In Defense of David Harris
by
Glenn Sacks
© 2003
A murder trial recently concluded in Texas wherein a
woman who killed her husband was defended by the husband's own mother,
brother and father, who explained that, aside from what might be
described as some unpleasantness on a bad day, the woman is really a
good, law-abiding person.
The press on both the left and the right has poured
derision upon the murder victim, referring to David Harris as a
"creep," a "rat," a "a lying, cheating scumbag" and Clara Harris'
"unfaithful dog of a husband." Misandrist feminist Susan Estrich asked
"Who could blame [Clara] for getting into her Mercedes and running him
over?" and seemed a little sad that the jury did. She fantasized a
Cochranesque defense for her, noting:
"Every day across America, women crowd into the offices
of plastic surgeons and beauticians and aestheticians, spending money
we don't have on painful procedures we don't really need, trying to
hang on to men who don't deserve us...with their votes, the Harris
jury could have sent a shot across the bow to all those cheating men.
If you cheat on your wife, she can kill you and get away with it. If
he deserved to get hit, you must acquit."
Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of
WorldNetDaily, penned a column entitled
"Free Clara Harris!" in which he wrote "I'd give her a
medal....she did the right thing. That creep deserved what he got" and
urged readers to "live like her." John Kasich, guest host on The
O'Reilly Factor, also expressed sympathy for Clara who, he claimed,
had been "mentally tortured" by her husband.
On the radio and the Internet many observers expressed
similar sentiments, such as: "If at first you don't succeed, run over
him again"; "I feel much compassion for Clara but absolutely none for
her husband the victim..[he’s] not worth killing"; and, of course,
"You play, you pay."
Even the prosecutor, Mia Magness, apparently quibbles
with the killer only over her choice of methods, expressing a
preference that, instead of killing David by her own hand, she should
have driven him to suicide by divorcing him and "[doing] like every
other woman...get his house, car, kids -- make him wish he were dead."
In Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, Lear is abandoned
by his family with the exception of one loyal daughter, Cordelia. In
the Texas tragedy David Harris has been abandoned by his family except
for his loyal daughter Lindsey, who loved her father and begged her
stepmother not to kill him. The murder of her father and the betrayals
of her grandmother, grandfather and uncle have exacted a high toll on
her, driving her to four suicide attempts in the past six months.
What did David Harris do to deserve this cruel fate? He
had an affair. As Shakespeare’s Marc Antony said of the fallen
Caesar’s "ambition," David’s infidelity was "a grievous fault--and
grievously hath he answered it."
It goes without saying that were the genders reversed
nobody would be talking about infidelity as a justification for
murder. Imagine a woman trapped in a loveless marriage with a jealous,
potentially violent husband whom she believes may be cheating on her.
She stays in the marriage because she fears she could be separated
from her children should they divorce, and finds understanding,
companionship and passion in a relationship with a coworker. Her
husband finds out about the affair and goes on a violent, jealous
rampage, slaughtering her in front of her daughter as the daughter
begs him not to kill her mother.
There would be no tears or excuses proffered for the
killer, and he would be just one more murderer sitting on Texas’ death
row. The public would view the woman’s affair as a sad, desperate
attempt to gain some comfort in the hellish life her brute of a
husband had imposed on her. The mere mention of the fact that his wife
had been cheating on him as an excuse for murder would be correctly
denounced by feminists, who would also express outrage at the
murderer’s "blame the victim" defense.
Listening to the public and media reaction to the
Harris case one would imagine that infidelity were a vice owned
exclusively by the male of the human species. In reality, research
estimates that for every five unfaithful husbands, there are four
unfaithful wives. According to the American Association of Blood
Banks, of the nearly 300,000 cases evaluated each year in the United
States, roughly 30% exclude the tested individual as the biological
father of the children he thought were his. Even blood typing
examinations taken decades ago showed that at a bare minimum 10% of
the fathers who signed their babies' birth certificates were
unknowingly claiming paternity of children who weren't theirs.
Unlike her husband, Clara is alive to spin her version
of the events and naturally portrays herself as the loyal, devoted
wife of a man who betrayed her. However, upon closer examination the
evidence is overwhelming that the bad spouse in this marriage was
Clara, not David.
David's daughter, Lindsey, says that her father had the
affair in part because of the way Clara mistreated and neglected him.
According to her testimony, David told his daughter on many occasions
how lonely he felt. Lindsey also testified that her stepmother Clara
made her feel unimportant and as if she were not part of the family,
and that the only place where pictures of her were allowed in the home
were in her father’s bathroom. By contrast, pictures of the twins (the
children Clara and David had together) dominated the house. Lindsey
also testified that Clara had physically assaulted David on at least
one prior occasion.
