Two weeks ago we launched a campaign against Fox's proposed reality show Bad Dads. Bad Dads unfairly depicts divorced fathers as uncaring and selfish, and publicly humiliates children of broken families by depicting their fathers as not loving or caring for them.

Fox has received over 5,000 calls, letters, and faxes from our supporters, and our protest garnered coverage in over 300 newspapers. Nearly a hundred educators, mental health experts, and family law professionals publicly condemned Fox's Bad Dads and endorsed our campaign. We also drew support from advocates for low income families.

As Kathleen Parker noted in her syndicated column, this campaign was an early, preemptive strike. The pilot has not been made yet, and all that has been contracted is a 10 minute promo for a pilot. We now have good reason to believe that we will never see Bad Dads aired.

Given the large response and media coverage, we have made our point to Fox, and have decided to suspend the campaign against Bad Dads. We will continue to monitor the situation, and if in the future we have good reason to believe that Fox will be going ahead with the show, we will renew our efforts. The campaign web page will remain up, as will all relevant information concerning the campaign.

Thanks to all of you who participated in what we believe has been a successful campaign.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ned Holstein, president of Fathers & Families
Dr. Linda Nielsen, president of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children
Glenn Sacks, newspaper columnist/radio host, www.GlennSacks.com

One of the unsung heroes of the struggle for fairness in family law is former California Assemblyman Rod Wright (pictured). Wright is currently in an election battle to get back into the California Senate, and if he wins it will be a big step towards family law reform in California and the nation.

Rod was a pioneer of child support and family law reform in California and the nation. In  speaking about his time introducing reforms into a hostile California legislature, Rod describes himself and his staff as "The first guys who hit the beach at Normandy--taking all the hits." It was absolutely true.

Rod was one of the pioneers of paternity fraud laws, and in 2002 got AB 2240 through the California legislature. It was subsequently vetoed by then-Governor Gray Davis (see my co-authored column Preserving Paternity Fraud, Orange County Register, 10/3/02), but it helped pave the way for the eventual passage of AB 252 in 2004.

Rod is looking for volunteers to make phone calls in support of his June 3 election campaign, and is also looking for donations. If you are interested in volunteering to help Rod Wright, click here. If you are interested in donating, click here.

Sacramento veteran Stan Diorio served as Wright's Chief of Staff from 1996 to 2002 and has been pivotal in many of the achievements in family law in California.  Below is a brief history he wrote about Rod Wright's contributions.

Rod Wright Led the Fight for Men’s Equality in Family Law

During his term as a member of the California State Assembly (1996-2002) Rod Wright was the only member who stood up and wrote legislation year after year to fight for men’s equality in the family law arena. With no organized men’s organization in the state to help him, Rod fought for a whole range of issues including greater fairness in child support orders, custody orders and paternity fraud. He won some and lost some but he never ducked the fight and never stopped trying.

Rod took the lead to fight against paternity fraud in California. The first year he lost the bill in committee. The second year it passed the legislature only to be vetoed by Governor Davis. Rod was termed out but the next year, a modified version of his bill was signed into law. The latest state reports show that over 2,000 men have gotten their lives back and had their paternity orders reversed because of his efforts.

He also lost bills to allow those behind in payments to get current with an offer to compromise. Again, this effort eventually passed into law and resulted in thousands of men getting current on their support payments. Rod was successful in passing several bills that created more equity in the enforcement of child support orders in California.

Rod never gave up and his efforts resulted in greater education of legislators and eventual passage of significant changes in the law. This work has been continued with the creation and efforts of the California Alliance for Families and Children.

Men have few elected officials who have the courage to champion the cause of equality for men in family law. Rod Wright is one of those champions – we need to give him our full support.--Stan Diorio

I don't need to tell you that what happens legislatively in California has a large impact on the rest of the nation, and our victories here often translates into progress elsewhere. Again, if you are interested in volunteering to help Rod Wright, click here. If you are interested in donating, click here.

To learn more about the CAFC, click here.

Six dozen educators, mental health experts, and family law professionals have condemned Fox's Bad Dads and endorsed our campaign. The endorsement statement reads:

"The undersigned believe that Fox's Bad Dads provides a distorted and counterproductive view of divorced and separated fathers. Moreover, it is harmful to children to publicly humiliate them by depicting their fathers as not loving or caring for them. We respectfully request that Fox cancel this ill-conceived show."

