Thursday, September 27, 2018
"America's Dad" no more
I suppose that the real takeaway from Bill Cosby's conviction for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand is this: there are people out there who will disbelieve a rape victim's testimony no matter how compelling the evidence is if the perpetrator is famous or powerful enough. To add some background on this, here's an personal anecdote:
When all of this shit started hitting the fan a few years ago - 2015, if I recall correctly - one of my coworkers complained that people "should leave the man alone" (or words to that effect) apparently because she just could not believe that any of the women that were coming forward at the time actually had a legitimate reason to. Like a lot of true believers in the saintliness of certain public figures, she discounted the truthfulness of anyone who dared to sully Cosby's image; all they were, apparently, were women who had a grudge against him or were mere publicity hounds and not legitimate victims of some of his assaults from years back. She's not with the company I work for in Meatspace anymore, but it'd be interesting to see what her opinion is now.
We saw this sort of thing with Michael Jackson, of course. The difference is that Jackson was acquitted due to lack of proof and Cosby wasn't. My own personal belief is that Jackson probably was guilty, but I wasn't on that jury and it's pointless now since Jackson isn't around to deny it. This time the jury was in agreement, though, and my guess is that although the #Metoo movement had a lot to do with consciousness-raising about sexual assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that wasn't the reason Cosby was convicted. It was simply a preponderance of evidence that did him in, not adverse publicity.
Even with his conviction, there are still some major points that some people don't get about the subject of alleged victims coming forward in situations like this; the defenders of Supreme Court nominee Bret Kavanaugh have said over and over again that the allegations against him are false and almost entirely motivated by politics. There's a serious problem with that assertion, however: no such allegations came out during the confirmation processes for Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Samuel Alito or Neil Gorsuch, or any number of male nominees to the court before them with the exception of Clarence Thomas. And although Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, he wasn't accused of out-and-out sexual assault as Kavanaugh is. The really ugly thing about the Kavanaugh situation isn't that the charges are somehow automatically false (which they're not) or that Kavanaugh may be denied a seat on the SCOTUS bench because of them (which might not happen either, sad to say); it's the kneejerk reaction of way too many politically connected individuals in automatically believing that The Woman Made The Damn Story Up.
Yes, there are women who've fabricated rape stories: one of the most famous of those incidents was here in Illinois with Gary Dotson, and it was ultimately DNA evidence (his was the first conviction that was overturned in the US on that basis) as well as a very public recantation by his alleged victim Cathleen Crowell Webb. But to automatically assume that a woman coming forward years later has a sinister agenda isn't merely ridiculous; it's got more than a touch of misogyny to it, and if it turns out she was right it's a form of victim-shaming that a lot of people should know better than to engage in. And of course they don't.
So what did the other victims of Cosby get out of this? Nothing, other than his imprisonment; his legal bills will be huge, and there's every possibility that he'll be safely dead before anyone comes calling with a successful civil lawsuit for what remains of his money. Ultimately, though, automatically believing an alleged victim without due process may be a mistake, but more importantly reflexively not believing her might be an even bigger one.
When all of this shit started hitting the fan a few years ago - 2015, if I recall correctly - one of my coworkers complained that people "should leave the man alone" (or words to that effect) apparently because she just could not believe that any of the women that were coming forward at the time actually had a legitimate reason to. Like a lot of true believers in the saintliness of certain public figures, she discounted the truthfulness of anyone who dared to sully Cosby's image; all they were, apparently, were women who had a grudge against him or were mere publicity hounds and not legitimate victims of some of his assaults from years back. She's not with the company I work for in Meatspace anymore, but it'd be interesting to see what her opinion is now.
We saw this sort of thing with Michael Jackson, of course. The difference is that Jackson was acquitted due to lack of proof and Cosby wasn't. My own personal belief is that Jackson probably was guilty, but I wasn't on that jury and it's pointless now since Jackson isn't around to deny it. This time the jury was in agreement, though, and my guess is that although the #Metoo movement had a lot to do with consciousness-raising about sexual assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that wasn't the reason Cosby was convicted. It was simply a preponderance of evidence that did him in, not adverse publicity.
Even with his conviction, there are still some major points that some people don't get about the subject of alleged victims coming forward in situations like this; the defenders of Supreme Court nominee Bret Kavanaugh have said over and over again that the allegations against him are false and almost entirely motivated by politics. There's a serious problem with that assertion, however: no such allegations came out during the confirmation processes for Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Samuel Alito or Neil Gorsuch, or any number of male nominees to the court before them with the exception of Clarence Thomas. And although Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, he wasn't accused of out-and-out sexual assault as Kavanaugh is. The really ugly thing about the Kavanaugh situation isn't that the charges are somehow automatically false (which they're not) or that Kavanaugh may be denied a seat on the SCOTUS bench because of them (which might not happen either, sad to say); it's the kneejerk reaction of way too many politically connected individuals in automatically believing that The Woman Made The Damn Story Up.
Yes, there are women who've fabricated rape stories: one of the most famous of those incidents was here in Illinois with Gary Dotson, and it was ultimately DNA evidence (his was the first conviction that was overturned in the US on that basis) as well as a very public recantation by his alleged victim Cathleen Crowell Webb. But to automatically assume that a woman coming forward years later has a sinister agenda isn't merely ridiculous; it's got more than a touch of misogyny to it, and if it turns out she was right it's a form of victim-shaming that a lot of people should know better than to engage in. And of course they don't.
So what did the other victims of Cosby get out of this? Nothing, other than his imprisonment; his legal bills will be huge, and there's every possibility that he'll be safely dead before anyone comes calling with a successful civil lawsuit for what remains of his money. Ultimately, though, automatically believing an alleged victim without due process may be a mistake, but more importantly reflexively not believing her might be an even bigger one.
Thursday, September 20, 2018
"Paranoia, they destroy ya..."
My apologies to the Kinks for misuse of that quote, but it's pretty damn obvious that that's exactly what you get when you interview President Unintelligible on anything related to the Mueller investigation these days. As quoted by Charles P. Pierce in Esquire:
“What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office. “I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done ... in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt,” he said. “If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don’t want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day on the job. ... I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don’t want him there when I get there.”
Other than the slight issue with not being able to fire the director of the FBI before your own inauguration as President, what's most evident about that quote and others from that piece in The Hill (Original here, for completeness' sake) is that Trump not only has some major issues with his thinking on the subject of exactly who's corrupt here (the smart money says it's his own flunkies, judging by all the indictments, guilty pleas and rolling over to cooperate with prosecutors and the like), but he also actually thinks he's doing us all a favor by trying to break effective independent law enforcement on the Federal level - at least where his own administration is concerned, of course.
But the thing that comes across the most in that word salad is that he thinks they're all out to get him.
Hence the reference to that Kinks song in the title.
It just fits too well.
“What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office. “I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done ... in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt,” he said. “If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don’t want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day on the job. ... I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don’t want him there when I get there.”
Other than the slight issue with not being able to fire the director of the FBI before your own inauguration as President, what's most evident about that quote and others from that piece in The Hill (Original here, for completeness' sake) is that Trump not only has some major issues with his thinking on the subject of exactly who's corrupt here (the smart money says it's his own flunkies, judging by all the indictments, guilty pleas and rolling over to cooperate with prosecutors and the like), but he also actually thinks he's doing us all a favor by trying to break effective independent law enforcement on the Federal level - at least where his own administration is concerned, of course.
But the thing that comes across the most in that word salad is that he thinks they're all out to get him.
Hence the reference to that Kinks song in the title.
It just fits too well.
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