PBS Internal Audit: National Organization for Women Outgunned by
Sackson Horde, Allies

Shortly after we launched our protest of Breaking the Silence, the National Organization for Women attacked us and sent out an Action Alert urging its followers to contact PBS and voice their opinion in favor of the film. Irene Weiser of Stop Family Violence urged supporters to counter the protests by calling PBS and urging them to run the program. Toni Troop of Jane Doe Inc./The Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence warned against us, saying that film angers the "mad dads whose tactics and efforts to further the abuse through the court systems are exposed."

At the time I told my wife "I bet we get far more support than NOW and its allies do." Data cited by Getler in his report confirms this--we outdid NOW & Company by a ratio of seven to one. Getler writes:

"The mail arriving at PBS has been overwhelmingly critical...PBS reports receiving almost 4,000 e-mails, with more than 3,500 of them negative. More than 90 of 105 phone calls were also negative as were virtually all of the few dozen letters."

These numbers are understated--PBS national and its local affiliates received about 6,500 calls and letters, and CPB received about 3,500. I thank the Sackson Horde and our allies--including Fathers and Families of Massachusetts, the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, Help Stop PAS Inc., The Coalition of Fathers & Families New York, and Fathers Are Parents Too--for their support.

Getler Began His Job Early Because of Protests

Getler, PBS's new ombudsman, says he began his job early because of our protests against Breaking the Silence, noting "waiting for me on my first day at PBS was a stack of e-mails, the great majority of them critical, and commentaries about a PBS documentary titled, Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories. He wrote:

"I joined PBS on Nov. 15. Before I got here, the plan was that my first column, and the Ombudsman's full Web site, would be launched on Dec. 20. But some controversy got here before I did and the main subject of this column is a PBS program, Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories, that aired on Oct. 20. Rather than wait until two months after the program was presented, I'm posting this column early while the events are still reasonably fresh.

New Column: AB 400 Will Help Wisconsin's Children of Divorce

My latest co-authored column, AB 400 Will Help Wisconsin's Children of Divorce (Wisconsin State Journal, 12/3/05), concerns a new bill which will protect children of divorce's relationship with both of their parents by limiting post divorce move-aways. I co-authored the piece with family law attorney Jeff Leving.

To write a Letter to the Editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, Wisconsin's second largest newspaper, concerning "AB 400 Will Assure All Parents' Rights," write to lwsjopine@madison.com.

As I noted in the column, the bill recently passed the Assembly and now resides in a Senate committee. Wisconsin Fathers for Children and Families is working to get the bill passed--to help support their efforts, click here. The text of the bill can be seen here.

As you know, move-away legislation has been one of the focuses of my work over the past three years. In California, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the non-relocating parent in the LaMusga case in April of 2004. In that case, Gary LaMusga fought an eight year battle to prevent his children from being moved from California to Ohio by a vindictive ex-wife. To learn more about that case, see my co-authored column Is a Pool More Important than a Dad? (San Francisco Chronicle, 5/4/04) and California NOW Takes Stand Against Working Mothers (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2/23/04). Also, see my radio commentary on the case in which I critiqued feminist arguments in favor of the move-away mom.

As many of you know, in the summer of 2004 I helped lead a campaign to stop SB 730, a bill which would have destroyed the LaMusga decision. On August 16, 2004 syndicated columnist Dan Walters--viewed by many as the ultimate Sacramento insider--wrote a column saying that we had no chance of succeeding. A few minutes after reading that column I received word that the leader of the California Senate had pulled the bill and we had won. It was one of the greatest upset victories in the history of the movement for shared parenting.

Lobbyist Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children was also a key part of that effort, as were many family law professionals committed to the proposition that children need both of their parents. To learn more, see California Senate Leader Pulls Anti-Child Bill in Face of Huge Opposition.

