Corbeil, Canada–Cartoonist Lynn Johnston makes a prescient point about marriage in the For Better or For Worse cartoon above. It reminds me a bit of the line Bruce Springsteen wrote in the song he penned about his divorce:
“But for you, dear, my best was never good enough.”
Thanks to Jim, a reader, for sending it.
New York, NY–I doubt many in the men’s and fathers’ movement feel this way, but there are occasions when our feminist opponents do something so embarrassing that I end up feeling a little sorry for them. Such is the case with New York State NOW’s reaction to Ted Kennedy’s recent endorsement of Obama over Hillary.
According to the Albany Times-Union, NY NOW president Marcia Pappas (pictured), in an angry, vindictive screed which sounds like it was written by a 13-year-old, recently announced:
“Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy”s endorsement of Hillary Clinton”s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.
“And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He”s picked the new guy over us. He”s joined the list of progressive white men who can”t or won”t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not ‘this’ one).
“This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women”s rights, women”s voices, women”s equality, women”s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation – to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what”s best for us.'”
Amazing. Ted Kennedy has been a huge advocate of women’s and feminist issues for decades, but like a carping wife with a memory that never forgets, Pappas feels compelled to remind him of every time he apparently didn’t snap to fast enough for New York NOW. Pappas says that, graciously, “women have forgiven Kennedy.” But now that Kennedy has chosen one liberal candidate (Obama) over another (Hillary), it is “the greatest betrayal,” the “ultimate betrayal,” and “abandonment.”
Note that Pappas does not mention any political differences between Hillary and Obama–it’s all about voting for a woman. This is particularly ridiculous because here the contest is between a white woman and a black man. Despite women’s struggles, white women have always had and continue to have it vastly better than black men.
But you know what really amazes me about this? These people–Pappas and NY NOW–beat us. In 2006, we launched a our Campaign in Support of New York Shared Parenting Bill A330. Pappas was the opposition’s main point person.
After we launched the campaign, NOW and other feminist groups counterattacked, launching Action Alerts and campaigns against the bill. The number of calls and letters we generated greatly dwarfed those of our opposition–by a ratio well over 10 to 1–but the Shared Parenting Bill was defeated anyway. It was a stunning commentary on the stranglehold feminist groups have over gender issues in political circles in New York and many other states.
To learn more about that battle, and to read our dueling op-eds in the Albany Times Union, click here. Pappas also criticized the fatherhood movement and my co-authored New York Daily News column NOW at 40: Group’s Opposition to Shared Parenting Contradicts Its Goal of Gender Equality (7/27/06) in her column Fathers’ Responsibilities Before Fathers’ Rights.
Los Angeles, CA–When the Iraq war began nearly five years ago, tens of thousands of parents who serve in the Armed Forces expected hardship and sacrifice. However, they never expected that their children might be taken from them while they were deployed, or that their own government might jail them upon their return.
Military service sometimes costs parents their children. For example, with the long deployments necessitated by the war, a military spouse can move to another state while his or her spouse is deployed, file for divorce, and then be virtually certain to gain custody through the divorce proceedings in the new state. Given service personnel”s limited ability to travel, the high cost of legal representation and travel, and the financial hardships created by child support and spousal support obligations, it is extremely difficult for deployed parents to fight for their parental rights. For many, their participation and meaningful role in their children”s lives ends–often permanently–the day they are deployed. 
In one highly-publicized case, Gary S., a San Diego-based US Navy SEAL, had his child permanently moved from California to the Middle East against his will while he was deployed in Afghanistan after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The 18-year Navy veteran with an unblemished military record has seen his son only a handful of times since he returned from Afghanistan in April, 2002. Meanwhile, he was nearly bankrupted from child support, spousal support, travel costs, and legal fees. While some military parents face the loss of their children, others face prosecution and jail for child support obligations which their service has rendered them unable to pay. Support orders are based on civilian pay, which is generally higher than active duty pay. When reservists are called up to active duty, they sometimes pay an impossibly high percentage of their income in child support. I’ve discussed this issue in numerous newspaper columns and on the radio, and I often hear from deployed soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who tell me heart-wrenching stories of being hammered in divorce proceedings while serving.
