Aha. I understand!

No, I do not have any problem with such a position at all.

However, I, myself, would probably ‘justify’ his behaviour on the grounds that men are being pushed to the limits and that, firstly, they have every right to get mad and, secondly, that they are only human beings – as per Roger above; i.e. they are not saints.

(I must state, however, that I do not know much about the Alec Baldwin case – just the headline stuff.)

Perhaps of greater importance regarding my own state of mind on such matters at the moment, however, is that I now believe that men who have been treated badly by those in officaldom have every right to fight back with more than just words.

In other words, I no longer accept the view that just because someone holds a lofty position that this means that they should continually be allowed to get away with treating people badly – just because ‘the law’ says that they can.

It seems to me that we, as men, take legislative blow after blow, and yet we are expected to use only words when it comes to defending ourselves or attacking our enemies.

For example, a judge says to a man that he cannot be with his own children – an absolutely devastating situation for many men – and yet if the man fights back using means other than words (perhaps, like F4J, he sits on the judge’s roof) then he is castigated for it by the public, and prosecuted by the courts.

Well, in my view, the situation is now so bad, for so many men – with many officials *knowingly* and *persistently* inflicting much hurt and much harm on to so many thousands of men – that those officials have lost any moral right to expect their victims to remain ‘passive’.

In fact, I wrote about this sort of thing in two of my most excellent pieces!

http://www.angryharry.com/esWhyViolenceIsOftenJustified.htm

http://www.angryharry.com/es-The-Golden-Rule.htm

And, if you read them, you will see that I no longer believe that words alone will do the trick, and that, as such, ‘aggression’ is very much justified; not only from a moral point of view, but also with regard to forcing some sense of fairness and decency back into the legal system.

For example, it seems to me that most of us would feel quite justified in using some form of ‘aggression’ to prevent A from treating B appallingly (if words alone did not work).

Well, I see no reason why, for example, this should not also apply to government officials who PERSIST in treating people appallingly.

Why should we feel any different just because of who they are?

I’m all for treating such people with respect etc etc – but this respect has got to go both ways!

And when it comes to ‘men’, we are not being treated with respect at all by these people. We are being treated like dirt – on so many fronts.

Anyway – I’m getting wound up now, so I had better stop, or I’ll never get to sleep! LOL!

I appreciate the astute objection to misuse of bold font.

Thank you for that.

But my question was to you alone, directly, not to or about or referencing Squiggy.

I wanted to suggest to you directly that advocates for fathers rights can and should simultaneously disclaim Alec Baldwin’s personal conduct and use the notoriety of his case as a way to spotlight real issues…

…as opposed to either ignoring his conduct or ignoring the opportunity that the attention on him provides.

My use of bold in this post is very selective and I hope placed well. And thank you quite sincerely for the work that you do at A.H.

*THAT* was not the whole claim being made by Squiggy. Squiggy suggested that Alec Baldwin’s activities would be ‘detrimental’ to the cause.

And, worse, he said it in a bold font!

What is the conflict here?

It can be simultaneously acknowledged that

A) “Alec Baldwin is no poster boy for fathers rights”
and
B) issues raised about the so called family court system and parental alienation are valid.

Fathers Rights advocates can put forth statements like, “While not agreeing with Alec Baldwin’s words to his daughter, his case raises valid points which apply to millions of fathers who have never talked like that to their kids in the first place.”

And then go into a variety of points about parental alienation (dropping the word ’syndrome’) and the systemic war on fatherhood.

I was very impressed with his interview on The View. They were very supportive of him. One host even mentioned she was going through the same thing (probably meaning an ugly divorce.) We’re getting through.

I don’t have any problem supporting him, even after he left that voice mail. I helped protest with Fathers4Justice, the California Men’s Centers and CRISPE outside one of his court hearings in Los Angeles. He’s only human, and he feels remorse.

As far as 20/20 getting tons of negative mail, how do we know all the mail was negative? When we write against VAWA, we’re listed as being for it. The opposite could be true in this case.

I’m not a popular gal around election time. People start to remember I’m a liberal. So I’m trying not to say too much about politics, yet.

I made the point that regular guys probably don’t connect with Alec Baldwin’s experience in my article on this topic; but you disagree with me there too. I’m a bit confused about what your perspective / position is at this point.

I totally agree! Absolutely! This stuff cause some men to commit suicide.

teri

I very literally understand exactly what you mean. And to your last comment to squiggy, I got tired a long time ago of leaving men on the battlefield because they don’t meet feminist requirements for a proper “poster boy.” Misplaced perfectionism and intolerance of real human character or anything that doesn’t serve the self-serving self is in fact just another psychological problem. According to feminists, all men everywhere are bad. If that’s the case, that is what men are and if feminists have psychological problems living in the real world with real people that’s their problem. Make room for “bad men” because that’s what real humanity is made of.

But let me tell you the problem with the Squiggys of this world. They are too honourable – and they think that most of the people with power are just like them.

But they are not.

I used to feel the same way as Squiggy about how to approach the problems that we face, and it took me a long time to realise that the ‘decent’ approach would have virtually no effect at all.

And, in a nutshell, the reason for this is that only those who are prepared to sacrifice their integrity to reach the top of their various trees actually get to the top of those trees and stay there.

And those possessing much in the way of integrity haven’t got a hope of competing with them.

A boxer who plays by the rules has no hope against a boxer who cheats!

Indeed, I find myself more angered by my discovery of this general ‘fact of life’ than I am by the feminists!

I could not describe to you just how outraged I was/am at discovering just how deceitful, dishonourable and self-serving are so many of those people whom, for most of my life, I had trusted; judges, academics, journalists, senior police officers etc etc.