To hear me discuss the move-away issue and LaMusga on PBS's Los Angeles affiliate, click here. Feminist law professor Carol Bruch, with whom I clashed on the show, authored the mothers' brief in LaMusga.  To hear Gloria Allred, Garrett Dailey (LaMusga's attorney), and I discuss the move-way issue on His Side with Glenn Sacks,  click here.

Hope for the Holidays: Spontaneous Reunification

The Christmas season is a special time for kids and families. But it can also be an exceptionally difficult time for divorced or separated dads who have been driven out of the lives of the children who love them and need them. Cases of Parental Alienation Syndrome--wherein children's minds are poisoned by one parent against the other--are even more painful. I detailed several wrenching PAS cases in my recent co-authored column PBS Declares War on Dads (Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 11/1/05).

Last Christmas season we did a His Side with Glenn Sacks show on Spontaneous Reunification--the documented phenomenon in which a child attempts to reconnect with a rejected parent on his or her own initiative without intervention from the courts or by a mental health professional. The phenomenon has been detailed by psychologist Douglas C. Darnall, Ph.D., author of Divorce Casualties: Protecting Your Children from Parental Alienation, and Barbara F. Steinberg, Ph.D. To listen to the show, click here.

Allen Green, author of the powerful new novel Blind Baseball: A Father's War, also joined us and gave some advice that I thought was particularly important. He urged the target parents of parental alienation campaigns to "play for the long haul." In other words, do what you can to stay in your children's lives, but don't destroy yourself and don't give up hope, because alienated children often come back to their fathers as young adults. Green noted that fathers can still have important relationships with their adult children, as well as enjoy their grandchildren.

Given the pain of PAS, Green's advice is obviously not easy to follow, but I believe it is correct. My relationship with my father as an adult has been enormously important to me. Had I never met the man before age 18 and he then appeared in my life, I still would have benefited enormously. I believe that the target parents of PAS--and their alienated children--can still enjoy the many benefits of these relationships, despite what was done to them during the children's childhoods.

Again, to listen to the show, click here.

Violence Against Women Culturally Acceptable?

While researching my column Domestic Violence Treatment Policies Put Abused Women in Harm's Way (Daily Breeze [Los Angeles], 11/7/05), I came across  an interesting assertion in a Texas domestic violence pamphlet. The pamphlet asserted that in America today domestic violence is culturally acceptable. I wondered what planet they were referring to.

While many feminists are at least reasonable enough to admit that there is a strong taboo against domestic violence today, they still often promote the idea that in the past it was acceptable. This was debunked effectively by Christina Hoff Sommers in Chapter 9 of her book Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women.

Sommers noted that laws against wife-beating predate the American Revolution, one going back to 1655. Sommers explains that many of the dominant religious groups of the colonial era "punished, shunned and excommunicated wife-beaters." She notes:

"Husbands, brothers and neighbors often took vengeance against the batterer. Vigilante parties sometimes abducted wife-beaters and whipped them."

Feminist historian Elizabeth Peck points out that punishments for wife-beaters were often quite severe--19th century laws in Maryland and Delaware prescribed 40 and 30 lashes at the whipping post respectively for batterers. In New Mexico, wife-beaters were sentenced to between one and five years in prison.

Recently I was reading a baseball book which discussed players throughout the history of the game and I came upon an interesting passage concerning domestic violence in the year 1902. In 1901 Mike Donlin, an outfielder with the Baltimore Orioles, hit .340 and scored 107 runs--both exceptional figures. In 1902 Donlin, a heavy and violent drinker, assaulted a woman with whom he had been involved in a love triangle. Donlin plea bargained, said he was drunk and didn't know what he was doing, and received six months in jail.

If ever there were a situation where violence against women would be tolerated, this would have been it. Baseball in the 1890s was an exceptionally violent game, and on and off field fights were common. In this era Hall of Fame outfielder Ty Cobb reputedly sharpened his spikes before games and slid into every base spikes high. Donlin's manager had been John McGraw, a successful manager who encouraged dirty play. Donlin was young, in only his third year of major league ball, and very valuable. He had served his time in jail, gone to alcohol treatment, and apologized for his actions.

