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TIMESTAMPS
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20111226235742/http://moderateleft.com:80/
There is a reason that Mithras’ birthday was celebrated this time of year. A reason that Bacchus’ birthday, the Saturnalia, Jesus’ birthday, and the New Year come this time of year as well. For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, at 05:30 UTC tomorrow morning (11:30 PM Central Standard Time tonight) the Sun’s slow ebb reaches its nadir, and begins its welcome return. For those of us who live in northern climes it is a not insignificant day; the sun will not rise today in Minneapolis until 7:48 AM and will have set by 4:34 PM, a meager eight hours and forty-six minutes of daylight. And Minnesota is in the pink compared to, say, Stockholm, where tomorrow the sunrise doesn’t come until 8:44 AM and sunset is already complete at 2:48 PM–just over six hours of daylight.
It is no wonder that millennia ago, our forebearers saw this day as especially meaningful — the moment at which the Sun began its triumphant rebirth. Thus Mithras, the Sun God, was reborn on this day, to grow and prosper, rising until July, when he slowly began to wither and die. Thus the Son God, Jesus, has a story that, calendar be damned, fits well with the idea of Sol dying, and being resurrected. All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again, an infinite cycle, repeated infinitely — or as close to it as we humans can imagine.
And so today, we celebrate the day that is the progenitor of all our winter festivals, the Winter Solstice–and await again our planet’s rebirth into the light. Happy Solstice.
Trolling is an art that I have a grudging respect for. But simply shouting insults at me? That’s pathetic. Especially when they’re tired, played-out tropes (LOL your fat! LOL your ugly! LOL your gay!) that I was bored with in sixth grade. When you guys threatened to troll me over my opposition to the racist, misogynistic, classist Rep. Paul, I was hopeful that you’d actually do so in an entertaining fashion. Alas, like most Paulbots, you simply don’t have the chops to do so. Accordingly, I’ve deleted your insults, and banned you, not because you trolled, but because you trolled so poorly.
A landlord putting up a “Whites Only” sign on her swimming pool? Not racist:
An Ohio landlord accused of discriminating against an African-American girl with a “white only” sign at her swimming pool told ABCNews.com that the sign was an antique and a decoration.
“I’m not a bad person,” said Jamie Hein of Cincinnati. “I don’t have any problem with race at all. It’s a historical sign.”
The sign in question reads, “Public Swimming Pool, White Only.” It is dated 1931 and from Alabama.
Hein, 31, was unapologetic about the racist origins of the sign that she displayed at the entrance to her pool. She said she collects antiques and was given the sign as a gift. She also said that even though the sign seems to indicate that the pool is public, the pool is on her private property and “everybody has to ask before getting in my pool.”
Well, you know, no harm, no foul…
Michael Gunn, 40, is the man who took issue with Hein’s sign and filed a discrimination charge with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. He was a tenant in one of Hein’s properties.
“We invited my daughter, who is African-American, to visit and swim in the pool for the Memorial Day weekend,” Gunn wrote in his complaint. “The owner, Jamie Hein, accused my daughter of making the pool ‘cloudy’ because she used chemicals in her hair. Days later, she posted a sign on the gate to the pool which reads, ‘Public Swimming Pool, White Only.’”
Hein said that the sign had nothing to do with Gunn’s daughter and that it was already up at the time of that party, but cannot be seen when the gate is open.
Oh, well that’s better — she’d already posted a “Whites Only” sign on the pool. It wasn’t in response to the horror of having a black girl swim in the pool with her hair full of chemicals that I can only assume included radon, lead, and ricin.
I must admit, it looks pretty bad for Hein, but she’s got a solid defense.
Gunn said the family previously “had unrestricted access to the pool area,” but Hein said that was not the case. She said everyone, including her own father, has to ask permission before swimming in her pool.
See? It was on her property! That makes it totally fine for her to discriminate against people because of the color of their skin, at least if you’re Ron and/or Rand Paul.
At any rate, it’s pretty awful of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission to find that this was a violation of Gunn’s daughter’s civil rights. Hein is clearly not a racist:
“I’ve never said anything to that child,” Hein said. “If I have to stick up for my white rights, I have to stick up for my white rights. It goes both ways.”
Jamie Hein: sticking up for her white right to put up a racist sign that echoes one of the worst times in American history, just because she happens to love history. Way to stick it to the man! What’s next — them telling her to stop burning crosses on her neighbors’ lawns? She’s just a historical re-enactor!
Honest to God, the only people in this country willing to admit to being racists are decent people who abhor racism, and want to try to get beyond their own internalized racism. I’ll admit, I am racist; I try to do better, and mostly I succeed (and sometimes I fail, and try to learn from my failures), but I figure I can’t do better if I don’t own up to the problem. And the most racist thing I’ve ever done is be pretty clueless about my own privilege. Hein actually put up a “Whites Only” sign on a pool. But she’s not racist. Racists never are.
I don’t have time go give Gene Marks’ asinine column the kicking around I’d like to. Suffice to say that if you’re white, you probably don’t want to write a column on what you’d do if you were a poor black child. It’s not going to end well.
If you do want to read a nice, thorough, and well-written takedown, may I direct you to Elon James White’s piece over at The Root? Because it’s full of win, and touches on what I think is the most important thing to remember about Marks’ post:
Now, in the midst of this overall attack on poor black children, Mr. Gene Marks comes along as an ignorant wolf wearing “I just want to help those poor Negroes!” clothing. Mr. Gene isn’t trying to be condescending or anything. He just wants to postulate the best way to fix poor Negro children, is all.
This isn’t him being an ass — this is simply what he might do as a middle-class, middle-aged white dude if all of a sudden he were attacked by Voldemort, a spell was cast and he was turned into a poor black child.
He just wants to give some advice to the poor black children … in Forbes magazine.
That’s reasonable, right?
We Negroes are familiar with this particular brand of help. The #WhiteLove™ style of caring. Movies love to show how, when a white person with an open mind shows up and deals with poor blacks, their lives aremagically changed. As I read this piece, I sighed to myself and mumbled, “White liberals.”
Yup. It’s “Nice White Lady” syndrome — the idea that if only those poor black kids understood the value of hard work and book learning, why, they’d all be rich! And who better to explain it to them than a white person — there being no African Americans who understand learning or work.
Even when it’s delivered with the best of intentions, it’s obnoxious and offensive. When it’s delivered, as Marks did, with utter cluelessness (hey, poor kids, buy computers!), it goes up to the next level.
White people? We can empathize with African Americans, but we can’t really understand what it’s like to be black in America, because we aren’t. As always, we need to talk less and listen more. Which is why I strongly recommend you read all of White’s article.
Hello. It’s Jeff. I know, I don’t blog much lately. I’ve been busy. I have a job that’s actually fairly demanding and a 9-year-old kid and a life. Plus, I have to admit, given a choice between writing jeremiads or watching Doctor Who on Netflix, I’m choosing the Netflix. It’s less depressing. And when I need to vent, there’s always Twitter.
But still, there’s something that I feel I need to bring up. Something that’s been becoming more and more clear to me over the past couple years, since around the time of the health care reform debate.
