If only Interpol, the US, and the UK used the breadth of police powers they used with Assange on every rape case. Maybe the Assange case will set a positive precedent.

I’m glad you’re boosting the signal on this.  I hope Sady takes care of herself.  She appears to be running solely on adrenaline.

OJ was framed?  That’s about as good as when you called anybody who didn’t declare Lovelle Mixon a victim of police brutality to be a cop lover. 

  The cops had been sucking up to OJ for years. Uniforms got to his house first and noted all the shit that idiots later claim were part of some so—called frame up, which Jeffrey Tobin demolished quite effectively. They saw bloody footprints, a glove, blood drops from the killer’s hands. Of course, for there to be a conspiracy, they had to have decided—-the lowest ranking members of the force—-to abruptly turn on one of their biggest boosters on behalf of an unknown killer who’d just butchered at least two rich people. I for one have always wanted to know where these wonderful Moriarty-like geniuses got OJ’s blood to plant, seeing as how he was more than halfway across the country by then.  Oh, yeah, and consider the LAPD is full of violent, sexist, domestic abusers who sympathize with OJ, it makes all the more sense for them to conspire against one dude who did the one thing they all long to do.  Yeah.  Simpson was nothing but a classic wife beater with more money and a higher profile and a police department in his pocket. He was Charles Thurman, basically, except with more money and publicity. Thurman had the cops in his pocket, too, but he wasn’t as famous.  People are always shocked when they see what men get away with, what other men—-even cops—-tolerate as long as some dude does it to a woman he’s already poked and owned. 

  When it comes to gender,  women are the ultimate lower class, the underclass. Men like Moore will whine and bitch and moan about the underdog, working class heroes, what the fuck ever, but women are always and permanently excluded from those categories. Women can’t be heroes, duh.  Women are just supposed to be men’s devoted staff behind the scenes, helping those heroes do their great heroic work. 

Michael Moore just revealed he’s as sexist as any unrepentant Republican.  It might be more by neglect than actual act, but once you scratch below the surface, he and Newtie could probably have a nice dinner table conversation about how evil those bitches are.  They only give a shit when it’s the guy on the other side of the aisle encroaching on their bitches. To guys like this, women just don’t exist independently of men.

I’ve maintained that, in the face of great pressure to be stupid about this, that we can be intelligent people who can handle the thought that Interpol being ridiculous doesn’t mean that the accusers are lying.

I would love to see this one on Twitter. Insomuch as 140 characters CAN convey complexities like the role of rape culture in this clusterfuck, that one is a grand slam.

Arguing on the internet is something everyone needs to occasionally step away from, even if the lies continue in your absence.  Dating a rape survivor counselor has led me to see how much stress eats away at people who care too much, and shown me how necessary it is for advocates to vent when confronted by the disbelievers and apologists.  She can’t get emotional while doing her work: she has to be supportive whether the survivor is going to prosecute or not, whether the family and friends are supportive or not, and she has to tell the family and friends (secondary survivors) to support her whether they disagree or not.  And then she comes home in a puddle and goes through all the anger and fear and exhaustion and all the rest and sees some idiot on facebook saying that consent isn’t retractable and some women lie and all this other stuff that she has to then confront with cold hard facts and ends up lashing out at people for all sorts of things.  And then she worries about whether or not she’s being a good advocate for her cause by lashing out, but she needs to vent.

When a six-year-old gets raped, that’s terrible enough without having people say that most men are just going to act a certain way under certain situations.  When a woman is left for dead out in the desert and can’t discuss her case because her jaw is wired shut and her arms are broken so she can’t write much, an advocate doesn’t need to hear that spurned women are sometimes willing to say anything to get back at their former boyfriend.  And when someone with dementia alternately discusses the man who raped her as a sweetie and a mean man and wonders if she’s going to get in any trouble because the police are there and the accused in this case has dementia himself, that advocate doesn’t want to hear that women in the prime of their life don’t have reliable memories.  She deals with grey areas all the time, but that doesn’t mean she can’t see other colors.

We have the best dinner conversations and pillow talk.

I think it is a useful thought exercize to consider what people would be saying if this was a different crime. If Assange were being held for traffic violations would his furiously fapping fan boys be up in arms saying that Assange was an excellent driver?

The 2 accuser’s ID’s have been outed. Olbermann even linked to a story outing one of the women on his twitter. I almost hope that those women have a cia/feminist/illuminati conspiracy keeping them safe.

Michael Moore is the latest in a long line of passive-aggressively selfish men whose status quo demands significant effort and cost borne—-often invisibly—-by women.

He is like the oblivious husband who has a “great” marriage because his wife is doing all the emotional work, and is surprised as all hell when she seeks a divorce because the misery has become unbearable to her and he never even noticed.

He is like the father who “babysits” his kids, and has never changed a diaper or gone to soothe a nightmare in the middle of the night, and thinks having kids is pure unmitigated joy and wants some more of them and wonders why the fuck his wife doesn’t feel the way he does.

He IS the man who will throw any woman’s safety, well-being, self-esteem, and human rights to the wolves to pay for his own relationship with her rapist or her abuser.

He’s also, apparently, one of those fair-weather douchebags who’s the best of allies on stuff HE cares about, and then is apathetic or downright hostile when something important to us comes up . . . kinda like the Republicans in the Senate, now that I think about it.

Gin, please walk and chew gum at the same time. I didn’t say OJ was innocent, nor did I say the cops planted all the evidence. But they juiced the case up.

We can be grown ups. If you can’t, fake it ‘til you make it.

When have Republicans been the best of allies?

some idiot on facebook saying that consent isn’t retractable

Honestly, that’s kinda like saying you’re not allowed to hit the brakes when you’re on the freeway and there’s a massive accident just ahead.

Consent gets revoked when something happens that makes the situation no longer good for the person revoking consent. Broken condom, panic attack, violation of boundaries, coercive/frightening behavior, pain or injury, whatever, the upshot is that when somebody revokes consent they’re generally already not going to be getting a nice pleasurable experience out of the encounter (and of course the revokation of consent also tends to preclude their getting off with their partner), and anyone whining that consent should be binding until THEY get their orgasm or whatever is effectively saying “I don’t care if I ruined it for you, how dare you ruin it for me!”

And the fact that that’s their default position indicates that they pretty much think of sex as all about them. Masturbation that uses someone else, who is supposed to provide them with such not because it’s any good for her, but for lighting up her dim little world with their glorious masculinity, or something.

I kind of always had the gut feeling that KO and Moore (especially Moore) were assholes even though I agreed with them a lot. Good to know my suspicions have been confirmed by this whole disgusting episode.

Oh, fuck you with your condescension, Amanda. You never did have the guts to admit you were wrong about Lovelle Mixon, and it’s rich to be lectured with stunning arrogance about chewing gum and walking when your standard cop lover accusation is nothing but intellectual laziness itself. As an added benefit, it gets you the ability to dismiss any and all opposition as being cop lovers, when it’s people calling bullshit on bullshit, on a standard knee jerk response.

Twitter is Least Common Denominator.  If you don’t have the ability to flood a channel, you will lose control over it.  It’s somewhat disgusting at times.

But why are Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore being tarred here, because they have other things to do than pay attention to each little twit rape apologist?

Can we just shut down the OJ-related banter?  OJ is a bad man who got away with what he did for a while due to his wealth and power but eventually was put where he belongs, in prison.

@Crissa: because Moore has lied about the specifics of the case, making him an actual rape apologist.  And Olbermann has issues with women.

I really have no idea how Sady Doyle does it.  She’s fast morphing from one of people whose posts I’m most excited to see turn up on my RSS reader to a personal hero.  Just reading and trying to beat back the vile, misogynistic comments on her Salon article was a soul-crushing experience.  I have no idea what it must be like to be the target of such a sustained tsunami of ignorant, damaged vitriol, but seeing her dedicate all of her intellectual and emotional resources to fighting the tsunami is pretty awe-inspiring.

OJ is not something to shut up about.  It’s just too illustrative of too many things, for better and worse.  The general consensus is pretty much as Amanda says: the police sometimes fudge things.  This isn’t a huge surprise for anyone who has had any long relationships with any part of the justice system.  His case also points to all sorts of cultural things, such as how easy it is to denounce something when the wrong person does it but how often the apologists come out when it’s one of them on the dock.

His current place in prison is pretty damn fishy considering all the prosecutor deals regarding the stuff going on in that Vegas hotel room and the full background of that case, but there aren’t a lot of people who are going to be rushing to his defense.  Some people get framed, some frame themselves.  And for a nation of laws supposedly based on a written Constitution and the Judeo-Christian Faiths, we sure do love the Karma.

I think this is all unfair to Michael Moore, I don’t think he has a sexist bone in his body.  I haven’t had a reason not to trust Moore these past 20+ years, I’m not going to start not trusting him now.

@#10- and you wonder what these people would say about withdrawing consent if the genders were reversed.  What if a man were in flagrante delicto and suddenly had chest pains or a back spasm, or started flashing back to ‘Nam or something and wanted to stop?  Would these same people say that the woman had the right to DEMAND that the man keep going if even if he didn’t want to?

That’s about as good as when you called anybody who didn’t declare Lovelle Mixon a victim of police brutality to be a cop lover.

I don’t recall anyone defending a cop killer, ginmar.  The ugly reality is that these incidents do create an excuse for the cops to bust skulls, one they’ll take, and denying that reality is a huge product of white privilege.

Yeah, because you won’t come out and do it honestly, but boy, you sure all are eager to ignore those women Mixon raped.

“Yeah, and neither officer that he killed ever got off a shot. Ms. Kate, you want to apologize now? Amanda, you got anything to say?”

I don’t know what Samhita said, but Ms. Kate and Amanda seemed to me to be talking about the likilihood that the Oakland PD was going to go out and behave more brutally than usual in unrelated cases, because the were pissed off about the murder of the their fellow officers by this Mixon guy. Whether this happened or not, who knows, but it’s not at all related to anything you typed.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/ft_worth_police_raid_gay_bar_on_anniversary_of_stonewall/undefined

I think this is all unfair to Michael Moore, I don’t think he has a sexist bone in his body.  I haven’t had a reason not to trust Moore these past 20+ years, I’m not going to start not trusting him now.

Yeah it’s not like he’s lied about the facts of a rape case, slandered the victims, and then laughed about it on television.  That definitely didn’t happen.

I like Michael Moore and think he’s a good person in general, but he does suffer from the same sexism that the Patriarchy implants in so many of us men.  He’s a decent fellow, so he will probably come to regret it.  But yes, he is doing a sexist thing with respect to Assange—or, rather, some of what he is doing with respect to Assange has sexist justifications.

Also, your bones aren’t sexist-your actions are.  If Michael Moore hadn’t done sexist shit, no one would call him a sexist, but he did and no amount “oh noes he are my hero, he pets puppies and loves kittens!” is going to change that.

Amanda, this is one of the few blogs out there that’s capable of maintaining their sanity about this issue. Thanks so much for that.

But what if Assange is innocent?  Then the whole “Moore is a sexist” thing is moot.  If he is right, then two people are getting unjustly smeared, three if you include Olbermann.  In the end, Moore won’t regret anything because he has nothing to regret.

There’s also this perceived mentality that if you think that Assange is innocent, you are a rape apologist.  Not true.  I think Amanda is right about most the rape apologist rhetoric, but I don’t think it applies to Michael Moore.

It’s unlikely that OJ was framed. His brilliant defense team exploited sloppy policework and relatively primitive state of forensic technology to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. The chain of evidence was compromised in innumerable ways. But the defense’s put forward an incredibly convoluted and theory of a framing that involved accidental spillage/cross-contamination at the crime lab and deliberate evidence-planting.

The main evidence that OJ’s blood might have been planted at the scene was the fact that traces of EDTA were found on evidence that was soaked with OJ’s blood. EDTA is used to prevent blood from coagulating in vials, and the crime lab had a sample of OJ’s blood for reference. Despite what the defense claimed, EDTA isn’t unique to blood vials. It’s also found in paint and other household products. The forensic tests of the day couldn’t differentiate between lab EDTA and other sources.

But what if Assange is innocent?  Then the whole “Moore is a sexist” thing is moot.  If he is right, then two people are getting unjustly smeared, three if you include Olbermann.  In the end, Moore won’t regret anything because he has nothing to regret.

There’s also this perceived mentality that if you think that Assange is innocent, you are a rape apologist.  Not true.  I think Amanda is right about most the rape apologist rhetoric, but I don’t think it applies to Michael Moore.

Have you been following this at all?  If you haven’t get your ass over to Tiger Beatdown and get caught up.  If you have, then you’re shit at trolling.

No, you lying sack of rape apologist shit-if Assange is innocent of the rape that he is accused of then he was still accused of rape and Michael Moore still lied about that, just like you’re lying now.  He has still spread around the names of the accusers, he has still lied about it, he has still laughed about it, he has still refused to apologize for it.  He’s still done all this shit and you’re supporting him.

Meanwhile, if Assange is found guilty, then the victims are still going to be smeared and attacked and harassed for as long as anyone remembers what Wikileaks even is.  And you’ll be okay with it, just like people like you are okay with all of it, because they’re women and victims and they only matter to you when you can use them to make a cheap point.