The first success on this issue occurred in 2005 under the leadership of Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children with the passage of SB 1082. SB 1082 addressed the way parents who serve are often taken advantage of in custody and family law matters while they are deployed, and helped resolve the child support nightmare many mobilized reservists face.
You, the reader, were a part of it–at Robinson’s request, we organized a campaign in support of the bill, and the Senate Judiciary Committee Analysis of SB 1082 made specific note of your calls and letters. The bill was sponsored by Senators Denise Moreno Ducheny (D-San Diego) and Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside).
According to Robinson, Senator Morrow was first inspired to take up this cause after Morrow read my column The Betrayal of the Military Father (Los Angeles Daily News, 5/4/03) about Gary S., the San Diego-based US Navy SEAL. To hear my radio interview with Gary, go to Two Years into Iraq War, Little Has Been Done to Protect the Rights of Military Fathers (3/13/05).
Later in 2005, Robinson and Jim Semerad of Dads of Michigan worked hard to pass Michigan House Bill 5100. According to Semerad:
“[The bill] provides a prevention of a change of custody while a military service member is deployed and prevents the absence from regular parenting time due to military service to affect the weighting of the 12 custody factors in custody determination.”
The bill was sponsored by Representative Rick Jones and Senator Patty Birkholz. To learn more about the Michigan bill, click here.
Robinson has also helped get bills passed in Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona to address this issue.
The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act of 2003 (SCRA) (formerly known as the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act) protects deployed soldiers against civil legal actions. Perhaps the biggest problem deployed parents face is that judges often do not interpret the SCRA as applying to family law proceedings. Today Robinson and the California Alliance for Families and Children announced that a new federal law will specifically extend the protections of the SCRA to family law proceedings and eliminate default judgments for deployed service personnel. Robinson writes:
“As some of you may know, we have been working on a provision at the federal level to provide child custody protection for deployed military parents. The original amendment was introduced by Rep. Mike Turner, Ohio, in HR 1585. Senator Gregg NH, had also introduced a stand alone bill in the Senate but that bill was killed in committee. The Gregg bill had the same language as the Turner amendment. After HR 1585 went to the Senate the provisions we were seeking went to conference committee and some of the language was lost but the overall intention of the bill was kept.
“For those of you not familiar with HR 1585, this was the National Defense Appropriations Bill that President Bush used the pocket veto on because there was language in the bill that would have allowed the current Iraq Government to be sued for past bad acts by Saddam. I was immediately informed of this even prior to press on the issue, but was assured that Congress was going to fast track a revised bill to fix the problem and that the provision we were seeking for protecting military parents with custody orders was not in jeopardy. “Sure enough, they did in fact fast track a new bill, HR 4986 and the bill was cleared for the White House on 1/22/08 and presented to the President on 1/24/08. I was contacted today by Congressional and White House staff informing me that the President will sign this bill. “The language in HR 4986 for section 584 can be see below. While the language is not as strong as the California statute, where it all started in 2005, and other state statutes we pushed, the language does at least provide protection in all 50 states now. I am still working on other family law issues that effect military parents, and we look forward to having more progress in 2008.” Mike Robinson is one of the most effective advocates in our movement, and I urge all to support him. To donate to the California Alliance for Families and Children, click here. To reach Mike, click on wm_robinson@comcast.net or call him at (916) 749-4033. The bill section reads: “SEC. 584. PROTECTION OF CHILD CUSTODY ARRANGEMENTS FOR PARENTS WHO ARE MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES DEPLOYED IN SUPPORT OF A CONTINGENCY OPERATION. (a) PROTECTION OF SERVICEMEMBERS AGAINST DEFAULT JUDGMENTS.–Section 201(a) of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (50 U.S.C. App. 521 (b) HR 4986 CPH is amended by inserting “including any child custody proceeding” after “proceeding.” (b) STAY OF PROCEEDINGS WHEN SERVICEMEMBER HAS NOTICE.–Section 202(a) of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (50 U.S.C. App. 522(a)) is amended by inserting “including any child custody proceeding,” after “civil action or proceeding.”
