If Steven Crowder is still doing videos, he isn't really serious about saving his marriage
The fact that Crowder even thinks he can keep up his YouTube activity with his marriage going down in flames says a lot about him.
Late last week, Yashar Ali revealed video shot in June 2021 showing conservative commentator and comedian Steven Crowder viciously berating his pregnant wife, Hilary, for not being willing to handle medicine for his dogs. Hilary was almost eight months pregnant at the time, and protested that the medicine was toxic to pregnant women. She also told Crowder to his face, “Your abuse is sick.”
None of that appeared to concern Crowder, who wasn’t pleased that Hilary wasn’t doing her “wifely duties,” and warned her to “fucking watch it.” Things went downhill from there, to the point that by his own admission, Crowder yelled at Hilary, “I will fuck you up!”—leading Hilary to flee their home. Hilary’s family had sent Ali the video after Crowder publicly announced their divorce on his podcast, “Louder with Crowder,” despite repeated requests from Hilary not to discuss it. Hilary’s family also revealed that Hilary had kept quiet about the abuse she had endured at Crowder’s hands for the better part of their nine-year marriage, and that she only sought a divorce when she learned that Crowder was trying to put the financial squeeze on her.
When I first saw this video, my blood ran cold. It brought back memories of my own experience with emotional abuse. Many of my longtime friends and readers know that from 2003 to 2006, I was married to a woman who was as emotionally abusive and controlling as Crowder. While she put up a public front of being an uber-devout Pentecostal, she would scream and curse at me a lot—even dropping her fair share of F-bombs. Like Hilary, I kept quiet about it. This was partly because in the back of my mind, I thought I was the one who had the problem. It was also partly because I didn’t think anyone would believe a 5-foot-3 woman could control a 6-foot-2 man. I finally left her in August 2006 when it became apparent that she either could not or would not stop her son, who had moved in with us, from threatening me. While it took a year to formally get divorced, our marriage essentially ended at that point. I was as beaten down then as Hilary is now; almost two years later, according to her family, she still isn’t prepared to speak publicly about it.
By his own admission, Crowder has a volcanic temper; indeed, he openly admits having trouble controlling it. And yet, in spite of this, since this video has been released, Crowder has still been regularly posting videos. As I write this on Tuesday, Crowder has done two live streams since the news of the video broke.
Indeed, his only comments on the matter came when he took to Twitter to claim the video had been “misleadingly edited”—a fancy way of saying the video lacked context. There is no context whatsoever that would make it even remotely acceptable for a man to berate a woman in this way.
From where I’m sitting, if Crowder were really serious about getting help, he wouldn’t be podcasting at all. Past history, however, suggests it’s not likely he’ll get help voluntarily. According to former co-host Dave Landau, Crowder frequently surrounds himself with “yes men" and doesn’t even realize he’s become a full-on bully.
Chances are, that means most people are telling him things along the lines of several of the responses to Crowder’s statement. Among other things, commenters suggested that Hilary was the real aggressor, and that Crowder was actually defending himself. I realize that until very recently, men were told to just suck it up and hide their feelings. But even allowing for that, this is a really bad look, to put it mildly.
I also fear for the safety of Crowder’s kids. How do we know he won’t turn his fury on them? I’m not just asking in the abstract. After I left my first wife, I learned via the papers from her first divorce that she’d hit her son in the head out of anger—and never filed a response when her ex-husband mentioned it in filings. In hindsight, this was a harbinger of the abuse that I faced.
Crowder’s behavior reminds me of another case of a conservative Christian hero acting like it’s business as usual while his family was in crisis. Namely, Jim Bob Duggar. Most of us now know that Jim Bob operated under the delusion that he could not only stay in the Arkansas House of Representatives, but run for U. S. Senate, after eldest son Josh molested a number of girls in his inner circle—including his own sisters. This was but one of many opportunities Jim Bob had to get Josh to a mature understanding of what he had done. His failure to do so arguably put Josh on the path that now has him serving 12-and-a-half years in federal prison and 20 years of supervised release for possession of child sexual abuse material.
What is more, Jim Bob arguably created the situation that allowed the abuse to take place by keeping his family in a two-bed, three-bath house in Springdale even though it was far too small to accommodate them. At the time the molestation took place, 16 people—Jim Bob, Michelle, and their then-14 children—were crammed into a house designed for six people at most. Boys and girls had to share the same bedrooms—and sometimes the same beds. This created a situation where improper touching could easily happen if someone were inclined to do so.
This situation was outrageously illegal, and Jim Bob knew it. As a fourth-generation real-estate agent, he should have been well aware that he was far exceeding the occupancy limits for that house. Moreover, he had the means to get a better living situation, as evidenced when he plunked down $250,000 of his own money to challenge Tim Hutchinson in the Republican primary for U. S. Senate. Granted, the Duggars’ current mansion in Tonitown was already under construction in 2000. But they didn’t move in until 2006. What father with any kind of love for his family would have accepted the Springdale house as even a temporary situation in any scenario, especially after it almost certainly led to molestation?
Jim Bob further compounded his disregard for his duties as a husband and a father when he allowed Discovery into his home so soon after Josh’s misdeeds. At Josh’s trial, former Duggar family friend Bobye Holt testified that when Jim Bob and Michelle invited Discovery Health to film a series of specials about the family in 2003—the ancestor to their own show on TLC—they did so mere months after Josh confessed to molesting several girls. No father with any kind of love for his family would allow a TV crew into his home so soon after a full-on crisis.
The parallels with Crowder’s situation are undeniable. Both Jim Bob and Crowder knew that they were facing a five-alarm fire in their family, and yet they either would not or could not do their duties as husbands and fathers. When it was obvious they needed help, they weren’t willing to get it.
There is at least one reason for hope. Crowder’s support among his fellow conservatives appears to be tanking, and fast. RedState’s Brandon Morse said that there was no way you could see the video as “just an angry back-and-forth.” Mike Cernovich faulted Crowder for putting out “a massively viral video” putting the blame on Hilary, while Ashley St. Clair claimed that anyone still wanting to platform Crowder at this point “is enabling an abusive, egocentric maniac.” The most unsparing criticism, however, came from Candace Owens. She played the clip on her podcast, she loudly wondered how anyone could watch it “and not roundly condemn this” for the bilge that it was.
In contrast, Jim Bob retained modest support in the evangelical world until Josh’s arrest and conviction. I still remember how a number of right-wingers claimed that liberal bloggers and mainstream media reporters were ganging up on the Duggars just because they were a good conservative Christian family. For instance, I had someone tell me that by calling out the Duggars, I was not only “not building the kingdom of God,” but “actively working to tear it down.” Perhaps if it hadn’t taken Josh’s arrest to knock the scales off the evangelical world’s eyes, Crowder may not have believed he could get away with claiming that he was the victim in his divorce. And perhaps he would have been man enough to stand down from podcasting and get help.