@24: Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. If Assange is innocent of the allegations against him, then the allegations that he is innocent of are still utterly and completely different from what Michael Moore said they were, ie, Moore lied on national television in two different countries about the facts of a rape investigation, because he doesn’t give two shits about rape investigations. Which is sexist.

what if Assange is innocent?  Then the whole “Moore is a sexist” thing is moot.

LOL wut?

How am I a “cop lover” when I accused them of corruption? That’s a fascinating suggestion that indicates strong black and white thinking.

But yes, he is doing a sexist thing with respect to Assange—or, rather, some of what he is doing with respect to Assange has sexist justifications.

He is doing a sexist thing—-rape apologism, especially from someone famous and most especially in a context that feeds a groundswelling of vicious contempt for 1) women who report rape, and 2) the idea that women who report rape generally do it because they were raped, is in fact quite thoroughly sexist in its effect.

Wrong, Albert. If you claim, without evidence, that the victims are lying, that is what makes you a rape apologist. If you get lucky, and the 5% chance you’re right comes to pass, this changes nothing. You chose to believe the worst about someone who had a 95% chance of being right, because of cultural narratives about women.

I really wish everybody who comments here were as capable of holding nuanced positions about the character of public figures as Amanda seems to be…

Michael Moore just revealed he’s as sexist as any unrepentant Republican.

No, he didn’t. He revealed that even men who are usually tremendous allies to progressive causes can say and do repugnant things which reinforce our society’s patriarchal rape apologist culture.

I’m not going to defend Moore’s conduct in this affair, because his conduct is indefensible. There’s simply no excuse for him to engage in the rape apologist rhetoric he’s used to try to defend Assange.

Having said that, claiming that Michael Moore is “as sexist as any unrepentant Republican” is mind-numbingly idiotic. If you’ll recall during the negotiations over healthcare reform, Moore very loudly and publicly slammed Rep. Bart Stupak (who happens to be Moore’s Congressman) for trying to force misogynist anti-choice restrictions into the healthcare bill. How many “sexist unrepentant Republicans” can you name who were as critical of the Stupak Amendment as Moore was?

It might be more by neglect than actual act, but once you scratch below the surface, he and Newtie could probably have a nice dinner table conversation about how evil those bitches are.

More ridiculous hyperbole. The world isn’t an absolute black and white place where people are either 100% your ally or 100% your enemy. As disgusting and disappointing as Moore’s position on this matter are, I would still argue that he has more progressive beliefs in his pinky than Gingrich has in his whole body. If I lived in a world where someone like Michael Moore is regarded as being just as despicable a human being as someone like Newt Gingrich, I would probably consider 99.99999% of all human beings scum.

Human beings, all of them, are flawed and fallible creatures. We should not be exempt from criticism when we act out of our uglier characteristics, but nor should the totality of our lives be judged solely on our most regrettable actions. Otherwise, someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. would be judged as nothing but a sexist asshole who cheated on his wife.

I remember last summer when Ted Kennedy passed away the variety of reactions I saw online. Wingnut douchebags like Andrew Breitbart were gleefully tweeting that Teddy was burning in hell, and most progressives were lauding the man as one of the greatest legislators in American history. The wingnuts wanted his life to be defined entirely by Mary Jo Kopechne’s death at Chappaquiddick and Teddy’s role in the events surrounding the rape allegations against his nephew William Kennedy Smith. A disturbingly large number of progressives wanted to pretend like neither of those incidents ever occurred, and tried to shame other progressives who pointed out that those things were a part of his life. One of the most mature obits of the Liberal Lion in the netroots came from Melissa McEwan. She didn’t shy away from calling Kennedy’s conduct in those affairs to be truly shameful and misogynist, but at the same time she also recognized that he deserved tremendous praise for his decades of work as an advocate for the underclass of this country. She didn’t try to whitewash or minimize the ugly aspects of the man’s life, but she also didn’t take the stance that his most shameful actions automatically negated all of the good things he had done.

When you take the position that because Michael Moore’s entire life work should be dismissed because he has behaved in a way that reinforces rape culture this past week, you make a grave mistake. Our broken healthcare system has been an ongoing discussion for many years, but I really believe that SiCKO made a lot more people more aware of just how bad it actually is, and I think it undeniably helped drive public demand for reform. Fahrenheit 911 absolutely obliterated any lingering notions that the Iraq War was anything more than a unnecessary war of choice in many people’s eyes.

All in all, the good done by Michael Moore far outweighs the bad in my book. That doesn’t mean he should get a pass for his actions in the Assange matter, and that doesn’t mean the harsh criticisms of him in the matter are unwarranted. It means that Michael Moore is a lot more than just a rape apologist who is allowing his admiration for Wikileaks to cloud his judgement of Julian Assange.

—-(CONTINUED)—-

Also, not guilty doesn’t necessarily mean victims were lying. It rarely does, in fact. It just means there wasn’t enough evidence to convict.

I think it’s important to challenge the following dichotomy: i) Assange will be found guilty, or, ii) His accusers made the whole thing up because they work for the CIA and/or they’re jealous man-hating bitches and/or because women love making up rape allegations.

Lots of people are, quite rightly, bending over backwards to remind everyone that Assange is innocent until proven guilty. The same presumption should apply to his accusers. It’s wrong to accuse them of lying or conspiring to frame an innocent man without evidence.

Even if you think Assange is innocent, you should keep an open mind about whether his accusers are sincere in their allegations. They haven’t had a chance to tell their stories yet, either.

I really wish everybody who comments here were as capable of holding nuanced positions about the character of public figures as Amanda seems to be…

Michael Moore just revealed he’s as sexist as any unrepentant Republican.

No, he didn’t. He revealed that even men who are usually tremendous allies to progressive causes can say and do repugnant things which reinforce our society’s patriarchal rape apologist culture.

I’m not going to defend Moore’s conduct in this affair, because his conduct is indefensible. There’s simply no excuse for him to engage in the rape apologist rhetoric he’s used to try to defend Assange.

Having said that, claiming that Michael Moore is “as sexist as any unrepentant Republican” is mind-numbingly idiotic. If you’ll recall during the negotiations over healthcare reform, Moore very loudly and publicly slammed Rep. Bart Stupak (who happens to be Moore’s Congressman) for trying to force misogynist anti-choice restrictions into the healthcare bill. How many “sexist unrepentant Republicans” can you name who were as critical of the Stupak Amendment as Moore was?

It might be more by neglect than actual act, but once you scratch below the surface, he and Newtie could probably have a nice dinner table conversation about how evil those bitches are.

More ridiculous hyperbole. The world isn’t an absolute black and white place where people are either 100% your ally or 100% your enemy. As disgusting and disappointing as Moore’s position on this matter are, I would still argue that he has more progressive beliefs in his pinky than Gingrich has in his whole body. If I lived in a world where someone like Michael Moore is regarded as being just as despicable a human being as someone like Newt Gingrich, I would probably consider 99.99999% of all human beings scum.

Human beings, all of them, are flawed and fallible creatures. We should not be exempt from criticism when we act out of our uglier characteristics, but nor should the totality of our lives be judged solely on our most regrettable actions. Otherwise, someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. would be judged as nothing but a sexist asshole who cheated on his wife.

I remember last summer when Ted Kennedy passed away the variety of reactions I saw online. Wingnut douchebags like Andrew Breitbart were gleefully tweeting that Teddy was burning in hell, and most progressives were lauding the man as one of the greatest legislators in American history. The wingnuts wanted his life to be defined entirely by Mary Jo Kopechne’s death at Chappaquiddick and Teddy’s role in the events surrounding the rape allegations against his nephew William Kennedy Smith. A disturbingly large number of progressives wanted to pretend like neither of those incidents ever occurred, and tried to shame other progressives who pointed out that those things were a part of his life. One of the most mature obits of the Liberal Lion in the netroots came from Melissa McEwan. She didn’t shy away from calling Kennedy’s conduct in those affairs to be truly shameful and misogynist, but at the same time she also recognized that he deserved tremendous praise for his decades of work as an advocate for the underclass of this country. She didn’t try to whitewash or minimize the ugly aspects of the man’s life, but she also didn’t take the stance that his most shameful actions automatically negated all of the good things he had done.

When you take the position that Michael Moore’s entire life work should be dismissed because he has behaved in a way that reinforces rape culture this past week, you make a grave mistake. Our broken healthcare system has been an ongoing discussion for many years, but I really believe that SiCKO made a lot more people more aware of just how bad it actually is, and I think it undeniably helped drive public demand for reform. Fahrenheit 911 absolutely obliterated any lingering notions that the Iraq War was anything more than a unnecessary war of choice in many people’s eyes.

All in all, the good done by Michael Moore far outweighs the bad in my book. That doesn’t mean he should get a pass for his actions in the Assange matter, and that doesn’t mean the harsh criticisms of him in the matter are unwarranted. It means that Michael Moore is a lot more than just a rape apologist who is allowing his admiration for Wikileaks to cloud his judgement of Julian Assange.

—-(CONTINUED)—-

—-(CONTINUED)—-

And pretty much all of this applies to Olbermann as well. KO definitely has some misogynist tendencies, and this isn’t the first time they’ve reared their ugly head. Amanda referred to him as a brash asshole a few weeks ago, which seemed a bit harsh to me when I first read it, but I think she’s actually pretty spot-on. Olbermann is a brash asshole and a blowhard. He has a tendency to go way overboard at times, which I think turns off a lot of people who would be allies if he could just tone it down a bit. But I’ll never agree with the “both sides” bullshit that I hear in which people claim that Keith Olbermann is nothing more than the left-leaning version of Bill O’Reilly. Both of them are blowhards who can’t keep their cool, but unlike O’Reilly, Olbermann has the facts on his side most of the time. And while Olbermann should perhaps consider taking a sedative before he goes on the air, there have been times when his impassioned Special Comments have been a force for good, in particular his scathing commentary on the passage of Prop 8 in California in 2008 and his ongoing advocacy for the people who are being killed by our immoral healthcare system.

Anyway, my main point is this… Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann deserve every bit of criticism they’re getting for their offensive words and actions in regard to the rape allegations against Julian Assange. If people want to boycott Moore’s films or Countdown, I’m not gonna say they are wrong for doing so. But I refuse to characterize these two men who are far more often than not allies to progressives as being no better than wingnut assholes like Newt Gingrich.

It’s beyond absurd.

Lindsay, re: OJ.  I was thinking of the glove the cops probably planted at the scene, to juice up the case for why there weren’t fingerprints.  I’m far from alone in believing they panicked and tried to plant evidence so that he didn’t get away with it, especially since it was partially their fault for letting him off the hook before.  John Douglas uses the case as an example when training police in ethics—-pointing out that you don’t fudge evidence not only because it’s wrong, but because it doesn’t work and can backfire.

Shit, double post. Sorry.

Agreed, roscoe.

@Albert Cirrus: It doesn’t matter if he’s found innocent. It’s entirely possible that he is innocent. Amanda’s not demanding people chant a chorus of “Lynch the bastard and anyone that defends him”, she’s saying that defending someone accused of rape without knowing if he actually did it or not makes you a rape apologist: Especially if you’re willing to lie about the details so you don’t look like as much of a rape apologist, as Moore is doing. It’s pretty hard to argue with that.

No one knows if Assange is guilty except Assange and his accusers, so it’s kinda shitty to see how many people automatically drop into “Wimminz is lying!” mode when it’s their hero. Especially the ones on the left that are supposed to be able to deal with nuance. Many of the same people that are incensed when right wingers do it are doing it themselves.

As far as wikileaks goes, his guilt or innocence has absolutely no bearing on wikileaks. The only people trying to paint it as such are authoritarians that want a reason, any reason, to attack what wikileaks has done. Even if it means shouting about how terrible a crime rape is, when they’d normally be smack in the “Wimminz is lying” camp in any other case. (At least any case where the accused was reasonably Caucasian, masculine, and/or wealthy.)

But what if Assange is innocent?  Then the whole “Moore is a sexist” thing is moot.  If he is right, then two people are getting unjustly smeared, three if you include Olbermann.  I

interesting. when the “people” getting smeared are men, then it’s a big deal, and you should be ashamed of saying it because you might be wrong, and what then?

but smearing the women in this case, that’s a-ok. No matter what you say about them, it won’t ever be a case of “two people are getting unjustly smeared”, because apparently women aren’t “people”.

The glove that the cops probably planted at the scene? Sure. The one that the first uniforms—-obviously the bold planners of this clever hoax—-observed on the scene and decided to plant without knowing if Simpson himself were also a victim.

Roscoe,  sweetie,  all Michael Moore was doing when he was condemning that Republican is pissing on his territory. It’s okay for liberal men to abuse liberal women and conservative women; in fact, it’s open season to attack the women of the opposite political party. It’s a fun way for liberal guys to get their sexist hate on in a way that they can’t ordinarily.  Conservative men are just shitty to women in general, though they may give lip service to certain conservative ideals of womanly virtue and respect, which of course they don’t buy into, because they’re quick with the sexism. 

See, an actual non sexist man doesn’t think any sexism is okay, which is what you so obviously missed.  Even if it’s against Sarah Palin, even if it enables you to make all those rape jokes or VPILF jokes you’ve been holding onto for just this day.

Wasn’t it a great day when OJ was found not guilty and Nicole came back to life?

What happened happened, regardless of a trial outcome.  What a trial determines is guilt by some legal standard.  With rape, there’s still someone left believing that she was raped.  With murder, they’re still dead.  With robbery, someone still got robbed.  Trials don’t determine truth, only if the facts presented are enough to convict.

