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#1
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Why I Like Judge Judy
Some of you may recall my story of a somewhat wretched woman I work with who argued with me that I should reconsider my stance on a presumption of joint physical placement in child custody cases. Her argument was that the teenage fathers in our school, at 15 years of age or so, were obviously unfit to be parents. At the time I agreed with her, but added that the teenage MOTHERS were equally unfit to be parents, but what are you going to do, that's who the unfortunate babies have for parents. Anyway, this woman is a special ed aide, and she is assigned to my room for two periods this trimester so I work with her on a regular basis. I also invited the woman I usually invite from the Blackstone Valley Advocacy Center to come and talk about domestic abuse. Unfortunately, the usual woman (who I have a rapport with and who at least tries, usually successfully, to be fair in her presentations) had received a promotion that made her unable to present to my classes. So they sent a new woman, with a bit less skill at presentation and a bit more of a tendency to use bogus statistics, many of which were disproved by the CDC over ten years ago (my personal favorite -- "Domestic Violence is the leading cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 44", when in fact the leading cause of injury for such women -- and in fact for all people -- is accidental falls, followed by automobile accidents, which account for more than ten times the number of injuries to women per year than domestic violence. Twice as many women are treated for animal bites per year as are treated for injuries inflicted by a male partner. But I digress). I had to do a fair amount of damage control with the kids in the days after she presented. I gave her all of the info I had found about her stats, which she received with a smile, and if she presents next year we'll see what she does with it. It was an interesting time, to be sure. Probably my favorite moment was when one of my pregnant students approached the guest speaker at the end of class with the "wheel of domestic abuse" that the presenter had distributed to the class and told her, "Miss, I do these things." She looked at the girl like she had three heads. "What do you mean, is someone treating you like this?" "No -- I do these things to my boyfriend. And my mother. Like, hitting and intimidation." "..." It was fun watching the presenter's face as she tried hard to process the fact that a pregnant girl was telling her that she was an abuser. It was kind of like that episode of Star Trek when the crew are stuck on that planet with the androids and make up some nonsensical card game to fry their brains with indecipherable information. "You've got a half Fizbin already!" Everyone knows that pregnant girls are ALWAYS VICTIMS. How could this be? In the end she mumbled something about how the girl should call the advocacy center if she wanted to get help. The girl took a number, and because I get along pretty well with her (enough to know that she was almost certainly telling the presenter the truth about her anger issues) I asked her a week later if she had called. She said she had but the people she had talked to weren't really any help. I had to wonder if they had spent most of the conversation trying to find a man to blame for her bad behavior. In the end I put her in touch with the school counselor, who hopefully can give her some guidance about controlling herself. She's going to have a baby soon. Again, I digress. I'll digress a bit more and say that another amusing thing about the presentations was the play between primarily upper-middle-class White feminism and the culture of lower class Black females. Many times the expectations of the feminists don't quite "click" with the realities of girls who are not also upper-middle-class White women. The results can be entertaining. OK, enough digression. Both of the periods that the special ed aide was assigned to my room for were hosts to the presentation given by the woman from BVAC. I noticed that the aide made herself scarce for every presentation. I'm still not sure why that was. She's usually present for every class. What she has done is add a few books to my class library, most of which deal with "women's issues". This is fine with me, in fact I ended up reading one of the books she brought in that was written by none other than irascible judge Judy Scheindlin. Maybe you've seen Judge Judy on television. I had not realized that she had served for over a decade as a family court judge before getting her television show. This came up once or twice in her book but wasn't the focus of it, instead she spent a lot of time ranting about how men had it easy and women needed to protect themselves and work twice as hard as men in a "man's world", etc. More or less what I would expect from a book that the aide in question would bring to my room, although to be fair Judge Judy seems to be the kind of "feminist" that Aunt Peg was and my friend Christen is, "prickly" and "angry" but also capable of thinking impartially and placing blame on women sometimes. In fact, a few of Judge Judy's throwaway lines led me