Female Journalist’s Sexual Harrassment of Male Naval Officer OK with Washington Post
July 31, 2009
Read this story and ask yourself the obvious question, "If a male journalist said these things to and about a female naval officer, what would the results be? (Washington Post, 7/25/09)"
Naval Commander Jeffrey Gordon has written a letter to the editor of the Miami Herald newspaper that employs Carol Rosenberg. In it he complains of numerous offensive and degrading statements made by Rosenberg to and about him in the presence of others.  Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal of the Herald is apparently "looking into" the allegations in Gordon's letter.
Specifically, Gordon complained of "multiple incidents of abusive and degrading comments of an explicitly sexual nature." As but one example, he says that when he stepped out of the shower wearing shorts and a towel, Rosenberg remarked to numerous people present, "Seeing him topless in tent city was the most repulsive sight I've ever seen in my life. I wanted to vomit." In addition, Gordon's letter alleges that Rosenberg frequently suggested that he is gay and that he would, among other things, enjoy having a broomstick shoved up his rectum.
Now of course the Washington Post piece was written by a journalist who was at pains to contact other journalists to laud the many virtues of Carol Rosenberg. Their defense of her is, in a nutshell, that she's aggressive and that sometimes rubs the brass the wrong way, but it's necessary to get the facts.
All of that says less than what they omit, which is any claim that Rosenberg didn't say the things Gordon attributes to her. And it falls far short of answering the obvious question posed in my first paragraph.
After all, when faced with a (seeming) wrongdoer like Rosenberg, how is it possible to pretend on the one hand that she's a tough journalist and on the other that she's incapable of the type of abuse Gordon claims. How can the Post and the journalists it quotes pretend that behavior that would never be tolerated in a man is in some way perfectly acceptable in a woman?
In most cases, gender equality is not a difficult concept. This is one of those cases. It is incomprehensible that articles like the one linked to simply don't grasp the fact that, if Rosenberg did the things Gordon charges, or even a few of them, she should be fired. Wouldn't a man be?
Thanks to Ron for the heads-up.
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Major Domestic Violence Organization Acknowledges Key Truths About Men, Women & DV
July 31, 2009
Here's a fascinating piece on DV (San Luis Obispo Tribune, 7/30/09). Believe it or not, it actually gives accurate representations of facts relating to male victims of domestic violence. If that's not astonishing enough, it quotes two spokespeople for the National Domestic Violence Hotline on issues relating to male victims. What's remarkable about that is that the NDVH has always stayed pretty close to the feminist/DV industry line that all victims are women and all perpetrators are men.
For example, here's the NDVH website.  Notice that it's a helpline for "domestic violence," but if you want to know whether you're a victim, "violence" all of a sudden becomes "abuse." And there are 15 sets of things that can constitute "abuse," but only one of them is physical violence.
That's absolutely standard procedure on sites like the NDVH's. There's a seamless and (the organization hopes) unnoticed transition from violence to abuse which miraculously consists almost not at all of actual violence. Thus is the definition of "violence" expanded beyond all recognition. Thus is the number of victims increased accordingly. Thus is the funding for "domestic violence" programs, shelters, etc. also increased. And the beat goes on.
So it's of considerable surprise that NDVH spokespeople are, to their credit, saying things like "Many male victims/survivors do not report or discuss the abuse against them." That's in response to the relatively low numbers of male victims who call the helpline. Of course she doesn't mention the fact that it takes a fairly sophisticated reader of the NDVH website to glean the information that men as well as women can get help there.
But the San Luis Obispo Tribune article is a good one. How many articles on DV say something like this?
Of the men living with abusive women, most do not report incidents of abuse to police unless the injury is significant enough to result in emergency medical care. The primary reason for non-reporting is shame. Because of this trend, scientific studies by a number of renowned universities and social agencies, and governmental departments such as the Department of Justice, uncover a better picture of this victim group than police and court records.
Or this?
Studies show that men are more likely to be hit with an object or stabbed while women are more likely to be hit with a fist, kicked or shot. While abused men remain in the relationship for many reasons, the top three reasons, according to the Department of Justice report are:
1. Protecting their children.
Fearing the courts will automatically give custody to the mother, the father worries that his children will be abused if they leave the family home.