To view the list of endorsers, click here.

If you are an educator, mental health expert, or a family law professional who would like to endorse our campaign, click here.

Another example of the hazards of Parenting While Male. According to Suspicious incident on-board MBTA bus resolved (5/6/08) from WBZ News in Boston:

"Transit police have identified the man seen with a young girl on-board a bus at Sullivan Station Sunday night.  

"Officers have met with both the young girl,  and the family member who was with her on the bus. 

"A passenger noticed a man holding the child's hand.  That passenger says she overheard the girl say she was hungry, and the man told her to 'Please be quiet.'   

"The police say there was no criminal conduct.  They consider the case closed."

So the man (pictured, with the girl) was a "family member," probably the father but maybe a different relative. He held his daughter's hand on the bus and told her to be quiet when she was complaining about being hungry. For this, he's investigated.

The case reminds me of the Victor Emmer case--see my blog post 'The police can't even stick a loitering charge on this guy, and they've gone and ruined his life'.

It also reminds me of the Virginia Billboard controversy--see my blog post Rush Limbaugh Covers Our Protest of Man-Bashing Virginia Health Department Billboards.

Background: In Dartmouth Students Rebel Against Feminist Professor's Manbashing, She Reacts by....Suing Her Students! (Part I), I discussed how a group of Dartmouth students rebelled against a feminist professor and her manbashing. The professor, rather than engaging in debate, pretended to be a victim, cancelled classes for a week, scurried off to another school to teach, and said she is suing her students.

Maureen O'Connor of the IvyGate blog checked and posted some of the student evaluations of the feminist professor. One wrote:

"Professor Venkatesan refuses to answer questions, does not respond to questions, and lectures by reading off her notes in front of her. She did not make me a better writer, she did not explain the concepts well, but she did manage to make my life a living hell."

Another wrote:

"She offered no help in class or in office hours for papers. When handed a hard copy she read the paper, said it was great, but then gave terrible grades to many students. Later on she began refusing to grade papers and gave the reason that judging by our peer editing abilities we didn't need her help on papers. She missed/cancelled 5 or 6 classes and as a result the syllabus was squished into 3 weeks and she changed the final project about 4 times. A TERRIBLE CLASS."

According to O'Connor, "last we checked, Venkatesan's course had fourteen reviews on the Dartmouth Student Assembly's student evaluations website, under the following titles:

Worst teacher I have ever had - Written by a 2011

Interesting - Written by a 2011

WORST PROFESSOR EVER DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS - Written by a 2011

save yourself now - Written by a 2011

a tad ridiculous - Written by a 2011

Interesting Material but Prof. is hard to follow - Written by a 2011

Terrible class, terrible prof - Written by a 2011

Interesting Material, Bad Prof. - Written by a 2011

If she teaches here... - Written by a 2011

WORST CLASS EVER - Written by a 2011

interesting topic, boring prof - Written by a 2011

Do NOT take this course - Written by a 2011

HORRIBLE - Written by a 2011

insecurity, ego, and more - Written by a 2011"

"[The students] staged a rebellion..."

From Joseph Rago's Dartmouth's 'Hostile' Environment (Wall Street Journal, 5/5/08):

"After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Priya Venkatesan was lecturing on 'ecofeminism,' which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But 'these weren't thoughtful statements,' Ms. Venkatesan protests. 'They were irrational.' The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student's 'diatribe,' several of his classmates applauded.

"Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was 'fascist demagoguery.' Then, after consulting a physician about 'intellectual distress,' she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.

"Such conduct is hardly representative of the professoriate at Dartmouth, my alma mater. Faculty members tend to be professional. They also tend to be sane.

"That said, even at – or especially at – putatively superior schools, students are spoiled for choice when it comes to professors who share ideologies like Ms. Venkatesan's. The main result is to make coursework pathetically easy. Like filling in a Mad Libs, just patch something together about "interrogating heteronormativity," or whatever, and wait for the returns to start rolling in...

"Why not? It's effortless, and there are better ways to spend time than thinking deeply about ecofeminism.

"The remarkable thing about the Venkatesan affair, to me, is that her students cared enough to argue. Normally they would express their boredom with the material by answering emails on their laptops or falling asleep. But here they staged a rebellion, a French Counter-Revolution against Professor Defarge. Maybe, despite the professor's best efforts, there's life in American colleges yet."