Michael Moore should be ashamed of his words even if there is an international Pentagon conspiracy to frame Assange.

His current place in prison is pretty damn fishy considering all the prosecutor deals regarding the stuff going on in that Vegas hotel room and the full background of that case, but there aren’t a lot of people who are going to be rushing to his defense.

Indeed. An objective analysis of the trial for the charges related to his incident in Las Vegas that ultimately put him behind bars was a horrible miscarriage of justice, when looked at independent of his previous criminal prosecution in 1995. But I don’t think many people feel sorry for him, even if they do think he got screwed on the Vegas charges.

Some people get framed, some frame themselves.

OJ Simpson’s own hubris was his ultimate downfall, because he foolishly believed that because he was quite literally able to get away with murder that he was therefore untouchable. I’m inclined to believe that what happened in Las Vegas was probably not the serious crime that it got turned into, but OJ was a moron for even putting himself in such a situation to begin with. When you get away with murder, you probably shouldn’t be playing cutesy games to see how far over the line you can go before you get nailed.

And for a nation of laws supposedly based on a written Constitution and the Judeo-Christian Faiths, we sure do love the Karma.

Absolutely, myself included. Had OJ Simpson never murdered Brown and Goldman, I think a lot of people would have been appalled about the conviction and sentence he got for the Vegas incident, and rightly so. That said, Brown and Goldman were murdered, and though the LA prosecutor failed to convince the jury of OJ’s guilt in their murders, there are very few people who actually believe that the man really was innocent. Two wrongs don’t really make a right, and while part of me acknowledges that OJ was locked up on some bullshit trumped up charges, I see it as course correction in the big picture. I think a lot of people probably see it the same way - that the miscarriage of justice which imprisoned OJ is compensation for the miscarriage of justice which previously exonerated him. OJ may not deserve to be in prison for the charges that actually sent him there, but I believe that he does deserve to be in prison nonetheless.

Oh, I think he deserves to be in prison for what he did.  But I also think his long sentence was largely a result of a giveaway to the other participants for testimony which was largely caused by a strong desire to get him behind bars for as long as possible.  Which isn’t to say it was wrong or incorrect testimony.  There’s more to it than “Did he or didn’t he?”  There’s also “What’s the correct sentence for what he was convicted of?”

I think he got more time than his crime warrants, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over his situation.

The continuing problem is that people make these binary judgments of others - celebrities in particular.  Good guy:  therefore not a racist, not a sexist, not a homophobe, not mean to his mother, etc.  Bad guy:  just the opposite.  People are way more complicated than that, and especially in terms of people who aren’t your personal friends, it’s impossible to generalize about them from what you do know.

It’s certainly worth giving some allies the benefit of the doubt - especially for carelessness.  But that doesn’t mean that someone can’t still be wrong, even if they’re an ally.  Michael Moore can be a lot of things, and so can Julian Assange. He can be completely right about some things and terrifyingly wrong about others.

And it doesn’t mean that Bowling for Columbine no longer makes good points about gun control.  It just means that Michael Moore is wrong about his treatment of this case.

There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about this case, partly because of Naomi Wolf.  Assange isn’t charged with “surprise sex,” or continuing sex when a condom broke.  His charges are “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. He’s accused of pinning one woman’s arms and using his body weight to hold her down during one alleged assault, and of raping a woman while she was sleeping. In both cases, according to the allegations, Mr. Assange did not use a condom.”

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10353/1111589-109.stm?cmpid=newspanel#ixzz18btFAyqM

He held one of the victims down and forced sex on her, not using a condom despite her asking him to use one, and he had sex with the other, again without bothering with a condom, while she was asleep.  Both incidents are rape.  It doesn’t matter if the perpetrator is the founder of Wikileaks or the guy down the street.  Both are also examples of misogynist behavior. 

People can support Wikileaks without supporting Assange’s position.  People can apologize for Assange’s behavior without being supportive of Wikileaks too.  One thing really has nothing to do with the other.

Argh! Reading the Twitter feed for #Mooreandme and keep running into guys mansplaining and going, “Well, what are you gonna say when it turns out this was all a set-up?” *headdesk*

Seriously, folks have been explaining it in the simplest of terms, ie. We investigate rape accusations and take them seriously, and yet men come crawling out of the woodwork to explain how it’s all a frame-up.

Somebody linked Shakesville’s Rape Culture 101 and some dude said, “So rape culture is anything we don’t agree with.” I can’t think he actually read the link which is link after link about how rape and violence against women is ellided by society or treated as a joke. The fundamental premise is stated: A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.

I want somebody to take Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore and point out the work that Patrick Stewart and Mick Foley have been doing lately, and say, “THAT’s how progressive men should be treating the issue of rape. Not turning it into a political football that reinforces your privilege.”

“If you claim, without evidence, that the victims are lying, that is what makes you a rape apologist. If you get lucky, and the 5% chance you’re right comes to pass, this changes nothing. You chose to believe the worst about someone who had a 95% chance of being right, because of cultural narratives about women.”

Just chiming in to say, THIS.

This this this this this.

Oh, if only I could tattoo this on the hands of everyone I know. And more so on those that I don’t know.

Thanks for this post, Amanda - Sady’s battle cry over at TB brought me to tears, and I appreciate both of you, as well as other authors and Twitter users for keeping this protest alive.

I’d just like to point out the harm done to the unintenional audiences of these mens’ words, and to society’s knee-jerk “blame the victim” reaction at large—I didn’t tell anyone of the sexual abuse that I was enduring at the hands of a family member until I was in my twenties. I had imbibed the rape apology mentality before I was even old enough to understand what it was. He was very religious and very active in his church, of course garnering him the good opinion and ostensible protection of the community around him. It began, as far as I remeber, when I was eight, and continued for years, at which time I was convinced that I would get into trouble for coming forward. It pains me immesnely to know that I was probably right.

I weep for the women in the lives of some of these people - how many have been trained by those that they love and trust he most to feel as if they don’t matter and don’t deserve justice?

Roscoe, sweetie, all Michael Moore was doing when he was condemning that Republican is pissing on his territory.

What a bunch of condescending bullshit. First off, Bart Stupak is not a Republican, he’s a Democrat. I think it is fair to say that Michael Moore was criticizing the Stupak Amendment because he saw how truly fucked up and sexist it was, not because he felt that Stupak was “pissing on his territory.”

It’s okay for liberal men to abuse liberal women and conservative women; in fact, it’s open season to attack the women of the opposite political party.

Nice strawman. Who here has ever said that it is acceptable to attack Republican women in a sexist manner? Yes, I am aware that a lot of douchey liberal men have cracked a lot of douchey misogynist jokes at the expense of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, but who is doing that here? Or do you consider any criticism of female wingnuts by men to be rooted in sexism, even when the criticism is about their wingnut beliefs as opposed to their anatomical composition? I can’t begin to tell you how patronizing to the cause of feminism it is for faux-feminist wingnuts to characterize any and all criticisms of Sarah Palin as being rooted in misogyny.

It’s a fun way for liberal guys to get their sexist hate on in a way that they can’t ordinarily.

If you believe that all or most liberal guys love to “get their sexist hate on”, you’re basically promoting similar beliefs about gender as those promoted by evolutionary psych quacks, who tend to insinuate that misogyny is an innate and immutable characteristic of all men. In our patriarchal society, all men have unearned privilege, and I think all men have abused that privilege in a sexist manner at some point in their lives, myself included. That said, your tone comes across as a blanket condemnation of all men everywhere, and it reveals a disturbing worldview in which the Michael Moores of the world are just as repugnantly sexist as the Rush Limbaughs of the world. If every man who has ever said or done anything even slightly sexist or misogynist in their lives deserves to be condemned and banished from the cause of progressivism, it’s going to be an entirely female cause. If that’s what you want, then fine, but I’m not sure how practical it is to try to make the world a better place when you view nearly half of the planet’s human beings to be the enemy.

Conservative men are just shitty to women in general, though they may give lip service to certain conservative ideals of womanly virtue and respect, which of course they don’t buy into, because they’re quick with the sexism.

I agree with this 100%. Couldn’t have said this better myself.

See, an actual non sexist man doesn’t think any sexism is okay, which is what you so obviously missed.

No, I’m pretty sure I’m in agreement with you on that. Which is why I wrote this:

I’m not going to defend Moore’s conduct in this affair, because his conduct is indefensible. There’s simply no excuse for him to engage in the rape apologist rhetoric he’s used to try to defend Assange.

And this:

All in all, the good done by Michael Moore far outweighs the bad in my book. That doesn’t mean he should get a pass for his actions in the Assange matter, and that doesn’t mean the harsh criticisms of him in the matter are unwarranted.

And this:

KO definitely has some misogynist tendencies, and this isn’t the first time they’ve reared their ugly head. Amanda referred to him as a brash asshole a few weeks ago, which seemed a bit harsh to me when I first read it, but I think she’s actually pretty spot-on. Olbermann is a brash asshole and a blowhard.

And finally this:

Anyway, my main point is this… Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann deserve every bit of criticism they’re getting for their offensive words and actions in regard to the rape allegations against Julian Assange. If people want to boycott Moore’s films or Countdown, I’m not gonna say they are wrong for doing so.

—-(CONTINUED)—-

—-(CONTINUED)—-

Back to your post…

Even if it’s against Sarah Palin, even if it enables you to make all those rape jokes or VPILF jokes you’ve been holding onto for just this day.

Once again, we agree. I have very little respect for Sarah Palin and I think the woman is barely qualified to be elected dog catcher, much less President of the United States. There are plenty of valid criticisms that can be made about her without having to resort to low-brow sexist nonsense. I think left-leaning men who resort to the childish sexist taunts against her aren’t doing the progressive movement any favors, and I wish such men would be more cognizant of their own unexamined privilege.

I didn’t call your post out because you criticized the misogynist behavior of Michael Moore; quite the contrary, I think such criticism is entirely warranted and legitimate. I am not a Julian Assange fanboy, and if you bother to check my comments on previous Assange-related posts here, you’ll see that I clearly aligned myself with the side that is being critical of Assange’s creepiness despite my belief that Wiklileaks is a good thing.

The reason I called your post out is because when you state that someone like Michael Moore is just as irredeemable, repugnant, and loathesome as Newt Gingrich, you start to lose the argument, because that claim is the epitome of intellectual laziness.

Sexism and misogyny are inexcusable and indefensible in every instance, regardless of the source. But not all sexist/misogynist behavior is equally bad, and not all men who say or do sexist/misogynist things are equally sexist/misogynist. When you take the absolutist position that everyone either is a sexist/misogynist or they aren’t and that degrees are irrelevant, you’ll find that there are very, very few people in the world who aren’t sexist/misogynist. Holding the position that Michael Moore has been good for the progressive movement overall is not a negation of the claim that his attitude in regard to the rape charges against Julian Assange are deplorable.

You and I are in agreement that Moore’s words and deeds this past week in regard to the Assange matter are disgusting and inexcusable, and that they reveal that Moore has some misogynist tendencies. Where we differ is that even though I agree that his misogynist actions are worthy of condemnation, I’m still willing to acknowledge and praise the many good things he has done for the cause of progressivism.

Maybe we should put international pressure on Sweden to keep up the good work in pursuing rape charges against people when they know where they are - including in their own country.  They don’t exactly have such a nice progressive track record when it comes to taking rape seriously, after all.  They should be commended and praised and clearly urged to NOT STOP HERE!

I was stunned when MM lied on KO’s show.  I saw it live and shut it off in abject disgust.  Since then, I have watched the ensuing fallout from afar.  I’ve become more and more disgusted with MM.  I saw in him something that night that really upset me.

A willingness to knowingly lie, and a meaness.

For decades many liberal feminists have certainly supported MM.  We bought his tv shows on dvd, we went to his movies, we bought his books.

Now to find out that in fact, bitches ain’t shit to MM, is a huge, and very hurtful blow.  THe hurt is passing and in its place is a terrible, and lasting, anger.

He may think he can wait this out, but he can’t.

I won’t forget.

Now, as for KO.  He’s a guy who comes into my home every night.  I often felt as if he got me through the darkness of the bush years.  Yet over the years, I have, from time to time, picked up instances of sexism on his part.  So I wasn’t as shocked as I was with MM.  My biggest question about KO is why hasn’t Rachel, who I know to be a brilliant and fierce feminist, sat his ass down and straightened him out?  ISn’t that what friends do?  No, I’m not blaming the woman, but I can’t help but be somewhat shocked that for all of the talk of their close personal friendship, she has been AWOL on this.  It’s not like her to sit out a misogynist scandal.  She’s better than that.  It makes me wonder, very sadly so, if perhaps that friendship is not exactly based on equality, and if in fact, it’s been overblown. 

But regardless, I am done with KO as well. 

As for Sady, I read her post, I do disagree with her on some very important points, but at the end of the day she’s more right than they are, and they lied.  They lied.

Um, Roscoe, you fucking moron, Bart Stupak is yet another fucking asshole who wants to punish women for having sex by declaring that fetuses and stray blood clots are more human than them. Thanks for mansplaining! I really needed some guy’s input on how men treat women. That’s always new and exciting.

  Moore has done fuck-all for women, so cutting him loose because he’s done this unforgiveable bullshit is going to hurt you and dipshit men like you. For women, he’s just dead weight, demanding our attention and giving us the lamest, limpest, last, least efforts on his part—and when some dude comes wandering by, that dude comes before women.