2. Assuming blame.
In this situation, men buy into the woman's reasons for delivering abuse rather than recognizing the abuse is unreasonable. This trait is common among both women and men.
3. Dependency.
The man is dependent on the woman for financial, social, or emotional support and fears the loss of such if he leaves the relationship. This trait, too, is shared between women and men suffering abuse.
It's almost enough to make you believe in miracles. To let the editors know your thoughts on Pam Baker's article, you can write to letters@thetribunenews.com.
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Carol Smith: Women Better Managers than Men
July 31, 2009
So now we know. Women are better corporate managers than are men.Â
How do we know? Carol Smith told us so, and she told us in the pages of the New York Times Business section here, so who can argue (The New York Times, 7/25/09)?Â
Who is Carol Smith? She's senior vice president of the media conglomerate the Elle Group. Why does Carol Smith hold such misandric views? Well, her experience tells her that women make better managers than do men, and that's that. Does it occur to her that her sexist worldview might possibly color her observations? If it does, she doesn't let on about it. Does it occur to her that her experience might be too limited to draw meaningful conclusions from? Maybe; she admits she's "generalizing," but that doesn't keep her from doing it.Â
Does it occur to her that people actually study management styles and their effectiveness, so that she doesn't have to rely on her own narrow set of experiences distorted by her sexism? Not apparently, and that's strange for a senior manager for a major corporation. I mean, what if a junior manager completed a project and his/her conclusion was based on nothing but some vague notions derived in a wholly unscientific way from pretty much random occurrences?  Â
Imagine it. Smith: "Mr. Jones, I want you to tell me what the market is for product X at price Y in area Z. Report back to me in two months." Two months later. Smith: "Well, Mr. Jones what's your report?" Jones: "Sorry boss, it's no go. Only one person in ten thousand in area Z would buy X at that price." Smith: "How do you know?" Jones: "Oh, I chatted up some of my buddies and overheard a woman talking on her cell phone."
Wouldn't she either fire Jones or send him back to the drawing board? Yes, she probably would because that type of work product is shoddy at best. And the same holds true for her thinking, if that's what she's doing.
Fortunately, most of the comments on the article call Smith on her sexism and general silliness. To tell the truth, so does the Times. The article's headline "No Doubts: Women are Better Managers," fairly reeks of sarcasm. Smith has "no doubts," but anyone who thinks at all effectively about the matter has plenty.
Interestingly, it wasn't long ago that male managers were criticized for their domineering, "my way or the highway" mangement style. That was always at least part mythology. Successful managers learn over many years what works best for them.  For some that means a military-style, "I give orders, you carry them out" way of managing. Others are more consesus oriented. But, part of male-bashing has always been to ignore facts, so male managers were caricatured as all "Chainsaw Al" Dunlaps.
So it's odd that one of the things Smith criticizes male managers for is the exact opposite. She claims they're always talking football or telling about their sons' soccer games. Most people would realize that what those guys are doing is trying to put people at their ease, softening an otherwise all-business approach. Not Smith. To her it's just more proof of male inferiority.
Some day, I swear, the media will start to realize what so many readers of the Times interview already do - that this sort of sexist nonsense is just worthless. There are differences between the sexes, and they make for interesting study and reading. Smith's type of off-the-cuff misandry says a lot about her, but nothing about anything else. It's a waste of perfectly good trees.
Thanks to Phil for the heads-up.
Schwarzenegger Terminates DV Funding
July 31, 2009
The State of California’s inability to rein in expenses and balance its budget in the face of precipitous drops in revenue due to the recession, Governor Schwarzenegger has eliminated funding for DV shelters according to this article (Sandie06, 7/31/09). That doesn’t mean all shelters will close or even that most of them will. They still have federal funding and private donations to rely on.  Still, the article linked to says about half of the 94 shelters affected statewide may be forced to close.
The article is about what you’d expect; it reports the governor’s decision and then jumps to quoting women who have been abused and shelter operators bemoaning the loss of funding. That’s all reasonable enough. But, in keeping with the apparently required narrative that DV only happens to women and is only done by men, the piece neglects to mention certain things.