to look up her opinions about how family courts treat fathers in our country. I was quite pleasantly surprised by what I found. In one of her other books, "Don't Pee on my Leg and Tell Me It's Raining", she comes out and states that there is a clear gender bias in the family courts and that fathers have a legitimate beef with the system and need to organize and take action against it. In 2005, during a televised interview with Larry King, Judge Judy spoke out about the need for a presumption of joint physical placement if the courts were to ever be fair to men and their children. Other than Bob Geldof, champion of lost causes, I think this is the first time I have ever heard of an easily recognizable public figure speaking so strongly and openly about this issue on television, or in any media outlet. And she's not just anyone -- she's a former family court judge who has proven herself to be anything but an apologist for men! Take a moment to read Judge Judy's words with Larry King: * * * * * Judge Judy Sheindlin, a NY family court attorney and then family court supervisory judge with 25 years experience Larry King Live October 4, 2005 SHEINDLIN ("Judge Judy"): I was a lawyer in the family court for ten years. I worked for the corporation counsel's office of the City of New York. I prosecuted juvenile delinquency cases. I did support and paternity. So, I was in the trenches and even then, Larry, it took me time. I remember the first day that I took the bench. It was in the Bronx and the court officers, if was pretty formal back then, court officer said, you know, say "All rise" and I stood up because I was accustomed to they say "All rise." We stood and finally the court officer said "You can sit down now, judge. They're standing for you. You can sit down." So, even when you have experience you need time to get comfortable in your chair. KING: I had a judge who became a federal judge told me once that the hardest thing to decide was custody cases. First he had no experience. Who has experience with custody cases? He's been happily married, has children. Who gets whom? Isn't that the hardest to give a child from one parent to another? SHEINDLIN: Yes. Sometimes it's relatively easy because the choices are clear but I've always thought in this country we do a terrible disservice to fathers. You know there was a time many years ago when we had what we called the Tender Years Doctrine, which meant children of tender years, young children, always went to their mother. And then all of the courts in this country said that's not fair. We have to be equal. So, on the books there is a law that says no one parent is favored over the other, now that's honored more in the breach than it is honored in actuality. And, I have been a proponent for many years of there being a presumption in this country for joint custody of children. That's where courts should start. KING: That's where you begin? SHEINDLIN: That's where you begin and if you're going to deviate from that, you have to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that there is some valid reason why you're going to deviate from that because one parent is crazy, one parent has a drug problem, an alcohol problem, something's wrong. But that should be the standard joint custody because children are entitled to be raised by two parents even if the parents don't get along anymore. I mean I think it's horrendous when one parent picks up and moves out of the state or moves 250 miles away and some judge in the family court, the domestic relations court usually if it's the mother who has moved away says, "Well, we'll have a hearing to determine whether it was the right thing." No, no, no, no, no. You can't say to people who you've lulled into this sense of I'm equal, you're an equal father. You can take off paternity leave. We expect you to participate in the rearing of your children, to go to open school night, to be out there to play with them. Very often there are two people working in the household. They divide authority and you're equal except when there's a divorce. And then, how often, Larry, I ask you the question, do you hear it quoted in the paper "He lost custody of his children"? You don't hear that. You hear "She lost custody. There must be something wrong with her." Well I think that that has to change in this country because it was my experience in the family court, and I left the family court ten years ago, but even my experience on the television courtroom suggests to me that there are as wonderful a group of fathers out there as a group of mothers and it's about time that this country recognize that in not only the letter of the law but the spirit of the law as well. * * * * * I literally had tears in my eyes as I read this. It was good to know that somewhere in the sea of gender bias and corruption that are the staples of the family courts, someone in a position of power noticed what was going on and actually cared. Now I don't know what Judge Judy did or what kind of decisions she made on the bench during her time while receiving the "King's Shilling" as a family court judge, but I like to think she at least tried to be fair. I read the entire transcript of the interview with King and was surprised how much I agreed with her about several other issues, from gay marriage to the need for far more public scrutiny of our family courts (she actually advocates camera recording every court session, and making such recordings available to the public -- which might prove enlightening to many people, in the same sense that turning over a rock or rotting log in your backyard can let you know what sort of things are scuttling about underneath). I went to Judge Judy's website and wrote her an e-mail thanking her for her public stance about this issue, and calling her a "light in darkness". I hope she reads it. I may just put it in paper form and mail it to her. - Ron ^*^ |
