Another child abuse scandal

This is a difficult article to read. It's another inquiry into child sexual abuse, this time of the 150,000 children sent abroad from the UK after World War II.

Those children weren't all abused, and not all of the perpetrators were from religious institutions. But many were. And the stories are horrendous!

For example, there's this one from Clifford Walsh:

He is now 72. Fremantle is where, in 1954, aged nine, he stepped off the ship from London, looking for the sheep he'd been told outnumbered people in Australia 100 to one.

He ended up at a place called Bindoon.

The Catholic institution known at one point as Bindoon Boys Town is now notorious. Based around an imposing stone mansion in the Australian countryside, 49 miles north of Perth, are buildings Walsh and his fellow child migrants were forced to build, barefoot, starting work the day after they arrived.

The Christian Brothers ruled the place with the aim of upholding order and a moral code. Within two days of arriving he says he received his first punishment at the hands of one of the brothers.

"He punched us, he kicked us, smashed us in the face, back-handed us and everything, and he then sat us on his knee to tell us that he doesn't like to hurt children, but we had been bad boys.

"I was sobbing uncontrollably for hours."

His story is deeply distressing. He tells it with a particularly Australian directness. He is furious.

He describes one brother luring him into his room with the promise he could have some sweet molasses - normally fed, not to the boys, but the cows. The man sexually abused him.

He claims another brother raped him, and a third beat him mercilessly after falsely accusing him of having sex with another boy.

"We had no parents, we had no relatives, there was nowhere we could go, these brothers - these paedophiles - must have thought they were in hog heaven."

He has accused the brothers at the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the first time he has fully disclosed his experiences.

At the time he says: "I was too terrified to report the abuse. I knew no other life.

"I've lived 60 odd years with this hate, I can't have a normal sexual relationship because I don't like to hold people," says Walsh. "My own wife, I couldn't hug."

He was troubled by all the memories.

"I couldn't show any affection. Stuff like that only reminded me of what the brothers would do all the time."

Bindoon is now a Catholic College. Again, not every person who raped children was a priest. And not every priest rapes children - far from it. But these are people who get respect just because of who they are.

Churches expect - and almost always get - our automatic respect. They claim to be our moral leaders, and nearly everyone seems to go along with that. Certainly, the news media and our politicians do. The religious section of my local newspaper is titled "Faith and Values." Church leaders regularly claim that 'you can't be moral without God.'

And yet:

The Australian Royal Commission recently estimated that 7% of the country's Catholic priests were involved in child abuse.

And such is the scope of sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic and Anglican churches in the UK that entire strands of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse are dedicated to them.

This story is horrific for many different reasons, and it wasn't just the churches who let such things happen to children, but the British government, too. Child rape is vile no matter who does it. I don't mean to imply otherwise.

But religious groups are different, because they claim to have the high ground. They claim to be our moral leaders. They claim to have an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving deity on their side. Well, where was he when children were being raped by his own priests?

The Catholic Church, in particular, tells us that contraception is immoral, that abortion is immoral, that homosexuality is immoral. Well, why should we listen to anything they say, when priests were not only raping children, but the church was helping them by covering it up and moving those priests to new, unsuspecting parishes where they could find fresh victims?

Of course, it's not just the Catholics, and it's not just Christian churches. But it's Christian churches here, in English-speaking parts of the world. And the Catholics have a rigid hierarchy that many Protestant denominations don't have (especially the smaller sects). With power comes responsibility.

And again, if you really do have an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving deity on your side, where the fuck was he? Your god would not be worth my worship even if he did exist. (Of course, if you've ever bothered to read your own Bible, you'd already know that.)

It is long past the time when we should have stopped giving churches and church leaders our automatic respect. If you want our respect, earn it.

It is long past the time when we should have stopped accepting the claims of religious leaders about morality. They know no more about morality than the rest of us, and many of them have demonstrated that they know far less.

It is long past the time when we should have stopped accepting all of their claims, without good evidence first backing up those claims. If child rape won't open our eyes, what will?

Hillary for President

(The Blue Deal)

So, I bought a Hillary Clinton yard sign the other day. It was vandalized less than two days later.

Heck, even the Barack Obama sign I had four years ago lasted longer than that. Not much longer, admittedly. But I figured I might get a week out of it, at least.

Speaking of Obama, I finally decided to remove the Barack Obama bumper sticker I've had on my truck the past eight years. I replaced it with "Friendly Neighborhood Atheist." It's been a month or so, but no vandalism yet. :)

Admittedly, my truck stays in the garage most of the time. I don't know if I'd want to park it on the street overnight...

