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Carey Roberts probes and lampoons political
correctness. His work has been published frequently
in the Washington Times, Townhall.com,
LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual
Conservative, and elsewhere. He is a staff reporter
for the New Media Network. You can contact him at
E-Mail.
Hillary Clinton,
Feminist-at-Large
Remember Whack-a-Mole? The theme park game that
features insouciant plastic rodents popping out of
the hole – Whack! Here comes another one
– WHACK!
That’s the image that comes to mind as I
ponder Hillary Clinton’s controversial career:
Staunch defender of a wayward Commander-in-Chief.
Achievement-free senator from New York.
Once-inevitable presidential candidate.
And just when you think the drama has thankfully
drawn to a close, the curtain rises on yet another
act.
In the current scene, Mrs. Clinton is nominated
to serve as the Secretary of State. You wonder,
exactly what qualifies her to serve as
America’s ambassador to the world? During
Hillary’s eight years in the White House, she
didn’t attend any National Security Council
meetings. She didn’t receive the
president’s daily briefings. She didn’t
even have a security clearance.
These facts prompted candidate Barack Obama to
jeer, “What exactly is [her] foreign
policy expertise?” Incoming White House
counsel Greg Craig proffered this blunt response:
“There is no reason to believe…she was a
key player in foreign policy at any time during the
Clinton Administration.”
Not only is Hillary Clinton over-hyped and
under-qualified, many of the claims in her foreign
relations brief are simply false.
“I was deeply involved in the Irish peace
process,” Clinton once boasted on the campaign
trail. I “pulled together in Belfast, in the
town hall,” a group of Catholic and Protestant
women so “the hard work of peacemaking could
go forward.”
That claim triggered this rebuke by Nobel Peace
Prize winner David Trimbell, who was present at the
time: “Hillary Clinton had no direct role in
bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a
‘wee bit silly’ for exaggerating the part
she played.”
During a 1996 Bosnia outing, a hail of sniper
fire at the airport forced Clinton’s entourage
to run “with our heads down to get into the
vehicles to get to our base” – at least
that’s what she said during a speech at George
Washington University.
But then CBS replayed the videotape showing a
cadre of Bosnian schoolgirls happily chatting with
Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea on the tarmac – but
no whizzing bullets.
During a March 8 CNN interview, Clinton claimed,
“I negotiated open borders to let fleeing
refugees into safety from Kosovo.”
But Congressional Quarterly’s
PolitiFact.com throws cold water on the boast. The
group concludes, “We don’t find evidence
to support that” and ridicules her claim as
“Barely True.”
During another interview, Hillary claimed she
had advocated for military intervention in Rwanda.
But no one else remembers it that way.
“Whatever her private conversations with
the president may have been, key foreign policy
officials say that a U.S. military intervention in
Rwanda was never considered in the Clinton
administration’s policy deliberations,”
counters National Security Council insider Gail
Smith.
I have no doubt that Mrs. Clinton fully
appreciates the difference between a French fry and
a Belgian waffle. But the stubborn question
remains, what are Senator Clinton’s
qualifications to serve as Secretary of State?
The truth is, Hillary does have extensive
experience working in other countries -- but not in
the way most Americans would expect. During the
Clinton administration, she was Bill’s
goodwill ambassador, traveling to the four corners
of the globe as a high-profile advocate of the
feminist agenda.
Inevitably the abortion issue came under the
glare of the media spotlight.
At the 1994 World Conference on Population
Development in Egypt, Hillary worked behind the
scenes to establish a universal right to abortion
on demand. That brought her into conflict not only
with Mother Teresa, but also with the Pontiff.
The following year she led the U.S. delegation
to China to attend the Fourth World Conference on
Women. She delivered the meeting’s keynote
speech, making the wrongful assertion that
“Women are 70% of the world’s poor.”
Clinton narcissistically concluded,
“Women’s rights are human rights and
human rights are women’s rights.”
Three years later she appeared at a meeting of
First Ladies held in El Salvador. This time she
made the bizarre claim that “Women have always
been the primary victims of war.”
Hillary Clinton was also behind her
husband’s 1996 selection of women’s
rights advocate Madeline Albright as Secretary of
State. Bill was reportedly leaning to George
Mitchell, but once again Hillary had the last
word.
There is little doubt that as Secretary of
State, Hillary Clinton will attach highest priority
to advancing the global feminist agenda,
particularly the right to kill the innocent unborn.
