I doubt that many will be shocked by the revelation that political
correctness has taken hold at the Washington Post.
Take the December 18 murder of pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett, whose baby
was cut from her mother's still-warm uterus. When news of the gruesome
homicide began to trickle out, the Washington Post newsroom was astir.
Why? Because the feminist catechism teaches that women are the eternal
victims at the hands of those brutish men. But in this case, the alleged
killer was a woman, Lisa Montgomery.
Normally, the solution would be simple: bury the story. That's exactly
what the Washington Post did, relegating the account to page A18 on
December 19.
But that didn't entirely solve the problem, because that very same day,
the Post was set to launch a three-part series on Maternal Homicide. The
series, by reporter Donna St. George, was based on the stories of
mothers who had been murdered by their boyfriends or husbands.
But the strangling of Bobbie Jo Stinnett by a deranged woman threatened
to sabotage the over-arching message of the WP series: that pregnant
women need stronger laws to protect them from the male menace.
In order to reach this conclusion, reporter St. George had to work the
numbers. First, St. George produced the shocking statistic that 295
pregnant or new mothers are killed each year in the United States. But
when you peered through the blood-spattered accounts, the following
facts soon came to light:
1. Slightly less than half of these deaths involved women who were
actually pregnant. Most involved women who had given birth up to 12
months before, mutilating the obvious meaning of the word "maternal."
2. According to St. George, 70% of the women were killed by their
intimates, and the remaining 30% died in car accidents and the like.
So crank the numbers, and that "epidemic" of 295 maternal deaths turns
to be only about 100 pregnant women who were killed by their intimate
partners. This is not to downplay the tragedy of those 100 women, but
rather to put it in proper perspective. Each year, over four million
women give birth in the United States. So we're talking about an
infinitesimal risk here.
Interestingly, the series drew
flack from critics representing the broad
spectrum of political opinion: Slate editor Jack Slater, Fox columnist
Wendy McElroy, domestic violence expert Richard Davis, Men's News Daily
editor Mike LaSalle, radio talk show host Glenn Sacks, and Howard
University professor Stephen Baskerville.
It may be tempting to dismiss the Maternal Homicide series as a
journalistic aberration, a bad-hair day for Donna St. George and her
editors. But it is not.
Research shows that women are just
as likely to commit domestic violence
as men. But the radical feminists
would never let that fact get out. So the Post's coverage of this issue
has long followed the "man = batterer, woman = victim" formula.
Still, the Post attempted to maintain at least the semblance of
journalistic objectivity.
But five months ago, the Washington Post editors completely took leave
of their senses. On August 24 last, the Post ran a piece that plumbed
the depths of tabloid journalism.
Get ready for this nasty headline on page C1: "Man of Your Nightmares:
When Good Husbands Go Bad." And if the casual reader didn't get the
drift, the page C5 continuation was festooned with the smear, "What
Darkness Lies in the Hearts of Men?"
One can only hope that no newspaper ever subjects female malcontents
like Lisa Montgomery, who now awaits trial in a detention center in
Leavenworth, Kansas, to such journalistic abuse.
So esteemed reader, we need to decide. Did the Post's Maternal Homicide
series merely represent a well-intentioned but flawed presentation of a
complex social issue?
Or published just a few weeks before the controversial Violence Against
Women Act is set to be re-introduced in the U.S. Congress, does this
series reveal a covert editorial intention to set the stage for this
feminist-driven legislation?