It's not 1968

(Eric Gay, AP)

As bad as the latest news as been, it's not 1968, as Jonathan Chait reminds us:

In his January 2008 speech following his defeat in the New Hampshire primary — the one will.i.am set to music — Barack Obama insisted, “We are not as divided as our politics suggest … we are one people, we are one nation.” That conviction, to say the least, has been sorely tested during Obama’s presidency. It has been especially strained during a presidential campaign in which Republicans nominated a race-baiting demagogue for president. And last night, when a gunman murdered police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, it appeared to reach a kind of breaking point. In the feverish late-night heat, race-baiters at the New York Post, Breitbart, and Matt Drudge stoked a race war they clearly craved. It was 1968 again, more than a few observers said. Everything seemed to be coming apart.

But the old, tattered ideal of unity may be healthier than it seemed. The demonstration in Dallas was the very model of a functioning liberal society — a peaceful protest against police conducted under the protection of the police themselves. Even the most radical of the protesters deplored the shootings, and the police honored the right to protest.

Probing deeper, into more tender spots, one could even detect a formative consensus about the underlying cause of the protest: the routine violence by police against African-Americans. Videos of the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have not only galvanized African-Americans who have grown accustomed to the constant threat of police brutality, but they also shocked no small number of white Americans. ...

Among Republican leaders, the impulse to restore calm prevailed over the impulse to stoke racial hysteria. Paul Ryan praised the values of peaceful protest. Newt Gingrich -- Newt Gingrich! -- conceded, "It's more dangerous to be black in America. You’re substantially more likely to be in a situation where police don’t respect you." Even Donald Trump obliquely, and with a characteristically shaky command of the facts, conceded the need for some solution to police abuse: “The senseless, tragic deaths of two motorists in Louisiana and Minnesota reminds us how much more needs to be done.” Whatever Trump actually believed — the identification of Trump’s real convictions always being more art than science — he at least felt compelled to make some nod toward the perception that the police had gone too far. It was not inspiring, it was not ideal, but it was also more than one would have gotten from, say, circa-1968 George Wallace.

That's not to say that we don't have our George Wallaces, even today. Former Congressman Joe Walsh (Republican, Illinois) tweeted "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you."

Meanwhile, the organizers of that Dallas protest, those "black lives matter punks," condemned the shooting in unequivocal terms. It was a peaceful protest, as guaranteed by our Constitution. The shooter appears to have been a lone, heavily armed crazy. We've certainly seen enough of those, haven't we? Is the fact that this one was black really significant in any way?

A reader at TPM describes 1968 this way. I remember it. I was still a teenager, far more concerned about myself than about the world at large, but I remember it. Despite the absolute hysterics about our first black president, we've progressed since then. Indeed, the fact that we elected a black president is a pretty good indication of that.

Sure, there are racists who gleefully predict a race war. Yes, there are lunatics in our country. And, of course, they're all armed to the teeth, thanks to the NRA, hysterical gun nuts, and cowardly politicians. But sane people still make up the majority in our country.

If you don't know how bad it's been, it's always easy to think that the current day is the worst ever. Indeed, I have people tell me that - people eager to predict the Christian end times, people woefully ignorant of history. It's not true.

The problem these days is that random lunatics can do more damage than ever, thanks to the ever-increasing availability of military grade weapons (and the capability of those weapons to kill large numbers of people). That's a problem we haven't been willing to address.

It's not just guns, either. As our technology improves, the ability of small numbers of people to kill vast quantities of other people also increases. There's always the possibility of truly horrendous acts of terrorism.

Unfortunately, it's not a problem that will ever be completely solved. At best, we can only try to minimize the incidents. Don't get me wrong. We should definitely be doing that. But we won't ever be 100% successful, no matter what we do.

But random lunatics aren't going to destroy our country. We have to do that. And despite everything - despite Donald Trump, despite Joe Walsh and the people like him, despite the hysteria on the right - I'm confident that we're going to survive 2016 just like we survived 1968.

There are people who want violence. There are people who push violence. And there are people who will use violence for their own political advantage. But that's not America. Most of us are better than that.

John Oliver: encryption

Convincing, isn't it? You know what surprises me the most? That I agree with Lindsey Graham about something!

Hmm,... maybe it's two things. After all, he did compare Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to the choice between "being shot or poisoned." (Admittedly, he didn't acknowledge his own role in bringing those choices into being.)

Are you depressed yet?

Are you depressed yet? Here's the Henry County Report about Alabama police officers planting guns and drugs on young black men for twenty years. They were racists, part of a Neoconfederate extremist group working against blacks and Jews.