Tucson, AZ–The drawings above were taken from Kara Bishop’s www.postcardsfromsplitsville.com. Bishop works with Children of Divorce, a class run by Tucson, Arizona-based Divorce Recovery. The class did an art project that included “sending away” the frustrations of divorce. The website is a place where Kara says “children can share their divorce-related feelings anonymously and parents can get a new perspective on how this life-changing experience impacts their children”s lives.”
To learn more, click here. Kara can be reached at Kara@PostcardsfromSplitsville.com.
January 30, 2008
Los Angeles, CA–
My recent His Side with Glenn Sacks radio commentary for KLAA AM 830 in Los Angeles discusses the testaments of two highly-successful women–actress Nicole Kidman and CBS television anchor Suzanne Rico–to the importance of the father-daughter bond.
To listen to the commentary, click here.
To learn more, see my blog posts Nicole Kidman: ‘There comes a time when you’re a daughter, that you need your father’ and CBS Anchor Suzanne Rico Discusses Her Father.
His Side with Glenn Sacks radio commentaries are broadcast daily on KLAA AM 830, a 50,000 watt talk station in Los Angeles and Orange County. KLAA AM 830 is owned by Arte Moreno, owner of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
From 2003-2005, His Side with Glenn Sacks ran in a syndicated talk show format in Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Seattle, and other cities. To listen to show archives, click here.
[audio:http://www.glennsacks.com/hsrc/mp3/hsrc-kidman.mp3]
Albany, NY–
New York Shared Parenting activist Deborah Fellows says that the NY Coalition of Fathers and Families will be holding a protest against New York’s boybashing “Coaching Boys into Men” campaign. The Campaign portrays boys as proto-abusers, and tells us that “violence against women” is wrong, as opposed to violence, period.
And of course, if it really were a “Domestic Violence Public Awareness Media Campaign,” we’d be made aware that women are just as likely to attack their male partners as vice versa, but any mention of that is strictly verboten.
The campaign’s main poster is pictured above. To watch their TV commercial, click here.
The protest will be held Monday Jan 28, from 7-9am at Latham Circle in Albany, NY, and I’m told that the media will be there. To join the protest, contact Debbie Fellows at dafellows2001@yahoo.com or 518-495-4044. The Coalition of Fathers and Families New York is an affiliate of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children.
The campaign’s radio ad, which can be heard here, says:
“As a dad, you”ll probably spend years teaching your son how to hit a baseball. How to throw a tight spiral and hit a receiver. How to spring off a diving board and hit the water. How to hit a one-wood and a nine-iron. How to hit the bull”s-eye. How to hit the strike zone. Hit a jump shot. Hit the open man. Hit the hockey net. And maybe the most challenging of all, how to hit the books. But the question is this, how much time will you spend teaching him what not to hit?
“Teach your son early and often that all violence against women is wrong. For tips on what to say, visit opdv.state.ny.us. Or call the State”s 24-hour hotline at 1-800-942-6906. Brought to you by the Family Violence Prevention Fund, the New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention, and the Ad Council.”
London, England–“A Vietnamese woman who traveled to Taiwan to find the father she had never met, ended up working for him without knowing it…Their reunion only came about because she mistakenly left some keepsakes at his home, which he had given to her mother more than 40 years before. Tsai Han-chao, 77, said he could not help crying when he found out he had a daughter he never knew about.” This heartwarming father-daughter reunion is one of the most bizarre stories I’ve ever read. It is also a stunning rebuke to the Single Motherhood by Choice crowd’s assertion that kids don’t feel a sense of loss when they don’t have a relationship with their fathers.