But first, let me start by talking about the right. We all know the right. They’re completely delusional, right? Out of control, drunk on anger and incohate rage, fed by a steady diet of propaganda from Fox and Rush Limbaugh. Amirite?
Well, no. First, it’s important to get delusional out of there — it’s ableist, yes, but moreover, it’s simply not true. Right-wingers aren’t delusional. They’re quite rational. They’re just dealing with a reality that doesn’t really exist.
The right is reacting exactly as any rational group of individuals would to the facts they’re given. If the president is really a communist secret Muslim out to turn America into a caliphate, while stealing your money and personal freedom, then yes, he’s someone that needs to be stopped at all costs. If you don’t step outside the bubble you don’t see the facile nature of the arguments, the actual facts that don’t fit with the spin. You accept as a given that what Fox tells you is true, and you go with that.
As for Fox, certainly, some of what they report are outright lies. But much more of what they spew is not, not exactly. They have sources, however flimsy. They have references and hyperlinks, albeit ones to questionable, fly-by-night operations. They’re not lying, or at least, they can tell themselves they aren’t. They’re just mainstreaming information that comes from dubious sources, because that information fits their narrative.
Around the time of the health care debate, this same pattern began on the left.
Probably, it’s always been there. But it was at that time that it really began to get traction. Firedoglake began amplifying the message that Obama was selling out the left, that he was intentionally trying to undermine the public option in order to…something. It was never made clear exactly why Obama would work against a policy that he had specifically endorsed, other than that it meant Obama was in thrall to Big Business.
Of course, Obama never did what the FDL crowd accused him of. It never happened. The public option was stripped from the bill for mundane reasons — it didn’t have enough support to get through the Senate. But that didn’t fit the FDL narrative, which is why they chose to believe and amplify information that came from dubious sources, because that information fit their narrative.
Since then, the left wing of the American left has been more and more invested in finding bits of data to fit their narrative, rather than reacting to facts. Bradley Manning? He couldn’t have been arrested for stealing military secrets, then treated badly in jail, though not uniquely so. He had to be a political prisoner, one who Barack Obama had literally ordered to be tortured. The Assange rape case? It couldn’t be, you know, an actual case where women had been raped. It had to be a “honeytrap,” a plot by the CIA to get Assange to the US, where he could be killed, or, alternately, a case of women who shouldn’t be allowed to cry “rape” over a little thing like someone not using a condom when he’d agreed to and then refusing to stop when he was told to stop. And now, the unbelievably stupid crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street in New York and Oakland and Berkley? They couldn’t be the combination of mayoral stupidity and police that have been slowly militarized over the past three decades. No, this has to be a coordinated plot, run out of the Oval Office, to destroy Occupy Wall Street.
Karoli has a good run-down on the completely non-existent underpinnings of that last charge. Suffice to say that one article ran on a questionable website. It was loudly trumpeted by grifter and professional narcissist Michael Moore on Keith Olbermann’s show, and now it’s been taken worldwide by Naomi Wolf, who was last seen simultaneously defending Assange from the mean women who he may have raped and burning every bridge between herself and the feminist community.
Of course, the story is too good to check, because it echos everything the pro-left wants to echo. Obama’s a corporatist lackey who really doesn’t want to improve things for anyone, and who harbors a very-well-hidden authoritarian streak. He’s to the right of Reagan, and anyone who doubts that just hasn’t read enough articles on FDL and Truthout.
The people who say this are not delusional. They are perfectly rational. If you don’t step outside the bubble, you don’t see the facile nature of the arguments, the actual facts that don’t fit with the spin. You accept as a given that what the pro-left tells you is true, and you go with that.
Enough.
Look, as we on the left are fond of hurling at the right, we’re entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. And too often lately, the left is going on with their own facts at the same time the right is going on with theirs. And this leads us to where we are now, where there is literally no common ground between the activists in both parties, because both sides are so certain that they are right, and everyone else is wrong.
The truth is messy. It doesn’t fit into narratives, and it’s often uncomfortable. But damn it, it’s the truth. If the left decides to completely divorce itself from reality at the same time the right does, then we are in trouble — big trouble.
So, lefties, I am asking you politely: please stop. Stop pretending that questionable sources are the gospel truth. Stop pretending that rumor and innuendo are the same as facts. Stop listening to anything Moore and Wolf and Hamsher are saying — because their concern for the truth is roughly the same as that of Hannity and Limbaugh and Coulter, and believe me, it pains me to say that, but it’s true.
Stop fighting the truth, and start accepting it. And when possible, work to improve it. For the good of our country and our world, please.
I’m not sure I remember a political primary quite like the 2012 GOP primary. There have been primaries with weak fields (the 1988 Democrats, the 1992 Democrats, the 1996 GOP, the 2008 GOP), and there have been candidates who have gained traction, only to implode (Gary Hart, Pat Buchanan, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani). But there’s never been quite the combination of weakness and collapse that has been the hallmark of this year’s GOP matchup. Bachmann, Perry, and Cain all have spent time atop the polls, and all have seen that support fall apart. Meanwhile, the only candidate in the race with any legitimate chance of winning the presidency is despised by pretty much all Republicans.
This isn’t to say that one of these chuckleheads couldn’t come out of the pack and somehow beat Obama next November. We’re a long way from the election. If the economy keeps improving, I think it’s likely Obama wins reelection. But if Europe collapses, the economy tanks, and the GOP nominates one of its few credible candidates, Obama could lose.
All of those are big ifs, of course. First, the Republicans have to pick a standard-bearer. But who? Let’s play Power Rankings.
Republicans
1. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. (Last Rank: 8 )
Newtmentum is running wild. He’s leading in several national polls, and at least one poll has him within striking distance in New Hampshire. Is Newt the Republicans’ Mr. Right? I don’t know, but he is certainly Mr. Right Now.
As Cain has slowly sunk, the anti-Romney voters have apparently begun to move to Gingrich by default. It makes a certain amount of sense. As I said way back in 2009:
That doesn’t mean Newt couldn’t get the nomination. In many ways, he’s the best sacrificial lamb in the race for the GOP. He doesn’t have a political future, so there’s no reason he can’t go out and get destroyed by Barack Obama in 2012. And like Tim Pawlenty, he allows the party to sidestep the rifts that a Romney or Huckabee nomination would expose. For those reasons, I can see Newt getting establishment support to prop him up as a bulwark against Huckabee and/or Romney, and I can see him getting the nomination in an effort to hold the party together.
This is why Newt is still hanging around: he’s a good compromise candidate. The establishment can accept him because he’s One Of Them, while the tea party folks like him because he’s a complete, raving asshole. And best of all, he’s not Mitt Romney.
Of course, Newt still has a ton of downside — from his work as a “historian” for Freddie Mac to his raving dickishness — which makes it possible his bubble could burst before Iowa gets here. He also lacks an organization, which could cause him to underperform in the Hawkeye state, even if he gets ahead of Cain. And if he gets the nomination, I think he’s easy pickings for Obama. But right now, at this precise moment, he’s the candidate with the best chance of winning the nomination, because the guy in the second spot is so despised.
2. Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney (LR: 2)
Let’s say that in a year or two, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., decided to start talking in populist terms. He’d run around the country quoting Paul Wellstone’s Conscience of a Liberal, and praising Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for his strong liberal economic views. He’d claim to be not just pro-choice, but he’d start advocating federally funded abortion. He’d claim not to be pro-gay, but he’d start advocating a constitutional amendment to make same-sex marriage legal. He’d push for high taxes on the rich, demand increased spending, and he’d claim that his decision to oppose the public option on health care was a huge mistake.
Then he’d announce he was running for president.
Would you trust him?
Of course you wouldn’t trust him. You know who Ben Nelson is. You know what he’s stood for his entire political career. At best, you’d welcome his conversion while supporting anyone – anyone – else. Because even if you thought he was now sincere, you’d never quite know. And you’d know full well that if he was able to shake off a lifetime of beliefs over a year or two, he could shake off a year or two of beliefs in a minute.
And so it is with Mitt Romney. The Republicans don’t trust him. And why should they? Mitt once claimed he was more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy. He’s advocated state funding for abortion. He put in place a health care plan that was nearly identical to the Affordable Care Act. During his term as governor of Massachusetts, he governed as a pure centrist, or perhaps someone who was center-left. The Mitt who governed Massachusetts would fit comfortably in the House Democratic Caucus.
And so when he now claims to support Question 26 in Mississippi, or to be opposed to same-sex marriage, or to be eager to strike down Obamacare, who can trust him? Certainly not Republicans. Which is why, despite the inability of any candidate to demonstrate any electoral viability, Mitt’s poll numbers are dropping.
Quite simply, Republicans don’t like Mitt. They don’t trust him. They don’t believe in him. They may have to accept him by Hobson’s choice, but if they can find anyone – anyone – else, they will.
Mitt has so far been having about as good a run as he could hope for, as potential challengers have collapsed along the way. But with each collapse, we see more and more clearly that Republicans are trying to find someone else to support. The flavor-of-the-week appears to be Newt Gingrich right now, and he may be the most dangerous candidate left to Mitt’s hopes. Newt is at least sort of credible. He’s not anathema to the right. He’s acceptable to the Wall Street wing. If Newt becomes the anti-Mitt, Mitt probably loses.
His best hope is that Cain avoids total collapse, but those hopes appear dim; Cain’s support appears to finally be falling off the cliff. If Cain can arrest his collapse before Iowa, or if someone else can rise, the rest of the field might be muddled enough that Mitt ekes out a win, closes things out in New Hampshire, and effectively sews up the nomination. But if Gingrich continues to rise, then Mitt is probably toast.
3. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas (LR: 5)
Paul won’t get the nomination, of course. But as I’ve said many times, he’ll keep floating around, pulling around 10% of the vote in every state, occasionally saying something in a debate that makes his fellow GOPers uncomfortable, and then following that up with some bizarre goldbug argument. He could even win a state or two, given the churning in the race — Iowa appears within reach, at least for the moment — but he has t00 many views out-of-step with the GOP to earn the nomination.
A Paul win in Iowa would be hilarious, but ultimately, he’s not going to win the nomination, and if he fails, he’ll leave without causing much of a wake; his supporters are generally not going to go to anyone if he drops out. But he continues to remain a presence in the race, and as long as he keeps floating around 10%, he’ll keep showing up at debates and in forums, and that’s mainly why he’s running, anyhow — to push the party toward libertarianism. It won’t work, of course, because libertarianism is a childish, unworkable political system, but it’s better than the bizarre blend of state support for the rich and laissez-faire for the poor that the GOP currently espouses.
4. Herman Cain (LR: 3)
I guessed last time around that Cain would lose support. I didn’t expect it to be due to a sexual harassment scandal. But that, combined with his disastrous non-answer to the Libya question, has caused his support to crater.
Cain’s support is still in double-digits simply because the far right has not seen another viable alternative to Romney. Perry is a train wreck, Bachmann is Bachmann, Santorum has his Google problem, Paul doesn’t hate gay people or Muslims enough, and Huntsman is like Romney only more liberal. Given that it’s too late for a white knight, conservatives have held onto Cain as their life raft.
The question will be whether Gingrich’s apostasies and mess of a family life will keep the far right from embracing him. I don’t think it will; Newt has said all sorts of dumb things, but he’s got a three-decade career of being a douchebag of conservatism. That will count for something.
The best hope for Cain is that Newt’s lobbying and infidelity cause him to fall. If that happens, then Cain could end up rebounding and regaining his standing as the best candidate to stop Mitt. But I don’t see that happening. Even though the Republicans tried valiantly to prop Cain up in the midst of the his sexual harassment scandal, they know in their hearts that it’s dealt a fatal blow to his chances in a general election. Newt still has a chance; they’ll back him before they back a sure loser. And if Newt fails, they’ll find someone who isn’t Cain.
5. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (LR: 4)
Perry has had a collapse unparalleled in modern political history. Sure, Fred Thompson burst onto the scene four years ago and made some noise before disappearing. But Big Sleepy’s fall was not so precipitous, and not nearly as visible. Thompson fell slowly, because he wasn’t that exciting and didn’t run a particularly vibrant race. Perry has collapsed through gaffe after gaffe, horrible debate performance after horrible debate performance. His epic, never-ending debate gaffe was just the final nail in the coffin. It confirmed what everyone in the nation had already concluded: the man is not bright enough to be president.
Perry has a lot of money left, but at this point, I can’t imagine how he undoes the damage he’s done to his own image. Not only can’t I imagine him winning the GOP primary, I can’t imagine him winning another election, even as a Republican in Texas. Rick Perry’s political career is over; he talked himself to death.
6. Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn. (LR: 6)
There were two candidates who could have been beneficiaries of a Cain drop-off. Rick Santorum was one, and Newt Gingrich was the other. And the GOP voters appear to have chosen Newt.
I’m not sure what it is about Santorum; whatever appeal he once had, it’s gone. I think it’s the vibe he gives off, an old-school fundamentalist vibe — one more of the 70s and 80s than today. Santorum feels like he would fit right in with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, but that’s not the manner of today’s evangelical right. They’re more Bachmann — angrier, more strident, more in-your-face.
Maybe it’s something else. I don’t know. All I know is that whatever the GOP is looking for, it isn’t Rick Santorum. He’s done.
7. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. (LR: 7)
Our Michele is showing no indication of regaining her previous lofty heights. She remains an afterthought in the polls, and for whatever reason, she seems mired in also-ran territory. Which is, of course, where a ludicrously conservative conspiracy theorist backbencher belongs.
That Bachmann ever had a lead in the polls is a huge indictment of the state of the current Republican Party. Sure, someone like her can get elected to Congress — there have always been extremists, in both parties, who have managed to bubble up through the ranks and get elected from safe districts. But that’s the ceiling for them; they don’t get taken seriously for president, not by serious parties. The Republicans of 2012, of course, are not serious. And while Michele Bachmann may have been an awful candidate, she is — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — no less awful than the three men who have succeeded her as front-runner. Perry is foolish, Cain is vacuous, and Gingrich is licentious. Michele Bachmann may have spouted bizarre gibberish on Libya, but she would have spouted it immediately, and with fervor. She knows damn well what 37 agencies she wants to cut, and she sold out to Fannie Mae for far less money than Newt sold out to Freddie Mac. And say what you want about Michele Bachmann, but she is no flip-flopper. She’s held the same ridiculous positions her entire political career.