#2
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Why I Like Judge Judy
While that might change my tone slightly about Judge Judy, it doesn't
change my feelings regarding these court programs, which are basically a trumped up game show with a puffed up "judge" out there spouting out one liners that would get them tossed from any real courtroom in a hurry. Werebat wrote: Some of you may recall my story of a somewhat wretched woman I work with who argued with me that I should reconsider my stance on a presumption of joint physical placement in child custody cases. Her argument was that the teenage fathers in our school, at 15 years of age or so, were obviously unfit to be parents. At the time I agreed with her, but added that the teenage MOTHERS were equally unfit to be parents, but what are you going to do, that's who the unfortunate babies have for parents. Anyway, this woman is a special ed aide, and she is assigned to my room for two periods this trimester so I work with her on a regular basis. I also invited the woman I usually invite from the Blackstone Valley Advocacy Center to come and talk about domestic abuse. Unfortunately, the usual woman (who I have a rapport with and who at least tries, usually successfully, to be fair in her presentations) had received a promotion that made her unable to present to my classes. So they sent a new woman, with a bit less skill at presentation and a bit more of a tendency to use bogus statistics, many of which were disproved by the CDC over ten years ago (my personal favorite -- "Domestic Violence is the leading cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 44", when in fact the leading cause of injury for such women -- and in fact for all people -- is accidental falls, followed by automobile accidents, which account for more than ten times the number of injuries to women per year than domestic violence. Twice as many women are treated for animal bites per year as are treated for injuries inflicted by a male partner. But I digress). I had to do a fair amount of damage control with the kids in the days after she presented. I gave her all of the info I had found about her stats, which she received with a smile, and if she presents next year we'll see what she does with it. It was an interesting time, to be sure. Probably my favorite moment was when one of my pregnant students approached the guest speaker at the end of class with the "wheel of domestic abuse" that the presenter had distributed to the class and told her, "Miss, I do these things." She looked at the girl like she had three heads. "What do you mean, is someone treating you like this?" "No -- I do these things to my boyfriend. And my mother. Like, hitting and intimidation." "..." It was fun watching the presenter's face as she tried hard to process the fact that a pregnant girl was telling her that she was an abuser. It was kind of like that episode of Star Trek when the crew are stuck on that planet with the androids and make up some nonsensical card game to fry their brains with indecipherable information. "You've got a half Fizbin already!" Everyone knows that pregnant girls are ALWAYS VICTIMS. How could this be? In the end she mumbled something about how the girl should call the advocacy center if she wanted to get help. The girl took a number, and because I get along pretty well with her (enough to know that she was almost certainly telling the presenter the truth about her anger issues) I asked her a week later if she had called. She said she had but the people she had talked to weren't really any help. I had to wonder if they had spent most of the conversation trying to find a man to blame for her bad behavior. In the end I put her in touch with the school counselor, who hopefully can give her some guidance about controlling herself. She's going to have a baby soon. Again, I digress. I'll digress a bit more and say that another amusing thing about the presentations was the play between primarily upper-middle-class White feminism and the culture of lower class Black females. Many times the expectations of the feminists don't quite "click" with the realities of girls who are not also upper-middle-class White women. The results can be entertaining. OK, enough digression. Both of the periods that the special ed aide was assigned to my room for were hosts to the presentation given by the woman from BVAC. I noticed that the aide made herself scarce for every presentation. I'm still not sure why that was. She's usually present for every class. What she has done is add a few books to my class library, most of which deal with "women's issues". This is fine