What I’m most baffled about from this whole “frenzy” is that Michael Moore is so bad at PR. I mean, by this point, five days later, a total “I’m sorry if anyone was offended” douchepology would likely have run its course by now. People would still be mad, but it wouldn’t be drawing in more and more people and getting bigger and bigger and it would mostly have been forgotten by the time his next movie came out. (Or perhaps I underestimate Sady. But when this started, it didn’t seem like it would have taken that much to stop all this.)

It’s kind of awesome—when’s the last time this many people were being made to think about rape culture? I have to believe that somebody, somewhere, must be learning something—but it’s also baffling. If ANYONE should know that publicly stonewalling someone who’s calling you out on something you’ve done wrong is an ineffective tactic, and backfires, Michael Moore should. I mean, this is his tactic. He has to know what this looks like. So what the fuck is he thinking?

My husband’s theory is that Moore is enjoying the attention. No such thing as bad publicity, after all. I can’t believe that’s true in this case, though: my impression is that progressives are at the very least really good at boycotting.

You know, it strikes me that guys don’t have to wrestle with this at all. A guy to them might be what he says he is: a liberal. For women,  as Bart Stupak shows, a guy might say he’s a Democrat, but really, he’s a Republican because he thinks and votes as if women are dirty whores who need to be kept from having abortions because they need to be punished.

No bad publicity if the people you’re offending are, you know, people. Women don’t count.

Women buy movie tickets, though.

Nobody acknowledges that.  Advertising is dominated by men who sell fantasies to men.  One of those fantasies is that the little lady will just go along with what Walter Mitty wants to see. 

I’ve defended Moore from people who compare him to people like Ann Coulter, which is just desperation. He’s never called for killing foreign leaders. But he’s not really interested in making dull, factual documentaries. He’s always had problems shaving and cutting stuff to make it more punchy.  That shows up here too.

“If people want to boycott Moore’s films or Countdown, I’m not gonna say they are wrong for doing so.”

So is this going to be the death of liberalism in America when people start to boycott the two greatest voices on our side over this issue?  Conservatives must be laughing at this.  I honestly don’t think Moore and Olbermann would knowingly jeopardize their reputation with the left, especially the feminist left.  That’s why I don’t think they would lie. 

If they are lying, they are putting the entire liberal movement basically on the line and no sane person would ever gamble that much.

There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about this case, partly because of Naomi Wolf.  Assange isn’t charged with “surprise sex,” or continuing sex when a condom broke.  His charges are “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. He’s accused of pinning one woman’s arms and using his body weight to hold her down during one alleged assault, and of raping a woman while she was sleeping. In both cases, according to the allegations, Mr. Assange did not use a condom.”

The link states:

“The details of Mr. Assange’s recent arrest are being sorted out in a bizarre game of Internet telephone in which misinformation reigns”.

Valenti is, herself, not a primary source.

As best I can tell, Assange has been picked up on a European arrest warrant, but Sweden has yet to lay charges.  I haven’t been able to find primary documents - as far as I can see, those details were alleged only in a extradition hearing, possibly because Swedish law requires face to face interviews for formal legal charges and the warrant is to return him for talking before charging.

Again, no primary documents, but the Guardian appears to have the best coverage I’ve seen from a quick look.

Moore was either misinformed or just lying when he talked about the rape allegations. As we all know, Assange is accused of having sex with an unconscious woman and holding another woman down against her will and having sex with her. Those accusations, if true, are rape.

And Moore should definitely be held accountable for either his ignorance or lying. Those are the only two options, neither of which make him look good.

However, something that most people don’t seem to realize. Presumption of innocence BY DEFINITION means that the accuser is either lying (no crime was committed) or at best misinformed (the accuser thought it was a crime but it was actually lawful, the accuser unintentionally accused the wrong person).

That doesn’t change whether the crime is burglary, assault, arson, or rape.

Therefore, if you believe in presumption of innocence, which is a principle that liberal democracies still maintain, then you must by definition believe that Assange’s accusers are lying (it didn’t happen as they said it did) or misinformed (somehow, though this is almost unlikely).

Albert, if “liberalism” in America doesn’t have a important, and fiercly guarded place for women, then what the fuck good is it for us? 

At any rate, I completely reject your premise that two white guys going down would be the death of liberalism.  Frankly, if that’s so, it’s already dead.

BS Celda.  Presumption of innocence means no such thing.

“So is this going to be the death of liberalism in America when people start to boycott the two greatest voices on our side over this issue?”

The death of liberalism is America? Oh, give me a break. Liberalism existed in this country before Moore and Olbermann and I think it will somehow carry on even after those pompous blowhards leave the public eye. And honestly, if the alleged “two greatest voices on our side” are such blatant rape apologists, I think it’s time to start looking for some new voices.

Daisy, that’s exactly what presumption of innocence means.

If I have been accused of, say, stealing from a store, I am presumed innocent. Since I am presumed innocent, there can only be a few ways I am innocent.

1.  The accusers are lying, nothing was stolen.

2. The accusers have unintentionally accused the wrong person, stuff was stolen and they think I did it but I did not.

3. The accusers are mistaken about the legalities of the situation; I did indeed take some stuff but (unknown to them) it was lawful for me to do so.

Now, in Assange’s scenario, he is presumed innocent. How could that be true?

2 is obviously impossible.

3 is also impossible given the allegations, having sex with an unconscious person is obviously rape.

We are left with 1.

So is this going to be the death of liberalism in America when people start to boycott the two greatest voices on our side over this issue?

Cirrus, please.

I honestly don’t think Moore and Olbermann would knowingly jeopardize their reputation with the left, especially the feminist left.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.  B/c they were both so feminist to start with. 

That’s why I don’t think they would lie. 

It’s on tape, numbnuts.

If they are lying, they are putting the entire liberal movement basically on the line

B/c no one else in the past 15 years has done ANYTHING for liberalism.

no sane person would ever gamble that much.

Olbermann is a self-righteous blowhard and Moore is a self-righteous sensationalist.  Funny what egos will tempt a person a do.

Regardless, I want some of what you’re smoking.  Must be nice to be all wrapped up in the fuzzy blanket of hero worship.

I honestly don’t think Moore and Olbermann would knowingly jeopardize their reputation with the left, especially the feminist left.  That’s why I don’t think they would lie.

But that’s exactly what Moore did!

Assenge is not being accused of having sex without a condom, which as Moore chortled, wouldn’t even be a crime elsewhere. 

That’s part of the warrant, the rest being as stated above, RAPE.  Holding a woman down and forcing her to have sex.  Forcing sex on a second woman. 

Lying about the charges, belittling the accusations by claiming it’s just about a condom just isn’t acceptable.  It’s rape apology, and it needs to be called our regardless of whom is saying it.

Daisy, if you paid attention during rape discussions like, oh, this one on top of every other discussion ever—-you’ll find that exactly that happens. People who whine about torches and pitchforks and burning witches over their fuzzy wuzzy woogums being accused of rape have no compunction about calling the accuser a lying whore.  Kind of like Moore and Olbermann.

ginmar -

I didn’t defend Stupak, I don’t support his views on anything related to reproductive rights, I thought the Stupak Amednment was one of the most offensive displays of misogyny I’ve ever seen by a Democratic Congressman, and I’m glad his political career will be ending in the next month. You claimed that Stupak was a Republican, and I corrected you by pointing out that he is a Democrat. Then you said that the only reason Michael Moore was critical of the Stupak Amendment was because Stupak was “pissing on his own territory”, whatever the fuck that even means. Do you have some magical insight into Moore’s underlying thoughts about the Stupak Amendment that nobody else is aware of? Do you refuse to consider the possibility that maybe Michael Moore criticized the misogynist nature of the Stupak Amendment because he genuinely believed it to be an extremely misogynist amendment?

On March 19, 2010, Michael Moore wrote:

Yet, here we are, just days before a weak, simple-minded, but now ultimately necessary health care bill has a chance of making it through Congress—and Bart Stupak is threatening to derail it because he wants to make sure that no woman WHO BUYS HER OWN INSURANCE with HER OWN MONEY is able to have a medically-insured abortion. We’re not talkin’ about federally-funded abortions—those were stupidly outlawed long ago. Bart Stupak doesn’t like that the Democrats’ bill doesn’t prohibit private insurance programs, set up for those whose employers don’t provide it, from providing abortion coverage if they get any federal funding—even to an individual woman paying without any government help. That’s it.

Moore not only blasts Stupak in that letter, he also calls out the stupidity of the Hyde Amendment, which has been law for decades. Now tell me, does that come across like something some evil woman-hating man would write because he thought that some other evil woman-hating man was stepping on his woman-hating territory?

Are you fucking kidding me?

In your very, very narrow worldview, there isn’t one iota of difference between someone like Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh, and they both deserve to be regarded with an equal amount of disdain. I guess you’re just a goddamn saint and the epitome of goodness and virtue and all that is right in the world.

Seriously, go fucking fuck yourself, you sanctimonious douchebag.

I’m not your “sweetie”, and I’m done discussing this with you.

@Albert Cirrus:

Well, the conservatives were laughing at us anyway. It’s what they do, when they’re not being all bug-eyed with rage at us. So I don’t think we really need to be taking their feelings into account here.

Also, the death of liberalism isn’t going to come about from this issue. I mean, please. People have been seriously talking about primarying Obama, and for quite a while: Moore and Olbermann are small potatoes. Also as people have said upthread, liberals who aren’t going to take this sort of thing seriously may not be useful allies anyway.

I doubt Moore and Olbermann would knowingly jeopardize their position on the left, but by this point, I don’t see how they could possibly not know they have, unless they’re deliberately avoiding reading anything about it.

Sady has, among many other things, shown that the facts of the case were known when Moore appeared on Olbermann’s show, so they could have known that it wasn’t, for example, a case about a broken condom, and even if they made a good-faith effort to learn what was going on and just missed it, it’s known now. And whether they knew or didn’t or whatever, there’s really no way to read the show’s transcript in a way that gives the impression that these are two liberal gentlemen who take rape accusations and the women making them seriously. Which is, of course, THE PROBLEM.

(Should also note that I don’t believe primarying Obama would lead to the end of liberalism either.)

ginmar what are you talking about?

I honestly hate the fucking people who post here.  What a bunch of douches.

As usual, someone comes on here and makes some condescending and insulting remark.

I have no idea what you’re responding to, but FUCK YOU.

Like this is the first discussion about rape I’ve had.

Amanda is a self-satisfied schmuck sometimes.  I wonder if that’s why she attracts a crowd of assholes.

Albert, if “liberalism” in America doesn’t have a important, and fiercly guarded place for women, then what the fuck good is it for us? 

At any rate, I completely reject your premise that two white guys going down would be the death of liberalism.  Frankly, if that’s so, it’s already dead.

+1.

Olbermann and Moore have both done a lot of good work for the progressive movement, but the suggestion that the entire liberal movement is dependent on them being shielded from all criticism is mind-numbingly stupid.

If liberalism is so frail at this point that it could be killed by progressive backlash against the misogynist words and deeds by MM and KO, then it’s already dead.

Additionally, I reject the claim that Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann are the two greatest voices on our side. No doubt, they have both been tremendously influential in promoting progressive ideology over the past 10 years or so. However, progressivism was around long before them and will be around long after them, and I’m pretty sure it is strong enough to endure Moore and Olbermann being criticized for their misogynist asshattery.

Celda, presumption of innocence is a legal concept, you have no clue what you’re talking about.

But don’t let that stop you from bloviating, and frankly, since you are talking out your ass, you came to the right comments section.  But you have to work on your arrogance a little.  You need more of it to really fit in here.

Think complete dickweed and practice.  You’ll get there.

“At any rate, I completely reject your premise that two white guys going down would be the death of liberalism.”

This isn’t about being white or male and you should be ashamed for bringing that up.  Let’s leave that kind of judgement for the right.  I mean they are the media leaders.  I guess Rachel Maddow and Markos Moulitsas are two of our leaders too, but not as big as Moore and Olbermann.

“Frankly, if that’s so, it’s already dead.”

As long as there is no massive backlash against Moore and Olbermann, I hope nobody else joins in on the hatefest.  I’m optimistic.

Don’t let ginmar drive you away, Daisy.  She has an extremely short fuse with rape discussions is all.  On the other hand, if you hate everyone so much and think Amanda’s a snob, no one’s stopping you from leaving.

I don’t hate everybody, but I have never made a comment on this blog without being attacked, and in a very nasty manner.

This comments section has grown out of hand.  It didn’t used to be like this.  I smell the smell of the Feministing police just before they went BUST.

I am surprised at the continuing silence from Moore.  Whether it’s cowardice or contempt, or some combination thereof, I can’t say- at any rate it doesn’t look good at all.  Is he one of those men with Christopher Hitchens syndrome?  You know, the complete inability to ever, EVER admit that he was wrong about anything?

Really Albert, this isn’t about being white and male huh?

LOL

Well, with liberals like you, and Moore, and Olbermann, what could possibly go wrong?

I disagree—it’s been a lot worse on and off in years past.  ginmar going apeshit on a rape thread is predictable but not indicative of a trend.  You shouldn’t have been attacked, but most people who hang around here get both barrels from her at some point.  Occupational hazard.  Doesn’t make it any less upsetting, though.

