NOW Attacks Sacks, Belittles Campaign Against 'Boys are Stupid' Clothing

April 1, 2004, By Pat Cangelosi

Helen Grieco, Executive Director of the National Organization for Women, California chapter, attacked men's and fathers' rights columnist and talk show host Glenn Sacks, labeling him a "women-bashing, backlash shock-jock radio host" in a Christian Science Monitor feature story published today.

Grieco also belittled the importance of Sacks' highly publicized campaign against 'Boys are Stupid' clothing, saying "[At NOW we] don't have time for T-shirt campaigns."

Sacks began the campaign in December when he urged his radio show listeners and supporters to pressure retailers into removing the products. In six weeks the products were knocked out of 3,500 retail outlets-- over 95% of the outlets where they were previously available. The campaign received worldwide media attention, and was covered in most American newspapers, as well as by hundreds of television and radio stations, and in magazines such as TIME and Forbes.

Matt Campbell of the National Coalition for Free Men fired back at NOW, noting "any outspoken men's rights advocate standing up for true gender equity in our society gets criticized and labeled marginal and not representative...feminists want to keep our issues on the back burner."

Along with the feature story on Sacks, "Bashing boys is, like, not OK" by Danna Harman, the Monitor is running a reader poll on the question: "Is there a need for a men's rights movement in the United States?" The possible answers are "No. Men still enjoy a privileged position" and "Yes. Casual male-bashing has become too commonplace." To vote, click here. To send a letter to the Monitor for publication, click here. 

Sacks has attacked California NOW on several occasions, including his recent column "California NOW Spits on My Wife" (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2/23/04), which criticizes NOW's support of a mother who seeks to remove her ex-husband from their sons' lives in the LaMusga move-away case in the California Supreme Court.  Sacks also took on California NOW in his columns "California NOW's Family Court Report 2002: Faulty Research, False Conclusions" (Los Angeles Daily Journal, 7/11/02), "Fathers Bear the Brunt of Gender Bias in Family Courts" (Insight magazine, 8/19/02) and "California Men's College Sports Under Assault from NOW" (Los Angeles Daily Journal, 10/29/01).

According to the Monitor, Grieco also believes that "when men like Sacks broadcast misinformation, skew statistics, and attack women's rights in order to advance their own cause, they are only harming everyone's agenda."

Grieco has been invited to appear on Sacks' Los Angeles-based radio show, His Side with Glenn Sacks,  on two occasions in the past several months. Sacks offered Grieco and California NOW the chance to debate Nancy Pfotenhauer of the Independent Women's Forum on the proper direction for the women's movement around the time of NOW's annual conference last July.  In February, Grieco was invited to debate President Bush's Marriage Initiative, of which NOW has been very critical, with Stephen Baskerville of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children and Rozario Slack of First Things First. Both invitations were declined.

"I would have given Helen the chance to express her views, as I do whenever I have an opposition guest," Sacks noted. "No guest who has ever appeared on my show can ever say that I was anything but a gentleman."

Sacks added that his invitation to Grieco and California NOW is still open.

Sacks also criticized certain aspects of the Christian Science Monitor story, saying "Harman  [the CSM writer] was either edited improperly or fed a line by the anti-male feminists she interviewed after me. She quoted me on the boy crisis in education and then omitted all the indices I detailed which demonstrate how dramatically boys have fallen behind girls in school."

"She quoted my criticism of the '1 in 4 college women raped' myth as if it was something I made up, when the  study upon which it was based has been widely discredited for 15 years.  Rape is an underreported crime but the U.S. Department of Education's study of rape reports to campus police--counting assaults both on and off campus--show less than one rape per three campuses per year."

Sacks also criticized the writer's dismissive reference to his "15 minutes of fame." He noted:

"Of course I'm a minor leaguer in a very competitive business. But while the publicity for the T-shirt campaign was great, it was hardly my first foray into major media. I've made hundreds of radio and TV appearances, on many of the biggest shows in the country. My columns have been published over 100 times in dozens of the largest newspapers in the US--and as a male writing pro-male, pro-father pieces, no less. Do you have any idea how difficult that is?"

Grieco counterposed the campaign against 'Boys are Stupid' products with NOW's work combating sharia rulings in Nigeria which call for unfaithful wives to be stoned to death, saying "I spend every day on life-and-death issues." According to Sacks:

"It's wonderful to see American feminists fighting against anti-woman barbarism in Nigeria. I only wish it were true that this is what NOW devotes its time to. California NOW spends most of its time trying to help selfish, vengeful women drive loving fathers out of their children's lives, as in the LaMusga case and in bills NOW has sponsored."

"Since NOW does good work in Africa and destructive work here in the United States, perhaps the solution is simply for NOW to pick up and move to Nigeria. I'm sure millions of American men will gladly chip in to help pay their plane fare."