When I was in college 25 years ago I remember my roommate telling me about a recent lecture on "ecofeminism" in his class. The feminist professor's thesis was "just as men rape women, they rape the earth."

So here the male students in the class (the small percentage who make it to college these days) had been listening to this anti-male nonsense class after class and finally did what they should do far, far more often--they challenged it. Rather than engaging in debate, the feminist professor pretended to be a victim, cancelled classes for a week, scurried off to another school to teach, and is now suing her students. It is also quite possible that some of those who rebelled against the feminist professor were female students who've not yet been poisoned with the anti-male bigotry relentlessly pushed in Women's Studies classes.

I'm sure the professor also has/will have plenty of scurrilous things to say about the despised male rebels. One advantage though--whereas in family court women often have free rein to vilify the men who they feel done them wrong, in this case most if not all of what transpired must have happened in front of witnesses. I'll be surprised if her lawsuit goes anywhere, but you never know.

Maybe Dartmouth will settle with her and give her a hefty welfare check just to go away--after all, she is an oppressed female, and an oppressed "woman of color" to boot. In the politically correct college world, that gives her a vast advantage over her male students, though I'm sure she would never acknowledge it.

Thanks to Jean Valjean, a regular poster, for sending me the story.

As anti-male as family courts are, this story is still a little hard to believe. The case is described in the story Man Jailed After Daughter Fails To Get GED (WCPO TV, 5/9/08). Ben, a reader, says:

"Summary:
 
1) Father was ordered to see to it that his daughter get her GED.
2) Daughter's problems in school were at a time when she lived with her mother.
3) Both mother and daughter agree that either one of them should go to jail before the father.
4) Father's current wife believes he might lose his job of 15 years for being in jail.

To their credit, both women in the story--the mother and the daughter (pictured)--accept responsibility for the problem, and say if anyone should be punished it's them, not the dad.

According to the story:

"A Fairfield man is in jail because his daughter hasn't gotten her General Equivalency Diploma (GED).

"A judge ordered the father to stay on top of his daughter's education months ago and when that order wasn't followed, Brian Gegner was sentenced to 180-days in the Butler County jail.

"The daughter, Brittany Gegner, says her father shouldn't be punished for her problems.

"Especially, she says because she's now 18, an adult.

"'It's ridiculously wrong,' said Brittany Gegner.

"'Of all the punishments they could have given him, to make him go to jail?,' she asked. 'I mean, probation – until I get my GED – would be reasonable, but to send him to jail? That's overboard.'

"Butler County Juvenile Court Judge David Niehaus ordered Gegner to jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor by not following a court order which required Gegner to be sure his daughter got her GED.

"This comes after ongoing problems of Brittany skipping classes at Fairfield High School and then, Butler Tech.

"While Brian Gegner had custody of her, Brittany says it was while she lived with her mother that she was truant.

"'I'm about to be 19 and my Dad's being punished for something I did when I was 16,' she said.

"'It's like I should, if anybody should be punished for this,' said Brittany. 'I would way rather me go to jail than my Dad.'

"'They probably should have punished me if they were going to punish anybody,' said Brittany's mother Shana Roach. 'Because she did live with me at the time, but because he had the custody, that's why he's being punished.'

"'But I don't understand the punishment all together because she's going to school, she's been going for four months,' said Roach. 'The only thing that's holding her back is she can't pass her math test.'"

Read the full article here.

It still seems like there must be more to this than we're hearing. If Butler County Juvenile Court Judge David Niehaus wishes to respond with his side of the story, he may do so by emailing me at glenn@glennsacks.com. I will publish what he sends me.

I've never liked the ad genre of "pretty woman uses her beauty power to take advantage of  hapless guy--isn't he a fool, ha ha ha," but this Dairy Queen commercial goes even beyond that. I'd say more but it's better that you just watch it. Note that the "gentleman" is said to be "wearing a donkey shirt."

I actually first saw this commercial at www.feministing.com, where Jessica Valenti--to her credit--criticized it in her post Womanhood: Getting dudes to buy you stuff.

To watch the ad, click here or see below.

To watch a couple other anti-male Dairy Queen commercials, see my blog posts Dairy Queen's Kit Kat Blizzard Ad and Another Anti-Male Dairy Queen Commercial.