Michele Bachmann is superior in many ways to the men who have surpassed her in the polls. That should terrify America. It terrifies me.
8. Former Ambassador Jon Huntsman (LR: 9)
Huntsman is doomed for the same reason Huntsman has always been doomed: he’s far too moderate for the Republican Party. Don’t misunderstand me: Huntsman is not a moderate. He endorsed Paul Ryan’s debt plan, which would be seriously damaging to America. But he’s at least willing to entertain the idea that political parties should work across the aisle. He’s not dedicated to destroying the Democrats at all cost, even the cost of the nation itself. And for that reason, he will never get the nomination of today’s GOP.
The only impact Huntsman will have on this race is by possibly making things interesting in New Hampshire. Huntsman has gone all-in on the Granite State, and while that state will most certainly be his Waterloo, he could still cut into the support of fellow moderate Mormon ex-governor Mitt Romney. Cut in enough, and Mitt could find himself underperforming expectations there — and that could sink Mittens. Of course, more likely is that Huntsman gets his gentleman’s three percent, and vanishes until 2016.
9. Former La. Gov. Buddy Roemer (LR: 11)
Roemer rises because a few of his positive quotes about Occupy Wall Street have trickled into the mainstream media, so…that’s something, I guess. But running for president as a Republican opposed to money in politics is like running for president as a Democrat opposed to Social Security. Getting more money into politics is a core Republican value. Indeed, it’s arguably the glue that binds the whole coalition together. Roemer is right that money in politics is a problem, and that we need to find a way to regulate it. But he’s wrong to think that he’ll ever convince a significant number of Republicans of that.
10. Former N.M. Gov. Gary Johnson (LR: 10)
Remember Gary Johnson? He’s still running for President. Honest, he is. No, seriously — he’s on the ballot and everything. If you are heavily invested in smoking pot, you might have heard of him, or maybe not — it’s hazy. If you aren’t, you haven’t heard of him. Don’t feel bad. Neither has anyone else.
11. Jimmy “The Rent is Too Damn High” McMillan (LR: 12)
With the ouster of protesters from Zuccotti Park, a prominent challenge to the too highness of the damn rent has been eliminated. That leaves Jimmy McMillan to save the day, reminding Americans of a simple truth: The Rent is Too Damn High. And it is, my friends. It unquestionably is.
12. Fred Karger (LR: 13)
Karger gets an up arrow because I actually heard something he said about Florida’s GOP chair. I don’t remember what it was — he was upset, as I recall — and I’m too lazy to look it up. And I’m not sure if it was on the radio or Twitter or something. But still, I actually heard Fred Karger’s name mentioned by someone somewhere. That’s progress.
Democrats
1. President Barack Obama (LR: 1)
Obama’s nomination is assured, of course, but it should be noted that his polling is continuing to improve, and that he is looking much stronger going into 2012 than he was coming out of 2010. For this, he owes a huge thank-you to the Republican Party, which has managed to do just about everything conceivable wrong in the past year.
As of right now, I’d rate Obama’s chances of being re-elected as 70-30; if the Republicans nominate anyone who’s name doesn’t rhyme with “spit,” those odds go 90-10.
2. Randall Terry (LR: 2)
Terry continues to get absolutely no traction, but that’s okay; his main goal is to run disturbingly graphic anti-choice ads during the Super Bowl. Of course, everyone thinks the fetus-picture people are a bunch of douchebags, even most conservatives, so I welcome that. Far from being shocked that surgery is messy, Americans will draw the conclusion that anti-choicers are assholes. Which they are.
Falling Out:
Ralph Nader (LR: 2)
Nader and Cornell West missed the deadline to get anyone on the ballot to challenge Obama in New Hampshire, and they’re unlikely to succeed elsewhere. For all their griping, the overwhelming majority of Democrats are behind Obama, and while I have no data to back this up, my guess is that the overwhelming majority of those most disaffected with Obama still understand that challenging him in the primary is a disaster waiting to happen.
In a way, I think Occupy Wall Street sucked the wind out of Nader’s sails. They conclusively demonstrated that there are other, more effective ways to get a politician’s attention than mounting a primary challenge. And Obama’s embrace of their core message undercut the emoprog argument that Obama is a secret Reaganite.
Whatever the reason, any hope of a primary challenge against Obama has fizzled. This doesn’t mean Ralph might not mount yet another independent run for the White House, of course. He’s like Pat Paulsen, only he isn’t funny.
I’m not going to add much to what I’ve written about Penn State so far, at least not until more information comes out (and it most certainly will). But for those who are interested in a detailed timeline of what happened and when, asiangrrlMN has a great three-part primer over at Angry Black Lady Chronicles. (Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here.) I encourage people to read it, but do be warned that it is triggering, even for those of us fortunate enough not to have suffered abuse.
One thing I do want to highlight from her posts is this:
I want to share a resource for boys and men who have been sexually assaulted. It’s called 1in6.org, and it’s called that for a reason. 1 in 6 men have been sexually assaulted, and we don’t talk about it. Women who have been sexually assaulted have resources and support and can at least talk about it with some people. It’s still a terrible, difficult thing For men, there are different issues of shame and isolation and simply not having the resources. That’s why we have to talk about it and keep talking about it, screaming about it, really, even if people tell us to shut the fuck up. That is part of the reason I’m writing about the PSU outrage – we can’t afford to let this be a two-day wonder.
That is absolutely right. More women than men have suffered sexual abuse. But the number of men who have been abused, especially those abused as children, is still staggeringly and depressingly high. And they must be told, in no uncertain terms, that it was not their fault, that they did nothing wrong, and that all decent people support them unconditionally. Anyone who is raped or sexually assaulted is deserving of our support and compassion. And anyone who rapes or sexually assaults someone is deserving of our opprobrium. Gender is irrelevant to those statements.
One of the first stories I ever followed on this blog was the University of Colorado rape and sexual abuse scandal. For those who’ve forgotten — there have been a lot of rape and sexual abuse scandals over the years — the University of Colorado football team was accused of using the promise of sexual favors as a recruiting tool. One former Colorado player who had the temerity to be female, Katie Hnida, came forward to admit that she had been raped while at the school.
Coach Gary Barnett responded by criticizing her skill as a kicker.
As these charges flew, Kate Fagan was inside the bubble. She played basketball for Colorado. She was put forward to answer the charges against the school, and to defend the institution.
While NBC Nightly News dimmed the lights inside the arena, set up two chairs facing one another, and adjusted the cameras, I paced the baseline and wondered if my answers would make the University of Colorado proud.
My school was mired in a recruiting scandal. NBC wanted to know how a female student-athlete felt about the charge that our football program used sex as a recruiting tool. The national media were pouring into Boulder as if the coasts had been lifted, everyone tumbling to the middle.