This wasn't from the distant past, either. This started in the 1990s, apparently (with this particular group, at least). The district attorney knew about it when he prosecuted these innocent men, and as the report says, "They were supervised at the time by Lt. Steve Parrish, current Dothan Police Chief, and Sgt. Andy Hughes, current Asst. Director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama."

Twenty years of framing young black men! Are you depressed yet? Yeah, it's a good thing racism is over, isn't it? LOL

CIA torture doctors sued

Sadly, this isn't as funny as my last post. But torture rarely is.

This still makes my blood boil - not just that my country tortured prisoners-of-war, which is bad enough, but that no one was ever held accountable. And many Americans still defend it! Oh, don't get me started...

Cenk Uygur makes a good point here - well, several good points, but one that I haven't heard much about. Our enemies used torture to make prisoners lie. That works, because you'll say anything to get torture to stop.

It's a completely different thing to expect to get the truth from torture. Did Dick Cheney not know that? From what I've heard, we tortured prisoners-of-war not to get useful intelligence from them, but to justify invading Iraq.

Certainly, we didn't get useful intelligence from them. But I'm not sure the Bush Administration got any useful lies, either. So I just don't know.

Fox News 'expert' arrested

Surprise, surprise, huh? But at Fox 'News,' you don't have to be real. You don't have to be truthful. You don't have to know anything at all. You just have to hate Democrats and push right-wing talking points.

Fraud? All of Fox 'News' is a fraud.

Trickery dickery Fox, phony war on cops

The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore
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Larry Wilmore is pretty good here, isn't he? I don't particularly like the format of the rest of his show, but the opening is always great.

Off-duty state trooper fires on unarmed teens

Absolute insanity:

Three young adults were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning after mistakenly knocking on the door of a New Jersey State Trooper and fleeing the scene.

... According to people close to the investigation, three young adults, after leaving a graduation party, attempted to go to a friend’s house nearby.

A source said, they mistakenly went to the next door neighbor’s home. After repeatedly ringing the doorbell and loudly knocking on the door, the homeowner, a state trooper, came to the door. When he opened the door and shouted at them, the three men ran away.

The three got into a vehicle and the officer fired three gun shots as they attempted to flee.

Yeah, the state trooper shot at them as they were trying to get away (hitting the car at least once). Now, these teenagers are under arrest. The article goes on to say, "It is not clear what charges, if any, have been brought against these men."

The state trooper who shot at three unarmed teenagers who were simply trying to get away? Nothing - so far, at least. In fact, he's still on active duty.

Welcome to America, the gun-and-paranoia capital of the world.

Mess within Texas - Sandra Bland's arrest

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I don't know how Sandra Bland died, but I do know how she ended up in jail on a $5,000 bond, and it's just ridiculous.

Ridiculous? Actually, it's criminal. We have a serious problem in America, and this is just another demonstration of that. (Really, do we need any more? Seriously?)

Why conservatives won't recognize race-based gun violence

Take a look at this very perceptive essay by Aurin Squire at TPM:

We live in an age where mass shootings are so common that there is now a template for politicians to plug in the victim’s names, the date and location of the massacre, and synonyms for words like “tragedy” and “horror.” In the last 36 hours, we've heard ersatz condolences filled with hollow words, anodyne phrases about "unimaginable" horrors.

But the Charleston church shooting that left nine African-Americans dead while they prayed is not an inexplicable tragedy. It simply took white rage and racism and conservative political race-baiting to their logical conclusions. It echoes a disturbing trend in right-wing media inflaming fringe factions, encouraging maximum armament, and then turning around after a tragedy and saying “we had no idea this would happen.”

On Wednesday night, South Carolina’s governor Nikki Haley trotted out a boilerplate statement, calling the shooting a “senseless tragedy.” One could excuse this choice of words as a rushed assumption issued in real time, but as more and more details about Dylann Roof surfaced, conservatives refused to face the music. One by one, politicians and pundits acted like this terrorist act was one of life’s great unsolvable mysteries.

“We don't know the motivation of the person who did it," Rudy Guiliani said yesterday. "Maybe he hates Christian churches. Maybe he hates black churches or he's gonna go find another one. Who knows." Donald Trump, in a tweet yesterday, said the crime was “incomprehensible.”

Last night, a Wall Street Journal columnist wrote: "What causes young men such as Dylann Roof to erupt in homicidal rage, whatever their motivation, is a problem that defies explanation beyond the reality that evil still stalks humanity. It is no small solace that in committing such an act today, he stands alone."

