Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the resignation of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman:
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer championed women’s rights, even as he paid for prostitutes behind his wife’s back.
New York Congressman Anthony Weiner championed women’s rights, even as he used his 5-year-old son as a “chick magnet” to lure minors while sexting.
New York celebrity Harvey Weinstein championed women’s rights, even as he abused scores of women.
And now we have learned that another champion of women’s rights, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, regularly beat the women whom he dated.
In many ways, Schneiderman is the most interesting of them all. He lived a double life, and it was not limited to his duplicity with women. His behavior frequently belied his ideology.
Ideology:
Schneiderman was a rabid supporter of the #MeToo movement, and brought suit against Harvey Weinstein over his sexual harassment offenses. He was aghast at Weinstein’s behavior. “We have never seen anything as despicable as what we’ve seen right here,” he said. Until now.
Behavior:
He liked his sex rough. He beat his dates until they bled, slapped them across the face, spat on them, called them “whores,” and threatened to kill them. Michelle Manning Barish, one of his four victims (that we know of), said he warned her, “If you ever left me, I’d kill you.”
Ideology:
When he was in the New York state senate, he sponsored a bill making life-threatening strangulation a felony, and made it a misdemeanor to “impede breathing.”
Behavior:
He frequently choked his dates while having sex with them.
Ideology:
He was a big proponent of animal rights. Last year he prosecuted three men on animal cruelty and dogfighting charges on Long Island, noting that three of the dogs had to be euthanized.
Behavior:
Following in the footsteps of his father, who was a former treasurer of NARAL, he was a strident advocate of abortion-on-demand. He also blamed many in the pro-life community for the killing of abortionist Dr. Bernard Slepian, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Ideology:
He was a radical egalitarian who opposed laws that did not treat all segments of the population equally.
Behavior:
In 2009, he supported a bill that discriminated against Catholics by holding the Catholic Church to a much higher set of standards regarding the sexual abuse of minors than afforded the public schools.
Ideology:
He deplored racism. Here are two of his quotes: “Racism has no home in New York.” “When racists try to intimidate our communities, they need to be condemned and condemned strongly.”
Behavior:
One of his victims, Tanya Selvaratnam, who is from Sri Lanka, said, “Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did.” He took note of her dark skin, calling her his “brown slave,” demanding that she acknowledge that she was his “property.”
Ideology:
In 2010, he proposed more jail time and stiffer fines for barbershops and bodegas that sell “nutcracker,” a sweet alcoholic drink. Two years later he spoke at the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, condemning alcohol and drug abuse.
Behavior:
According to all of his victims, he was a heavy drinker and drug abuser. One of them said he “would almost always drink two bottles of wine in a night, then bring a bottle of Scotch into the bedroom. He would get plastered five nights out of seven.” He also availed himself of her Xanax.
Ideology:
When he was in the state senate, he sponsored a bill called the Gun Violence Prevention Act; it was a response to the NRA’s efforts against gun control. Just a few weeks ago, he sat down with high school students marking the 19th anniversary of the Columbine massacre.
Behavior:
He mocked anti-gun activists, calling parents and protesters from Sandy Hook Elementary School “losers.”
Ideology:
He worked with the extremists from the Southern Poverty Law Center imploring everyone to “stand up to hate.”
Behavior:
He arranged for a convicted felon, Oscar Lopez Rivera, co-founder of FALN, a terrorist organization, to lead the Puerto Rican Day Parade last year.
Ideology
In 2011, after taking over as state attorney general, he boasted that “no one is above the law.”
Behavior:
After one of his victims complained that he was violating the law against jaywalking by “yanking” her across the street, he replied, “I am the law.”
CONCLUSION:
Schneiderman’s misogyny, violence, alcoholism, racism, and utter hypocrisy make him unusual, but it is a fair question to ask how many other prominent left-wing public figures and activists experience a disconnect between their ideology and their behavior. Too many it seems.