We were closing ranks inside the athletic department. Buffaloes above all else. The University of Colorado was being attacked from all sides; we were in self-protection mode.
Those months in 2004 were a light sprinkle compared to the thunderstorm that has descended upon Penn State. Former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is charged with sexually assaulting young boys. Important members of the hierarchy, such as head coach Joe Paterno and athletic director Tim Curley, are charged – some formally, some in the court of public opinion – with failing to report Sandusky’s actions to police, for failing to protect our children in favor of their program.
As a 21-year-old in Boulder, I couldn’t see the humanity – the women whose lives had been damaged – standing just outside our black-and-gold athletic gates. I pulled on my CU letter jacket and refused to understand why a few women wanted to destroy our athletic family.
Fagan’s conduct can be forgiven. She was 21. Like the students who inexplicably rioted in support of Joe Paterno, she was too young to have gained a sense of perspective, or an ability to step outside herself and place herself in someone else’s shoes. It takes time to develop empathy. Time living in the real world. And college students usually haven’t had any of that. She can be forgiven her lapse, especially as she’s done what we’re all called to do: grown up.
Big-time athletic programs are not entirely unlike nation-states. Everyone wears the colors, says the pledge, and sings the school anthem. Everyone worships the logo, recites the fight song, and reports up the chain of command.
Everyone’s committed to defeating a common enemy: Ohio State or Nebraska or Michigan.
This is what makes college athletics galvanizing and wonderful. And also, for anyone who has been inside it, it’s what can make college athletics frightening. When you’re inside, you’re often a rah-rah believer. Blind acceptance exists that coaches and administrators, those who have established the institution’s culture, possess absolute authority. They’re accountable only to one another or not at all. The bad stuff can be handled internally, must be handled internally, unless it’s so bad it seeps out the office door.
And this is why, of course, Joe Paterno had to be fired. Because Paterno handled this precisely like every other college program facing every other scandal has: by burying it. Allegations against Sandusky first surfaced in 1998. Sandusky quietly stepped down from the team in 1999. No less an authority on rogue programs than Barry Switzer said, “Having been in this profession a long time and knowing how close coaching staffs are, I knew that this was a secret that was kept secret. Everyone on that staff had to have known, the ones that had been around a long time.”
And yes, of course they did. Sandusky was investigated in 1998, in Joe Paterno’s town. Are you telling me he didn’t know? Paterno himself was told, flat out, that abuse had happened in Paterno’s own locker room. Did Paterno respond by going to the cops, or at least telling Mike McQueary to go to the cops? No, he passed it up the line, to his “superior.”
JoePa was the King of State College. He didn’t have superiors.
And as Fagan reminds us, the man Paterno notified would go on to fail less sickening, but no less serious tests of character:
Is it a coincidence that Penn State is responsible for two of the most inflammatory college scandals of the last quarter-century? Women’s basketball coach Rene Portland “resigned” amid charges of anti-gay discrimination. She had coached successfully at Penn State for 27 years. The Penn State administration – Curley was Penn State’s athletic director then, too – allowed Portland to run her program in whatever way suited her personal beliefs. She scared lesbians into the closet and revoked scholarships based on sexuality.
Just look the other way. Nothing to see here.
Sound familiar?
Sounds very familiar. Like every college scandal, from Miami to Oklahoma to Minnesota to Colorado to USC to Ohio State back to Miami and now to Penn State, and all the dozens of other stops in between. Preserving the reputation of The Program becomes more important than preserving integrity as humans. As Fagan says:
But Penn State is no more guilty than other powerhouse athletic departments and universities. Believe this: These things could have happened anywhere. It’s the protective cocoon of big-time athletics.
The longer you reside within that cocoon, the more entrenched you become in the culture. Administrators and coaches often morph from humans who react with humanity into vassals charged with protecting the institutional image. Preserving legacy and mystique are placed ahead of a child’s – or a woman’s – pain.
Joe Paterno was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be more ethically pure than the lords who oversaw more maculate realms. But he wasn’t. When he and his program were confronted with a scandal that literally crosses every possible bright line, one that was almost metaphysically wrong, Paterno covered it up. For the 13 years from the time Sandusky was investigated by police in 1998, for the 11 years from the time a janitor saw Sandusky abusing a child, for the nine years from the time a grad assistant told him what he saw in the locker room, for the two years that Sandusky was under investigation by a grand jury, all the way up through the week where he became the winningest coach in Division I FBS history, Paterno kept silent, to preserve the reputation of The Program.
Today, The Program lies shattered, and Paterno is compared to Woody Hayes. Yes, inside the bubble, I’m sure it made sense to hide, to cover up, to obfuscate. But the vast majority of us live outside the bubble, and out here, the pain of a child rape victim is far more important than Penn State football could ever be.
The news from the Penn State football program is as horrible a story as we have heard in college athletics, and that is truly saying something. For a scandal to stand out against the NCAA’s miasma of academic, financial, and sex scandals, it must be truly beyond the pale, and the news handed down in State College, Pa., on Saturday truly was. Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant coach who had maintained offices at the university even after retiring in 1999, was indicted on 40 counts of criminal sexual abuse of eight minors, all under the age of 16, at least one as young as eight. He had been investigated in 1999, the year he — perhaps not coincidentally — decided to leave coaching, but no charges were filed against him at that time. An investigation only began in earnest in 2009, leading to his indictment Saturday.
That would be awful, truly awful. But it would not, perhaps, have reflected poorly on Penn State; had they not known about Sandusky’s actions, or better, had they known and done something, the sins would be his and his alone.
If.
But Penn State did know about the allegations against Sandusky. Indeed, one of the acts of abuse took place in 2002, in the Penn State locker room, and was witnessed by a graduate assistant:
At approximately 9:30 p.m. on March 1, 2002, a Penn State graduate assistant entered what should have been an empty football locker room. He was surprised to hear the showers running and noises he thought sounded like sexual activity, according to a Pennsylvania grand jury “finding of fact” released Saturday.
When he looked in the shower he saw what he estimated to be a 10-year-old boy, hands pressed up against the wall, “being subjected to anal intercourse,” by Jerry Sandusky, then 58 and Penn State’s former defensive coordinator. The grad assistant said both the boy and the coach saw him before he fled to his office where, distraught and stunned, the grad assistant telephoned his father, who instructed his son to flee the building.
The next day, a Saturday, the grad assistant went to the home of head coach Joe Paterno and told him what he had seen. The day after that, Paterno called Penn State athletic director Tim Curley to his home to report that the grad assistant had told him he had witnessed “Jerry Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy.”
A week-and-a-half later, according to the grand jury report, the grad assistant was called to a meeting with Curley and Gary Schultz, the school’s senior vice president for finance and business, where he retold his story.
This would be beyond disturbing news, but the actions that Curley and Schultz (and, probably, Paterno) were to take were clear. Penn State is a school, and officials at schools are mandated reporters. They have to report incidents of possible child abuse to the appropriate authorities.
They did not.
