrote the song. Susan Loesser, 74, tells NBC News that songwriter Frank Loesser would've been "furious" at his tune being pulled from the radio, noting that it was a "different time" when her dad penned the song and that "flirting was a whole different thing back then." She turns her attention especially to the line "What's in this drink?," insisting that it wasn't meant to be an allusion to date rape, but simply a "joke" about a drink "going straight to my head." So what led to the song's more nefarious alleged undertones, per Susan Loesser? "Bill Cosby ruined it for everybody," she says, noting that while she'd heard people whisper that the song touched on date rape "from time to time" before the #MeToo era, it was only after the Cosby scandal that she hears that "all the time." USA Today notes Saturday Night Live made just that connection in a 2015 sketch, showing actor Kenan Thompson playing Cosby, singing the song with a woman next to him and joking about the famous lyric. The paper notes that just days after that episode aired, Cosby was charged with sexual assault. (A Cleveland radio station is refusing to play the song.)