Pro-life lobbyist Jeanne Head predicts,
“Hillary would promote her husband’s
agenda at the United Nations to make abortion a
fundamental human right worldwide.”
We’ll need to keep a close eye on this
woman.
Domestic Violence
Industry: Criminal
The domestic violence industry has a habit of
attracting unsavory characters into its ranks. And
now three former operatives are doing hard
time.
Take Barbara Dehl of Nampa, Idaho. Ten years ago
Dehl single-handedly lobbied for passage of
Cassie’s Law, a bill aimed at stopping dating
violence. That achievement landed her on the Montel
Williams Show, and Sen. Mike Crapo hailed Dehl as
the “Spirit of Idaho.” Her crowning
moment came in 2002 when she was invited to serve
on the National Advisory Committee on Violence
Against Women.
But then Dehl got caught up in drug trafficking
charges and a murder case. Two years ago Dehl was
sentenced to 15 years in the slammer for the
kidnapping and macabre torturing of a 20-year-old
man and his girlfriend.
About the same time Cindy Lou Shores, director
of the South Central Region Tribal Nations and
Friends Domestic Violence Coalition in Oklahoma,
was pilfering $106,000 from the coalition’s
cookie jar. This past March, Shores was sentenced
to 17 months in federal prison.
And two months ago the former head of Domestic
Violence Emergency Services, John Scott, was
sentenced to a year behind bars for stealing money
from the Roanoke, Va. abuse shelter. After Scott
leaves jail, he will serve another year of
probation and pay $48,000 in restitution.
But the problem isn’t limited to shelter
officials who enrich themselves at the expense of
taxpayers. Shelter managers condone and even
encourage a broad range of illegal activities
within their own facilities.
Mistreatment of children appears to be
widespread. Last October the life of toddler Myliak
Dale was snuffed out when a woman backed out her
car at the SafeSpace shelter in Stuart, Fla.:
www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/080722
. Incidents of child abuse often go unreported to
local officials, in violation of state law.
There’s the problem of harassment and
sexual assaults. At Bethany House in Falls Church,
Va., two house managers were forced to resign
following sexual advances of shelter residents:
www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/080902
.
Drug abuse is rampant at some shelters. A former
employee at Another Way of Lake City, Fla.
revealed, “I, on numerous occasions reported
illegal drug use that I had witnessed take place on
Shelter property and often my complaints were
ignored…We always knew not to call the law
unless you were prepared to be
unemployed.”
Some shelters forego background checks on job
applicants. That policy helped Another Way land
former shelter manager Wendy Pittman (four criminal
charges of passing bad checks); Brenda Collins (one
charge of aggravated assault and two counts of
cocaine possession); and Gloria Taylor (nine
misdemeanor convictions and three felonies):
www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/081009
.
Many shelters have lawyers who coach women to
embellish their stories or even dream up incidents
that can never be refuted (“Don’t worry,
he’ll never be able to prove he didn’t
threaten you with the knife”). Then they file
a series of baseless allegations that are designed
to make the man’s life miserable.
That’s what they did to James Hall of
McIntosh Co., Oklahoma: www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/080923
Convincing a person to commit perjury is called
subornation of perjury -- and that’s a
crime.
Then there’s the slick shelter shake-down
routine: Arrest the man on phony abuse charges and
then plunder his house while he’s stuck in
jail. That’s what happened to Bob Hartzog of
Glendale, Ariz: www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/081117
.
Some managers believe their shelter is protected
by a form of sovereign immunity -- after all, our
society is steeped in patriarchal privilege so
women need to have a safe place.
So when 26-year-old Veronica Bullock sexually
assaulted a 12-year-old boy at the Brewster Center
Domestic Violence Services, shelter workers not
only barred the Tucson police from entering the
facility, they even refused to disclose the
rapist’s name.
And when the police arrest a woman for
assaulting her husband or boyfriend, the shelter
girls scoot over to the police station and have the
woman released to their custody. Once ensconced at
the shelter, the assailant is free to come and go
as she wishes.
For illegal immigrants, sovereign immunity means
a neon-flashing “Bienvenidos” sign. Just
spend a night at the local domestic violence
shelter -- all you need to do is scream,
“Abuse!” That will entitle you to a free
pass with the immigration people – amazing but
true: www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/070912
.
Discrimination on the basis of sex is also
illegal, but who cares about abused men?:
www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/080817 . Racial
bias has been documented as well: www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/081124
.
