[AKidsRight.Org] TV Interviews: Matt O'Connor, Glenn Sacks, and Stephen Baskerville

jmurtari@AKidsRight.org

Good People & People of Faith,

This message has info on:

1. Seven year old and best interest - rest of the story.
2. Matt O'Connor TV Interview - best interest of the child? 
3. Glenn Sacks - TV debate on dead-beat Pizza boxes.
4. Steven Baskerville - CNN, dead-beat Pizza boxes,the sequel!.

This is a SHORT message with links to some good news videos
of some lead people in our efforts for reform.  I feel we can
all learn by what these people did right/wrong on camera.

As you watch these clips, try to keep these things in mind: 

1. Don't blame the interviewer - they may be bias, they may
interrupt. We can't control what 'they' do -- how did we respond?

2. Whose story was it?  Who set the agenda?

3. Did 'our guy' answer the questions?

4. When 'our guy' made points, what were they talking about?

5. What would you do differently.  How do we get 'good' media
coverage?

6. If you had 30 seconds, how do you answer "what's wrong and
how do we fix it?"

   - your FEEDBACK is welcome.

1. Seven year old and best interest - rest of the story.
-------------------------------------------------------
My message last week on the childhood of a seven year old brought a
LOT of feedback, which will be posted to the list soon.  It also made
it clear that almost 20% of the people didn't read the story to the
end.  I think it has a good ending, if you didn't finish it:
http://www.AKidsRight.Org/archive/archive2007/0009.html

2. Matt O'Connor TV Interview - best interest of the child?
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.fathers-4-justice.org/ - the real thing.

Many of you are familiar with Matt O'Connor's name and the F4J group
he started.  He hasn't appeared much on camera in the United States,
here is your chance to hear him speak during an indepth interview.

Morgan & Platell News show in the UK:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9GkUMnkD64
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o72nai-8zds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdDKG5cZZyM

To understand some of the references during the show, you can click
here for the story of David Blunkett, British Home Secretary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Blunkett_paternity_case

3. Glenn Sacks - TV debate on dead-beat Pizza boxes.
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.glennsacks.com/

Glenn Sacks is a men's and fathers' issues columnist, commentator,
radio talk show host and blogger. Glenn's columns have appeared in
dozens of the largest newspapers in the United States. He has made
hundreds of radio and TV appearances and is often quoted in major
publications.

Glenn debated Cynthia Brown, the architect of the highly-publicized
pizza box/deadbeat dad campaign, on FOX News nationally-syndicated
Morning Show with Mike and Juliet on March 27. Brown is the Executive
Director of the Butler County (Ohio) Child Enforcement Agency.  Her
new campaign was featured in several hundred news outlets

See the Associated Press story on it here. 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,261051,00.html

To watch video of Glenn be interviewed on the show:
http://www.glennsacks.com/blog-files/video/morning-show-032707.wmv

4. Steven Baskerville - CNN, dead-beat Pizza boxes,the sequel!
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/

Stephen Baskerville holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.
He has taught political science at Howard University and Palacky
University and served as an Earhart Fellow at the Howard Center for
Family, Religion, and Society. He is the current President of the
American Coalition for Fathers and Children. http://www.acfc.org/

Below is a transcript (not entirely accurate) of his CNN appearance on
Sunday, April 1.  He also debated with Cynthia Brown (as did Glenn
Sacks). 

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/01/sm.02.html

NGUYEN: In the meantime, a wanted poster delivered with your pizza, of
all things, is happening in a suburb of Cincinnati. Mugshots of
parents accused of not paying child support appearing on pizza
delivery boxes. A child enforcement worker came up with this idea and
pitched it to pizza places in Ohio's Butler County.  While this may
sound like a good idea, to many, it does have its critics. One of
those critics being Steven Baskerville of the American coalition for
Fathers and Children. There he is. And he joins us from
Washington. And from Cincinnati, Ohio, this morning, the woman who
came up with this idea, Cynthia Brown. Good morning to you both.

CYNTHIA BROWN, CHILD ENFORCEMENT WORKER: Good morning.
STEVEN BASKERVILLE, ADVOCATE FOR FATHERS: Good morning.

NGUYEN: Cynthia, let me start with you. Why did you come up with this
idea and how did you come with it?

BROWN: Well, first of all we placed two wanted posters a year and
they're large poster-size posters, and I came up with the idea in late
2005 to downsize the posters for law enforcement cruisers. One
evening, my husband and my stepdaughters and I ordered a pizza, and
they always have the coupons on top of the pizza box and they were the
same size as the downsized posters, and I thought, hey, why don't we
approach pizza parlors and see if they'll put these on top of pizza
boxes. My husband said I needed a vacation. Instead of taking a
vacation, I decided to run with the idea and so here we are.