Curley did not notify university police or have the graduate assistant further questioned involving the incident. No other legal or university entity investigated the case.
Merely alerting police would’ve been significant since they investigated Sandusky in 1998 for “incidents with children in football building showers.” Curley never asked for a background check on Sandusky.
Curley instead took it upon himself to inform the director of “Second Mile” about the charge, although it didn’t concern potential sodomy of a minor.
Curley told the grand jury he was merely told that Sandusky was “horsing around” with the boy. The grand jury did not find that credible in part because Schultz said he had gotten the impression “Sandusky might have inappropriately grabbed the young boys’ genitals while wrestling around.” Both Curley and Schultz are charged with perjury for claiming the grad assistant didn’t inform them of “sexual activity.”
Curley later met with Sandusky and told him he was no longer allowed to bring children onto the Penn State campus. He forwarded the report on to university president Graham Spanier, who approved of Sandusky’s ban from bringing children onto campus and himself never reported the incident to police.
And so Jerry Sandusky was truly punished. He couldn’t rape kids on Penn State’s campus any more. He’d have to rape them somewhere else.
Sandusky was not reported to authorities. He himself was not banned from campus. The school didn’t even have the decency to try to find the identity of the child.
You can’t tell me that Curley and Schmidt were clueless, either. Even the cover story — that Sandusky was showering nude with a 10-year-old, alone, and that they were “horsing around” — rings so many alarm bells that it’s sickening. That alone would warrant an investigation. That alone would warrant serious questions. That alone would be wandering up to the line of criminality, if not crossing it clearly. It certainly would cause anyone who cared more about kids than their program’s reputation to call the police and suggest that they look into the matter.
But Curley and Schmidt actively swept the incident under the rug. And for that, and for lying to a grand jury, they’ve ended up indicted on two felonies each. Joe Paterno, the eternally-tenured coach of the Nittany Lions, managed to avoid criminal prosecution, because he at least reported the incident to Curley. But given that Curley works for Paterno as much as Paterno works for Curley, it’s hard to say that Paterno walks away from the incident with his reputation intact. Nothing prevented him from calling the cops himself.
No, Curley, Schmidt, and Paterno all chose to put the Penn State football program above abused kids, to let things die quietly — and to let Sandusky keep abusing kids — in order to keep things out of the media.
And the school is still trying to pretend that it didn’t fail on a massive scale. Even with two of his subordinates indicted, and amid allegations of a child rape occurring on his campus, Penn State University President Graham Spanier issued a statement that truly defies any standard of decency. I’m reprinting it in its entirety, because it must be read in full for its callousness to be understood:
The allegations about a former coach are troubling, and it is appropriate that they be investigated thoroughly. Protecting children requires the utmost vigilance.
With regard to the other presentments, I wish to say that Tim Curley and Gary Schultz have my unconditional support. I have known and worked daily with Tim and Gary for more than 16 years. I have complete confidence in how they have handled the allegations about a former University employee.
Tim Curley and Gary Schultz operate at the highest levels of honesty, integrity and compassion. I am confident the record will show that these charges are groundless and that they conducted themselves professionally and appropriately.
This is sickening. First, note what Spanier doesn’t express: any shred of concern for Sandusky’s victims. Second, Spanier somehow manages to claim that Curley and Schultz possess “the highest levels of honesty, integrity, and compassion.” But by their own admission, they chose not to report what was at best a very troubling, credible, and serious criminal allegation to authorities, as they were required to do by law. That’s not showing integrity. They gave conflicting statements to the grand jury. That’s not honesty. And compassion? They never asked the boy’s name.
They had no compassion for him. They didn’t care whether he was raped. Didn’t care whether he lived or died, frankly. They just covered their own asses, and Sandusky’s to boot.
Even if the facts are exactly as Curley and Schultz claim, they should be fired for their incredible lack of judgment. Paterno likely deserves to go as well — an ignominious end, to be sure, but he made his choice no less than the others. As for Spanier, well, any school official who could be so cavalier about allegations of criminal activity on his own campus is ipso facto unfit to lead. He should be dismissed immediately, and frankly, given his statement, I believe investigators should look into what he knew about this incident, and when he knew it.
The saddest part of the story is that it isn’t all that surprising. The alleged crimes of Sandusky were monstrous, to be sure. But they are only different by degree from the star athlete who rapes someone, only to have the school administration pressure her to keep things quiet, to not make waves, to not wreck the boy’s life. Faced with a horrific and undeniable act of sexual abuse by a man who had been accused of similar behavior in the past, the Penn State administration and coaches chose to obfuscate, to deny, and to ultimately short-circuit any criminal investigation. It makes me wonder how many other times they’ve covered up malfeasance, and how many more victims’ scars went ignored.
I haven’t had much to say about Herman Cain’s sexual harassment of a couple former subordinates, because frankly, nothing I could say would be more damaging to Cain than his own…er…”evolving” statements have been. Protip: When denying a sexual harassment settlement, it helps for there not to have been a sexual harassment settlement, and no, nobody outside of the fringe is buying the “it was an agreement, not a settlement” line.
Still, because Herman Cain is a Republican, Republicans have felt compelled to come out and defend him against those joyless women who obviously hate men. I mean, those ugly feminists should be grateful that a powerful man would demean and sexualize them in the workplace, amirite?
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has an interesting take on Herman Cain’s growing scandal: honestly, he says, these days it seems like women can’t take a joke.
“There are people now who hesitate to tell a joke to a woman in the workplace, any kind of joke, because it could be interpreted incorrectly,” he told the National Review. “I don’t. I’m very cautious.”
Well, yeah. I mean, you kidnap one girl, and the next thing you know, she’s mad at you! Women. Amirite?
If you follow events on the intertubes, you may have heard of the sad case of Amber Cole, a 14-year-old girl who was videotaped giving oral sex to a boy the same age, as one of his friends watched. The other videotaped it, of course; then, being a massive douche, he uploaded it to Facebook. From there it went viral, because I guess child pornography is okay now.
If you’ve followed reality for the past ever, you know exactly how this has gone down. Amber Cole’s name has been spread far and wide across the internet. The boys in the video remain anonymous. Amber’s transgression is viewed as totally awful; the boys — well, they’ll be boys, amirite?
Meanwhile, there’s been not enough of a strong defense of Amber — who is African American — from the white feminist community. I’m not sure why, though I suspect it’s a bit of fallout from the Slutwalk whitesplaining debacle. This needs to stop; Amber Cole doesn’t deserve to have me know her name and her teen sins, and that is something that any decent human should say without reservation. We can do that without wading back into the Slutwalk controversy (such as it is — anyone with the vaguest understanding of white privilege knows what went wrong there, and why. It’s not so much a controversy as Exhibit Q for the proposition that being liberal does not make one automatically anti-racist.)
So yes, we should vocally defend Amber Cole. Not to say that there aren’t potentially interesting things we could talk about regarding intersectionality, the way that African American women who are sexually active are treated differently than white women, and the marginalizing of non-white voices in the feminist community. These are all important and serious issues that we should deal with in an open and honest manner. And we could use the Amber Cole case as an opportunity to do so. I’d love to see, say, Jezebel post something by an African American writer regarding this debacle. And lo and behold, they have!
