Media Research Center - PBS's Erbe says Chavez too old to be raped

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Slowpoke_Rodrigo

New member
CYBERALERT

On the PBS public-affairs show To the Contrary over the weekend, host Bonnie Erbe told panelist Linda Chavez that a woman of her age doesn't need to worry about being raped. So National Review’s John J. Miller and Ramesh Ponnuru revealed in their Washington Bulletin e-mail on Monday.

To the Contrary bills itself as "a discussion of issues from a variety of women’s perspectives," though Erbe’s comment is one sure to have had generated condemnation on the show if uttered by a man. Her comment came at the very end of a discussion about gun control and the Million Mom March with the conservative Linda Chavez, a Virginia resident who disclosed that a month ago she bought a gun at a gun show.

Here’s the transcript of the relevant portion of the show as provided by National Review, with some slight corrections and added words I got off the MRC’s taped copy of the program:

Linda Chavez, Center for Equal Opportunity: "If you're someone like me, who lives out in a rural area -- if someone breaks into my house and wants to murder or rape me or steal all of my property, it'll take half an hour for a policeman to get to me."
DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton jumped and a brief back and forth ensued about how Chavez has dogs who will alert her to an intruder.
Chavez continued: "Thousands of lives are saved by people being able to protect themselves."
Norton: "And there are more suicides and more accidents because there was a gun in the home than they’ll ever be lives saved because somebody happened to get the jump on a burglar."
Bonnie Erbe: "And if you look at the statistics, I would bet that you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning, Linda, than living where you live, and at your age, being raped. Sorry."

Before anyone could react, Erbe moved the discussion to a new topic: The New York Senate race.

NR’s Miller and Ponnuru learned that Erbe stands by her assessment of rape risk and thinks women who buy guns are "bonkers." They reported in their May 15 e-mail:
"Contacted on Monday, Erbe refused to back down. ‘A woman living in a rural area and at a post-menopausal age statistically is not likely to be a rape target,’ she said. ‘Women buying guns for their self protection have gone completely bonkers.’ Asked if she knew Chavez's age, Erbe replied, ‘Somewhere over 55 and somewhere under 60.’ Chavez is 52. Cari W. Stein, the executive producer of To the Contrary, said, ‘Bonnie certainly is not insensitive to sexual assault. Her commitment to women's issues should be apparent from the program.’"

Erbe, now a columnist for Scripps-Howard, is the former legal affairs correspondent for the Mutual/NBC Radio Network. While still in that job, she took this stab at conservatives on the August 16, 1996 To the Contrary, just after the Republican convention:
"TV viewers saw a well-orchestrated image of a moderated Republican Party, portraying itself as pro-woman, pro-minorities, and pro-tolerance. This is in sharp contrast to the delegates on the floor, sixty percent of whom self-identified as conservative Christians."

In a June 1997 column, she complained: "What liberals can’t understand is why can’t Republicans be honest about their discomfort with the advancement of women and minorities...The ideological pulse of the party, the Conservative Action Team, is backing its own candidate for the Republican Conference’s vice chair. And nary a woman was ever in the running. The message from the crowd is clear: only anti-abortion, right-wing males need apply."

And remember, it was on Erbe’s To the Contrary that a panelist wished Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas would die. On the November 4, 1994 edition, then-USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk show host Julianne Malveaux, spewed: "The man is on the Court. You know, I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that’s how I feel. He is an absolutely reprehensible person."

To see a clip of Malveaux’s wish, via RealPlayer, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/nq/dishonor1999/dishonor_videos.html#7

For more about To the Contrary, which is produced by Maryland Public Television, go to: http://www.pbs.org/ttc/

Washington area viewers with a lot of free time can watch the show four times each weekend: Saturdays at 12pm on WETA-TV; Sundays at 10:30am on WMPT-TV; and Fridays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 5:30pm on WHUT-TV.

+++ Watch Erbe make her comment on To the Contrary about how older women have more to fear from lightning than rape. Wednesday morning MRC Webmaster Andy Szul will post a RealPlayer clip in the posted version of this CyberAlert item. After 11am ET, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/2000/cyb20000517.html#5

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Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...

I voted for the Neal Knox 13

I'll see you at the TFL End Of Summer Meet!
 
What a crock! Slopoke can you post a link and tell the sisters to go after that b****! Find us a complaint link. 2 on one no fun. Counting our members 5000+ on one lots of fun!
 