Maid finds boss is missing father BBC, 1/22/08 A Vietnamese woman who travelled to Taiwan to find the father she had never met, ended up working for him without knowing it. Tran Thi Kham, 40, did not discover the truth until after leaving her employer. Their reunion only came about because she mistakenly left some keepsakes at his home, which he had given to her mother more than 40 years before. Tsai Han-chao, 77, said he could not help crying when he found out he had a daughter he never knew about. “Life’s ups and downs are just like television drama. How could I have ever dreamed that she is my daughter? I couldn’t stop crying when we were finally united,” he told Taiwan’s TVBS cable news channel. Ms Tran had travelled to Taiwan a few years earlier to search for her father. Her only clues were a gold ring and a photograph of him as a young man. He had given the mementoes to a Vietnamese woman he had fallen in love with in Hong Kong in 1967.
Utopia, TX–Background: Recently I criticized USA Today financial columnist Sandra Block’s column Husbands should consider delaying Social Security benefits (USA Today, 1/15/08). I wrote:
“[Block] all but comes right out and says that men are selfish for retiring at retirement age. Instead, men should continue to work, work, work while–guess what?–women should retire earlier. According to Block, by working well past retirement age, men can ‘make up for all the times you came home with beer on your breath, left your socks on the bathroom floor or gave your wife a DustBuster for Valentine’s Day.’
“I guess 40 years of working longer hours than your wife at a job more demanding and hazardous than hers–as most men do–isn’t enough…to write a Letter to the Editor of USA Today, email letters@usatoday.com.”
Two of our blog readers’ letters were published in USA Today’s January 24 edition–“Husbands don’t ‘owe’ a delayed retirement” by Robert Franklin and “Cease stereotypes” by Tim Murray. The letters appear below–well done gentlemen.
Husbands don’t ‘owe’ a delayed retirement
Robert Franklin – Utopia, Texas
I was extremely disappointed with Sandra Block’s column “Husbands should consider delaying Social Security benefits” (Your Money, Money, Jan. 15).
Block writes: “Here’s some advice for married men who will turn 62 this year: If you want to make up for all the times you came home with beer on your breath, left your socks on the bathroom floor or gave your wife a DustBuster for Valentine’s Day, hold off on filing for your Social Security benefits.”
Why does she not just first make her case, which boils down, in part, to the fact that a spouse can choose the higher of the two spouse’s Social Security payments upon the death of one partner?
Why does she need to throw in the notion that the man owes it to the woman to work more years because he’s deficient?
Isn’t a main concept behind the column that the husband’s payout is probably higher than the wife’s? That means he has probably worked more, earned more and contributed more money to the support of the family. And according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, on average, men work about an hour more than women per day.
So why the disrespect for the man? Why the misandry?
Cease stereotypes
Tim Murray – Pittsburgh
I suppose Sandra Block thought she was being humorous when she wrote her column “Husbands should consider delaying Social Security benefits.”
If the column is intended to explain an economic issue, why does she go out of her way to lead off with good old-fashioned male-bashing? Husbands don’t “owe” it to their wives to continue working past retirement age to make up for stereotypical male failings. I guess we husbands owe it to our wives to keep working until we drop dead — all to make up for being born male.
Los Angeles, CA–“When he took me to Europe one summer we went to the site of the forced labor camp at Ohrdruf, which his unit, the 4th Armored Division of Patton’s Third Army, helped liberate, and later to the museum at Dachau, an extermination camp. As we walked around, I could tell my father was moved.
“He knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. He said, ‘Joey, someday somebody’s going to tell you this didn’t happen. But I was here, and I saw it. The Germans murdered these people, millions of them.’ As he got up he said, ‘Never turn away from the truth, no matter how ugly.'”