At this point, Roof’s bigotry has become clear in myriad ways. Yet as late as this afternoon, when cornered by a reporter and asked if the shooting was racially motivated, presidential candidate Jeb Bush said “I don’t know.” This means Bush is either incapable of basic logic, or he has willfully decided to blind and deafen himself to one of the nation’s biggest problems.

After all we’ve found out about Dylann Roof, how can we still say we “don’t know” why this happened?

The survivors from inside the church claimed Roof said African Americans “rape our women” and are “taking over our country.” His statements are deranged fiction, but they don’t live in isolation. They exist not only on a historical continuum of racially motivated violence, but within a current narrative of white people “losing the country” and the reactive violence of rural militias and domestic terrorists. Republican governors’ complicity in fostering a dangerous cocktail of political bigotry and easy-access guns has never been clearer than after this latest mass shooting. While it is true that bigots and violent people will always exist, a persistently racist culture nurtures small-minded hatred, and politicians provide them with tools to realize it.

It is no secret that one of the baubles of the conservative movement is the Confederate flag, which appeared on Roof’s license plate. It is a symbol of white supremacy and slavery, and it is also a symbol that is a part of South Carolina's official government as the flag flies in the capital. When questioned about her state’s continued support for it, Governor Haley shrugged it off.

South Carolina hasn't exactly left its racist history behind. Haley has consistently sided with more guns, fewer voting rights, and fostering a conservative culture of fear and suspicion. Last year, she signed a new and even more expansive bill for concealed weapons and easier access to guns in her state. She was applauded by the NRA for this bill. In an age where abortion clinics are bombed, elementary school children are gunned down on a cyclical basis, and lone gunmen have unlimited access to machine guns, the idea of expanding gun rights seems inconceivable, especially in a state where a gun-related death happens every 14 hours.

Meanwhile, South Carolina was one of the first to add more restrictions on voting after the Supreme Court cut away at the Voting Rights Act and Republicans continue to pursue new voting rights restrictions aimed at black and Latino citizens.

Let me repeat one sentence from that: It echoes a disturbing trend in right-wing media inflaming fringe factions, encouraging maximum armament, and then turning around after a tragedy and saying “we had no idea this would happen.”

Right-wing politicians push irrational fear - and absolute hysterics about our first black president - while also encouraging gun ownership and use. The gullible become even more fearful and more filled with hate, while also seeing "2nd Amendment remedies" as the solution to every problem.

But when angry loons actually act in the direction they've been pushed, then conservatives are astonished. How could anyone have predicted this? It certainly can't be racism, because racism no longer exists (except for the discrimination white men face, of course).

Here's what Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal said:

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal on Friday suggested that "institutionalized racism" was not a driving force in the massacre of nine people Wednesday night at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina because it "no longer exists."

Fox 'News' actually pushed the idea that this was an attack on Christianity! Well, it can't be racism, right? Racism is just what that evil Kenyan in the White House fosters among the thugs he leads, in his attempt to take our country away from us real Americans.



Meanwhile, South Carolina still flies the Confederate flag - a symbol of racism, slavery, and treason - over the state capitol. Statues of Confederate leaders are proudly displayed in the state. Street names are named after racists and slave-owners.

Of course, to other white people like him, Roof was just "a conservative with a lot of 'Southern pride.'" Sure, he made a lot of racist jokes, but that's considered normal in South Carolina (in Nebraska, too).

Of course he was angry. What right-winger isn't angry? After all, 'those people' are taking over our country, right? And don't get me started about those damned Mexicans. As Donald Trump says, they're all drug dealers and rapists, with Mexico determined to send us all of their worst. (OK, there might be a few good people mixed in with the rapists. It's possible, at least, Trump magnanimously concedes.)

And what do you do with an angry white conservative? You give him guns, of course. After all, what if Barack Obama plans to invade South Carolina after the military finishes with Texas?



But right-wing politicians and pundits are just astonished when these things happen. Well, no one could have predicted violence, right? Hysterical anger, racism pushed for political gain (the GOP's 'Southern strategy' is alive and well), and deadly firearms easily available everywhere certainly can't be blamed for any violence that results. Who could even imagine such a thing?

And racism no longer exists in America - except when our racist president and the brown rapists Mexico keeps sending across our border discriminate against white men, of course - so it can't be that.

On the other hand, we know we have a war on Christmas and a war on Christianity in America, right? Poor Christians, only 71% of the population, are bullied and discriminated against by the 3% of Americans who are atheists (not to mention the .9% who are Muslim). Well, as Jesus said, the well-armed will inherit the Earth. And if you're struck on one cheek, bust a cap in their ass.