I'll betcha that there are a damn sight more post-menopausal woman raped, than kids accidentally killed by firearms

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
I had to explain to my mother that she's among the people perceived as "easy targets" by all sorts of sick and twisted vermin. She doesn't want to think about it but, at least, now has an eleven-shot contingency plan.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Bonnie Erbe: "And if you look at the statistics, I would bet that you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning, Linda, than living where you live, and at your age, being raped. Sorry."[/quote]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we been told for at least the last thirty years that rape has nothing to do with sex, but is a crime of violence? That being the case, what possible correlation could there be between a person's age and their likelihood of being raped? Actually, I do believe Linda's chances of being hit by lightning are greater than being raped, but that's only because she has taken positive steps to tip the odds in her favor...



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"...and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."
Luke 22:36
"An armed society is a polite society."
Robert Heinlein
 
With respect to Erbe's comments, just allow me to inform her that a good friend of mine's grandmother was attacked in her home, savagely beaten, and raped. She was 83 years old at the time. Many elderly women, let alone so-called "post menopausal" women, are considered vulnerable targets for the dirtbag slimeballs who prey on those whom they believe cannot or will not fight back. She later died of the trauma from the event. My mother is now 83 and lives alone. She is proficient with the Smith Model 19 I gave her, and we go to the range every 60 days or so for a refresher. She never shoots less than 200 rounds per visit, and is dead nuts in the black at 21 feet.

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Safe shooting - PKAY
 
I believe bestdefense357 probably has some actual cases in his book on elderly folks and firearms........blatant lies to supporttheir position....typical though...fubsy.
 
STORY

'Contrary'-ness Strikes PBS Talk Show
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 23, 2000; Page C07

In today's talk show culture, it's hardly unusual for guests to smack each other around. But Bonnie Erbe, host of PBS's "To the Contrary," seems to have drawn blood in the process.

The contretemps began when regular panelist Linda Chavez talked about why she keeps a gun at home: to protect herself against possible murder or rape.

"If you look at the statistics," Erbe responded, "I would bet that you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning, Linda, than, living where you live, and at your age, being raped. Sorry."

Chavez's reaction? She quit the show. Then the argument really got nasty, with Erbe even suggesting that Chavez needs therapy.

After the May 13 show, Chavez, 52, who lives in Loudoun County, sent the program's producer statistics that said she indeed has a far better chance of being raped than felled by lightning. When National Review's Web site ran a piece on the flap--co-authored by a man who once worked for Chavez at the nonprofit Center for Equal Opportunity--Erbe responded with a series of e-mails to Chavez.

"I think your reaction (especially looking up the stats on lightning strikes) goes beyond histrionic," Erbe wrote. Calling Chavez an "overgrown Catholic school girl" who "planted" the National Review story, Erbe said: "If you think you zinged us, think again. We don't care. Nobody reads that magazine anyway. . . . I must say I'm shocked at your reaction. I thought you were a much bigger, more mature person than you're showing yourself to be."

In another missive, Erbe wrote: "I know and accept your insecurities. And I expect insecure people and especially conservatives to lie and play games. . . . I suggest you get into therapy, otherwise you're going to continue to be miserable and in denial the rest of your life."

Erbe now says that "I did offer Linda an on-air apology if I hurt her feelings. She has yet to take me up on that. Other than that, I find the whole situation very amusing and think Linda is going off the deep end. . . . The door is open for her to come back to the show." She says Chavez has quit the program before "in a snit."

Chavez, a former GOP Senate candidate in Maryland, says she left the show for a couple of years in the mid-'90s both for scheduling reasons and because another panelist kept calling her a liar. She says that people in her office undoubtedly notified National Review about Erbe's on-air comments, but that she declined to comment for the piece.

Erbe says the story must have been orchestrated by Chavez's friend Kate O'Beirne, Washington editor of National Review--and an original "To the Contrary" panelist who also quit the show years ago. But O'Beirne says she had "absolutely nothing to do with it."

"I never had a cross word with Bonnie," O'Beirne says. "I hate to disappoint her, but there's no cabal."

Chavez, a prominent conservative, says she is "offended by a kind of double standard in journalism: If a conservative said something very politically incorrect, that women of a certain age are not going to be raped because they're beyond their sexual years, that would be considered beyond the pale. . . . It struck me as meow! What a catty thing to say."

Although she once wrote a syndicated point-counterpoint column with Erbe and has been on the all-female show for most of its eight-year run, Chavez says she's had it with the program.

In a final e-mail last week, Erbe said an apology would be a "no-brainer" if Chavez would "extend me the courtesy of a phone call." As for Chavez's insistence that she had nothing to do with the National Review item, Erbe wrote: "I was born at night but not last nite. . . . This is getting sillier and sillier. This will be my last communication with you. Please let it be your last to me."
 
ESSAY

/24/00 4:30 p.m.
Sexist Claptrap on PBS
It's not distinctive; it's just dumb.