According to testimony by a detective at Blue Moon
Investigations, the private detective agency which Clara had hired to
spy on David, when Clara first came to the agency for help she
described her husband as a "good man" who had fallen into the "trap"
set by his coworker Gail Bridges, a "deceitful woman." Clara told the
detective that her own neglect of David was the cause of his affair.
A vice president for Blue Moon Investigators told the
court in November that she had conducted an investigation of Clara and
presented several audio tapes on which, according to the news
department of a Houston television station, "witnesses claim that
Clara Harris was also having an affair before her husband died"
[emphasis added].
Clara also lies, as evidenced by her preposterous
courtroom claim that she didn't know she was running over her husband,
despite a video which shows her repeatedly circling and running him
down with her Mercedes.
Most importantly, David Harris was married to a person
capable of killing an unarmed man as the man's daughter begged her not
to kill her father. While we'll never know exactly what happened
between David and Clara behind closed doors, can there be any doubt
that a person capable of such a heinous crime was not exactly the
perfect spouse? That David probably had good reason to distrust or
dislike her and seek the affections of another? That somewhere along
the line it might have been Clara's um......personality that might
have created the problem?
One of the main clubs used against David Harris is the
conversation he had with Clara at an airport hotel bar on July 18 in
which he allegedly listed the reasons he preferred Bridges over Clara.
According to Clara, these reasons included the fact that Clara made
negative, pessimistic comments, was loud and dominated conversations,
and that David found Bridges more physically attractive than Clara.
Many have cited this as evidence of what a cad and a creep David was.
Yet few husbands would have the courage to speak to their wives about
their wives’ physical appearance in the way Clara claims, particularly
to a jealous, violent wife like her. It is extremely likely that David
broached these subjects with Clara only under direct pressure from
her. I imagine the barroom conversation/interrogation went something
like this:
Clara: Tell me how she is better than me. Tell me why
you prefer her.
David: I don’t want to talk about it.
Clara: Tell me. That’s the least you can do.
David: I said I don’t want to talk about it. You two
are two different people.
Clara: How are we different, I want to know. Tell me
why she is better than me (pounds fist on table). Tell me.
David: (Sighs) Well, she is less.....vocal. She listens
more. She’s not so...negative, pessimistic.
Clara: (Ignoring David’s comments) It’s her looks,
isn't it? It’s got to be her looks. Tell me about her looks.
David: I don’t want to talk about it. It’s got nothing
to do with her looks. I like her because she’s nice to me...
Clara: I demand to know about her looks.
David: It’s not her looks...
Clara: Tell me about her looks. I deserve to know.
David: (Sighs) Well, she is (quivers)......well, she
is...(quivers again)...thinner than you, just a little bit honey, just
a little bit....
Clara: And? And?
David: (Still quivering) Nothing. That’s all.
Clara: No it isn’t. What about her breasts? Is it her
breasts? What are her breasts like?
David: (Head swivels, looks around in every direction
for a waiter) Clara, please...
Clara: What are her breasts like?
David: (Sighs) Her breasts are... (quivers)....are....
nice
Clara: Nice! Nice! How nice? What are they like?
Describe them to me....
Clara, the appearance-obsessed former beauty queen, was
probably capable of seeing her and David's problems only in terms of
her looks and focused on this instead of David’s real message, which
was that Clara’s neglect and personality were the cause of the
problem. Many have used the conversation as an excuse to speak of
David's affair as if he were carrying on with a 19 year-old
cheerleader. In reality, Bridges is only a few years younger than
Clara and is the mother of three children. Since she was also a
coworker, odds are that David looked to her at least as much for
companionship as for sex.
Why did David stay? Probably because of his young twin
boys. He probably knew that in a divorce he had little chance of
winning even shared custody of his children and that it is common for
custodial mothers to block noncustodial fathers' access and visitation
to their children. He almost certainly knew that Clara was just the
type of vengeful person who would do such a thing.
Despite Clara's attempt to save herself from justice by
maligning her dead husband, there is no evidence that David Harris was
anything worse than a fallible human being who was caught in a
difficult situation. By all estimations he was a good father, a good
provider and a good husband for the vast majority of his and Clara's
10 year marriage. The fact that this flawed but decent man could be
slaughtered and then vilified for his one comparatively minor
transgression speaks volumes about our society’s noxious mix of
anti-male feminism and anti-male male chivalry. The product of this
witches' brew is a sick cultural norm where, in any conflict between a
man and a woman, the man is always wrong.
Copyright 2003 Glenn
Sacks, all rights reserved
