More On Pistof

Does Katha Pollitt read Roger Ailes? Undoubtedly not. But she did read Nick "Pistof" Kristof's sleazy columns diminishing the work of feminists on the matter of sex trafficking, and had the same reaction as Roger:

I'm reminded of these good people because the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof is once again accusing American feminists of ignoring Third World women and girls. Last spring, he discovered obstetric fistula in Africa--the tear between the birth canal and the lower intestine that can happen during protracted labor and that, unless corrected, condemns a woman to a lifetime of physical misery and social ostracism. Kristof profiled Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia and wondered why "most feminist organizations in the West have never shown interest in these women." Perhaps, he wrote, "the issue doesn't galvanize women's groups because fistulas relate to a traditional child-bearing role." Right, we all know that feminists only care about aborting babies, not delivering them safely. The Times got a lot of letters (and published some, including one from me) pointing out that feminists, in fact, were behind numerous efforts to combat fistula and other maternity-related health problems in Africa, including the work of the UNFPA, praised by Kristof, whose funding was eliminated by the White House to please its right-wing Christian base.

You'd think he'd learn. But no. Now Kristof is complaining that American women's groups such as NOW and Feminist Majority don't care about sexual slavery and the trafficking of women and children for commercial sex. In a series of columns, he describes his efforts to "buy the freedom" of two Cambodian teenage prostitutes living in a sleazy brothel in Poipet and to get them home to their families. Evangelical Christians, he argues, care about girls like these; feminists are too busy "saving Title IX and electing more women to the Senate," he observed in a Times online forum. Right, why should American women care about equal opportunities and electing to office people who think contraception is as important as Viagra? Never mind that putting more feminists in the Senate--not more "women"--would mean more help for the very causes Kristof supports!

And here's another article telling Kristoff to piss off, with a very revealing detail:

In case you missed it, here's Eleanor Smeal's response [to Kristof's column], which the Times published Feb. 7. The letter was abbreviated; it does not mention, for example, that FMF provided plenty of documentation of the organization's past and current involvement in this issue to a NYT fact checker who called FMF the evening before the column ran. None of the information was included.

It like there wasn't room to fit both the globe-trotting egomanic's immense self-regard and the facts in the same column.