By Jonah Goldberg, NRO Editor-----------------------JonahEMail@aol.com



Bonnie Erbe, the host of one of PBS's most ludicrous scams, says, "I expect insecure people and especially conservatives to lie and play games." The host of the all-woman pundit show To The Contrary wrote this in an e-mail to Linda Chavez, one of her guests. The fur first began to fly when Chavez, a charming and intelligent lady, said on the air that she kept a gun for fear of being attacked or raped. Erbe, in the typically arrogant and giggly way nasty liberal women say these sorts of things, said that Chavez didn't need a gun because, "I would bet that you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning, Linda, than, living where you live, and at your age, being raped. Sorry." If you want the whole tick-tock, back and forth read Howard Kurtz's summary in yesterday's Washington Post.

Now, I don't have too much to add on this contretemps, though it's nice to see the fictional "national epidemic" of rape has some limits even in Ms. Erbe's opinion. And, it's nice to see where anti-gun ideology takes some people. Still, it was a dumb and nasty thing for Erbe to say, and therefore typical of her and her show. And that's the real point.

I spent most of my professional life as a public-television producer and when it comes to political journalism, PBS is a hothouse of ideological fraud, bias, and stupidity. There are a few exceptions on the Left and the Right and in the middle. The NewsHour does excellent work, albeit from an old establishment-liberal slant from time to time. Frontline is terribly left-wing, but extremely well-done and professional. The program I worked on and helped start, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, has a definite approach to issues, but it strives for the only worthwhile kind of balance among its guests — a group of people whose "diversity" arises from the fact that they know what they're talking about.

But by any reasonable standard, To the Contrary is a horror show. Even for the smart and capable women who sometimes appear on the program — including our own inestimable Kate O'Beirne, who was a regular years ago, or Amy Holmes these days — the program is classic suburban, affluent-feminist agitprop. The animating fiction is that somehow these women speak truth to power by offering views at odds with the reigning male patriarchy dominating political TV. The program's website and promotional material shout out its "unique perspective," which helps "women's voices get heard" and "presents news and views that are rarely, if ever, available elsewhere on television."

Well, yeah. But that's mostly because they're not worth putting "elsewhere on television." This is the program, recall, where To the Contrary regular Julianne Malveaux said of Clarence Thomas, "You know, I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that's how I feel. He is an absolutely reprehensible person."

Ms. Erbe is well known for taking the usual brain-dead potshots at conservative Christians; she suggested that partial-birth abortion was no less "gruesome" than butchering veal; and all sorts of other zingers that get house-plant feminists to jump up and down and cheer (to the dismay, no doubt, of their many cats). When guests on the show are engaged in intelligent discussion, there's very little of this unique women's perspective they blather on about. There's liberal perspective, very liberal perspective, extremely liberal perspective, and — of course — outnumbered-token-conservative perspective. That's the fiction and the con. This is women's-auxiliary punditry.

Ruth Conniff of The Progressive is a Contrary regular and a seemingly sharp liberal. Surely, she doesn't say anything different about WTO or gun control on this show that she doesn't say on Fox News? Kate O'Beirne offers the same perspective on CNN's Capital Gang as she would anywhere else — her own. Erbe's idea is that somehow Meet the Press has a male bias. If Tim Russert were a woman, somehow the show would turn into one giant Café Vienna moment with Ms. Russert's friends holding readings of "Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood" and "Our Mothers Ourselves." The truth is that mainstream shows have plenty of women on them and the vast majority of them are liberal women. Hell, MSNBC might as well be a soccer-mom book club for most of the day.

Regardless, I've never heard Elizabeth Drew have her inner Gaea denied by David Broder. Cokie Roberts and Gwen Ifill outshine plenty of men, and I don't think they do it because they suffer from patriarchal false consciousness or because they've lost their Girl Power. How come all these supposedly tough independent women are constantly whining about how they can't get a word in edgewise?

Sure, sometimes To The Contrary, covers "women's issues" in more depth, but those issues invariably are either monstrously dull, academic, and irrelevant or synonymous with typical items on the liberal agenda — and nobody is fooled except the usual fools. I'm sure some take-your-daughter-to-work event coordinator at Brown University thinks the show is great, but only because it confirms her own silly views about the patriarchy. Face it, some people just like to watch a bunch of women sit around and pretend they're doing something important by complaining about men. That's fine by me — in fact that's what my four years of college were all about — but don't call it anything more than bad political theater. And don't think that your PBS pledge dollars aren't supporting it.

Still, I don't blame Erbe for slinging this bull. After all, PBS has been in the crap-buying market for a very long time. In fact, To The Contrary is a brilliant concept for dunning corporations to meet their "diversity outreach" budgets with one-stop shopping. Underwriters like Mitsubishi write checks for this dreck and then can say to NOW or any curious journalist, "Hey, look what we're doing for women." It's a pretty good value to get feminists off your back, and a good write-off at the same time.

