WSJ's Taranto Blames “Obama's America” For School Suspension of Six-Year-Old

“The War On Men Is Also A War On Little Boys”

Wall Street Journal editor James Taranto is blaming “the war on men” supposedly waged by “Barack Obama's America” for the school suspension of a six-year-old Colorado boy for sexual harassment.

First-grader Hunter Yelton made national news this week following his suspension from elementary school for sexual harassment after he kissed a female classmate on the hand. While the nation debated the appropriateness of the punishment, Taranto espoused a new theory in a December 11 piece for The Wall Street Journal: Yelton is the “littlest casualty in the war on men.”

“In Barack Obama's America, even a small boy can become a sexual suspect,” Taranto wrote, claiming the boy's school was “following orders from Washington” when it issued the suspension. As evidence, he cited an April 2011 letter from then-Assistant Secretary of Education, Russlynn Ali, which reminded schools, colleges, and universities receiving federal funds of their obligation under Title IX to respond to allegations of sexual violence and sexual harassment at their facilities.

Taranto decried these sexual harassment regulations as unfairly policing men, going so far as to suggest that sexual harassment is normal male behavior that has become stigmatized (quote marks are his own):

As amusing as the story of Hunter Yelton is, however, it is an example of a dire and widespread problem. “Sexual harassment” rules are ostensibly sex-neutral, but in practice they are used primarily to police male behavior. Feminists like Hanna Rosin note with triumph that girls and women do better in school than their male counterparts. One reason is that normal female behavior is seldom stigmatized or punished in the name of “civil rights.”

And while college “justice” is often downright oppressive, the excesses of contemporary feminism know no age limits. As the story of Hunter Yelton demonstrates, the war on men is also a war on little boys.

Taranto's theory quickly made it to Fox News, where The Kelly File devoted an entire segment to speculating whether the Obama administration shares blame in the child's suspension. In response to host Megyn Kelly's question, “does the administration have a hand in this,” conservative radio host Dana Loesch repeated Taranto's argument, claiming regulating sexual harassment “polices male behavior, it's the persecution of a guy.”

The WSJ editor is a habitual crusader of a “war on men” -- He's declared that efforts to mitigate sexual assault in the military amount to an “effort to criminalize male sexuality,” argued that “female sexual freedom” has resulted in a “war on men,” and even excused George Zimmerman's allegedly threatening his estranged wife because he's simply “guilty of being male.”