Did you know that the Komen foundation gave to Planned Parenthood for only two years before withdrawing? James Taranto of the Journal gets it right:
Planned Parenthood’s bitter campaign against Komen–aided by left-liberal activists and media–is analogous to a protection racket: Nice charity you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it. The message to other Planned Parenthood donors is that if they don’t play nice and keep coughing up the cash, they’ll get the Komen treatment.
There’s one crucial difference, however. In a real-life protection racket, the victim never pays voluntarily. The threat is present from the get-go. By contrast, Komen presumably was not under any duress when it made its grants–and it could have avoided all this nasty publicity by never dealing with Planned Parenthood in the first place.
Thus smart prospective donors–especially ones that are apolitical, like Komen–are getting the message that supporting Planned Parenthood is a trap. Give once, and you will give again–or else you will pay.
Now that we have cable TV again (well, for us, satellite TV), I’m getting back into the habit of watching nightly network newscasts. For some reason, no doubt a lingering loyalty to the late Peter Jennings, I usually watch ABC. Not after tonight. The network led with the Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy. Take a look at how they handled it. Two Planned Parenthood-sponsored interviews, and one sympathetic to PP’s position. A YouTube clip of Komen’s Nancy Brinker defending her organization. Zero interviews from anyone supporting Komen. Diane Sawyer quoted an e-mail from an unnamed woman accusing Komen of “politicizing women’s health.” Claire Shipman agreed that this episode shows what a big deal “women’s health” is. Nothing about the unborn, or people who think this issue is about the right to life. Where is the balance? Take a look at the caption on ABC’s health blog, identifying a Komen official as “Anti-Abortion Stalwart Karen Handel.” They might as well have called her a woman-hating hag.