The reaction? American League president Ban Johnson booted Donlin out of the league, and newspaper articles in several major league cities called for Donlin to be banned from baseball. Violence against women wasn't "culturally acceptable."

It is true that today there are players who have been charged with domestic violence and who still play. This is because:

a) many of the incidents are murky, "he said/she said affairs" without criminal convictions. The Scott Erickson case is a good example--see my column Baseball Player's Domestic Violence Arrest Demonstrates How Men are Presumed Guilty in Domestic Disputes (Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 8/8/02).

b) whatever the player has done, it is difficult legally to deny someone their right to make a living.

c) the players have a strong union and good lawyers who will work to make sure that off-the-field-transgressions don't prevent players from making a living.

One more note about baseball and domestic violence. When I was a kid I read a book which discussed the famous Marichal/Roseboro fight in 1965. After a series of brawls between the Dodgers and the Giants, Giants pitcher Juan Marichal (then batting) thought that Dodger catcher John Roseboro had intentionally nicked his ear while throwing a ball back to the pitcher, and hit Roseboro with the bat. I still remember that after the bloody fight Roseboro told the newspapers the worst thing he could think of to say--"a guy like that would hit a woman."

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Report: 'No Hint of Balance in PBS's Breaking the Silence'

Over 3,500 of you wrote or called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Round 3 of our campaign protesting PBS's film Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories. CPB Ombudsman Ken A. Bode subsequently investigated the film and issued a report last week which endorsed our central charges against the film. Declaring that there is "no hint of balance in Breaking the Silence," Bode noted:

"The father's point of view is ignored as are new strategies for lessening the damage to children in custody battles. There is no mention of the collaborative law movement in which parents and lawyers come to terms without involving the court, nor of the new joint custody living arrangements.

"The producers apparently do not subscribe to the idea that an argument can be made more convincing by giving the other side a fair presentation. To be sure, one comes away from viewing the program with the feeling that custody fights are a special hell, legally, emotionally, psychologically. But this broadcast is so slanted as to raise suspicions that either the family courts of America have gone crazy or there must be another side to the story."

CPB's report praised PBS's decision to put the program under official review, noting that the film "needs to be reviewed for accuracy, fairness and balance."

The report also criticized the Mary Kay Ash Foundation, which gave $500,000 towards the production of the film and is reportedly "providing a stipend so that every battered women's organization in the country can put on private screenings of this film for their local judges and legislators." Bode noted:

"If so, PBS may find it has been the launching pad for a very partisan effort to drive public policy and law."

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is the largest single source of funding for public television and radio programming. Most CPB-funded television programs are distributed through the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

CPB's full report can be read here. For more information on the campaign against Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories, click here. To contact Ken A. Bode, click here.

McElroy, Sacks in College Textbook

My column Confronting Woman-Bashing In the Men's Movement (iFeminists.com, 4/2/02) was recently reprinted in Thomson Gale's Opposing Viewpoints college textbook. Oddly, my column is placed in opposition to a column by columnist Wendy McElroy condemning man-bashing. In reality, I doubt there is anything in either column that either one of us would disagree with.

My work has been reprinted in several other books, including my column The Teachers' 'Code of Silence' (Los Angeles Daily News, 12/2/01) in Larry Elder's best-selling Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests That Divide America and my column Stay-at-Home Dads: A Practical Solution to the Career Woman's Dilemma (Newsday,  5/22/02) in the Prentice Hall college writing textbook The Blair Reader.

ACFC Billboard Campaign Makes Important Point

The American Coalition for Fathers and Children has joined with a group of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois parents to draw attention to issues involving the local family court through a billboard campaign. The billboard features a small child crying and asking "4 days a month with our dad?"

The ACFC and other concerned parents are challenging the head of the local family courts to examine and reform the courts' practices. The ACFC stands for shared parenting, where both parents can play a meaningful role in their children's lives after divorce.