with me, in fact I ended up reading one of the books she brought in that was written by none other than irascible judge Judy Scheindlin. Maybe you've seen Judge Judy on television. I had not realized that she had served for over a decade as a family court judge before getting her television show. This came up once or twice in her book but wasn't the focus of it, instead she spent a lot of time ranting about how men had it easy and women needed to protect themselves and work twice as hard as men in a "man's world", etc. More or less what I would expect from a book that the aide in question would bring to my room, although to be fair Judge Judy seems to be the kind of "feminist" that Aunt Peg was and my friend Christen is, "prickly" and "angry" but also capable of thinking impartially and placing blame on women sometimes. In fact, a few of Judge Judy's throwaway lines led me to look up her opinions about how family courts treat fathers in our country. I was quite pleasantly surprised by what I found. In one of her other books, "Don't Pee on my Leg and Tell Me It's Raining", she comes out and states that there is a clear gender bias in the family courts and that fathers have a legitimate beef with the system and need to organize and take action against it. In 2005, during a televised interview with Larry King, Judge Judy spoke out about the need for a presumption of joint physical placement if the courts were to ever be fair to men and their children. Other than Bob Geldof, champion of lost causes, I think this is the first time I have ever heard of an easily recognizable public figure speaking so strongly and openly about this issue on television, or in any media outlet. And she's not just anyone -- she's a former family court judge who has proven herself to be anything but an apologist for men! Take a moment to read Judge Judy's words with Larry King: * * * * * Judge Judy Sheindlin, a NY family court attorney and then family court supervisory judge with 25 years experience Larry King Live October 4, 2005 SHEINDLIN ("Judge Judy"): I was a lawyer in the family court for ten years. I worked for the corporation counsel's office of the City of New York. I prosecuted juvenile delinquency cases. I did support and paternity. So, I was in the trenches and even then, Larry, it took me time. I remember the first day that I took the bench. It was in the Bronx and the court officers, if was pretty formal back then, court officer said, you know, say "All rise" and I stood up because I was accustomed to they say "All rise." We stood and finally the court officer said "You can sit down now, judge. They're standing for you. You can sit down." So, even when you have experience you need time to get comfortable in your chair. KING: I had a judge who became a federal judge told me once that the hardest thing to decide was custody cases. First he had no experience. Who has experience with custody cases? He's been happily married, has children. Who gets whom? Isn't that the hardest to give a child from one parent to another? SHEINDLIN: Yes. Sometimes it's relatively easy because the choices are clear but I've always thought in this country we do a terrible disservice to fathers. You know there was a time many years ago when we had what we called the Tender Years Doctrine, which meant children of tender years, young children, always went to their mother. And then all of the courts in this country said that's not fair. We have to be equal. So, on the books there is a law that says no one parent is favored over the other, now that's honored more in the breach than it is honored in actuality. And, I have been a proponent for many years of there being a presumption in this country for joint custody of children. That's where courts should start. KING: That's where you begin? SHEINDLIN: That's where you begin and if you're going to deviate from that, you have to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that there is some valid reason why you're going to deviate from that because one parent is crazy, one parent has a drug problem, an alcohol problem, something's wrong. But that should be the standard joint custody because children are entitled to be raised by two parents even if the parents don't get along anymore. I mean I think it's horrendous when one parent picks up and moves out of the state or moves 250 miles away and some judge in the family court, the domestic relations court usually if it's the mother who has moved away says, "Well, we'll have a hearing to determine whether it was the right thing." No, no, no, no, no. You can't say to people who you've lulled into this sense of I'm equal, you're an equal father. You can take off paternity leave. We expect you to participate in the rearing of your children, to go to open school night, to be out there to play with them. Very often there are two people working in the household. They divide authority and you're equal except when there's a divorce. And then, how often, Larry, I ask you the question, do you hear it quoted in the paper "He lost custody of his children"? You don't hear that. You hear "She lost custody. There must be something wrong with her." Well I think that that has to change in this country because it was my experience in the family court, and I