People have been seriously talking about primarying Obama, and for quite a while: Moore and Olbermann are small potatoes.

Just a momentary derail… I understand that sentiment, and I think many of the frustrations progressives have towards Obama are entirely valid.

That said, the only thing that will happen if a serious primary challenge is launched against Obama in 2012 is that we’ll probably have a Republican president taking office in January 2013. Primary challenges against sitting U.S. Presidents DO NOT WORK. And in every instance in the past 100 years in which a sitting POTUS was challenged by someone in his own party during a re-election year, the opposing party has always taken back the White House.

Anyone who seriously wants to try to take the Democratic nomination away from Obama in 2012 is free to do so, but they should remember to pat themselves on the back when they are watching President (Palin, Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, Pence, etc.) being sworn in, because they will have helped them get elected, even though it probably wasn’t their intention. The only Democrat who will be taking the Presidential Oath of Office on January 20, 2013 will be Barack Obama, and if it isn’t Obama, then it will be the Republican who beat him.

Daisy, presumption of innocence is a legal concept as you said.

It also follows the rules of logic, as legal concepts are not exceptions to logic.

You have said nothing to refute my arguments, other than repeating that I am wrong.

Again, if someone is presumed innocent, then the obvious corollary is that their accuser is lying or at best mistaken.

This is a simple logical truth; why do you continue to deny it?

Whether it’s cowardice or contempt, or some combination thereof, I can’t say- at any rate it doesn’t look good at all.  Is he one of those men with Christopher Hitchens syndrome?  You know, the complete inability to ever, EVER admit that he was wrong about anything?

It’s just the privilege talking.  Or not talking, as the case may be.  His whole schtick is being the underdog.  Point out he’s not, and he’s abusing his privilege to willfully be an asshole rape apologist and it’s like Opposite World for him.

Celda, it is possible for an accusation to be true and for the government not to be able to convict the defendant because of a presumption of innocence. 

In the U.S., this presumption offers several grounds for a new trial.  YMMV in Sweden, Julian Assange.  An indictment could have been defective; the defendant could have been denied access to counsel; the jury could have heard something it wasn’t supposed to hear.  Or some other irregularity could have gone on.  The presumption of innocence doesn’t set the defendant free—but if his rights were violated he cannot be convicted then and there.  Either he gets a new trial, or the charges are dropped. 

Everyone is entitled to procedural fairness.  That’s what the presumption of innocence means: until the government can’t get it together to put together a fair prosecution, the defendant remains free.  It does not mean that accusers = liars.

“can’t” should have been “can” in my penultimate line above.

roscoe3680:

I wasn’t suggesting that primarying was a good /bad / other thing to do. Just saying that there are deeper rifts in the liberal community than whether or not we can all approve of Michael Moore, and have been for some time. I could have reached much further back for examples, but Obama was on my mind at the moment. That’s all. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don’t derail on the Obama thing.

(Should also note that I don’t believe primarying Obama would lead to the end of liberalism either.)

It wouldn’t lead to the end of liberalism, but it would probably lead to a GOP president taking office in January 2013.

Nobody has ever successfully primaried an incumbent POTUS in any of our lifetimes, and only one person has ever done it successfully in U.S. history. In 1856, James Buchanan defeated incumbent President Franklin Pierce for the Democratic Party nomination and then went on to win the presidency. Every other attempt to do what Buchanan did failed miserably. It just doesn’t work. And besides, the one guy who actually pulled it off is widely regarded one of the worst U.S. presidents of all time.

Fuck you back, Daisy. Thank you for proving me right when I said you hadn’t paid attention to any rape discussions. It’s not like rapist apologists EVER nurse a huge whingy sense of victimization when people don’t bow down and suck their dicks, but hey,  you haven’t seen it even in these Assange discussions. Fuck off.

  And fuck you too, Emmett. So sorry I can’t be submissive enough to pretentious upper middle class assholes, especially men, when I get angry at the way they get to ignore rape culture their whole fuckin’ lives.

And Roscoe, sweetums,  just because some white dude bestirs his ass to condemn the worst of the worst in his spare time and when it’s his fucking enemies doesn’t mean he gets a cookie, like you so obviously think he deserves.

mr_subjunctive @ Comment #89:

You’re right, sorry about that. I posted my last comment before I read that, but I’ll drop it. Amanda, feel free to strike Comment #90 from the thread.

ginmar, I’ve been around long enough to see this is how you operate on rape threads.  It’s abusive.  I’m not saying you don’t have reasons to be triggered, but they don’t justify verbal abuse.

Celda, it is possible for an accusation to be true and for the government not to be able to convict the defendant because of a presumption of innocence.

Yes, that is correct. However, that is unrelated to what I have said.

An accusation can be true—there could be eyewitnesses who saw the murder happen, DNA evidence on hand, a videotape showing the murder in clear resolution—yet due to technicalities the evidence could be thrown out and then the defendant declared not guilty.

What you have told me is that accusations can be factually true yet the defendant not be convicted. I never denied that or implied otherwise.

What I have said is that all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until evidence is shown at a trial to prove otherwise. This is a fact.

Therefore, as a logical corollary, all accusations are initially presumed false and all accusers presumed lying or mistaken unless it is proven otherwise.

Is he one of those men with Christopher Hitchens syndrome?  You know, the complete inability to ever, EVER admit that he was wrong about anything?

I think Moore has a bit of Hitchen-esque hubris in him. Though to Hitchens credit, he did actually admit that he was wrong about believing that waterboarding wasn’t torture once he allowed himself to be waterboarded and got to experience how terrifying it actually is.

Let me back up for a second.

Yes I acknowledge that there have been liberal/progressive leaders before and there will be more (no pun intended) in the future.  Liberalism will survive the smears against Olbermann and Moore.  I might have been exaggerating a little when I said “the entire liberal movement basically on the line.”  I’m sorry.  But it still does us injustice to bash Moore and Olbermann and threaten boycotts, we need heroes like them in the media to tell the truth in the face of bold lies.

And this is my last post in this discussion since it seems to be devolving worse than Ken Ham and I don’t want to be caught in the crossfire.

Presumption of innocence means that in a criminal trial, the burden of proof is on the accuser, i.e. the government that is issuing the charges.  It doesn’t mean they have to all believe the person is innocent until they prove otherwise-the prosecution specifically does otherwise.  It means that unless the prosecution proves their case such that the jury finds the defendant guilty, they are assumed to be innocent.

This is not a hard concept.

we need heroes like them in the media to tell the truth in the face of bold lies.

Jesus fucking fuck.  Just arrange the fucking three-way already, dude.  The fucking injustice here is the actions of your goddamned heroes.

One of whom LIED and both of whom engaged in rape apolegetics.  Which clearly you don’t give a fuck about.

Lied BOLDLY, even.  Where no man has lied before.  Oh wait, scratch that last.

Therefore, as a logical corollary, all accusations are initially presumed false and all accusers presumed lying or mistaken unless it is proven otherwise.

No, that is just not true.  Let’s say you report auto theft (one of the crimes that has a higher lying/false accusation rate than rape), or a fire that looks like arson, or identity theft, or embezzlement from your business, or malicious property destruction ... you think the authorities should start out with the belief that you’re lying or mistaken?

The presumption of innocence is a formal, technical stance to foster procedural fairness.  No evidence, no conviction, even if the defendant might really have done it.  It does not say that accusations are false until someone proves them true.

No, that is just not true.  Let’s say you report auto theft (one of the crimes that has a higher lying/false accusation rate than rape), or a fire that looks like arson, or identity theft, or embezzlement from your business, or malicious property destruction ... you think the authorities should start out with the belief that you’re lying or mistaken?

If I report a crime, no one has been accused of anything yet. They don’t start with the assumption that I’m lying because there is no presumption of innocence. The authorities investigate because I have made a report and they need to find out if a crime happened or not.

Once someone is accused, then they are presumed innocent. And therefore, the accusation of them is presumed to be false.

I understand the technical and legal reasons for the presumption of innocence. What I am pointing out is that if we believe in the presumption of innocence (until proven guilty), we must, BY DEFINITION believe that any criminal accusation against someone is false (until proven true).

Suppose a student gets the valedictorian position. If you believe that they deserves the position due to academic achievement, then BY DEFINITION you also believe that they did not cheat.

Why are you arguing against something as simple as a basic corollary?

But it still does us injustice to bash Moore and Olbermann and threaten boycotts, we need heroes like them in the media to tell the truth in the face of bold lies.

Is today Opposite Day and no one told me? Because Moore and Olbermann have lied boldly in the face of the truth.

Truth: Assange has been accused of rape.

Lie: Assange has been accused of “sex by surprise,” “sex with a broken condom,” or something else that is not rape.

Even if they were mistaken about the charges when they said those things, they’ve since been given the correct information. Repeatedly. If they’re so concerned with truth and justice and journalistic integrity, I’d expect them to have issued public corrections/redactions. And they haven’t. Funny how that works out, huh? Why, it’s almost like they were caught lying rather than caught making an honest mistake.

Roscoe3680, thanks for your posts #36, #37, #52, #53 and #72. Keeping one’s head and sticking to facts and logical consistency when confronting personal attacks is both remarkable and extremely uncommon in internet fora.

Whenever g-mar’s dosage levels slip, the rest of us have to hear about it.  Le sigh.

I understand the technical and legal reasons for the presumption of innocence. What I am pointing out is that if we believe in the presumption of innocence (until proven guilty), we must, BY DEFINITION believe that any criminal accusation against someone is false (until proven true).

No, what is presumed is that prior to trial, the accusation of guilt has not yet been proven true. That’s why the news media generally refers to the crime with the modifier “alleged” prior to trial. They don’t say “John Doe murdered his wife”, nor do they say “John Doe didn’t murder his wife”; they say “the prosecutor alleges that John Doe murdered his wife.”

Presumption of innocence does not mean that the accusation is presumed to be false, but rather that the accusation starts from the position of being unproven, and that the prosecutor must provide enough compelling evidence that the accusation is true before a guilty verdict can be rendered. It isn’t the job of defense counsel to prove the innocence of the accused person(s), it is the job of the prosecution to prove their guilt. Failure to prove guilt does not necessarily mean that innocence has been proven, though the U.S. Constitution mandates that a “Not Guilty” verdict exonerates the accused from further prosecution for the particular crime that they were tried for, regardless of what evidence may wind up surfacing later, even if it is a videotape of the accused person committing the crime for which they were charged. OJ Simpson could walk out of prison in ten years and then say, “Guess what, I did kill Nicole and Ron, I enjoyed doing it, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.” Legally, there would be very little that could be done to punish him, even if he made such an admission on live national television.

There have been numerous instances of prosecutorial ineptitude or incompetence in which an accused party escaped conviction on procedural errors and technicalities, even though virtually everyone believes them to actually have committed the crime they have been accused of. Remember the four racist pigs who beat the ever living shit out of Rodney King back in 1991? According to the Simi Valley jury that ruled on their initial criminal prosecution, three of them were not guilty of any of the violent crimes for which they had been indicted.

Why don’t you go back and watch the infamous video of King’s beating and then tell me with a straight face that Officer Timothy Wind is an innocent man, that even though he is clearly videotaped repeatedly slamming a baton into King while he is lying helplesly on the ground that Wind didn’t actually use excessive force against him. Tell me that Officer Wind is an innocent man.

A “Not Guilty” verdict is not an absolute declaration of innocence but rather a declaration that the prosecution failed to prove that the accused was guilty of the crimes with which they were charged. The jury doesn’t have to determine whether or not the accused is actually innocent, they merely have to determine whether the case presented against the accused is strong enough to prove guilt.

When a party is found “not guilty” of murder, it doesn’t mean that the jury has said unequivocally that the accused didn’t murder the person they were accused of murdering, it means the jury has said that the prosecution’s case failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove that the accused person committed the murder they were charged with.

On the other hand, if you hate everyone so much and think Amanda’s a snob, no one’s stopping you from leaving.

g-mar attacked an inoffensive Buddhist for using the word ‘praxis’, on the the Buddhist’s own blog, playing her well-worn blue-collar card.

It seemed to escape her that, if she was reading a blog, she was also connected to the world’s largest resource library, and instead of gratuitously attacking somebody she could take the opportunity to learn something.  But NOOOOOooooooo.

Once upon a time, I hoped she’d write a fantastic book about her service in Iraq.  That hope is gone.

And Roscoe, sweetums, just because some white dude bestirs his ass to condemn the worst of the worst in his spare time and when it’s his fucking enemies doesn’t mean he gets a cookie, like you so obviously think he deserves.

Okay, g-mar’s just making shit up & has been since comment 3.  Would one of her fans / enablers please pull her aside & explain to her that belligerence =/= eloquence?  Please & Thanks.

Whenever g-mar’s dosage levels slip, the rest of us have to hear about it.  Le sigh.

Fer fuck’s sake, guys, if you don’t like ginmar just ignore her. Don’t go thrashing around throwing any ableist bull you can think of at her. It’s a blog discussion thread; you can skip over comments that seem off-topic without retaliating, and without sinking down to the infantile level of “lol off her meds!” jokes. Or just take your <strike>bruised</strike> balls and go home. I really don’t care.