One thing it fails to mention is that the federal government openly admits that the shelters it funds (a) give no data at all on what they do, how they do it, who they provide services to, what those services are, who they reject, etc. and (b) have established no criteria by which to judge whether they actually reduce DV or not. Go to the White House Office of Management and Budget website and check out the Family Violence and Services Program. There you'll find that the program is rated as "Not Performing."Â
In short, the federal government is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars each year into a vast system of shelters whose functioning it knows not the first thing about. That would be outrageous in any other industry, but with domestic violence, it’s business as usual.
The point being that maybe Governor Terminator is on to something. If the feds don’t know what the shelter system is doing with its money, then I doubt the Golden State does either. Maybe Schwarzenegger is going to demand an accounting from the shelter system in exchange for any future renewal of funding. The article doesn’t say, preferring to hew to the accepted narrative.
But consider this: whatever the motivations behind the governor’s decision, remember that he’s a politician and, whatever else may be true, he considers it politically safe to cut 100% of state funding for DV shelters.  The article missed it, but THAT’S news.
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Schwarzenegger Terminates DV Funding
July 31, 2009
The State of California’s inability to rein in expenses and balance its budget in the face of precipitous drops in revenue due to the recession, Governor Schwarzenegger has eliminated funding for DV shelters according to this article (Sandie06, 7/31/09). That doesn’t mean all shelters will close or even that most of them will. They still have federal funding and private donations to rely on.  Still, the article linked to says about half of the 94 shelters affected statewide may be forced to close.
The article is about what you’d expect; it reports the governor’s decision and then jumps to quoting women who have been abused and shelter operators bemoaning the loss of funding. That’s all reasonable enough. But, in keeping with the apparently required narrative that DV only happens to women and is only done by men, the piece neglects to mention certain things.
One thing it fails to mention is that the federal government openly admits that the shelters it funds (a) give no data at all on what they do, how they do it, who they provide services to, what those services are, who they reject, etc. and (b) have established no criteria by which to judge whether they actually reduce DV or not. Go to the White House Office of Management and Budget website and check out the Family Violence and Services Program. There you'll find that the program is rated as "Not Performing."Â
In short, the federal government is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars each year into a vast system of shelters whose functioning it knows not the first thing about. That would be outrageous in any other industry, but with domestic violence, it’s business as usual.
The point being that maybe Governor Terminator is on to something. If the feds don’t know what the shelter system is doing with its money, then I doubt the Golden State does either. Maybe Schwarzenegger is going to demand an accounting from the shelter system in exchange for any future renewal of funding. The article doesn’t say, preferring to hew to the accepted narrative.
But consider this: whatever the motivations behind the governor’s decision, remember that he’s a politician and, whatever else may be true, he considers it politically safe to cut 100% of state funding for DV shelters.  The article missed it, but THAT’S news.
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‘We’ve got to acknowledge some men abandon kids, and support men willing to raise a kid who isn’t theirs’
July 30, 2009
Garrett Luttrell, a paralegal and a reader, writes:
An interesting court case about fathers' rights and particularly single fathers' rights is Quilloin v Walcott, 434 U.S. 246 (1978). Some of this may be relevant to Virginia’s ‘unwed potential father’ registry, since this case involves an unwed father who was denied the right to prevent his child from being adopted.
The child was born in 1964 to unwed parents, and the parents’ relationship ended shortly after. In 1976, Mother married; she and her husband immediately petitioned for the husband to adopt the child (this was in Georgia). Father tried to stop the adoption, and for the first time, tried to get visitation. (Child support was never an issue, and Father had sporadically sent money and gifts, and occasionally spent time with the child)
Under Georgia law at that time, if a child was born to married parents, both parents had the same parental rights. In the case of a child born to unwed parents, if the father had not legitimized the child, “the mother [was] the only recognized parent and [was] given exclusive authority to exercise all parental prerogatives.â€
To legitimize a child, a father must have, “married the mother and acknowledged the child,†or he must have obtained, “a court order declaring the child legitimate.†In this case, Father had not legitimized the child, so Mother was the only legal parent – making her the only person whose consent was required to go forward with the adoption.
The lower court allowed the adoption, and Father appealed, lost, and appealed again to the Georgia Supreme Court. That court, ruling on Father’s Due Process and Equal Protection claims, also allowed the adoption.
