Sally Field Was Right

Sally Field was right.

Forget that she stumbled for the right words. Forgive her for using the Lord's name in vain. If you focus on what she said but most Americans didn't hear, she was dead-on about how most mothers feel about war.

Field stepped up to the microphone Sunday night before an almost-live television audience to accept the Emmy for best actress in a drama series. She paid tribute to mothers everywhere, including those who "stand with an open heart and wait — wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm's way and from war."

Then, after a few excruciating moments of stammering, she declared, "Let's face it, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no g——-n wars in the first place."

Fox censors, taking advantage of a time-delay broadcast, dropped her audio mid-sentence. Just like that, Field was silenced, and the coverage was as predictable as it was pathetic.

To clear up the confusion: One sentence, no matter how much stammering precedes it or emotion fuels it, is not a "rant," a "giddy war rant" or a "diatribe."

Fox bleeped single expletives of two other actors, including Ray Romano's lament that Kelsey Grammar's character would soon have sex with his former TV-wife, Patricia Heaton. Field, though, got special treatment.

Fox denied a political motive, issuing this statement on Monday: "Some language during the live broadcast may have been considered inappropriate by some viewers. As a result, Fox's broadcast standards executives determined it appropriate to drop sound during those portions of the show."

Earlier this month, however, the conservative Parents Television Council, a self-appointed watchdog of family-hour broadcasts, released a study on the amount of sex, violence and profane language airing in the early-evening hours.

Of the six major networks, the "worst offender" was Fox.

The Council said it counted 20.78 instances of violent, sexual or profane content per hour on the network. Fox's "American Dad" was the worst, with 52 instances per hour.

Pundits have gleefully harpooned Field for her inability to collect her thoughts quickly before millions of viewers, but surely many women could empathize.

The overwhelming majority of those grabbing headlines and airtime for speaking out about anything, especially the war, continues to be white, middle-aged men. Practice may not make perfect, but it does make for better sound bites.

I winced at Field's delivery, in part because it felt so familiar. Over the years, I've seen many women who, with flushed cheeks and a tremor in their voices, dared to ask hard questions at public forums. It's painful to watch, but our comfort level is not even remotely the point. What matters is that these women summon the courage to be heard.

Columnist Michele Malkin unloaded on Field, making astonishing assumptions about her mothering.

"She's the mom who holds her tongue at the mall when thugs spew profanities and make crude gestures in front of her brood," Malkin wrote. "She's the mom who buys her teenager beer, condoms and a hotel room on prom night, because she'd rather give in than assert her parental authority and do battle."

Wow. All that, and more — much more, which I will spare you — because Field dared to suggest that mothers don't want to send their children to wage wars planned mostly by men who remain safely ensconced at home.

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, though, supported Field. "I agree with her," he said. "I think if mothers were in charge of the world, there'd be far less war . . . . Women are much more reasonable when it comes to conflict resolution."

Do all women, or even all mothers, oppose all wars? No. But the majority of American women, from the earliest polling, opposed this war in Iraq. Not that anyone was listening.

Until now.

This week, a 60-year-old mother said publicly what most mothers were thinking long before our president goaded the enemy to "bring it on."

We can stand idly by as others ridicule Sally Field.

Or we can stand beside her, and make it clear she's not alone.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "... and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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