I’m sorta curious about who “some asshole” might be…

Accusers are not assumed to be lying by the courts.  If you put a victim on the stand to testify, the jury is not instructed that the victim is lying, unless the prosecution can prove otherwise.  The jury is instructed to evaluate their testimony in context and determine whether they are credible or not.

The presumption of innocence is merely shorthand for the idea that the prosecution has to prove the defendant is guilty of a crime, rather than the defense proving that the defendant is innocent.  It does not literally mean that every person who believes in the justice system in the United States must believe that defendants are innocent and accusers are liars (or mistaken) until and unless the jury convicts.

The presumption of innocence is merely shorthand for the idea that the prosecution has to prove the defendant is guilty of a crime, rather than the defense proving that the defendant is innocent.  It does not literally mean that every person who believes in the justice system in the United States must believe that defendants are innocent and accusers are liars (or mistaken) until and unless the jury convicts.

THIS.

...and written with a far greater economy of words than I was able to muster above.

Ginmar, if you are a survivor, I’m sorry. 

But I NEVER implied anything other than what you are saying.  I agree with you, and that is why I am so angry that you are cursing me out.  Now I think that maybe you are too filled with rage to see what I said and you somehow came away with the idea that I was defending rape apologists.  I really don’t know how you could have come to that conclusion, but if it’s because you’ve been sexually assaulted, then fuck it, yell and scream at me.  I know what that rage feels like. 

I’m going to leave the thread.  Maybe some things really can’t be discussed, among strangers, on the internet without devolving like this.  No sense of tone, too many misunderstandings. 

But I would never defend Moore or KO on what they did, and I never said they weren’t doing the things you accuse them of doing.  I think they were doing those things.  I don’t defend rape apologists.  Not ever.

Bagelsan: I see your point & apologies for causing offence, but I have to strongly disagree re: taking the ignore approach.  I’ve conceded the notion that mocking ginny for being Truly Gone Fishing is cheap, but engaging her in good faith is a waste of time.  The pattern emerges that she considers picking fights online as a free form of therapy that she’s entitled to & is very abusive to anyone who calls her on it.  Bad enough, but she also has an established pattern of making things up about the contents of the comment.  Anyone w/ a residue of self-reflection would consider the fact that they’ve shit on & pissed off so many people online that a community has formed for the purpose of comparing notes on their unreasonable behavior & venting spleen about the spite & abuse they’ve dished out as a warning sign that they might be taking a wrong approach.  Ginny says she’s “flattered”?  Sounds like “My mental illness from having !!!BEENINIRAQSTANDINGONTHEEDGESOFMASSGRAVES!!! gives me free licence to be as unnecessarily vicious, condescending, belligerent & obnoxious to people online as I want & to make up as much shit about them as I please.  Neener neener neener.”  To add to the pile, she’s also gone to the sites of people she’s abused on discussion threads & picked fights with them there as well.  This isn’t just bullying, it’s a form of harassment, bordering in stalking.

She’s a bully.  If the Clinton years, the ‘09 town halls & the “9/11 Mosque” nonsense has taught progressives anything, ignoring the crazies doesn’t make them go away, it just makes them crazier: it coddles their assumption that what they’re doing is fine & free of consequences.  Bullies have been making the news a lot lately, & with good reason:  bullies are toxic & people are fed up w/ them.  She likes to sneer that those who retaliate “can dish it out but can’t take it”, but there’s what one has to take vs. what one doesn’t have to take: no one is under any obligation to put up with a load of crap from a shellshocked shit-talking bulldozer who lobs rhetorical cinderblocks into comment thread traffic because they can’t be bothered to lie down on an analyst’s couch.  It’s a relief to see her bullying being called to account several times by different people in the same thread.

Smartpatrol:

I suppose I could buy your characterization of ginmar as a bully; I know shes gone off and attacked me when I was agreeing with her, but using language that was different than what she’d use. (though we worked it out later) I can see how in different contexts, you might come to that conclusion.

But.

Comment #105? Where you make some sort of pharmacological-based dig?

NOT FUCKING OKAY.

At all.

Seriously, a remark like that smears you with enough eau-de-asshole that you’ll be smelling like shit years from now. Just drop your handle on the floor and walk away from it, register something new and start over as a newbie commenter. Just go.

I wonder if that’s why she attracts a crowd of assholes.

That’s a rather unique way to characterize ginmar, but it seems highly appropriate somehow.

Oh come on.  The “you must be on drugs” response is pretty standard for the internets.  It is not nice - actually, it is pretty shitty. But telling someone to go away forever because they said something unkind:  that is pretty mean too. 

I have been watching this string for a while.  This, like most strings that get heated and personal, involves a commenter who is still pissed about something they took personal from an old post.  When I see someone say something like, “You are being an asshole just like when you called me [insert real or imagined insult here] back on that post about [insert old newsworthy subject here]”; I just look away politely and move on.

Also:  Thank Amanda and all of the commenters here for being grown up and understanding nuance.  From the gate I figured that it was entirely possible that Assange is a raping asshole - but that the international pursuit of him was totally bogus.  If Interpol chased rapists regularly, that WOULD be awesome.  But they don’t - thus, this shit is really suspect.

Um, smartie patrol? Fandom wank existed long before I arrived on the scene, you dumb fucker.  As to the rest of your bullshit, I can point out various places where you accused me of things that Twisty has said—-years ago.

Weezie Jefferson:

“Standard for the internets” doesn’t make it less demeaning for those who are actually mentally ill and require meds. Perhaps it doesn’t apply to you, and therefore it’s hard to see the severity of the insult (or perhaps it does and you just don’t care), but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to do.

Also, if you’ll go back and read #115, nobody was told to go away forever.

“Oh come on.  The “you must be on drugs” response is pretty standard for the internets.”

Nobody’s getting taken to task for accusing another poster of having voluntarily altered their consciousness with psychoactive substances taken for pleasure prior to posting.  Which is, yes, kind of an asshole thing to say but is not in the same league as what was actually said.  The specific implication of the insult was that the poster being targeted is a) mentally ill, b) in need of medication to manage such, and c) has stopped taking said medication.  It doesn’t work without the social stigma applied to those who are mentally ill.

Anyone who’s been here for any length of time is familiar with ginmar’s behavior and backstory.  She needs to be called out, but mocking her condition, come on, that’s not okay.

NO time to get involved - other than, Celda, I admire your logic.  (sincerely.)

The rest of the thread - hmmm.  Looks like the kiddies are having trouble playing nice in the sandbox today.  Think I’ll go hang out with some six year olds for some mature conversation. 

Ciao.

ginmar, grow up already.

And if that’s your concept of an apology, I hope to God you get a dose of your own medicine. You throw something triggering in my face—not once but twice?—-and call that an apology? When what you’re doing is just trying to tear me apart because you’re a lying stalker?——“Hey, ginmar,  you said men hate blowjobs! You think that oral sex is disgusting! You accused me of dishing it out but not taking it!There’s a whole community formed to hate this bitch.” That’s an apology? “OMGMASSGRAVEMASSGRAVE.” Here’s a hint, jerkwad: that’s not an apology, and you’re still an asshole. You’re not sorry,  you’re still harassing me, and you do this every time you get a chance. But I’M the big bully.

Your so-called apology was no such thing. You posted it to a dead thread, two days after everyone else had given up. That’s no concession.  You conceded nothing. It’s a Republican concession, where you just use it to bash me more.  And that’s what I’m talking about.

Eric_Rom,  tell me this: how many ‘inoffensive buddhists’ are running around in the shitty neighborhoods of Saint Paul these days? Hm? Using words like praxis? Why in hell should I look it up when the whole point was to point out how that language is a signal of privilege?  But God forbid the peasants get uppity about throwing that in a the face of a notoriously upper middle class white feminist website, where the same ‘civil’ shit about women gets trotted out in the comments because like Smartie Patrol up there it’s okay to ignore what the guy does but if a woman ever whips out the sarcasm, she’s a bitch and it’s unforgiveable. Or she’s a crazy cunt, which is pretty much what Smartpatrol and that community that he keeps blaming me for basically say. What he doesn’t mention is that it’s got over five thousand members whose community predates my existence online and that periodically they dive bomb MY blog to harass me, like he’s been doing. And either they make shit up—-“Ginmar says white women can’t be racist because they’re OPPRESSED! Crazy bitch!”——or they admit they don’t read it. But it’s funny. As much as Smartpatrol and you all politely call me a rage-filled crazy bitch,  somehow, the fact that I’m crazy is never something that reflects on you guys.  If I’m crazy, and you attack me for it,  what does that make you?

Dark Avenger, you didn’t quote it, but I suppose you’d want to avoid it, in view of your own difficulties with sexism:

And I was disheartened to find out recently, when Samhita wrote a blog post at Feministing talking about how the recent shooting in Oakland that left four cops dead would likely result in the cops trolling around Oakland looking for payback, how many supposed liberals will loudly and repeatedly defend the police against the charge that they abuse their power to intimidate and harass minority populations.  If you’ve had the lifelong privilege of being the sort of person the cops ignore, then I suppose they could seem friendly and innocuous, but as this case shows, that is not the case. 

No, actually, what Samhita did was she wrote a post about Lovelle Mixon, in which she opened a pretentious ‘dialogue’ about a serial rapist and how he was really just a poor victim of the system, and how lack of a job made him do the things he did. 

Think I’m exaggerating?  Have at it. 

I do not deny that Mixon was armed, dangerous, a career criminal and potentially linked to the rape of a young woman. Lovelle Mixon’s actions are deplorable. But if we look at them within the context of police brutality, they sadly start make sense. Lovelle Mixon was trying to get out of going back to jail and this compounded with not finding work led him to desperate actions.

A woman? No, a twelve-year-old child.  Days later, DNA linked him to at least two more rapes, including two he committed that very morning.  Did any of the self righteous feminists who tried to deflect criticism about their supposed intersectionality have the guts to admit they were wrong? No, Amanda got snitty about it, quoted above.  Feministing and Feministe never addressed it. All of these blogs are run by bright, college-educated women who can’t or won’t admit that they’re wrong, and that they hide behind all kinds of big words when it suits them, such as when they try and make a rapist into a poster child for police brutality, while employing either outright deceptive language—-Amanda’s ‘all these people who’ll defend the cops’ when people weren’t defending the cops, they were criticizing anybody who adopted Mixon as a fluffy woobie——or Feministe avoiding the issue by blathering on about bullshit that had nothing to do with the fact that they whitewashed a rapist.  I’m sure there’ll be more bleating about how what a dumb cunt I am for not being able to ‘hold two different things in my head at the same time, for not ‘walking and chewing gum’ like Amanda said, but the fact is, there weren’t two things about the Mixon case. The victims were removed entirely, so there was no intersection because no other street was allowed to cross.  There was no police brutality;  somebody had an agenda and rammed the Mixon case into it and oh, just by the way, tossed lower class women like me in the dumpster so they could get all warm and fuzzy about their new victim, who was a man.  Now you all are dogpiling me for convenient rewrites of history, and attacking me for shit that you resent when I turn it around on you. Crazy? Well, bless your patronizing ass for leaving out so much of it. By omitting just about everything, you’re doing to me what Assange’s little fanboys are doing to his victims, what happens to any woman who dares challenge privilege.  How does that feel, Oh Superior Upper Middle Class Intelligentsia?  Oh, wait, I know: Now, Ginmar, you’re just an uppity cunt who pisses everybody off and asks for it.  Yeah, well, baby, we’re going to give it to you.  Oh, yeah, and you’re a crazy bitch. If we’re really generous, we’ll be patronizing.  Now, little peasant, go run off and learn some manners for dealing with Moore apologists and liberal dudes who claim that taking rape seriously is going to bring down liberals. I note that my anger makes me a crazy cunt to you guys,  utterly unjustified, but then again, it’s not your class and gender being tossed aside so some upper middle class people can cuddle with people who feel like they’re sustaining a body blow if the lower orders—-you know, people who you might write about in your term papers but demand ‘civility’ from no matter how much you’re an asshole to them—-dared question you. You call it obnoxious and leave out anything that preceded it. I wonder if next time, people will eagerly ignore Smart Patrol’s continued slams, lies, and harassment then, too?  Because if you leave out things like that, then it looks like I got mad out of nowhere.

I didn’t. And you can claim I’m a crazy bitch all you want, or obnoxious, but Smart Patrol’s been pulling this bullshit for a while now, and throwing triggering shit at me,  and while you bitch at me, not a one of you has taken him to task. Period. Just like making Lovelle Mixon’s rape victims disappear so the grown ups could ride their hobbyhorse of ‘police brutality’ in a case where feminists used the sort of dismissive language that they turn around and condemn in trolls. “I’m not saying….I’m not denying BUT…” Yeah.

Smartpatrol’s claimed previously that a community of thousands of assholes was formed by people I’d victimized with my sarcasm. Now he’s moved on to somehow claiming that it’s okay it’s thousands against once because I’m such a vicious cunt.  Problem is,  that community existed ages before I was around. And it’s got thousands of members. When thousands of people repeat lies over and over again,  what happens to the truth? But, oh, no,  I’m a bully.

    That shit matters. It might not matter to people who have safe, educated lives, and you might not like hearing about it——“Her patented blue collar schtick”——-but it still matters. And you’re too far up your own ass to care.

interesting. when the “people” getting smeared are men, then it’s a big deal, and you should be ashamed of saying it because you might be wrong, and what then?

but smearing the women in this case, that’s a-ok. No matter what you say about them, it won’t ever be a case of “two people are getting unjustly smeared”, because apparently women aren’t “people”.