The US Supreme Court addressed Father’s argument that he was denied ‘Due Process’ and ‘Equal Protection’ because the ‘best interests of the child’ doctrine violated the ‘Due Process’ standard, and that he did not have the same right to veto the adoption as a married father would have. (Father or his attorney seem to have forgotten to argue about gender discrimination on earlier appeals, so the SC did not address those arguments even though they were raised. That’s normal, but unfortunate).
On the ‘Due Process’ claim, the SC decided that the “best interests of the child†doctrine did not violate ‘Due Process’ because Father had not sought or exercised custody of the child, and that the adoption would keep the child with his current family, keeping everyone, except for Father, happy. Finally, the SC pointed out that Father had notice and a hearing on legitimacy, the adoption, and the child’s ‘best interests.’
Father also claimed that he was treated differently than a married, separated, or divorced father. The SC argued that a married father would have, at some point, had some responsibility for the child, whereas the unwed father in this case has never had – or sought – responsibility (only visits, never custody) for the child, nor has he ever had obligations.
The SC agreed with the Georgia courts, and allowed the adoption to go through.
I have mixed feelings on this one. While our current legal environment discourages fathers from becoming involved, how many fathers out there would never try? There are a great many details missing from this case, though I haven’t looked at the decisions of the lower courts yet.
We know that fathers don’t abandon their kids nearly as often as our culture believes, but we’ve got to acknowledge that it happens occasionally, and support men who are willing to step in and raise a child that is not their biological child. I’ve got a question for Glenn’s readers – where do we draw the lines between parenting, alienation, and abandoning?
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FIU Study: ‘Children of divorce really miss their fathers’
July 30, 2009
"Research indicates that fathers are more effective at attenuating high-risk behaviors such as sex, drugs and other criminal activities. These behaviors also involve high social costs."
Some interesting work from Florida International University Psychology Professor Gordon Finley. Finley runs FIU’s Fatherhood Lab and focuses specifically on how divorce impacts fathers and the development of their children.
From FIU lab investigates the state of fatherhood (FIU News, 6/15/09):
Using questionnaires and a retrospective technique in which he asked 1,989 young adults to think back on their relationship with their fathers, Finley found that children of divorce really miss their fathers. According to Finley, they are denied a relationship with them because of present-day family law and court practices.
“Divorce marginalizes or severs a father’s relationship with his child,†he says. “In reality, the father becomes a visitor in his or her life. He is no longer a father in the very literal sense.â€
For decades, researchers focused on motherhood when studying parenting. Today more attention is being paid to fathers, and the data is consistently showing that fathers are vital to raising happy, healthy and successful children. “They contribute more than bringing home the bacon,†Finley says...
Finley’s research indicates that fathers are more effective at attenuating high-risk behaviors such as sex, drugs and other criminal activities. These behaviors also involve high social costs.
Yet Finley says that his findings on fatherhood do not match today’s social reality or family policy. In divorce cases, the father rarely gets custody (only in about 15 percent of cases) and shared parenting is not equal. Fathers usually see their children only once a week and two weekends a month.
Finley’s findings also suggest that parent-children relationships are not as much about identification or imitation, as once thought, but about transaction. The way a girl learns to become a woman is through her interaction with her father. That will determine how she will relate to men in her adult life.
His study concluded that girls experience a greater impact by divorce than boys.
“The real cost is actually to the daughters of divorce. They don’t have relationships with their fathers. So when they enter adolescence and start questioning whether to have sex, they don’t have a realistic idea of what men are like.â€
Read the full article here.
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Winston Churchill & Recovering the Lost Art of Manhood
July 30, 2009
Frank Miniter, editor of American Hunter, has a new book out called The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide: Recovering the Lost Art of Manhood. Miniter's perspective is that the traditional art of being a gentleman and being a man has been discarded by political correctness, and that both men and women are the poorer for it. It's an interesting and very readable book.
One section of it deals with Winston Churchill, my dad's hero, who Miniter sees as exemplifying some of the virtues of the traditional gentleman.