Rounding out the picture are uncounted incidents
of embezzlement, record falsification, financial
irregularities, and garden-variety malfeasance:
www.mediaradar.org/docs/RADARreport-DV-Programs-Misuse-1-Billion-Tax-Dollars-Per-Year.pdf
One asks, Where are all the state attorney
generals and federal inspectors who are supposed to
be enforcing our laws?
Domestic Violence
Industry: Hateful
Dogged by weeks of protest, the Dallas Area Rapid
Transit finally took down the controversial
advertisements from its buses this past weekend.
Purchased by a local abuse shelter, the ads
featured a young schoolgirl who blithely predicted,
“One day my husband will kill me.”
Journalist Helen Smith denounced the ads as
“Very disturbing hate speech against husbands,
fathers, and even boys.” Advice Goddess Amy
Alkon titled her op-ed, “Hating Men –
Supposedly for the Greater Good.” One
distraught mother responded to the Dallas Morning
News article by writing, “I took my son aside
after seeing it and explained to him how certain
women in this society abuse their positions to
promote hatred towards men and boys.”
From its beginnings three decades ago, the
domestic violence industry has been plagued by a
cabal of pinkshirts who will do almost anything to
advance their agenda.
Erin Pizzey, founder of the first domestic
violence shelter in England, let the cat out of the
bag when she revealed many of the women in her
shelter were as abusive as the men they had left.
In retaliation, feminists issued death threats and
eventually forced her to flee the country.
In the United States, Dr. Suzanne
Steinmetz’ research on the Battered Husband
Syndrome triggered a whispering campaign designed
to torpedo her impending promotion, as well as a
bomb threat at her daughter’s wedding.
Family violence researcher Murray Straus at the
University of New Hampshire has been similarly
slandered, harassed, and threatened by radicals who
all claim to be against violence.
Eventually the gender partisans got their way,
securing passage of the Violence Against Women Act
in 1994. Conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly
would later refer to the legislation as the
“hate-men law.”
Is that description a little over-the-top? Read
on, decide for yourself.
Federal domestic violence laws funnel millions
in taxpayer money to sponsor public awareness
programs such as the Dallas bus ads, as well as
training for judges and law enforcement
personnel.
Former police officer George Sperry of La Mesa,
Calif. described the training he attended as
“so dripping with male hatred that everyone in
the class felt uncomfortable, male and female
officers alike.”
But the most virulent anti-male ethos is found
at the 1,800 abuse shelters scattered across the
country.
A former worker at Bethany House in Falls
Church, Va. revealed the facility was “largely
used as a free hostel for women with emotional
problems if they were willing to hate their
husbands enough.”
One woman, hired to work for a network of
shelters in the St. Louis area, quit in disgust
after only a few months because the residents
“were subjected to a constant barrage of
man-hating lesbian propaganda.”
One Seattle-area judge who served as a member of
the advisory committee of a shelter admitted,
“I was shocked at the anti-male bias of the
ladies who ran the shelter. The only solution
championed by the shelter was to get free from that
big, malicious male.”
Joy Taylor, former volunteer at a Washington
state shelter, found that “Men were always
presented as potential abusers; any goodness one
might see in them was only temporary.”
Shelter residents also complain of deep-seated
anti-male bias.
At Independence House in Hyannis, Mass., Nev
Moore disclosed, “Women are ordered to leave
their husbands, even in the complete absence of
real domestic violence or abuse.”
Former shelter resident Nezha Saad revealed,
“exposure to domestic violence audio and
visual materials in the shelter has negatively
affected my children to the point where even they
may now feel that men, in general, are
abusive.” Saad demanded that “Justice,
not man-hating ideology, must prevail in our
justice system.”
But the problem is not just an out-of-control
industry that marinates itself in defamatory
caricatures of men – the source can be traced
to feminist ideology as a whole.
Gloria Steinem once made this breath-taking
statement, “The patriarchy requires violence
or the subliminal threat of violence in order to
maintain itself.” And feminist icon Andrea
Dworkin spewed this shocking tirade: “Under
patriarchy, every woman’s son is her betrayer
and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of
another woman.”
Three years ago the New York Times ran a
screed that blamed the problem of domestic violence
on “every man and in every class of
society.” (All the research shows women are as
likely to abuse as men --
www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm -- but goodness
gracious, let’s not allow the facts to stand
in the way of female empowerment!)