left the family court ten years ago, but even my experience on the television courtroom suggests to me that there are as wonderful a group of fathers out there as a group of mothers and it's about time that this country recognize that in not only the letter of the law but the spirit of the law as well. * * * * * I literally had tears in my eyes as I read this. It was good to know that somewhere in the sea of gender bias and corruption that are the staples of the family courts, someone in a position of power noticed what was going on and actually cared. Now I don't know what Judge Judy did or what kind of decisions she made on the bench during her time while receiving the "King's Shilling" as a family court judge, but I like to think she at least tried to be fair. I read the entire transcript of the interview with King and was surprised how much I agreed with her about several other issues, from gay marriage to the need for far more public scrutiny of our family courts (she actually advocates camera recording every court session, and making such recordings available to the public -- which might prove enlightening to many people, in the same sense that turning over a rock or rotting log in your backyard can let you know what sort of things are scuttling about underneath). I went to Judge Judy's website and wrote her an e-mail thanking her for her public stance about this issue, and calling her a "light in darkness". I hope she reads it. I may just put it in paper form and mail it to her. - Ron ^*^ |
#3
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Why I Like Judge Judy
John Meyer wrote: While that might change my tone slightly about Judge Judy, it doesn't change my feelings regarding these court programs, which are basically a trumped up game show with a puffed up "judge" out there spouting out one liners that would get them tossed from any real courtroom in a hurry. Maybe so, maybe so... But I don't think any number of one-liners would get a family court judge "tossed" from their own courtroom. And how much better would things be if EVERY family court judge were FORCED to be under the spotlight, as she advocates? It would be better than the current secrecy, I think. - Ron ^*^ |
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Why I Like Judge Judy
On May 19, 8:35 pm, John Meyer wrote:
While that might change my tone slightly about Judge Judy, it doesn't change my feelings regarding these court programs, which are basically a trumped up game show with a puffed up "judge" out there spouting out one liners that would get them tossed from any real courtroom in a hurry. Beg to differ with you on that one. I haven't faced a CS judge directly, but I can tell you that *criminal* court judges have been acting like second rate Judge Judys for years. I had a judge in a self- defense case in 1999 who did nothing but make smartass comments to everything I said. The following year, a friend of mine faced drug and prostitution charges (nothing violent) and the judge in her case reeled off one-liner after one-liner. I expected the judge to say "I'll be here all week" after the fourth time. Thanks to the popularity of The People's Court and all its misbegotten progeny, the appearance of solomonic wisdom is all but gone from today's judiciary in favor of camera friendly one-liners. Bill |
#5
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Why I Like Judge Judy
Bill wrote:
On May 19, 8:35 pm, John Meyer wrote: While that might change my tone slightly about Judge Judy, it doesn't change my feelings regarding these court programs, which are basically a trumped up game show with a puffed up "judge" out there spouting out one liners that would get them tossed from any real courtroom in a hurry. Beg to differ with you on that one. I haven't faced a CS judge directly, but I can tell you that *criminal* court judges have been acting like second rate Judge Judys for years. I had a judge in a self- defense case in 1999 who did nothing but make smartass comments to everything I said. The following year, a friend of mine faced drug and prostitution charges (nothing violent) and the judge in her case reeled off one-liner after one-liner. I expected the judge to say "I'll be here all week" after the fourth time. Thanks to the popularity of The People's Court and all its misbegotten progeny, the appearance of solomonic wisdom is all but gone from today's judiciary in favor of camera friendly one-liners. Bill There is that, and I was suddenly reminded of that judge down in Florida who seemed to have a penchant for zingers. Cameras in the courtroom might help (then again, they might also encourage that sort of behavior; you can never tell with these people.) Unfortunately, we are given a joke of a recall system in this country to hold judges accountable for this sort of thing. Read any sort of ABA guide to judges prior to an election. The guide may as well have the phrase "rubber stamp" printed across the front for the number of judges they support vs those they oppose. It seems almost like you have to have the judge caught diddling themselves in the public square in order to even think of getting them booted off the bench. That pretty much makes them bulletproof. |
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