QUESTION: Ohio Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold recently gave some advice to a 19-year-old woman pleading guilty to charges she helped her boyfrield misuse a lost credit card. Court transcripts, the Associated Press reports, record the judge as telling the girl she needed to dump her boyfriend, show her legs and find a doctor to marry. Were these appropriate comments by the judge?
BETSY HART: Of course not. The judge says her comments were taken out of context, that she was simply trying to tell the girl to get rid of her boyfriend and that, once free of him, she had a chance to be a productive individual.
Still, her comments were patronizing. She should have told the girl she had a chance of becoming a doctor, not given her a road map on how to use her feminine wiles to hook up with one.
Whether she should be removed from office for the comment will be up to the voters in the next election. Meantime, the hue and cry from the sisterhood can be heard loud and clear. But come on, this is not yet more evidence of some huge male conspiracy in our legal system (especially since the judge is a woman). It's a generally isolated case that should be seen as the anachronism it is.
But in one sense, maybe it isn't so isolated. Everywhere young women look these days, from billboards to television dramas and sitcoms, they learn that sex sells. Or that it can buy them whatever they want. Savvy fictional businesswoman Amanda of "Melrose Place," for instance, donned more than a few micro-miniskirts - not to mention handsome males - on her way to the top.
Clearly, this judge was out of line. But so is a culture that sends so many mixed messages to young women.
BONNIE ERBE: My colleague never can resist taking a cheap shot at progressive women. Yet, in the same breath, she wants to let a public official run amok get off scot free. As usual, she's missed the point.
Of course Judge Shirley Saffold should be punished - disbarment would serve as an example to other would-be judicial big mouths. It's not what Judge Saffold said (which of course was sexist, anti-male blather), it's the fact she felt free to rule her courtroom as if it were some sort of unrestricted fiefdom.
Judges are public servants. They forget that too often. We give them the power to sentence criminals and run courtrooms according to the law. They are not paid by us (the taxpayers) to be pundits, philosophers or to give political and ethical discourses. The fact Judge Saffold felt not just free, but empowered, to lecture the defendant on such issues as how to choose a mate and what to do with the rest of her life, shows how completely out of control some members of our judiciary have become.
Bureaucrats who abuse their offices are responsible for the rise of demagogues and cult leaders like David Koresh and the Montana Freemen. Those groups can cite silly abuses of power (such as Judge Saffold's) to make a case the whole system is corrupt. Of course, they are way off base. So that is why any incident such as this should be taken seriously and dealt with accordingly, to put trifling public officials back in the boxes in which they so richly deserve to be placed.