Stanley Kurtz
National Review Online
Contributing Editor
Mr. Kurtz is also a fellow at the Hudson Institute
December 5, 2001 8:25 a.m.
Imagine that a feminist heroine like Carol Gilligan or Catherine MacKinnon had been silenced by federal officials at a government-sponsored conference, simply for airing her feminist views. Then imagine MacKinnon or Gilligan being put upon by a group of paid government consultants and told by a man to "shut the f*ck up, bitch" while the rest of the crowd laughed at her derisively. Now imagine our feminist heroine, having been publicly silenced and insulted, finally leaving the conference, while the federal officials running the show did nothing to challenge or chastise the man who had hurled the insult.
Of course, none of this happened to Catherine MacKinnon or Carol Gilligan. Just imagine the media firestorm if it did. But this did happen to the famous critic of feminism, Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Sommers was delivering an invited speech at a conference on "Boy Talk" (a program sponsored by the Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention (CSAP) of the Department of Health and Human Services) when CSAP official Linda Bass summarily interrupted, and commanded Sommers to end her talk. Minutes later, as Sommers was forced by a hostile crowd to defend her claim that scientific studies ought to be used to help evaluate the effectiveness of government drug-prevention programs, Professor Jay Wade, of Fordham University's Department of Psychology — an expert on "listening skills" — ordered Sommers to "shut the f*ck up, bitch," to the laughter of the others in attendance. Having been muzzled by Bass and put upon by the crowd in a manner well outside the bounds of civilized discourse (and with not a move made by those running the conference to chastise Professor Wade) Sommers had little choice but to leave — effectively ejected from a government conference, simply for airing her views.
I called Professor Jay Wade for a comment on his insulting remarks to Sommers at the conference. It turns out that Wade had himself gone back to HHS and asked them to tell him, using the tape, exactly what he had said to Sommers at the conference. So Wade's remarks to me reflected the official transcript, which does not include the word "bitch." Wade said he remembers saying "Shut the f*ck up," to Sommers, but was unsure about whether he said "bitch." "I could have said 'bitch.' I probably thought it," Wade told me. Sommers says that Wade did in fact say "bitch," and careful listening to the tape reveals that the word was uttered, although almost drowned out by the derisive laughter of the crowd.
There is nothing liberal about 'liberals'.