Right-wingers won't recognize race-based attacks because they don't want to. They won't recognize the problems inflammatory, racist rhetoric and an abundance of guns pose because they don't want to. Right-wing politicians certainly won't recognize the part they've played in this and other attacks because they don't want to.

And since they're faith-based, rather than evidence-based - and, more to the point, so are their supporters - they don't have to. Reality doesn't matter to any of them, because they all live in the right-wing fantasy world of their choice.

___
PS. There has been plenty of good commentary about this incident. Here's Jon Stewart, for example. And here's Larry Wilmore. Watch them. Seriously.

John Oliver: Torture

You know one of the worst things about this? At least one of our nine Supreme Court justices gets his information about how the world works from fictional television shows!

It might be that former Vice-President Dick Cheney does, too, but I suspect he just makes up whatever he wants to believe.

Ugly, racist, and un-American

This is more about the right-wing response to that Texas pool party incident I mentioned yesterday.

Disgusting, isn't it? We saw the videos of this. Those kids were not out of control. There was absolutely no danger to this rogue cop. The kids were just completely confused about why he was treating them like that.

Even the police chief in McKinney didn't support the actions of his officer: "He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident. I had 12 officers on the scene, and 11 of them performed according to their training."

And here, a former police officer talks about what went wrong there. But the right-wing media automatically blames the black kids. And the interview with that white neighbor is just embarrassing.

Brandon Brooks, the 15-year-old white kid who shot that video, is impressive, though. There's cause for some optimism, I guess. But it's the 21st Century, people. Isn't it about time to abandon racism,... even in Texas?

John Oliver: Bail

Over and over again, John Oliver keeps pointing out big problems which have slipped through the cracks - or, at the very least, problems which I've missed previously, myself.

Bail is entirely outside my life experience. I've never posted bail. I don't think I've ever even known anyone who had to post bail. And I certainly don't watch 'reality TV.' So it's just completely foreign to me.

That's not to say it isn't important, of course. But I had no idea this was going on.

John Oliver isn't just carrying on in the tradition of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. He isn't just a worthy successor. He's bringing up important issues that they didn't (at least, as far as I know). I'm really, really impressed - and grateful that he posts these clips on YouTube.

Cop tases and pepper-sprays stroke victim

This guy suffered a stroke. But he made the mistake of being black, so instead of helping the man, the police shot him with a Tazer, pepper-sprayed him, and then drove over his foot (that last was an accident, admittedly).

This video was posted on the Russia Today YouTube channel, but it's raw footage from the police cam. Here's an article about the incident, in case you think it's just Russian propaganda.

The black driver was charged with several crimes (hit-and-run, reckless driving, and driving on a suspended license), all but the last apparently a result of the stroke.

The police weren't charged with anything, though one officer resigned after his superiors concluded that he'd used force that was "not appropriate."

But seriously, can you even imagine this happening to a white driver? Maybe it does. I have no doubt that white people face problems sometimes when dealing with the police. But the automatic assumption of guilt that black people face is just something else.

There was another recent incident in Cleveland, where the police shot 137 bullets into a car at an unarmed black couple. Apparently, it started when the car backfired while driving past a police station. OK, I can understand the concern.

But 137 shots? Both people in the car - unarmed, remember - were shot more than 20 times each. One cop jumped up on the hood of the car and pumped 15 shots through the windshield, after the car had already stopped (and the rest of the officers had stopped firing).

Even that man was found "not guilty" of voluntary manslaughter. None of the other police officers were even charged with anything.

Do you wonder why African-Americans get angry at this stuff? I don't.

Here's another thing: There was a recent shootout among gangs in Texas where 9 people were shot to death and 18 were injured. Hundreds of guns were found at the scene - more than 300, apparently - with plenty of other weapons, too.

Scary stuff, huh? But these were white gangs:

The prevailing images of protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, over police killings of black men were of police in riot gear, handcuffed protesters, tear gas and mass arrests. The main images of a fatal gun battle between armed bikers and police in Waco, Texas, also showed mass arrests — carried out by nonchalant-looking officers sitting around calm bikers on cellphones.

There's more:

The firefight in Waco is raising questions about perceptions and portrayals of crime in America, considering the vehement reaction that the earlier protests got from police, politicians and some members of the public.

Unlike in Ferguson and Baltimore, where protests went on for days, there was no live news coverage of the Waco shootout. And yet the incident at a Texas restaurant hasn't been used as a bridge to discuss other issues about families, poverty and crime, media critics, columnists and civil rights activists say.