This is great. Or it would be great, if the writer in question was, say, Pam Spaulding or Renee Martin. But it isn’t. No, the writer in question is Jimi Izrael who, you may have noticed, is a guy. Now, being a male feminist, that’s not so much a problem. What is a problem is that Izrael is not a feminist. He’s an unrepentant MRAwhose main take on the Chris Brown attack on Rhianna was to talk about how Rhianna shouldn’t have been reading Chris’ text messages. He’s best known for a bookin which he castigates African American women for being too picky and choosing handsome alpha males instead of Nice Guys™.
So yeah. This should be awesome, if by “awesome” you mean “horrifying.” An the “awesome” starts right with the headline.
I Am Amber Cole’s Father
He’s…he’s not going to pretend he’s Amber’s dad, is he? That would be…that would be awful. Tell me he isn’t going to….
I am Amber Cole’s father. I am angry, confused and completely at a loss. I love my daughter. I want to guide her without suppressing her. That is not always easy. Children need protection from their worst inclinations. That is not always easy.
Oh, fuck me.
I am trying to convince her that the world will still love her if she keeps her clothes on. I do not know if she can hear me, or if she is listening. She would listen to her mother, if her mother was not busy. Doing something, anything that is not parenting. I want her mother to spend less time being “empowered” and more time being aware and engaged with our daughter. I want her mother to be a better role model, not a BFF. It takes two.
Correction: fuck you.
Where the hell did that come from? Where in God’s name did Izrael come up with that half a paragraph? There’s been no evidence put forward that Amber’s mother is particularly disengaged or a bad parent. No evidence that she failed to talk to Amber about anything. No evidence that she’s anything other than a good, dedicated parent. Near as I can tell, this sequence is just pure, free-floating misogyny projected onto a situation that Izrael knows very little about. It won’t be the last.
Anyhow, Izrael’s first paragraph was about attacking Amber’s mom. Hopefully, he’ll mention the boys who, you know, videotaped this and uploaded it to the internet. After all, we know they did something wrong.
I am Amber Cole’s father and this should go with saying: I am angry with those boys.
Well, okay. That’s…
But I knew those boys. Those boys were my friends. I grew up with those boys, hung out with those boys.
You know what I would never, never, never say about boys who intentionally degraded my daughter? This. I can assure you, if God forbid anyone should ever violate my daughter’s privacy and trust like that, my vengeance will be swift and awesome. I will not muse that I knew boys like you; I will do everything in my power to make your life miserable.
No father could reminisce about his childhood while talking about his child being shamed. No father worth a damn, anyhow.
But I was always The Other Guy – the boy you do not see on the tape. The one who, because of religious beliefs, self-respect or common sense decides to have no parts of such a thing. He is a nerd. He is an outsider. He is long gone, at home reading and writing. I want to meet The Other Guy and shake his hand. I’m trying to raise The Other Guy. But it is not easy. Girls don’t like The Other Guy. Being the Other Guy is not as cool as being one of the boys. I want to raise my boy to not be that kind of cool. Being a gentleman is cool. I want him to get the chance I did not have. I want him to to wait for that special girl.
Oh. My. God. He did not just pull out a Nice Guy™ whine in the second fucking paragraph of his post on how he loves his fake daughter, did he? He did? Kunapipi, take the wheel.
And by the way, you know how you can ensure that your son doesn’t grow up to treat women with respect? Tell him that women don’t respect decent guys — but that he should be one anyhow. That’s a message that is going to have 50 percent effectiveness.
I am Amber Cole’s father and I have seen the video.
You know what I will never, never, never, never, never do? Watch a sex video with my daughter in it. Ever. Period. Seriously, I’d rather blind myself.
You probably have too.
Nope. Not into kiddie porn. Especially when it was uploaded specifically to shame a 14-year-old girl.
I would like to ask her mother’s boyfriend, Karrine Steffans or Kim Kardashian where my daughter learned that. How she became proficient at such a difficult act.
Now, I’m not going to run down blowjobs here. They’re great, and I think most men enjoy receiving them from their partners. But let’s face it, they’re not rocket science. I’ve never given one, but I think if I for some reason decided to, I could figure it out. Indeed, billions of men and women have managed to figure it out just fine, even before Kim Kardashian was born!
I want to know who has been teaching my little girl how to act like a woman while I have been trying to teach her to be a young lady. Teens don’t have the tools they need to express, explore and comprehend the consequences of careless intimacy. I want to know what kinds of people we are allowing to look after our children when we are not around. I want to know why my 14 year-old knows so much about oral sex.
Look, Amber and her partner are ahead of where I was at 14, but not by much. I knew what a blowjob was at 14. I hadn’t had one, but I wouldn’t have turned one down, either. Now, I was too young to engage in that level of physical intimacy, but like roughly every 14-year-old on the planet, knowing that probably wouldn’t have stopped me.
I think it’s good that we tell our kids about sex. That we set them up to learn what it is and what it isn’t. I’m not going to pretend that I think Amber or her partner made good choices here — if Amber made her decision freely, it wasn’t a good one, and however things went down, her partner made a bad one. But I’m not going to pretend that nobody was making bad choices about sex twenty years ago, or two hundred, or two thousand. Romeo and Juliet were about 14; teens have been making bad decisions about sex forever.
Of course, this supposes the act was consensual. It might not have been, not fully. Which takes this out of “bad decision” territory and into “rape” territory. This should go without saying; certainly, Izrael doesn’t say anything about it. But that’s because he assumes his not-daughter was behaving like a slut. Any other possibility never crosses his mind.
And now, let the dynamite go boom.
I am Amber Cole’s father, and I am not raising a slut. White feminists can teach their own little girls to find empowerment through their crotches – my brown little girl cannot afford to be that carefree and cavalier with her life choices.
A few commenters on Jezebel defended this part. I’m not going to. Oh, Izrael is right that African American women do not have the freedom to be as open about their sexuality as White women do, at least for now. But that’s not a good thing; that’s something that hopefully will change someday. And I don’t know any women, not even the most sex-positive of the sex-positive, who are arguing that they’ve found “empowerment through their crotches.” What they’ve said — and what I believe — is that what they choose to do with those crotches is their own damn business, and that doesn’t define whether they’re worthwhile or not.
But — and this is the important part — Amber wasn’t giving quasi-public blowjobs to her boyfriend to empower herself. If rumors are to be believed, she was doing it to win back an ex. Or maybe win a boy’s affection. She was doing it to get attention from boys. If other sources are to be believed, she was coerced into it. If Izrael was serious about caring about Amber, he’d ask why his not-daughter felt she had to use sex to hold onto a relationship, or worse, why she had no choice but to engage in a sex act. And why we teach our sons that this is a price they can demand.
But he’s not interested in that discussion. He’d much rather bash white feminists.
