Los Angeles, CA–
Our Campaign Protesting Father-Bashing Domestic Violence Ads was recently praised on PJTV by two prominent commentators–Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds.
Malkin is a syndicated columnist whose columns appear in nearly 200 newspapers, the author of three books, and a frequent TV and radio commentator.
Reynolds’ blog, www.Instapundit.com, is perhaps the most-read political blog in the US, and he is an author and frequent TV commentator.
Malkin and Reynolds were discussing the controversial “No on 8” pro-gay marriage protests, as well as ways the Republicans can recover from their recent electoral defeat. Our DART campaign–launched by Fathers & Families and I at the end of October–was held up as a model for 21st century political activism. Reynolds said:
I”ve actually got an example of how to do this right…Glenn Sacks’ campaign against some of the ads on public transit in Dallas…ads about domestic violence…
As usual, the statistics were dubious to begin with, and the ads stereotype by gender…if you’re a man you’re going to be a perpetrator of domestic violence more likely than not or such. It was really quite offensive–a lot of people were offended.
What Glenn Sacks and [Fathers & Families] did, they didn’t try to get anybody fired. They did complain to DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) about the ads…they did actually find the domestic violence provider’s top 50 donors.
They didn’t try to get anybody fired but they contacted them and asked them, “Did you realize that your money is supporting these ads? Is this what you want to do?”
They made a very big point of being very polite about it and not making any threats. They did get some action and did it without trying to get anybody fired or booted from their jobs or doing anything vicious.
That’s an example of how it ought to be done. That’s something that people on the right should be looking at…for the [next four years.]
Malkin agreed, adding:
Glenn Sacks has been very effective in getting his message out and rectifying unbalances in media coverage and advertising. You would hope that [other activists] would take a cue and a clue from this type of campaign.
The video can be seen at here–the discussion of our campaign starts at 15 minutes in.