They complain that there appears to be little societal concern about the gunplay at a restaurant in Texas, whereas politicians — including President Barack Obama — described violent looters in Baltimore as "thugs," and the media devoted hours of television and radio airtime to dissecting social ills that affect the black community. ...

Civil rights attorney Charles F. Coleman Jr. said only minority communities get blamed for violence, while no one blames white families or white communities for fatal violence by white men, characterizing such events instead as "isolated incidents."

Coleman noted that protests, some violent, that flared up around the police killings of black men, most of which involved an overwhelmingly black crowd, were called "riots" while college and professional sports championship celebrations and losses that turned violent, most of which involved an overwhelmingly white crowd, are not.

"But when you look at Ferguson, or you look at a Baltimore, when you look at these sorts of incidents, we have a tendency vis-a-vis the media to actually question why it happened to the victim, and we go further and then we impute liability on the entire community and sort of do this systematic victim blaming of black America," he said.

Make no mistake, I'm not excusing riots. I'm not saying that people should run from the police, either. (Having a stroke, though,... that's hardly criminal activity.) But look at the differences in how these incidents are treated and in how various people are perceived.

We have a problem with racism in America. A big problem. Yes, we've progressed. It's better than it used to be. But "better" isn't "good."

Football Town Nights

Don't like rape jokes? Me, neither. But as TPM points out, this is the right way to joke about rape.

Of course, the joke isn't about rape, but about attitudes towards rape, about the lame excuses for rape, and about the football culture in small towns.

It's from Inside Amy Schumer, which I haven't seen, and it parodies a movie I haven't seen. So some of the humor went right past me, I'm sure.

Here's what Amanda Marcotte, one of my favorite columnists at TPM, says:

The sketch, “Football Town Nights,” is a loving parody of Friday Night Lights that also works as a pitch-perfect satire of the various ways rape culture perpetuates itself.

Josh Charles plays “Coach Thompson,” a direct homage to Kyle Chandler’s Coach Eric Taylor on the beloved football drama. (Amy Schumer plays his wife, gently sending up Connie Britton’s wine-loving, free spirited performance on the show.) Coach Thompson wants his team to be inspired, to work hard, to win games and oh yeah, to not rape.

The team’s locker room reaction to his instructions not to rape is immediately familiar to anyone who has dared to peek at the comments under any article denouncing rape: a bunch of dudes making increasingly convoluted arguments about why there should be exceptions or caveats to this broad no-raping philosophy. “What if it’s Halloween and she’s dressed as a sexy cat?” “What if she thinks it’s rape but I don’t?” “What if she’s drunk and has a slight reputation….” It’s only a mild exaggeration of the kinds of arguments feminists get with this relentless prodding strategy.

Or in some cases, not exaggerated at all. “What if the girl said yes but then she changes her mind out of nowhere, like a crazy person?” adds one, which is one we’ve heard a lot.

But while the persistent whining of trolls is the funniest part of this sketch, the satire of rape culture goes much deeper. The community frames Coach Thompson as an unreasonable fun-killer, and his wife even tries to argue that maybe he should let this one go—all reactions that feminists are intimately familiar with when they speak out against rape. Tellingly, the sketch doesn’t include any girls at all, making it clear that rape is a product of male entitlement and isn’t about the girls or what they do and wear.

The best part may be the end, when Coach Thompson, frustrated that his players are losing focus because they’re so obsessively angry about this extremely reasonable “no raping” rule, screams at them in a classic rallying-the-team locker room scene. “How do I get through to you boys that football isn’t about rape?” he yells. “It’s about violently dominating anyone that stands between you and what you want!”

Rape isn't funny. I understand that. But humor can work wonders. Racism isn't funny, either, but All in the Family made racists laugh at themselves - and, perhaps, think.

American Apartheid

(AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

In the wake of the Walter Scott murder, Lawrence Brown notes an interesting fact at TPM:

As statistician Nate Silver has noted, most police don’t live in the cities they serve and patrol. This is especially true for white police officers. Out of the 75 largest cities in the U.S., only 35 percent of white police officers live in the cities they serve; rather, a large majority of white police officers live in suburbs surrounding the city.

In cities such as Baltimore, Houston, Detroit, Denver, Newark, Los Angeles, Birmingham, Tampa, Orlando, Minneapolis, Oakland and Miami, fewer than 25 percent of white officers live in the cities they patrol. This might not seem to be a big deal—until one considers that most suburbs were extremely segregated until the 1980s due to the critical role of the Federal Housing Administration in subsidizing the construction of suburbs. Therefore, white police officers live in and/or grew up in disproportionately white suburbs.