Yeah, Dark Avenger,  have you stopped defending Keith Olbermann and using the word “feminazi” as a vehicle for that defense? <a >All the while using your wife as a ‘some of my best friends are—-!” alibi? </i>

And seeing as how Daisy has never apparently participated in rape discussion, where cries of ‘innocent till proven guilty, you pack of yapping bitches’ are common, and indeed have occurred here in discussions of Assange: 

Celda, presumption of innocence is a legal concept, you have no clue what you’re talking about.
But don’t let that stop you from bloviating, and frankly, since you are talking out your ass, you came to the right comments section.  But you have to work on your arrogance a little.  You need more of it to really fit in here.
Think complete dickweed and practice.  You’ll get there.

This after Celda took the time to explain to her.

nteresting. when the “people” getting smeared are men, then it’s a big deal, and you should be ashamed of saying it because you might be wrong, and what then?

but smearing the women in this case, that’s a-ok. No matter what you say about them, it won’t ever be a case of “two people are getting unjustly smeared”, because apparently women aren’t “people”.

ginmar, your lengthy diatribe only demonstrates that I’m a convenient whipping boy for you when you can’t rant and rave about anyone else.

As a person who suffers from occasional mental illness, I have to say that the “you are off your meds” insult adds to stigma, and I’d like to ask you to stop.

People off their meds don’t demonstrate the level of organization ginmar brings to her screeds here.

No ginmar, she didn’t say that to me, you took that from a conversation between her and someone else.  I believe that claiming that our legal system’s “innocent until proven guilty” bedrock is the same as saying that the victim is lying, is not only wrong, but very harmful.

And as far as not participating in rape discussions, I’ve been raped, but in therapy both group and privately, and have participated in many discussions.

It helped get a handle on my rage.

I hope some day you get a handle on yours.  Abusing others is not therapy nor is it ever to be tolerated no matter what your reason is. 

And you are an extremely abusive person.  Period.

I wish you well.

Bye.

Re, Olbermann and Moore. I’m not going to comment on their conduct in this current episode but I think that while most of their work is very good, they do tend to suffer a lot from being both comedians and enthusiasts. Since both like to use comedy to advance liberalism or at least bash conservatism, although Keith isn’t really as funny as he thinks he is, they tend to fall into the pratfalls of comedy, mainly not knowing when they crossed the line on a particularly sensitive issue. This problem is exasperated by their enthusiasm for their causes, sometimes they do not know when to proceed cautiously or think more thoroughly before acting.

  An example of Olbermann’s enthusiasm is when he accidently spread an article written by infamous Holocaust denier, Joran Jermas:

  http://hurryupharry.org/2010/12/09olbermann-assange-and-the-holocaust-denier/

  He latter apologized for this but a little more prudence would have saved him the embarrasement.

That should say that I have been in therapy for the rape, not that I was raped in therapy, good god.  I am very upset by this thread, and not typing very well, sorry.

What the fuck does Lovelle Mixon killing four cops have to do with whether Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann participated in known tactics of rape apologism?  For that matter, what the fuck does the Duke rape case have to do with determining whether these two women are lying?  I’ve now seen both cases trotted out in blog comment threads and neither issue does anything to clarify what’s going on with the Assange case.

Yeah, Daisy, you went off on somebody else while whining that I went off on you—-when you acted like ‘innocent till proven guilty’ is some innocent statement that has no history in rape threads.  Which it most emphatically does. 

Dark Avenger, you’ve proven that you’ll defend sexist men against ‘femnazis’ against all logic, and one of them has been Keith Olbermann. I can quote and quote and quote where you defended Olbermann, against all sense, when he held up a picture of her and called her “The Worst Person in the World”.  Don’t pile on somebody else in a verbal gang bang if you have any skelatons in your closet there.  And as for my comments—-I’m crazy, not stupid.

The Duke rape case is going to be brought up in every thread where rape is alleged, because even though Roscoe and Smart Patrol can’t imagine it, it is possible to be a supposed liberal and be an absolutely jackass to women, and sexist besides.

Oh and if you bitch at me for my anger, then take a lgood long look at what gets me angry:

There’s what one can take vs. what one doesn’t have to take.  No one is under any obligation to put up with a load of crap from a shellshocked shit-talking bulldozer who often can’t be bothered to read a post to the end before making ludicrous assessments re: the character of the commenter while glibly dismissing (“Yeah, whatever.”) &/ ignoring the actual content of said post.  Ever.  Boundaries, G-mar.  Boundaries.

Shellshocked shit talking bulldozer? From yet another Assange dick sucker? Yeah,  that’s the concession that you all lovely, wonderful, understanding and compassionate college liberals accepted.

I didn’t. And you can claim I’m a crazy bitch all you want, or obnoxious, but Smart Patrol’s been pulling this bullshit for a while now, and throwing triggering shit at me, and while you bitch at me, not a one of you has taken him to task.

There is indeed a pattern where person after person either ignores you or insults you.

But, ginmar, what you’re missing is that the common element in all those cases is you.

ginmar, here is an example of the sort of thing that you write that gets people pissed off at you:

“Hey, ginmar, you said men hate blowjobs! You think that oral sex is disgusting! You accused me of dishing it out but not taking it!There’s a whole community formed to hate this bitch.” That’s an apology?

I’m assuming that post was a response to Smartpatrol’s comment at #114. Within that quote, you have a few small kernels of truth mixed in with a bunch utter bullshit that you just made up out of thin air. It’s kind of ironic, as one of the criticisms Smartpatrol directed at you was:

Bad enough, but she also has an established pattern of making things up about the contents of the comment.

Quite literally, you just provided prima facie evidence that his claim that you tend to make shit up is legitimate. I can’t find the part in Smartpatrol’s comment where he wrote the words, “Hey, ginmar, you said men hate blowjobs! You think that oral sex is disgusting!” Where was that written in comment #114, precisely? The thing is, you’re not paraphrasing what Smartpatrol wrote in his comment, you are actually attributing a DIRECT QUOTE to him that he never made. He said absolutely nothing about your opinion on blowjobs and oral sex, but that’s what you wanted to hear to justify that huge chip on your shoulder, so you just went ahead and accused him of making a statement that he never made.

You made that bullshit up, and when you have to start attacking people for saying or writing things that they never actually said or wrote, you’re conceding that you don’t have a legitimate argument. I live in a world in which we analyze and criticize the actual words somebody actually said or wrote, not a delusional interpretation of their words that is completely fabricated to fit the interpretation I wish to have.

Let’s continue:

“OMGMASSGRAVEMASSGRAVE.” Here’s a hint, jerkwad: that’s not an apology, and you’re still an asshole.

See, that IS a legitimate paraphrasing of what Smartpatrol actually wrote, and you are free to call him out on it because it essentially is what he wrote, not something you completely made up, like him accusing you of hating blowjobs.

Your so-called apology was no such thing. You posted it to a dead thread, two days after everyone else had given up.

Once again, you are making shit up.

Amanda posted this thread YESTERDAY at 12:30pm ET. Smartpatrol wrote his comment this morning at 8:45am ET. I’m not a math genius, but I’m pretty sure Smartpatrol’s comment was written slightly more than 20 hours after this thread was begun, which is not the same as “two days”. Unless something changed overnight, I’m pretty sure that there are 48 hours in two days, which would be 27.75 hours more than the amount of time between this thread being first published and Smartpatrol’s comment to you earlier this morning.

I have no idea what has happened to you in your life, and I’m sorry if you have ever been the victim of sexual assault. I myself am a victim of sexual assault, I know firsthand how immensely painful it is, and I understand the feelings of rage that it can produce, because I’ve felt those feelings.

You are entitled to your rage, your cynicism, your distrust, and your disgust not only towards the specific perpetrators who hurt you but to the system and the culture that enables rapists in our patriarchal society. I can’t blame you for being pissed, and I’ll never say that you don’t have a right to be pissed, because you most certainly do have the right to be furious about the fucked-up nature of rape culture.

What you do not have a right to do is be a complete fucking asshole towards anyone and everyone who has the slightest disagreement with you, even over the most trivial of issues. You don’t have a right to put words in people’s mouths and accuse them of saying or writing things that THEY DID NOT SAY OR WRITE.

You know what? Scratch that. You do have a right to be as big of an asshole as you want to be and you do have a right to make shit up to suit your needs. Just don’t expect any sympathy when you drive more and more people away from you because they don’t enjoy being abused by someone with a massive chip on her shoulder. The condescending wingnut stereotype that tries to reduce feminism to nothing but a man-hating culture pisses me off to no end. And yet, I have to say that if anybody were to accuse someone who says and writes the things you say and write of being nothing more than a bitter man-hater, I’d have a tough time proving them wrong.

The people who you’ve alienated here don’t dislike you because you’re a woman, they dislike you because you’re an asshole.

Look, even considering everything Smartpatrol and Daisy have said, even if I thought it was all true and unbiased… I just don’t think ginmar has the power to truly threaten you guys. Verbally abuse? I don’t know; FSM knows she isn’t pussyfooting around about her opinions, but she has managed to rage without resorting to dumbass low-blows about insanity and meds and without acting all wounded innocence/ignorance about how rape threads work. So that’s ginmar 1, ginmar-haters 0 on that count.

I think that she has a short fuse (sorry I’m just completely talking about you in front of you, ginmar) but what the hell makes y’all think it looks cool or mature to goddamn flick matches at that fuse? If you genuinely thought she was a serious, dangerous opponent (like some all-powerful cyberbully, requiring a coalition of anti-ginmar people to combat) you would not patronize and dismiss her in this way—and if you thought she was some pitiable crazy person surely you’d lay off a bit with the taunting and baiting you’ve been doing? Pick one; is she a crazy you can’t take seriously, or someone you must band together to defeat? You can’t have it both ways.

I don’t think therapy would kill her, if that’s an option—I don’t think therapy would kill anyone, really, I’m a big fan—but you guys acting like little fuckers about this, and piling on (“but, she’s a crazy bitch! Everyone thinks so!”) isn’t gonna be some kind of cathartic experience that convinces her to ooh change her ways it’s a holiday miracle! So you’re not accomplishing shit, you’re just adding ugliness to the thread.

I firmly believe there’s a place for ginmar’s anger. And I don’t really agree with a lot of what she says, so I firmly believe there’s a place for arguing (even vehemently!) with her. But there’s not a place to act like an asshole—like a pile on of assholes—and go on some smear campaign against her. Even if it’s true. Please act like fucking adults, not a gang of kids who like to throw rocks at the weird one. Not to sound like a goddamn parent but seriously, if you can’t engage reasonably then don’t engage; even if ginmar is totally fer real the crazy bitch y’all claim she is (and I think she maybe is, only in a generally positive way) the rest of the commenters will appreciate only hearing ranting from one person per thread. Okay? Lay off.

You know, as an outsider, it appears that in response to Ginmar, all anyone has is whining, ableism and sexist tone-trolling.  If this is the best that can be done to convince me she’s this horrible person, I am extremely unimpressed.  She’s acerbic, unapologetic and abrasive.  None of this makes her wrong.  Pathetic, sexist and cowardly pile-ons, however. . . .

Ah, Rare Vos said it shorter and better.

You know, as an outsider, it appears that in response to Ginmar, all anyone has is whining, ableism and sexist tone-trolling.  If this is the best that can be done to convince me she’s this horrible person, I am extremely unimpressed.  She’s acerbic, unapologetic and abrasive.  None of this makes her wrong.  Pathetic, sexist and cowardly pile-ons, however. . . .

Umm, OK.

I have a hard time viewing someone who reacts to criticism by replying with verbally abusive shit like this:

Shellshocked shit talking bulldozer? From yet another Assange dick sucker?

as just an acerbic and thought-provoking critic of the patriarchy. Call me crazy.

To be fair, someone called ginmar a shellshocked shit talking bulldozer. Assange dick sucker is her response to being called the first insult, and imho a much milder slam.

She’s acerbic, unapologetic and abrasive.  None of this makes her wrong.

You’re right, none of that makes her wrong.

What makes her wrong is completely fabricating quotes and accusing people of saying or writing things which they have never said or written.

That, and calling someone an “Assange dick sucker” for not being in complete agreement with everything she believes, even when the target of her homophobic slur agrees that Julian Assange is a creepy misogynist.

Being the victim of misogyny gives you a right to be pissed and a right to call out assholes who promote misogyny and rape apology. It does not give you a right to be an abusive asshole to anyone who doesn’t completely share your entire worldview.

Thanks.  I stand corrected.  I had no idea there was some real stuff behind that.  I see the “yer off yer meds” shit slung around so much that I pretty much figured this was more of the same. 

Yes, that IS an extra shitty thing to say.

“Once someone is accused, then they are presumed innocent. And therefore, the accusation of them is presumed to be false.

I understand the technical and legal reasons for the presumption of innocence. What I am pointing out is that if we believe in the presumption of innocence (until proven guilty), we must, BY DEFINITION believe that any criminal accusation against someone is false (until proven true).

Suppose a student gets the valedictorian position. If you believe that they deserves the position due to academic achievement, then BY DEFINITION you also believe that they did not cheat.

