Just as I was about to write a column praising Natalie Portman for attacking racist John Galliano, along comes Mike Huckabee to attack her as a unmarried-and-pregnant-negative-role-model. There's a time for everything, Mike. And this was the wrong time. But before I respond to Mr. Huckabee -- a man for whom I have much respect -- let me first tell you why Ms. Portman elicited my praise.
Our world constantly excuses evil. The Hitlers and Stalins of this world are spoken of as 'sick,' as if they committed their evil out of delusion and mental illness. That's how you now hear people speaking about Gaddafi -- he's a weirdo, he's high as a kite -- instead of calling him what he really is: evil and cruel to the core.
Over the past two weeks Hilary Clinton and President Obama have been saying that Muammar Gaddafi has 'lost the legitimacy to rule,' surely, the most painfully laughable phrase uttered by a Secretary of State and President of the United States in recent memory. Er... he only now lost the legitimacy to rule? And while he tortured and imprisoned political opponents for forty years and blew up airliners and discotheques he had legitimacy to rule? President Obama, who shook Gaddafi's hand in Italy, has this Messianic hang-up where he believes that he can somehow transform brutal killers like Gaddafi into upstanding citizens instead of boldly declaring them to be the evil killers they are.
About five years ago I wrote a column that said that although most of my close friends are staunch liberals, I myself could never embrace liberalism because it refuses to hate evil. And the inability of the two most powerful people in the United States to get up and say 'Gaddafi is, was, and always will be a despot' is sad proof of my earlier conviction.
So it was with glee that I read Ms. Portman's courageous statement in the wake of John Galliano exposing himself as a Jew-hater. When Mel Gibson made a film depicting Jews as Christ-killers, Hollywood, and the Jews of Hollywood -- with the notable exception of my former agent Ari Emanuel -- excused him and continued to work with him. Even after he got drunk and called us 'F-ing Jews' who incite all the world's wars, Hollywood still cast him in films. It wasn't until we discovered that he also hates women, African-Americans, and Lord knows who else that he was finally shunned.
But this time when a famed designer, an 'artist,' made his admiration for Hitler known (was it all those stylish SS uniforms that caught your eye, John?) a leading actress who had just won an Academy award told him to go to hell. Saying she was 'shocked and disgusted,' she declared herself proud to be Jewish. Party on Natalie!
So perhaps Mr. Huckabee should have thought twice before choosing this particular moment to attack a Hollywood hero who stood up to evil.
Not that Huckabee doesn't have an important overall point. It is disconcerting that few in Hollywood seem to believe that children should be brought into the world amid the security of marriage and surely our stars of the big screen would agree that most children love to see Mom and Dad as husband and wife.
But having said this, Ms. Portman is quite simply the wrong target. Mr. Huckabee's ire ought to be directed toward the men who are the real problem.
Once there was a code of honor among men to treat women with commitment and respect. If you lived with a woman and wanted to have a child with her you granted her the ultimate compliment of publicly declaring your love and commitment to her by making her your wife. Marriage is a where a man selects one woman and simultaneously deselects every other woman on earth, thereby establishing the object of his live as the one and only.
Today, however, there is a broken code of male honor. Men treat women casually and hedge their bets. And why not? If you can have a woman commit to you without having to reciprocate the whole marriage thing seems a bit gratuitous.
This is a regular mistake made by social conservatives. Last week Richard Land, the head of the Southern Baptists, published a column in the Wall Street Journal enjoining religious conservatives not to give up the fight on abortion, the most divisive of all social issues in America. But why can't we find language that is actually unifying? Both the left and the right agree that respect for women is a paramount virtue. Yet, most abortions are the product of men sleeping with women whom they don't love, impregnating them, and abandoning them. These are not men but inseminators, hormonally-driven walking sperm banks. Abortion thrives in a society that has witnessed the end of love and the rise of the hook-up. Yes, women have to learn to respect themselves but more importantly parents and schools must inculcate within men a desire to be gentlemen again.
So instead of beating an endless drum on abortion, why not focus on the real problem. Is there anyone of any political persuasion who would condone men using women as masturbatory material and disappearing from their lives?
Granted, men who have a child with a woman in a serious relationship, like Portmans' beau, Benjamin Millepied, are not in this category and indeed he is her fiancé. Still, there are way too many men who leave the picture as soon as the woman is pregnant.