Federal, state and local policies also explain the conditions of urban black neighborhoods that white police officers will patrol after commuting from their suburban home. America’s residential segregation is a result of over 100 years’ worth of race- and eugenics-based policies, including... [the article lists five of them] ...

Due to these devastating government policies that sanctioned racial segregation, the areas where more than 60 percent of white police officers live are jurisdictions where black people have been intentionally excluded. This creates a dynamic where most white police officers who live in suburbs and patrol in black neighborhoods are commuting to work with ingrained, longstanding racial biases and stereotypes intact. As James Loewen argues in Sundown Towns: “Segregated neighborhoods make it easier to discriminate against African Americans in schooling, housing, and city services.”

Shocking, isn't it? I certainly didn't realize that.

The effects of racism linger on for generations. Indeed, despite changed policies, younger people are still raised racist - less so than previously, true, but we're definitely not 'over' racism.

And let's not forget the politics of it. After the Democrats took a stand for equal rights and against racial segregation, Republican Party leaders began their 'Southern strategy' of deliberately wooing racists. They were probably no more racist than most Americans, but they really wanted to use those people for their own political advantage. (It worked, but that flood of racists into the party has had a huge long-term effect on the GOP.)

And the South did not integrate. If state-sponsored racial segregation was illegal, there were still plenty of other ways to stay segregated. White southerners took their kids from public schools,... and stopped supporting the public school system. Meanwhile, they still wanted government support for their schools (the initial impetus behind vouchers and the 'Moral Majority,' among other right-wing policies).

As this article points out, racial zoning was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1917. And restrictive covenants, which also kept blacks, Jews, and other minorities out of neighborhoods, was found unconstitutional in 1948. Those rulings didn't stop the problem. They helped, but... it's just not that easy.

Note that politicians from both parties betrayed the 1968 Fair Housing Act, either through politically motivated racism or cowardice. And LBJ's war on poverty is, to date, the only war right-wingers haven't loved, the only war in which they were willing - even eager - to surrender and accept defeat.

Even today, de facto racial segregation is a reality. Even today, the Republican Party uses racism for political purposes. Today, white Americans are actually raising money to support Michael Slager, the white cop who murdered Walter Scott (while another white cop did nothing and went along with the coverup).

The effects of generations of slavery, followed by generations of segregation and blatant racism, aren't so easily fixed. We've definitely made progress - we should never forget that - but we still have a long way to go.

40 years in prison on coerced testimony

Man, this would be hard to take, wouldn't it? It's hard to even read about.

After nearly 40 years in prison, a man convicted in a 1975 Cleveland slaying has walked out of the county jail as a free man.

Fifty-seven-year-old Ricky Jackson was dismissed from the Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH'-guh) County jail and walked out of the adjoining courthouse Friday about an hour after a judge dismissed his case.

The dismissal came after the key witness against Jackson and brothers Wiley and Ronnie Bridgeman at trial, a 13-year-old boy, recanted last year and said Cleveland police detectives coerced him into testifying that the three killed businessman Harry Franks the afternoon of May 19, 1975.

This is the only life we've got. He missed his 20s, 30s, 40s, even most of his 50s locked up for a crime he apparently didn't do. Can you imagine?

Incidentally, this is the reason I oppose the death penalty - the only reason, in fact. I have no sympathy for violent criminals, and if the crime was bad enough, I'd pull the switch myself.

But we're not infallible, and we're never going to be infallible. Sometimes, we convict the wrong people.

One more thing: you might think that Jackson really did commit this murder, that the police knew what they were doing,... but how do you know that? In America, there's a presumption of innocence, you know.

And Jackson is a black man. Even today, let alone 40 years ago, black men face an automatic assumption of guilt from many people. "Well, he must be guilty of something," huh? Everywhere in our justice system, even today, there are racial disparities.

Unarmed black men routinely seem to be shot for no reason, too - sometimes by police. Accidents? Well, sure, sometimes. But do you think that race plays no part in 'accidents'? Or in cases like the Trayvon Martin incident where an unarmed black teenager, minding his own business, can be stalked and killed, and the police just shrug it off?

Boys will be boys

(AP Photo)

This is really sick, but it needs publicity.

Two teenage sisters in rural India were raped and killed by attackers who hung their bodies from a mango tree, which became the scene of a silent protest by villagers angry about alleged police inaction in the case. Two of the four men arrested so far are police officers.

Villagers found the girls' bodies hanging from the tree early Wednesday, hours after they disappeared from fields near their home in Katra village in Uttar Pradesh state, police Superintendent Atul Saxena said. The girls, who were 14 and 15, had gone into the fields because there was no toilet in their home.