It is probably too much of an exaggeration to say that, “my whole world collapsed,” when I began to see what was going on, but those words are not far off the mark.

I really do feel outraged and cheated by them.

It’s like discovering that your wife of 20 years never really loved you at all – despite all the apparently sincere pronouncements that she did so – but was just interested in your money.

It hurts!

But, of course, you could always walk away from her having discovered her true feelings; and try to get over it.

But you **cannot** walk away from this permanent deluge of man-hatred. You cannot escape from it. It comes at you from every angle.

And those bastar#s who are pulling the strings, and who are creating and maintaining this deluge of man-hatred in order to serve themselves have got to be taken down and disempowered.

And this is not going to happen by talking politely to them – any more than Saddam Hussein would have given up his power following a few polite words.

Yes, we do need polite words, but we are also in need of highly aggressive publicly visual activists who grab people’s attention and who, quite frankly, intimidate those self-serving shysters who try to get in their way.

Well, that’s my view!

Dear Reader,

Last Tuesday, Alec Baldwin’s long anticipated book, A Promise To Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce, chronicling his experiences with Parental Alienation and the family courts of Los Angeles was released.

On Wednesday Alec gave his first live TV interview about the book on ABC’s daytime program ‘The View.’ In addition to Alec’s story, Jill Egizii related her experiences as a mother battling parental alienation and how she has spent years out of the life of her children. I was also interviewed regarding the need for family law reform and shared parenting.

There was strong opposition from several groups protesting the content and airing of the program. Executives at ABC indicated their email system was overwhelmed by all the negative traffic.

Our thanks to Alec Baldwin for his courage in writing a candid book about his personal experiences with parental alienation and the courts. We also thank ABC and ‘The View’ for having the courage to tackle this controversial subject.

The View’s audience is predominately female. I’m pleased to report there was significant support from both the audience and the hosts for improving the family law system in such a way that children are able to maximize their relationships with both parents, regardless of the parents marital status. ‘The View’ was a positive for Shared Parenting.

Click here to see a couple of photographs from the show.

Sincerely,
Mike McCormick, Exec. Dir.
ACFC

Patschef
http://www.masculinisme.blog-cty.com

Squiggy – I am too tired to slug it out with you – but I can tell you this!

You’re wrong.

There will come a time – hopefully – when the perception of ‘aggressive’ men being linked to the MM will, indeed, be detrimental to it. But at this point in time, we need to get all the attention that we can.

Perhaps it’s like this …

If people were looking at our ‘problems’ and seriously considering them, then the Alec Baldwin outburst might not be very helpful.

But very few people indeed at the moment are bothering to consider men’s rights, and so we need to start turning a few heads in our direction.

And the heads that we are most likely to turn at the moment belong to those men who are rather angry – because of the way that they, themselves, have been treated.

Now, it would be nice if we could turn those heads simply by using polite discussion etc etc.

But this does not work – and it won’t work.

Now, you might argue that many people would be put off the MM by the Alec Baldwin outburst. This is probably true – BUT – those people were mostly not bothering to help us anyway.

But what Alex Baldwin will have done, is reached slightly into the heads of **millions** of men who have experienced, almost experienced, or seen others experience, what he has gone through.

And he has *publicly* pointed out the enemy to them.

Furthermore, he has stuck is head out (probably quite a long way given his line of work) and this will encourage others to do the same.

In addition, so heavily stacked against men is the situation in so many areas at the moment, that almost any increase in the public discussion about men’s rights will add to the growing awareness that something is wrong with the way that men are being treated these days.

Indeed, I even saw an article yesterday by a woman talking about the plight of fathers in connection with a father’s murder/suicide.

And you certainly wouldn’t call a murdering father a poster boy given what you said about Alec Baldwin, would you?

But this father’s murderous actions have actually led a **woman** journalist to think about – and write about – fathers!

And here it is!

http://tinyurl.com/4strpo

One day Squiggy, you will be right. But not at the moment – in my view.

Harry, I normally agree with you, but not this time. Go pick anyone at random and ask them to tell you anything they know about Alec Baldwin and his children. 99% will not know anything except that he called his daughter a pig. But if he gets to be known as part of the fathers rights movement, that couldn’t be anything but detrimental. There’s no way to put lipstick on this particular pig.

And with regard to the implication (of some) that Alec Baldwin’s contribution to our cause has been insignificant – or detrimental to it – I can only say “absolute rubbish”.

What father who has been to hell and back hasn’t flown off the handle once or twice?

Well, me for instance. No matter how angry I am at someone else, my children aren’t punished for it. And guess what? My children (one and all) choose ME to live with.

Guys, just because Kim Bassinger is a world-class bitch doesn’t excuse Alec one iota. He took his anger out on his child. Not acceptable.

Having said that, read his book if you want. Quote from it (if it’s worth quoting). As amfortas said, at least he’s shooting (these) arrows in the right direction.

“Tonight I heard Alan Colmes give a coherent overview of parental alienation, speak of bias against fathers in family law, and talk about the frustration of being denied the fundamental right to see your own child.”

Perhaps the article I did about Colmes, and the radio interview I did with him for treating Baskerville very rudely caused him to change his mind? Colmes was pretty disgusted with the interview because he couldn’t find a weak spot in my position, and I let him show all of his by letting him walk into his own traps.

See:

FOX News Alan Colmes: Who Needs Air America?
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/12/05/fox-new%E2%80%99s-alan-colmes-who-needs-air-america/

The interview: http://mensnewsdaily.com/audio/alancomes-2007-12-17.mp3

The Debate on Alan Colmes: Who Won?
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/12/17/usher-on-alan-colmes-tonight-10pm-ct-11pm-et/

teri
jugsforjustice