View the billboard here. To learn more about the campaign, click here.

A Compliment for an Opponent

Some of you may recall that last year I criticized a father-bashing ad campaign conducted by the National Fatherhood Initiative. The NFI does good work on promoting the importance of fathers and fatherhood, but errs in ignoring the role that family courts and mothers play in creating fatherlessness, instead placing all blame for fatherlessness on men. In the column I wrote:

"'Easter Bunny. Tooth Fairy. Daddy. Eventually kids stop believing in things they don't see.'

"'Each Night Millions of Kids Go To Sleep Starving. For Attention from Their Dads.'

"'Dear Daddy, My Mommy Can't Be My Daddy Too.'

"Bus stop ads with pictures of small African American children delivering these biting messages to their absent fathers can be seen all over Los Angeles County. They are part of a nationwide campaign to reduce fatherlessness in the African-American community. The campaign is sponsored by the National Fatherhood Initiative, an influential Maryland-based nonprofit organization which has had ties with both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

"While the NFI's goal is laudable, fathers bear only part of the responsibility for black fatherlessness. Among the major factors the NFI campaign completely ignores is the fact that mothers often drive fathers out of their children's lives."

To read the full co-authored column, see National Fatherhood Initiative's Ad Campaign Insults African-American Fathers (Pasadena Star-News & Affiliated Papers, 6/14/03). Also, hear NFI president Roland Warren defend the campaign on His Side with Glenn Sacks by clicking here.

I stand by those criticisms. However, I do believe in giving credit where credit is due, and the NFI deserves credit for some of their new radio and TV PSAs.

For example, in the new radio PSA More Than Words, a young African-American woman details her admiration for her father and says she wants to marry a man of the same caliber.

Another radio PSA, Daddy Issues, features a group of teenagers complaining about their dads--their dads enforce discipline, have standards, and watch what their kids are doing. The ad promotes one of the most underappreciated qualities of the traditional dad. In a recent column I explained:

"It is certainly true that the old, tough dad had his drawbacks, just as all parents--including mothers--do. The best parent is one who mixes affection and discipline, who loves and is lovable but at the same time is respected and, when necessary, feared. But not all parents can do all these things, and while we might have wished that the old dad were more sensitive, he was very important, and his virtues much underappreciated.

"As a former high school teacher I can assure you that what we need is more, not less, of the old dad--particularly in the inner cities. The dad who's not afraid to be the bad guy. The dad who's not afraid to take strong measures to help and protect his children. The dad who tells his son "if you shoplift you'd better hope the police get you before I do." A father like my friend's dad, a South Central Los Angeles cop who kept a tight curfew and a belt on the wall and who, before he died at an early age, claimed as his greatest achievement the fact that all four of his daughters got through college without having a baby" (from Raising Boys Without Men: Lesbian Parents Good, Dads Bad, World Net Daily, 9/10/05).

The NFI's new "Moments" TV PSAs aren't as impressive, but are still good. These include "Dance," "Errand," and "Lightsaber." "Errand"--in which a father helps his teenage daughter with an uncomfortable shopping purchase--is the best of the three. "Dance" reminds me of my daughter and I, though the father in the ad is far more graceful and limber than I...

One more compliment--a NFI radio ad from last year featured country singer Tim McGraw and his song "Grown Men Don't Cry." The end of the song is as follows:

"I'm sittin' here with my kids and my wife
And everything that I hold dear in my life
We say grace and thank the lord
Got so much to be thankful for
Then it's up the stairs and off to bed and my little girl says
I haven't had my story yet.
And everything weighin' on my mind disappears just like that
When she lifts her head off her pillow and says,
'I love you dad'."

Have You Been the Victim of a Child Support Error?

If you feel you have been billed for child support payments that you believe you do not owe, or if you believe you have experienced a questionable practice by a child support agency, Jane Spies and the National Family Justice Association are conducting a study on this issue and want to hear from you. Click here for more information.

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
GlennSacks.com
HisSide.com

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