Hundreds of angry villagers stayed next to the tree throughout Wednesday, silently protesting the police response. Indian TV footage showed the villagers sitting under the girls' bodies as they swung in the wind, and preventing authorities from taking them down until the suspects were arrested.

Police arrested two police officers and two men from the village later Wednesday and were searching for three more suspects. ...

The family belongs to the Dalit community, also called "untouchables" and considered the lowest rung in India's age-old caste system.

There's a lot to this, no doubt - caste and misogyny and a patriarchal mindset, certainly. The article goes on to talk about "an entrenched culture of tolerance for sexual violence" in India. These girls were only 14 and 15, and they weren't even safe from the police officers who were supposed to protect them!

Do you wonder why I post about rape, about misogyny, about angry self-pitying douchebags? But the people who piss me off the most are those who shrug off these issues. Yeah, you may not be raping and murdering any teenagers yourself, but you can't stand those feminists who keep making a big deal about nothing, right?

India tightened its anti-rape laws last year, making gang rape punishable by the death penalty, even when the victim survives. The new laws came after the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in New Delhi that triggered nationwide protests. ...

Last month, the head of Uttar Pradesh state's governing party, the regionally prominent Samajwadi Party, told an election rally that the party was opposed to the law calling for gang rapists to be executed.

"Boys will be boys," Mulayam Singh Yadav said. "They make mistakes."

Really, is this such a problem? Why are you always blaming men? After all, boys will be boys.

___
Edit: This gets more infuriating all the time:

Uttar Pradesh officials initially appeared caught off guard by the reaction to the attack on the two girls, and [Chief Minister Akhilesh] Yadav on Friday mocked journalists for asking about it.

"You're not facing any danger, are you?" he said in Lucknow, the state capital. "Then why are you worried? What's it to you?"

What makes it rape?

Here's a great post by Amanda Marcotte at TPM:

Having a glass of wine (or three) on a date and then retiring to the bedroom for some consensual sexing is not unknown in the liberal, feminist circles long-derided by the conservative media. So imagine my confusion when I read National Review writer and self-appointed expert on what “feminists” think, A.J. Delgado, argue that feminists “define rape as including any sexual activity in which the woman is not sober, claiming that consent is never truly given if one has had a few drinks.”

So sure is she of this assertion that she fails to cite any of the “prominent scholars and activists” that have offered this definition. I want to know who they are, so I can avoid drinking with them.

Nice start, huh? But she continues:

It is true that “radical feminists” such as the Department of Justice have argued that rapists often use drugs and alcohol to facilitate rape. Partially, they believe this because rapists themselves admit to it. Delgado seems to assume that there’s a lot of drunken sex that the man believes was consensual, but is later told that he’s being charged with rape. But researcher David Lisak found the opposite was true: Rapists deliberately seek out very drunk women or deliberately get women very drunk in order to rape them.

Surveying over 2,000 men on college campuses about their sexual history, Lisak found that about 1 in 16 of them admitted to raping someone (so long as you didn’t call it rape). Most of the admitted rapists said yes to this question: “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated [on alcohol or drugs] to resist your sexual advances?” (Emphasis mine.)

In other words, it’s not the drugs or alcohol that made it rape. It’s the lack of consent. Women aren’t being brainwashed into thinking they were raped. They are being educated about the fact that the guy who forced himself on them while they were too drunk to fight back really meant it.

Delgado proudly explains that she is not an outsider to the world of either sex or alcohol, smugly writing, “I am fairly certain that a statistically significant amount of sex — including very enjoyable sex — happens under the influence of alcohol.” As a hands-on expert, then, she should know that there’s a big difference between having had a few and being too wasted to express yourself, fight back, or even understand what’s going on. (It’s not just rapists either. Other criminals, such as muggers, know drunk people make easy marks because they can’t fight back.)

Yes, it's not drugs or alcohol - or even violence - that makes it rape. It's the lack of consent. Furthermore, the woman doesn't have to say no. It's the not-saying-yes part that makes it rape.

Not long ago, I read about a teacher who discovered, to her astonishment, that her high school students didn't understand that. It wasn't just the boys, but the girls, too, who thought that it couldn't be rape if the woman was unconscious, because she couldn't say no.

Is that "No is No" campaign really so confusing? No is no, but no isn't required. It's yes that's required. It's the lack of consent which makes it rape, and you can't give your consent if you're unconscious or otherwise incapacitated.

That doesn't mean you have to be stone cold sober. Of course not! But you don't have to fight off an attacker. The onus isn't on you to stop someone else's advances. That's blaming the victim, and it's turning the whole thing around. It's the lack of consent that makes it rape.