And, best of all, it's so, so easy to ignore. That is, as long as the checks clear. But just wait until someone tries to cancel the show and then you'll hear much gnashing of teeth and wailing of maidens from liberal groups complaining that needed voices are being muzzled etc.

But there is one issue that should get some light — aside from the fact that it's an awful show. Groups like FAIR claim that PBS is top-heavy with conservatives. Seriously, they do. Stop laughing. But the reality is that even the most conservative hosts on PBS, Bill Buckley until recently, or even Ben Wattenberg, are very honest about their biases; in fact, that's their appeal. However, liberals like Erbe operate in bad faith, claiming to be neutral, or, in Erbe's case, claiming to provide some sort of dispassionate woman's perspective when she's really just a tired liberal who wants to be Captain Kirk in her tiny little alternative universe. We get a glimmer of this from Ms. Erbe's comment that she "expects conservatives to lie" (this from the ideological side of the playing field where "lying for justice" was invented and thrives today). Just imagine if a conservative host of a show said such a thing.

Welfare For Women Who Want to Be Millionaires
The irony of talking about this little-watched show is that there's a mega-watched show out there called "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire" that's being assaulted by the Pope of the "To the Contrary" set. Patricia Ireland and her politburo at NOW yesterday released an hysterical report on women in the media. More on that another time.

But Patricia Ireland says she thinks Who Wants to Be A Millionaire should offer some sort of "affirmative action" to attract more female contestants. The thinking behind this is so exhausting and depressing I'd rather feed my Adam's apple to weasels than address it.

So what is this supposed to mean? Whatever happened to all this level-playing-field stuff? Are women incapable of listing state capitals from East to West or in alphabetical order with the same proficiency as men? They have to dial the same number, make the same choices, know the same rudimentary fifth-grader information. Millionaire is not merely one of the highest watched shows in recent history — its viewers are disproportionately female. So don't tell me the show needs just a bit more outreach.

One wonders what ABC is supposed to do. Should they give women an extra few seconds? Maybe let them take a civics textbook with them into the studio? Maybe give them a few more lifelines?

You do see the problem with that, don't you? It flies in the face of "equal work for equal pay" — the holy mantra of liberals who lie about the economic conditions of men and women. Any economist will tell you that giving this kind of "equal opportunity" to female contestants is really the same as writing them checks. In an aggregate, statistical sense, the producers should just be giving out cash to chicks who try a little harder. "Come on, she was close. Give her the million anyway, she's just a girl."

But then again, maybe I just don't get it. Maybe when a woman guesses wrong about the chronological order of top forty albums, she's not really "wrong" about K.C. and the Sunshine Band, she's just expressing her unique female perspective. Hey, maybe that's why I think To the Contrary is such a moronic show.

"No One Reads That Magazine"
Ms. Erbe says no one reads National Review, er sorry, "that magazine." My guess is that she means "no one she knows reads that magazine," which I think is just fine for all concerned and none too surprising. But I should defend the franchise for a moment. First, I should say that I don't know a soul who has ever said, "Did you catch To the Contrary this weekend?" But since the personal is too political, let me grab this report from Erdos and Morgan, a survey firm which measures influence among various opinion makers: National Review ranks ninth among the Congressional Leadership for influential media – ahead of the NBC Nightly News, ABC News, The New Republic, etc. National Review ranked in the top ten in all categories, including #2 for "enjoyable." I would tell you where To The Contrary ranks, but first they'd have to make the list.

And, as for NR Online (where the piece in question appeared), the Committee of Concerned Journalists ranked us ahead of the New York Times among political news sites. I know it's not necessary to sound the trumpets all the time, but then again sometimes I just have to give expression to my own unique male voice.

[This message has been edited by Slowpoke_Rodrigo (edited May 25, 2000).]
 
I am unable to express in language fit for this forum my reaction to this incident. Therefore, with a witch or feline theme in mind, I gave myself an operations order:

SITUATION: Bonnie Erbe is a strega of monstrous proportions.

MISSION: Take the strega down a peg or two.

EXECUTION: Obtain a kitty dish or a broom, your choice. Ship the object to Erbe, without comment.

SERVICE AND SUPPORT: Shipping address -

BONNIE ERBE
PERSEPHONE PRODUCTIONS
1825 K ST NW
9TH FLOOR
WASHINGTON DC 20005

Use any shipper at your discretion.

COMMAND AND SIGNAL: NA

[This message has been edited by Slowpoke_Rodrigo (edited May 25, 2000).]
 
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