1/05/01 4:55 p.m.
Inapt AP
A dishonest attack on Linda Chavez.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

irst the far Left savaged Labor Secretary nominee Linda Chavez. Now its surrogates in the mainstream press have decided to jump in: Today’s Associated Press story by Laura Meckler is a particular disgrace. In what is ostensibly a news report, Meckler performs a selective review of Chavez’s various writings and then invites feminist critics to say she “has no business in the U.S. government.” It is a hit job, dressed up as objective journalism.

Meckler does her dishonest best to distort Chavez’s views. She claims, for instance, that Chavez “ridiculed the Americans with Disabilities Act as ‘special treatment in the name of accommodating the disabled.’”

Here is what Chavez actually wrote about the ADA, in the same column: “No one doubts that thousands of worthy, disabled workers have benefited from a law that protects access to jobs for which they are fully qualified.” That is not ridicule. Chavez also says, “The ADA is only the latest in a series of well-intentioned laws that have gone far beyond their original purpose of outlawing irrational and invidious discrimination.” In particular, she says, “the ADA has been used successfully by everyone from infertile cops to drunken airline pilots to force employers to offer special treatment in the name of accommodating the disabled.”

This last line — or rather, a portion of it — is what Meckler seized upon. But it sounds totally different in its proper context — the one readers of Chavez will have had, but not readers of Meckler.

This is not Meckler’s only misrepresentation. She also claims Chavez “suggested the increase in sexual harassment lawsuits is making the United States ‘a nation of crybabies.’ She added: ‘With men so often the targets of such witch hunts, it’s no surprise that a few strike back.’”

Whoa — that sounds like a defense of wife beating, or at least a rationalization of it. But it turns out that isn’t at all what Chavez meant. Instead, she wrote about a male federal employee who filed a sex-harassment lawsuit because he heard a female colleague tell an allegedly sexist joke (not worth repeating here, except to say it was lame rather than lewd). Chavez bemoans that “bad taste has become a federal offense.” She continues: “The answer to this nonsense is not for more men to claim that they, too, are victims of sexual harassment because someone tells a meaningless joke. We are becoming a nation of crybabies who can respond to others’ ridiculous behavior only by engaging in more of the same.” That sounds pretty reasonable. And so does this line, which Meckler quotes without using the ellipses it is her responsibility to include when she snips a few words: “With men so often the targets of such [sexual harassment] witch hunts, it’s no surprise a few, like John Boyer [the suing federal employee], strike back.”

There are other distortions, too, but you get the point.

Meckler writes that “Chavez’s views ... are getting a close look as Democrats and unions prepare to battle her nomination.” That’s surely the truth. If only Meckler would provide her own readers with more information, then they would be able to have a close look at Chavez’s paper trail for themselves.