NGUYEN: Well, did you get any pizza companies saying, wait, wait,
wait, this is too controversial, not for us. We're not interested.

BROWN: Some of the larger chains. I think they felt it might be a
negative. A lot of mom and pop chains did join in and we were pleased
with that I think the larger chains thought it was negative, because
it's a lack of education in child support and in what we do and how we
go about doing our business.

NGUYEN: And how effective has it been?
BROWN: Excuse me?
NGUYEN: How effective has it been so far?

BROWN: We have -- we started the poster owns pizza boxes in August of
last year and there were 10 individuals put on that poster, men and
women, we put a new poster out, downsized it to the pizza boxes, the
end of January and this happened to be just all men and we did get
somebody -- I think it was the day after.

NGUYEN: Wow, that's pretty quick. Steven, now you have a problem with
this. What is the harm in putting these pictures on pizza boxes?

BASKERVILLE: This is an outrageous use of government power. The entire
child support system in this country has been hijacked by special
interests in ways that dangerously increase government power. Child
support was intended for parents who willfully abandon their children
and leave them on public welfare. It's has been perverted into a
system of forces parents to pay for stealing their own children.

NGUYEN: But if deadbeat parents won't pay, shouldn't something be
done?

BASKERVILLE: Parents do pay for their children -- fathers do
voluntarily pay for their own children.

NGUYEN: But there are those who don't.

BASKERVILLE: There are always those who don't and they can be taken
care of. What this is a system of taking children away from their
fathers and using the children as an excuse to plunder the
fathers. There's a massive system of child exploitation that cynically
uses children to loot their families, to loot their fathers to destroy
their homes. We have a massive problem in this country of fatherless
children.

NGUYEN: Let's not paint with a broad brush. And Cynthia, I want to get
your reaction of what he's saying, the criticism of this plan.

BROWN: Right, first of all, we don't have -- our agency has no rights
to custody, visitation, we don't deal with those issues. We deal with
child support issues alone. In other words when a court orders child
support, we follow those orders, and I'd like to comment on the
willfully abandoning a child. That's exactly who is on the posters,
those individuals who have run from their moral, ethical, and
financial responsibility. These aren't individuals -- excuse me -- who
have fallen on hard times. These are individual who have run and run
for years. This isn't a matter of "I haven't paid for six months," if
somebody works with us, we'll work with them. These individuals on the
posters are those people who do not want a relationship with their
children, do not want to pay their child support and I personally will
go after each and every one of those individuals and hold their
collective feet to the fire.

NGUYEN: Steven, let me ask you this. Is there a fear in your mind that
this will have a negative impact on children?

BASKERVILLE: It certainly does have a negative impact on
children. It's the flagrant exploitation of children to increase the
power of government officials. Throughout this country, millions of
children, literally, are forcedly separated from their parents by
family courts, by social service agencies and this child support
chicanery is nothing but a subsidy on stealing children from their
fathers, it's a subsidy on involuntary divorce. Ms. Brown may says
that she's not part of this, but this is, of course, the bureaucrats
plea, we didn't take away your children, the office down the hall took
away your children. Then the next office takes your bank account, the
next office takes your savings, and then the next office along, they
take you..  .  NGUYEN: Cindy, is he going to far with this or what do
you think about it?

BROWN: Here's what I've got to say and that is, I was really hoping
today to get somebody from fathers' rights who would sit down and
actually listen and stop with the anger, because anger won't get
children money, it won't help us...

BASKERVILLE: Excuse me. No parent is going...

BROWN: And I keep getting -- I keep getting these individuals coming
to me from fathers' rights quoting me statistics from 1992, putting my
family's home address on the Internet, putting us in danger, when
all's I'm doing is doing my job and doing it well, and if that
irritates the father' rights group, I don't know what to say.

BASKERVILLE: There is not a shred of evidence ever presented by a
government agency or an academic study that there was a problem of
fathers not supporting their children and paying child support. There
is solid evidence of large numbers of children being forcedly
separated from their fathers without the fathers having done nothing
wrong. There is also -- there is also numerous scholars who have shown
there is nonpayment problem of child support. This is entirely whipped
up hysteria by government officials to whip up animus against innocent
people.

NGUYEN: All right, we're going to have to leave it there. We
appreciate both sides of this argument. It's definitely a debate and
not everyone is in support of this plan. But we appreciate you both
coming on the show today and talking about both sides. We thank
you. Cynthia Brown and Stephen Baskerville, we appreciate it.

BROWN: Thank you, have a good day.
BASKERVILLE: Thank you.
************************************************ 

-- 
                                       John Murtari
____________________________________________________________________
Coordinator                            AKidsRight.Org
jmurtari@AKidsRight.Org                "A Kid's Right to BOTH parents"
Toll Free (877) 635-1968(x-211)        http://www.AKidsRight.Org/

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