Planned Parenthood in the Crosshairs…again

Planned Parenthood has had a rough, if not bizarre week, which started off with a bombing at one of their clinics in Wisconsin and ended with a strange donation attempt.

Let’s start with the latest on the bombing.

Police have arrested Francis Gerald Grady, an ex-con, who admitted on camera that he had committed the crime. When asked why he did it, he replied, “Because they’re killing babies in there.”

Needless to say, he’s not being called what he should be called, and that is a domestic terrorist. He acted on an ideological difference and tried to use terror – in the form of a bomb – to intimidate his opposition. But this is nothing new. We have seen this sort of thing before and it’s really quite amazing that our country is so frightened to call these radicals exactly what they are.

Over the years, we’ve witnessed heinous attacks against clinics, doctors and supporters of women’s rights that have resulted in death and destruction, but everybody seems to want to pussyfoot around the fact that the people who commit these acts are terrorists, homegrown, and living amongst us. Believe me, there’s not much difference between these people and the Taliban, if the truth be told.

Now onto the more bizarre story…

Earlier this week, a dude named Tucker Max, who I had never heard of until now, offered a donation to Planned Parenthood of Texas, after Governor Perry & Co. gutted funding for family planning in that state.  It was a sizable donation – to the tune of $500,000 – and enough to get a clinic named after him. Mysteriously (at first) Planned Parenthood turned him down.

Why the big snub from Planned Parenthood? Well, maybe because Max is a bit of a misogynistic a-hole, as evidenced by quotes from his new book, which Lindsay Beyerstein of In These Times points out:

Tucker Max

-“There is a girl lying next to me on the bed, shaking me, saying something. She is not happy. She is also not skinny. Or attractive. She may not even be human.”

-“I know this really sexy move you can do with your mouth. It’s called ‘shutting the fuck up.’”

In addition, Irin Carmon of Salon.com dug up some less than flattering tweets from Max regarding Planned Parenthood, which have since been deleted from his timeline:

“Planned Parenthood would be cooler if it was a giant flight of stairs, w/someone pushing girls down, like a water park slide #FF @PPact”

“In South Florida. This place is awful. Shitty design, slutty whores & no culture, like a giant Planned Parenthood waiting room.”

In 2009. The L.A. Times did a piece on a movie based on Max’s memoir, which, again, had less than flattering things to say about women:

And now the “fratire,” in which Max rates women on a scale from “common-stock pig” to “super hottie” and declares himself a “professional at humiliating and ‘debasing’ people,” has sold a million copies.

“Common-stock pig,” eh? Well, isn’t that lovely.

Turns out this whole thing was nothing but an attempt to promote Max’s new book, the title of which I’m not even going to mention, and he’s been trying to swing a deal for over a year:

In fact, Max’s camp has been trying to give money to three different Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country since last summer, according to a representative from Planned Parenthood. His agent, a guy by the name of Ian Claudius, had been making those calls, and always requested that the organization repay Max’s largesse in the form of endorsements or building naming rights, and each affiliate has turned him down on the grounds that what Max wants in exchange for his gifts violates the organization’s gifts policy.

Max’s PR stooge, Ryan Holiday, then took to the pages of Forbes magazine to disparage Planned Parenthood for refusing the donation:

We could hardly conceive of what had just happened. Planned Parenthood’s “mission” is to help women get access to reproductive services, but they were turning down money intended to do precisely that. How could someone trying to give a half million dollars to a women’s health clinic be turned away for being anti-woman? A week before Planned Parenthood been “honored to have his support,” now they were slamming the door in his face. So he turned around and headed home, the check he’d planned to write figuratively torn up.

Shocking! Absolutely shocking that Planned Parenthood, who is battling attacks from every which way, would refuse the donation of a woman-hating jerk trying to use them as a blatant publicity stunt. In a statement to the Huffington Post, Planned Parenthood made this very point:

“We appreciate the generosity of our supporters, and take seriously our role as financial stewards of contributions, grants, and government funding. Like many nonprofits, Planned Parenthood reserves the right to decline offers of gifts and grants that may be discriminatory, are for purposes outside of our mission, or are too difficult to administer.”

Let’s just be clear, this was not an altruistic move to be overly generous to a cause Max believes in – his own disparaging words regarding women make that perfectly clear – it was a cynical attempt to gain publicity for a misogynistic prick at the expense of the women he so obviously despises.