Americans pride ourselves as being open-minded
and tolerant. So where did the feminist movement
get sidetracked?
Professor Murray Straus, a courageous man who
refuses to back down in the face of feminist
efforts to squelch his research, explains it this
way: “History is full of atrocities carried
out in the service of a moral agenda.”
Domestic Violence
Industry: Racist
The Family Place, an abuse shelter in Dallas,
recently placed race-baiting advertisements on
local buses. The ads depict a smiling
African-American girl crowned with a tiara who
innocently predicts, “One day my husband will
kill me.”
Barbara Kay of the National Post charged the ads
were “outright lies.” Dallas Morning News
columnist James Ragland labeled them “shocking
and biased.” Journalist Helen Smith called
them “very disturbing hate speech.” And
Elizabeth Crawford, president of African-Americans
for VAWA Reform, denounced the bus placards as
“sexist and racist.”
The Family Place -- funded to the tune of $2.9
million a year and whose director receives an
annual compensation package that tops $163,000 --
receives much of its funding from the federal
Violence Against Women Act.
So if the Family Place is able to indulge in
hurtful racial stereotypes with impunity, what does
that say about the domestic violence industry?
There’s no doubt that the abuse industry
strives mightily to keep a tight lid on dissent.
But a few years ago the Ms. Foundation for Women
sponsored a conference probing the effects of
intrusive domestic violence programs on inner-city
residents.
The Foundation’s tell-all report,
“Safety and Justice for All,” reveals
that “when state power has been invited into,
or forced into, the lives of individuals, it often
takes over.” As a result, the
“Criminalization of social problems has led to
mass incarceration of men, especially young men of
color, decimating marginalized
communities.”
That’s a strong indictment of a law that
was supposed to rid our families of the scourge of
violence.
Linda Mills, vice provost of New York University
and author of the book Violent Partners, makes the
point that our current domestic violence system,
designed by college-educated white women, caters
mostly to the needs and conveniences of
college-educated white women. So it’s no
surprise that racial minorities are poorly
served.
In Charleston, W.Va., the Domestic Violence
Counseling Center specializes in helping minority
victims of partner abuse, female and male. But when
the Center approached the West Virginia Coalition
Against Domestic Violence for support, the answer
was a stern “nyet.”
Why? Because the Counseling Center refuses to
endorse the radical feminist, anti-male ideology
that the West Virginia Coalition imposes on its
membership.
A few years ago Tricia Bent-Goodley wrote an
article, “Perceptions of Domestic Violence: A
Dialogue with African American Women.”
Bent-Goodley notes, “Shelters have denied
housing to African American women for not sounding
fearful enough or sounding too strong….Shelter
workers have been found to make assumptions about
the mental health needs and safety of the survivor
based on this superficial stereotype.”
Angela Mae Kupenda of the Mississippi School of
Law voices a similar concern about domestic
violence shelters: “In many minds a picture
has been painted of Black women as hardened, tough,
back-talking, strong, permissive and undeserving of
protection.”
These biases eventually affect the persons who
are in greatest need of help.
Meagan Copelin, a former resident at the
Cherokee Family Violence Center in Canton, Ga.
recently contacted me. She revealed Black residents
routinely faced discriminatory practices, such as
being denied gas vouchers to go look for a job. One
staffer “would look as us Blacks like we were
horrible,” Copelin said.
Dolores Taylor, a single mom, had a similar
experience at the Georgia shelter. “I am
writing to you because I have experienced racism
from the staff here at CFVC and my departure from
this facility is to prevent me from voicing what
really takes place here,” Taylor revealed.
When Pearl Williams and her two children arrived
at the Martha House in Hamilton, Ontario, they
faced a torrent of taunts:“Einy, meiny, miney,
moe, catch a…” One co-resident referred
to her as “that black bitch,” and a
shelter worker told Ms. Williams that she should
“learn how to be white.” With that, she
took her children in hand and fled the facility.
“I swore I’d never go back to another
shelter,” Williams told me.
And a few miles down the road, internal racial
discord contributed to the decision to shut down
the Shirley Samaroo House in Toronto.
So how does the domestic violence industry get
away with these travesties? Simple.
The $4 billion-a-year abuse industry has become
another self-serving interest group that steadily
expands its definition of “domestic
violence,” advocates for policies that are out
of synch with women’s wishes, and condones
racist practices within its own ranks.
That’s an industry that’s overdue for
reform.
© 2008 Carey Roberts
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