The story below was sent to me last year by a reader. It really belongs in Tim Russert’s Wisdom of Our Fathers.
Chester James Staub, May 4th, 1912 – January 13th, 1997
Today is the tenth anniversary of my father’s death. Every year I send out a reminder and perhaps an anecdote. But ten years is enough, so I’ll finish, and I’ll do so with sharing the eulogy I delivered at his memorial service. I spoke extemporaneously then, but I remember most of what I said. My father loved baseball. He loved pretty girls, big band music, and fast cars. He loved to dance. He loved his country and its flag and all that they stood for. He loved old movies. He loved to read, mostly 20th century history. He loved cold beer and grilled cheese sandwiches and potatoes fried in a skillet. He loved his family and he loved my mother, after a fashion. He loved Johnny Carson and Carol Burnett and the Newman character on Seinfeld.
But most of all he loved me. I know because he told me so, often. He always said that the best moment of his life was holding me for the first time, to be surpassed only, he would go on, by all the moments with me since then. He loved me deeply and wasn’t afraid to show it. But I tell you it wasn’t always easy, being loved like that. There were times he spoiled me, and other times when his adoration made it hard for him to see me as I was, and vice versa. But we worked it out, he and I, and we came to know each other, and I learned from it all that a great love is, as he said, a flame that can both illuminate and burn.
I am not sure he loved my mother, or she him. It was clear to me very early on that they had only married to give me a stable home. I knew they loved me, and they were certainly civil and even social with each other, but that was all. Perhaps they had tried to make it work at one point, but by the time I was in junior high it had become merely a waiting game. I told them once, when I was in seventh grade, that they didn’t have to stay together because of me, I was fine. We were eating dinner when I brought it up, and my father turned to me, put down his fork, and said, “What’s between your mother and me is none of your damn business. We love you. That’s all you need to know.” My mother added, “That goes for me, too, Joey.” And so it went. When I left home they split up, and
whatever deal they had made, they took to their graves. Maybe there wasn’t so much love between them, but I learned from him and her something about the nature of sacrifice and, more importantly, that they were right: it wasn’t any of my business and some things ought not to be.
My father taught me much.
Norfolk, VA–
“That’s right. Contempt. Sneering, mocking, name-calling, eye-rolling, sarcastic, cynical, bitter-tasting contempt. Contempt is a very bad sign in a marriage…the Silly Husband has been a common figure in commercials, TV and movies for ages. I’ve been fine with that, but lately it seems commercials have taken on a more acrid flavor.
“Instead of Silly Husband, the guy I see most often now is Ridiculous Lazy Idiot Who Can’t Do Anything Right. That guy is so common that right after the tax commercial the archetype showed up again in a Domino’s Pizza commercial. When the husband finds out he has 30 minutes before the pizza comes, he appears in a red satin robe. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
“The wife deadpans, ‘What are we going to do with the other 28 minutes?’
“That’s harsh. If my husband said something so cold to me, I wouldn’t stand there smiling. I’d sneak off somewhere to lick my wounds. Forget the pizza.
“Sure, these are just commercials. I should ignore them, turn them off, stop watching so much TV. And yet, I can’t ignore that human beings tend to copy the examples in front of them…
“I hope I never end up like that. Every time I see one of those commercials…I’ll take that display of contempt and use it as a cue to pounce on my husband and kiss him all over.”
I couldn’t say it any better than Norfolk Virginian-Pilot columnist Jacey Eckhart does in her recent column ‘Silly husband’ commercials are starting to tax my patience (1/22/08), which is quoted above. To send her a nice note, write to jacey87@mac.com. To send a Letter to the Editor, click on letters@pilotonline.com.
To watch the ad Eckhart refers to–Domino’s Pizza’s “What are we going to do with the other 28 minutes?”–click here or see below.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acCnKmZDpfA]