Slutlife is the hard, lonely vocation of rich, educated, privileged white women who will fuck The World, contract social diseases and still, somehow find a husband. No black woman ever got far being a slut. I want to know what kind of women “slutwalk,” while young impressionable girls of all kinds look on with wonder and admiration. I want to know why these same women run to protect Miley Cyrus but just shrugged, nonplussed for my little brown girl. I want to know what the fuck those dumb bunnies are thinking. Most of them do not have daughters. I want my daughter, the woman, to have healthy, vibrant sexuality. My little girl should have other priorities. I am her father. I will protect her and every woman in my life with my life.
That paragraph is all over the map. White feminists are sluts who won’t stick up for my not-daughter! And they’re also stupid and don’t have daughters, unlike me with my not-daughter, who I want to have a healthy sexuality! I don’t want her to care about sexuality. I’m her not-father, and I’ll protect her with my life, but I don’t really care enough to get mad at the boys who were involved here.
And that’s the rub. There’s far more vitriol in this column for white feminists, Kim Kardashian, and a fictional representation of Amber Cole’s mother than for the boys who actually and certainly videotaped this act and uploaded it to the internet, and may have pressured her into the act itself. Women suck. Boys will be boys. But boy, Izrael sure cares about Amber, so much that he’s gonna bring it home with a pure MRA rant.
I am Amber Cole’s father. Don’t ask where I was that afternoon, because you already know. I was at work, just like you. I do not live with her, cannot always talk to her, cannot always be there. Not the way I want, and there are few laws to help me. To protect me and my rights. No one cares that I cannot be the kind of father I would like to be, until my daughter is a link, a hashtag, a trending topic. A punch-line. The subject of what may be the most widely seen piece of child pornography in history: A 14 year-old giving oral while two other boys watch and laugh. You say what you would do, what you would say, but you have no idea. We are all great parents with other people’s children. You blame me. Do not judge me. I love my daughter as much as you love yours. I am doing the best I can. I need the help of a partner who at times seems to be modeling the kind of behavior I am discouraging. We are fighting. Pushing and pulling, in no one’s best interest. Why can’t this be about my daughter? No, this is not about blame. It takes a village that starts with parents – all parties must be accountable. But parenting? Yeah. To do it well–even after all these years –it still takes two.
And again, we go back to the projection of what Izrael sees as the relationship between Amber’s parents, a relationship that he has no connection to whatsoever. Amber’s mother and father may be together. They may be split up. I don’t know, and a quick Google search doesn’t tell me. Maybe they are split up. They could be.
But if they are, there’s no evidence that Amber’s mom is fighting with her dad. No evidence that Amber’s dad is shut out of the relationship in favor of the mom. And not for nothing, but sometimes, despite the best parenting in the world, kids screw up. If the act was consensual, I don’t really blame Amber and her partner for it. In the grand scheme of things, they did nothing that millions of 14-year-olds haven’t done, and if it was a bad decision, it’s a bad decision that they share will many, many others.
As for Izrael’s questions — what would I do? What would I say? I don’t know. I feel awful for Amber and for her family. I wouldn’t substitute my judgment for theirs. I hope I could find a way to be supportive, while keeping myself from murdering anyone. But I don’t know how Amber Cole’s family works, and I won’t pretend I do. Unlike Izrael, who’s decided her family works like every MRA’s fever dream says it does.
Bring it home with the awful.
Kid sex is as old as time, but that realization doesn’t make me feel any better. Amber Cole is my daughter.
I am Jimi Izrael. I am not really Amber Cole’s father. But she is my daughter.
You do not think so. But she is your daughter too.
No, she isn’t. And she isn’t your daughter, either.
Do you hear me? She isn’t your daughter.
Amber Cole doesn’t need you as a father. Indeed, thank God she doesn’t have you as a father. At a time when she’s had an intimate act spread across the internet, had her name plastered up on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter, had her morals questioned and her technique critiqued, she needs parents who actually will try to support her. I don’t know if her parents will. But you sure as hell won’t.
You’re too interested in moralizing and lecturing and blaming women — over and over again — to give more than a passing nod to the greatest lapse of judgment in this sad, sordid affair. Not Amber giving a blowjob, nor her partner receiving one, assuming it was consensual. Not even the act being done with his friends around. But the decision — willful, premeditated, and with malice aforethought — to videotape the act and upload the video to the internet, where it was bound to spread. Giving in to sexual urges? Nobody who’s done so can truly claim that it’s a decision made completely rationally. But choosing to intentionally shame someone? That’s a choice. And a horrible one.
If you were really Amber’s father, the first thing you’d have written would be names — three names, to be specific. Yes, they’re minors, but so’s your daughter, and the whole world knows her name now. I’d be screaming the names of the boys who violated her. Telling them to anyone who would listen. I’d tell people this should be the called Adam, Billy and Chuck video. Wasn’t Adam a partner in the sex act? Wasn’t Billy watching? Didn’t Chuck hold the camera? Why aren’t they getting attacked? And by the way, given that there were three boys there, and one girl, and the boys were friends — how willingly did Amber consent? You never even to ask the fucking question. That would be my first question, and the first question of any decent father.
If you were Amber’s father, really Amber’s father, you’d be angry at YouTube and Facebook for keeping child pornography – child pornography – online after you notified them about it. You’d be angry at the school for not having their property adequately monitored. You’d be furious at the boys who at best merely violated her privacy, and at worst raped her. And you’d be focused on helping your daughter heal, not yelling and screaming about how bad her mom is. Because when your child is hurting, if you’re any kind of decent parent, that’s the only thing that matters.
You’re not Amber Cole’s father. She has a father. And he’s angry — about his belief that his daughter was coerced into doing this. He’s angry — about the way the video providers drug their heels after being asked to delete it. He’s pushing for charges to be filed against the boy who videotaped the act. He’s focused on those who hurt his daughter.
That’s what a real father does. Not slut-shame his daughter, or attack her mother. No, a real father goes to war to defend his daughter, goes full-tilt after those who wronged her. Fortunately for Amber Cole, she has a real father. And fortunately for her, Jimi, it isn’t you.
There is a reason that Mithras’ birthday was celebrated this time of year. A reason that Bacchus’ birthday, the Saturnalia, Jesus’ birthday, and the New Year come this time of year as well. For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, at 05:30 UTC tomorrow morning (11:30 PM Central Standard Time tonight) the Sun’s slow ebb reaches its nadir, and begins its welcome return. For those of us who live in northern climes it is a not insignificant day; the sun will not rise today in Minneapolis until 7:48 AM and will have set by 4:34 PM, a meager eight hours and forty-six minutes of daylight. And Minnesota is in the pink compared to, say, Stockholm, where tomorrow the sunrise doesn’t come until 8:44 AM and sunset is already complete at 2:48 PM–just over six hours of daylight.
It is no wonder that millennia ago, our forebearers saw this day as especially meaningful — the moment at which the Sun began its triumphant rebirth. Thus Mithras, the Sun God, was reborn on this day, to grow and prosper, rising until July, when he slowly began to wither and die. Thus the Son God, Jesus, has a story that, calendar be damned, fits well with the idea of Sol dying, and being resurrected. All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again, an infinite cycle, repeated infinitely — or as close to it as we humans can imagine.
1. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. (Last Rank: 8 )
2. Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney (LR: 2)
