Feminist Gone Wrong

Gloria Allred started her career with the best of intentions. 

She’s often described as a “feminist attorney” who shows up at the side of allegedly wronged and famous women to defend their honour.  Trouble is, there hasn’t been  much honour in the women she’s been defending lately.

Allred, an unfortunately annoying and shrill public speaker, made a name for herself when she worked on behalf of actress Hunter Tylo who had been fired from Melrose Place because she was pregnant.  Allred proved discrimination and won a fat multi-million dollar settlement. It was a victory for women and for choice and Allred took on several such cases and fought hard for her clients’ rights.  She sued the all-male Friars Club for firing an employee because of her gender (she won) and she represented Nicole Brown Simpson’s family during OJ’s murder trial.

But then the lines started to get blurry.  She started taking cases that had little or nothing to do with discrimination but put her in the glare of the media spotlight. She represented Amber Frey, the other woman in the Scott and Lacy Peterson murder case. Frey appeared to have been duped by Peterson into a fast-moving affair and her testimony helped put him away for his wife’s murder.  Allred represented a woman who claimed she was humiliated when she was forced to take out her nipple rings at the Lubbock, Texas airport.  She’s acting on behalf of a former nanny for Rob Lowe’s family who claims she was sexually harassed.  But the capper has come in the Tiger Woods extra-cirricular activities situation. Allred is representing one of the mistresses, Rachel Uchitel.  Now, I ask you, why would Uchitel need a lawyer?  She’s not being sued.  She’s not accused of a crime.  It’s quite clear that she and Allred are merely shining in the reflection of a huge, and hopefully fickle, spotlight.

This week, Joy Behar on The View jokingly called Uchitel a “hooker” and Allred responded with a demand for an apology and this quote in a statement:  “It is false, it is defamatory and it is very damaging to her. She values her reputation and we have, as a result, asked ABC … to retract that statement.”

She values her reputation?  She is detailing her hook-ups with the married Mr. Woods and currently in talks with Playboy for a full-frontal pictorial. We only know this woman’s name because she does not giver a tinker’s damn about her reputation and is a fame whore!  ABC did retract the statement and Allred won more publicity for herself and her client.

Gloria Allred probably wanted to change the world and truly hoped to help women who were wronged.  But now she’ll apparently represent anyone with a chequebook and a whine.  She can no longer distinguish between a case built on genuine issues and an opportunity to get on camera.  Fame is apparently addictive and this attorney can’t seem to go very long between hits.  It’s really a shame.