In his comments Huckabee himself acknowledged that it's the men who are the problem, which makes his attack on Portman even more curious. "You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock," he said. "61 percent of Hispanic kids -- across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering." But it's not the women who are abandoning these kids, Mike, but the men.
And the same applies to so many of these recent racist tirades, nearly all of which are being committed by broken and messed up men.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, "America's Rabbi," is the international best-selling author of 25 books and has recently published "Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life," and "Honoring the Child Spirit: Inspiration and Learning from Our Children." Follow him Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Follow Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RabbiShmuley
How is that "Huckabee acknowledging that men are the problem"??? Sounds like all he's doing is trashing blacks and Hispanics for having children out of wedlock; tossing in a statistic for "across the board" rather than a statistic for whites, .
And treat those two imposters just the same...
...Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son! - Rudyard Kipling, "if"
Truth in essence is a person (Christian worldview), as well captured in John 14:6. Truth is NOT an excuse, or mitigations meant to explain away things. Such are referred to as excuses, mere speculation and attempts at second guessing.
Wrong must also be absolute and easily definable. One proof that humans know what's wrong? Why do they look for so many words to explain or justify things? Abortion is wrong, not merely because of the loss of life(s) involved, but because the acts that led to it in the first were wrong. Sex is not bad, but based on lust and related vices, it takes on a whole new negative dimension.
It's a result of the nature of this world, lopsided nature, that the Natalie Portmans' are easier to condemn than the murderous despots who rule men.
Huckabee's attack on Portman is based on some truth, just like her own attack on anti-semites like Galliano, mutually exclusive but intersecting at Truth Highway. Both need to be courageously said out loud at the end of the day.
Honesty is a foundational value for any society. Truth must return to its ultimate place. We must make it so second nature we even take it for granted.
Even wrong... since she is Marrying the father of her child
And consider this.....
Why didn't he go after Bristol Palin?,
who is NOT marrying the father of her child ..
because he made a video ( according to her )
As a liberal married to a conservative, my husband would claim the same - (liberals won't "hate evil" or something like that). Not true. It's that my definition of evil is much more strict than yours. Conservatives who are all about the word "evil" tend to claim that anything they do not understand/approve of is "evil". Wrong. It happens often that my husband snap judges something he knows little about as "evil". If/when we take a deeper look, often (not always, but VERY often), there were facts that he didn't know that add context. I'm not for relativizing everything, but I am for recognizing when I am not the expert on something.
2 - I totally agree with the author about society failing to blame men. Why rant about "single mothers"? That demonizes the many women who have done what the father hasn't - stuck around and stuck it out to take care of the baby. The "single mother" term also lumps in women who's husbands have left them (etc etc) and deserve nothing but praise for the job they're doing. Why don't conservatives rail about "absent fathers"? The mothers aren't without blame, but does anyone think they WANT to be raising a child alone? No. We need to stop placing the blame solely at the feet of women. Stop telling young girls ONLY to respect their bodies and tell it to the boys too. The whole double standard has far more consequences than anyone wants to admit.
"Granted, men who have a child with a woman in a serious relationship, like Portmans' beau, Benjamin Millepied, are not in this category and indeed he is her fiancé."
AND why isn't Millipied in that catagory?
Remember Levi Johnston was a committed "fiance" too.
Notice how grumpy and indignant these old-white-guy types get when you try to apply that sort of standard to THEM >coughGINGRICHcough
Bristol Palin, OTOH, was held up as a role model by her mother and by the campaign (and by Huckabee) as a fine example of Christian Family Values.
Hypocritical much?
Abortion, has been practiced in many ways for thousands of years.
Previous to modern sterile environments most abortions were life threatening
events for the reluctantly pregnant woman.
This issue is fully owned fully by the pregnant woman, her body her choice.
Men do not carry, so they suffer none of the dangers of pregnancy.
A mans sperm is simply a bit of errant fluid which happens to have the
ability to begin a process culminating in a potentially viable human baby with successful
delivery of the properly gestated fetus.
Sorry to be so scientific, but we do live in a time of knowledge.
Antiabortion forces would have us all fall back to the time when we believe in
witches and conception without intercourse.
In my book there is not a man or woman on this earth that should be telling woman what they can do with their bodies.