Leftists believe the Truth is an intellectual fraud designed to prop up
the existing techno-patriarchal-capitalist power structure. That's why
the neo-Coms will tell you with a straight face that Saddam Hussein was
a courageous freedom fighter, and that the New York Times usually gets
the story right.
No wonder George Orwell once said, "In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
This year three stalwart truth-tellers stood up to a tsunami of
prevarication to make the short list for the 2005 Award for Political
Incorrectness.
Our second runner-up this year is...Michael Kinsley, opinion-page editor of
the Los Angeles Times. You may recall last February when Susan Estrich,
former presidential campaign manager for Michael Dukakis, threw a temper
tantrum because only a fraction of the LA Times op-eds were written by
women.
Mr. Kinsley curtly
replied
that if more female editorialists wanted to be
published in his newspaper, then they would need to write better
articles.
Bravo, Mr. Kinsley.
The first runner-up is Mr. Ken Bode, ombudsman for the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting. Last month Mr. Bode reviewed the PBS program
Breaking the Silence and concluded the incendiary show was little more
than an
anti-father
cant.
Well done, Mr. Bode.
And the winner of the 2005 Award for Political Incorrectness is...(pan of
vast audience with expectant expressions)... Phyllis Schlafly.
This past year Mrs. Schlafly took on the federal government's deepening
alliance with radical feminism. In the process she debunked many of the
Left's pet explanations for family break-down. To do justice to
Schlafly's contributions, I have quoted from several of her columns.
In January she started off the year with a column about
"Children
Made Fatherless by Family Courts." The article revealed that "fathers are
systematically discriminated against by family courts which nearly
always award physical custody to the mother even when the father has
committed no fault."
Schlafly continued in the same vein in her February column about the
"Fatherphobia
of Family Courts." In that article she took divorce courts
to task for ignoring a "mountain of social science research" by failing
to award joint physical custody to fathers.
In March she highlighted
the plight
of National Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly
who was called up for service in Iraq. Upon completion of his tour of
duty, McNeilly was greeted with the news that a family court, during his
absence and without his knowledge, had awarded full custody of his
10-year-old son to his mother.
In May she turned up the heat, exposing how
"Federal
Incentives Make
Children Fatherless." Schlafly warned, "Follow the money. The less time
that non-custodial parents (usually fathers) are permitted to be with
their children, the more child support they must pay into the state
fund, and the higher the federal bonus to the states for collecting the
money."
Mrs. Schlafly doesn't mince words, does she? And it only gets better.
In her June column on
"How
to Celebrate Father's Day," Schlafly took aim
at the feminist Big Lie: "For 30 years, feminist organizations and
writers have propagated the myth that women are victims of an oppressive
patriarchal society and that marriage is an inherently abusive
institution that makes wives second-class citizens."
Then beginning in July, Schlafly took on the hotly-debated Violence
Against Women Act (VAWA) which came up before Congress this past fall
for a five-year renewal.
In "Time
to Defund Feminist Pork," Schlafly wondered why the US Congress
funnels "a billion dollars a year of taxpayers' money into the hands of
radical feminists who use it to preach their anti-marriage and anti-male
ideology, promote divorce, corrupt the family court system, and engage
in liberal political advocacy."
Mrs. Schlafly's pièce de resistance came in October. While our elected
officials were buckling under the feminist intimidation tactics,
Schlafly released an exposé with the sizzling title,
"Time to Defund
Feminist Pork -- the Hate-Men Law."
First Schlafly ridiculed the feminist urban legends such as "a woman is
beaten every 15 seconds" and Super Bowl Sunday is the "biggest day of
the year of violence against women." She deplored how VAWA rides
"roughshod over the constitutional rights of men."
Schlafly then scolded our elected officials in Washington: "Shame on
Members of Congress who lack the courage to stand up to feminist
outrages."
For 30 years the Leftists have waged a tenacious assault on society's
bedrock institutions, including fatherhood and families. As the rest of
us silently stood by, feminists branded dads with epithets such as
deadbeat, abuser, and patriarchal oppressor.
And now Phyllis Schlafly has shed the light of truth on their evil
scheme.