It's an interesting portrait of a flawed but inspiring man who made plenty of mistakes (Gallipoli, Gandhi, and opposing women's suffrage) but who overcame much (a speech impediment, failure in school, problematic parents) to be very successful.
All the while Churchill kept his sense of humor. One sample from Miniter's book dealt with England's Labor Party's nationalizations of parts of English industry after World War II. Miniter writes:
Churchill entered the men's room at the House of Commons to find his political rival Clement Atlee standing at the urinal. Churchill took a position as far away as he could from Atlee, only to hear Atlee jab, "My dear Winston, I hope that despite being adversaries in the House, we could be friends outside of it."
Churchill replied:
"Ah, Clement, I have no quarrel with you, but in my experience, whenever you see something big, you tend to want to nationalize it."
Another Churchill quote (not from Miniter's book) is described thusly:
Nancy Astor was a native Virginian who became Britain’s first woman member of the House of Commons. In the 1930’s she headed a clique in the House of Commons that found something to admire in Hitler’s Germany. Churchill described an Astorite as an appeaser "who feeds the crocodile hoping that it will eat him last." One time shortly thereafter, Churchill found himself at Cliveden, the Astor mansion.
After dinner Lady Astor presided over the pouring of coffee. When Churchill came by, she glared and said. "Winston, if I were your wife, I’d put poison in your coffee." "Nancy," Churchill replied to the acid-tongued woman, "if I were your husband, I’d drink it."
And while we're at it, click on the photo above for a nice clip about the Battle of Britain from the recent HBO movie about Winston Churchill, Into the Storm. To learn more about Miniter's book, click here.
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Before each start, Randy Johnson ‘Bows his head and says a prayer in his father’s memory’
July 29, 2009
"[When my father died] I made a promise then that nothing would get in my way, that I’d become the best pitcher I could be.â€
From Sports Illustrated's The Power of Two (12/17/01):
Randy Johnson's father, Bud, was a police officer...who almost never missed Randy's Little League games. Randy would practice pitching against his garage door, pretending he was another lefty, Oakland Athletics star Vida Blue. The kid threw so hard he'd loosen nails in the wood siding. When Randy was done, Bud would hand him a hammer and say proudly, "Pound them back in, son."
"When I threw a no-hitter [for the Mariners] in 1990, I called him up, and he said, 'How come you walked six guys?' " Johnson says. "That's how he molded me. I tell people I want to have a better season next year, and they'll say, 'How? At your age?' Well, why can't it be better?"
On Christmas Day 1992 Bud Johnson suffered an aortic aneurysm while Randy was flying from Seattle to spend the holiday with his parents. Bud was dead by the time Randy reached the hospital. "I saw him in his pajamas and just hugged him and cried," Johnson says. "I talked to him. Everything spilled out. Mostly it was, 'Why? Why did you have to leave?' I made a promise then that nothing would get in my way, that I'd become the best pitcher I could be."
Since then Johnson has squatted behind the back of the mound before each start, bowing his head and saying a prayer in his father's memory. He is 151-53, a .740 winning percentage, since Bud's passing.
After Johnson made his promise to his dying father in December, 1992, he had his first big year in 1993, going from being an average pitcher who walked way too many batters to being perhaps the best in the game. Over the next five years he went an incredible 75-20.
Since this article was written in 2001, Johnson has gone on to win over 300 games in the major leagues, and after his retirement will be a first ballot Hall of Famer.
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Woman Bites Man – Newspaper Calls it Domestic Violence
July 29, 2009
Is this a misprint? The headline of this article reads "Lakeport Man Assaulted in Domestic Violence Incident" (Lake County News, 7/18/09) I read the article and, sure enough, police were called to a couple's house on a DV report, found that a woman had bitten her ex-husband when he dropped off the kids, arrested her and charged her with domestic violence.
Now, what you'll immediately notice is that the article reporting on the incident appears in a small county newspaper in northern California. It sometimes happens that reporters for that type of paper haven't learned journalistic basics. Therefore, they don't understand that violence by a female intimate partner against a male intimate partner is never referred to as domestic violence in the mainstream press. If that rule is ignored, it's hard to maintain the pretense, long disproven by decades of social science, that all DV perpetrators are men and all DV victims are women.
Hey, accidents happen sometimes.
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