Why are you arguing against something as simple as a basic corollary? “

Sorry if I’m beating a dead horse here, but this is just flat out faulty logic.  I full well understand that guilty until proven innocent has some loaded meaning in discussions about rape but that truly has nothing to do with those here who have taken issue with Celda’s misstatements regarding a concept that is truly one of the bedrocks of our criminal justice system.

In the United States, the presumption of innocence simply means that the state has not yet met its legal burden, in a court of law, in order to secure a guilty verdict against an accused.  It means that a person who is accused of a crime can not simply be sentenced by a judge and put in prison without a trial being held in which the laws of evidence are respected and the state is held to it’s burden to prove the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (which is also a highly technical legal term, basically legal shorthand for the state proved that it is more likely than not that the accused did the crime of which he or she is accused.)

Celda the correct version of your statement should read that if we believe in the presumption of innocence (until proven guilty), we must, BY DEFINITION believe that any criminal accusation against someone is yet unproven until such time when the State establishes that proof, in court, and beyond a reasonable doubt.  I take my job to uphold both the Constitution and the laws of my State quite seriously, and I have never, ever treated an accuser/crime victim as a presumed liar simply because she has not yet proven that she is telling the truth.  That would not only serve to further victimize such a person, it would also arguably violate her own human rights.  Which is just all shades of wrong and horrible.

Can we stop the Ginmar pile-on?  And Ginmar, I’m not sure what Daisy said that set you off—if I knew, if she knew, it might be easier to avoid it.  At first I thought it was that you confused Celda’s comment to Daisy as being from Daisy.

Is there anyone who’s ever been a regular commenter at a politically-charged website who hasn’t at some point or other been the target of vile vituperative vilification?  It’s part of the deal.

What I primarily took from Sady’s post is that here’s someone who needs to step away from the Twittering for a few days, because she sounds like she’s about to have a nervous breakdown- and that’s just what the trolls want.  You can’t fight for your cause 24/7/365; and the supply of morons who get their jollies pushing your buttons is inexhaustible, especially on the intertubes.  Pick your spots.

On Moore, if I had to guess I’d say Moore was probably ignorant of the actual charges and was predisposed to jump on the “government conspiracy” bandwagon.  After all, that’s what he’s been arguing about for his entire career, conspiracies by the powerful to dominate and exploit the powerless.  The “Assange was framed!” argument fits very neatly into his world-view.  As to why he hasn’t issued a retraction, who knows.  Maybe he really is a misogynist who really thinks bitches ain’t shit, or maybe he doesn’t want to admit he was wrong out of ego and narcissism, or maybe he doesn’t want to dilute his arguments against the conspiracies of the powerful; trying to psychoanalyze him from afar is ultimately a useless endeavor.  I don’t know that he’s ever expressly said he was a feminist, but also I can’t believe that he would knowingly lie about something simply out of hatred of women, or just to score political points.  He has not demonstrated that lack of integrity.

On Olbermann, he is absolutely the flipside of Hannity and Beck.  His lack of attention to detail and promotion of ignorant lines of argument in order to be the Voice of the Opposition have been numerous, and incomparably cataloged by Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler.  If he tends to be more on the side of truth than those others, it is often more by accident than intent.  (Rachael Maddow has quite often been demonstrably guilty of the same lack of attention, all in the name of snarking at Conservatives.  I no longer watch either show.)  His “special comments” are usually cringeworthy rants, not the Murrow-esque argumentation he clearly aspires to emulate.  If Olbermann and Moore are the best examples of philosophical “leaders” we can come up with, we liberals are in serious trouble.

In truth, I can think of no one nominally in the “progressive”/liberal camp with whom I am in complete agreement today.  Even Markos Moulitsas, who probably is the closest thing to a leader we have at this point, has his blind spots and has made his missteps.

So, I get that you might be angry at ginmar and there might be history that you have with her and you might not appreciate her style of interaction on the web. But. All the “off her meds” talk is ableism, pure and simple. It doesn’t matter if she really is a bully. It just doesn’t matter. She’s open about her mental health struggles and so not only is it ableist, but it’s also hitting below the belt to use that against her. It’s just not cool. And if you don’t give a shit about her, well other commenters here have been open about living with mental illnesses and might not appreciate that language being thrown around. So there are a lot of really valid reasons to not use the “crazy bitch” line of offense against her. If you find her that intolerable, just ignore her.

And all we have, in the end, is a derailed discussion. Sady and Amanda are saying something pretty fucking important in their posts and what they are saying deserves a real discussion, not what is happening here now.

I stand by “verbally abusive.”  Ginmar is not the only person here who’s a trauma survivor.  No, her arguments themselves aren’t threatening, and sometimes I agree with her basic points.  But I spent sixteen years putting up with unprovoked, vicious assaults on my psyche, and it wasn’t so long ago that shit was triggering for me.  I’m not going to pretend her temper, habit of fabrication, and long-winded rages are anything other than what they are.  As this is a both/and blog, I think we’re all capable of saying pile-ons, taunting by ‘isms, and lashing out are bad behavior.

From the outside in, this looks like less of a pile on and more of an intervention.  Sometimes your friends have to stop you and say “Hey you are really lashing out and being hurtful (and a plain old jerk).  What can we do?”  Seems like one of the things you have decided is not helpful is getting angry and bringing up her psychiatric issues as a way to subdue her (which does not work ever on anyone).

I hope you all manage to listen to each other and get back to being a cohesive Unit of Awesome that has the best, most thoughtful (if sometimes really heated) discussions on the internets.

You know, I might buy this as an intervention if people were straying away from the very abuses they accuse ginmar of, both here and in other forums.

Seriously, Bagelsan et al,

ginmar‘s behavior is well beyond any real tolerance for general discourse.  She *is* acting in an abusive fashion that is typical of agressive people who are psychically disturbed.  Ableism is just not an appropriate topic, when people react pretty much as they have.  I wouldn’t have talked about meds or anything like that, but I seriously hope that Pandagon’s code enables Amanda to ban people from particular comments or for a particular length of time.

We aren’t having a discussion about the main topic.  Mostly because a person who knows she’s off her rocker and doesn’t care is attacking people verbally with very little discrimination.  At such a point, I could hardly care less that some other commenter talks about needing to up her meds.  He‘s not the problem, and talking about ableism just derails this to even more unpleasant-land.

Sometimes your friends have to stop you and say “Hey you are really lashing out and being hurtful (and a plain old jerk).  What can we do?”

Yeah, and if the people piling on were her friends, or if they had said anything at all resembling the above, maybe you’d have a point.

But yes, I would like if we could rerail… Surely, even though many of us clearly can’t be ass’d to stand up for ginmar, we can at least support Sady, who is performing her liberal feminism in a proper tone and not directed at the very defensive us?

I can quote and quote and quote where you defended Olbermann, against all sense, when he held up a picture of her and called her “The Worst Person in the World”.  Don’t pile on somebody else in a verbal gang bang if you have any skelatons in your closet there.  <i>And as for my comments—-I’m crazy, not stupid.

ginmar, I’ve already had someone phone me when I accidentally used my real name at a blog one time and used it to get my cell phone #, so please save the melodrama for the paying customers, as we used to say in my college theatrics day.

If you were to look me up:

I have no criminal convictions, a few speeding tickets at least 10 years ago or more, a better than average credit rating, three siblings and my mother dead from cancer, a father who worked as a teacher for 37 years before retiring to the Central California Coast, a BA in Biology and a very low tolerance for bullshit of any flavor, male, female, LGBTA

And as for my comments—-I’m crazy, not stupid.

You managed to mangle the HTML linking to my horrible comments, so you have what, Schizonetia or Affective Code Disorder?

Not Proven.

We aren’t having a discussion about the main topic.  Mostly because a person who knows she’s off her rocker and doesn’t care is attacking people verbally with very little discrimination.

No, it’s because, on a post about Sady getting attacked as a crazy bitch because she is defending women being attacked as crazy bitches, we have a commenter who is getting attacked as being a crazy bitch. I do not distinguish between defenses of crazy bitches, thank you. I do not choose to let slide some of these attacks just because it’s friendly fire against someone our side likes to call a crazy bitch. Certainly no one here gets to throw the first stone against crazy bitches, nor should we! It’s sexist, it’s ableist, and whether Assange’s dick was involved or not, it is beneath us.

I think it doesn’t seem to be an intervention since an intervention gets its power from people who you love and care about saying,hey, tone it down a bit. When people start throwing around anti mental illness slurs and stuff, it stops being about whether ginmar should be nicer to people(I used to be as mean as ginmar despite us being internet enemies in the past*) and starts sliming everyone who is struggling with mental illness, whether they are nice on the internet or mean on the internet, and that’s not right.

*That stopped when I forgot whatever she had done. I still to this day don’t remember.

I seriously resent the abuse of the concept of ableist, because it’s about more than pill-popping.  And I think you’re an apologist for ginmar‘s actions and words, Bagelsan.  I’ve been around in the web for awhile.  I see this stuff go on all the time.  Some long-timer who clearly has “issues” is allowed to go off on people because of his or her close ties to the people that run the websites.  At least until it gets very publically embarrassing.  Guess what?  It’s not okay.  If a man has “anger management” issues, and he doesn’t use therapy because beating his wife is just so much more fun than counting to ten, he just doesn’t have the right to call ableism.  We’re NOT TALKING ABOUT SOMEONE WHO IS INCONVENIENT TO OTHERS, OR MAY POSE AN INCONVENIENCE TO OTHERS.

Morally, ginmar is well into the wrong, and attempting to talk about how some random commenter who’s saying what a whole bunch of people are thinking is ableist just promotes hypocrisy and a lack of seriousness about the needs of *real* ableism against people with psychological issues, let alone the ableism issues that never gets talked about because the focus always seems to be about the more “mild” psychiatric issues—rarely crippling psychatric issues, and almost NEVER about deafness, or muscular distrophy or cerebral palsy, or any of the other broken people that are put away from society’s limelight.

shah8 - that is an excellent Moore rape-apologist- style impression.  Mind if I quote you to people defending him elsewhere?  That is an excellent send off of Moore’s total wrongness.

lola, that was so well said.  I am just adding that for myself; i’m a liberal person.  I would never agree to change the American justice system from a presumption of innocence to a presumtion of guilt.  So making the very simplistic claim that if there is a LEGAL presumption of innocence that means there is a presumption that the victim is lying merely further enables fuckwits to make the previously referenced remarks about rape victims.  Frankly, I don’t think anything would stop them, but I’m not on with providing them with added ammunition.

Anyway…

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/20/naomi_wolf_vs_jaclyn_friedman_a

Jaclyn Friedman kicked the shit out of Naomi WOlf today on Democracy now and exposed her as the fool that she is.  I don’t know how Wolf was permitted to end with “when the woman is telling Assange YES YES YES go ahead YES without a condom”.  That part is enraging. 

BEcause that appears nowhere in the leaked accusations from the Guardian.  I do not know what is wrong with this woman.

And KO said some more stupid shit today.  Now I have to find something to do at 8 pm every night!  I guess I will get a lot more reading done.

Don’t really care.  Shit, I drown puppies on my birthdays, Rare Vos.

But you know that kind of thing that really drives me just insane? 

Nobody ever shouts ableist, or ageist for that matter, when someone powerful is screwing over someone who’s weak.  Ableist and ageist stuff happens every fucking day, and I get nice, and thoroughly reminded of the general shittiness of human nature when people talks about Helen Thomas like she’s so old, she lost her marbles.  Nobody ever shouts ableist then, because the IP conflict warriors will come after you!  It’s always so amazing how easy a little ABLEIST derail helps those that damn well shouldn’t get it.  And how hard it is to actually stop real ableism.

That stuff makes me ssooooooo crazy, I acid-tongue’d all the fools and the people that should know better

To be fair, someone called ginmar a shellshocked shit talking bulldozer. Assange dick sucker is her response to being called the first insult, and imho a much milder slam.

Fair enough, she does deserve a bit of a pass since she was responding to an ugly insult directed at her first. I’m not necessarily in agreement that “Assange dick sucker” is milder than “shellshocked shit talking bulldozer”, because the former insult has a pretty homophobic tone, as if being a guy who would suck Assange’s dick is itself a horrible thing.

My bigger issue with the “Assange dick sucker” slam is that it does not appear to be even remotely based in reality. Forgive me if I missed something, but I’m not seeing where Smartpatrol or anyone else (aside from Albert Cirrus upthread) has spoken in defense of Julian Assange in this thread, or even defended the ugly misogyny displayed by Moore and Olbermann in discussing the allegations against Assange.

It seems that just about everyone who posts here is in agreement that Julian Assange is at the very minimum a really creepy and misogynist individual, and that Moore and Olbermann are assholes for engaging in rape apology to try to defend Assange’s actions.

I called ginmar out initially because she made the absolutely ridiculous claim that Michael Moore was every bit as much of a misogynist as Newt Gingrich. That’s a horseshit opinion and a very lazy analysis. Because I refused to validate her asanine comparison, she attacked me as though I was defending Moore’s or Olbermann’s conduct, as if I was entirely dismissing the claim that they acted like misogynist asshats, when I did nothing of the sort.

If I haven’t been clear up until this point, let me make my position clear:

Michael Moore’s and Keith Olbermann’s use of rape apologist rhetoric in discussing the accusations against Julian Assange was despicable, and they both deserve to be excoriated and criticized for the stunning asshattery they displayed in discussing this matter. I will not defend the truly offensive things that they did and said in regard to the Julian Assange rape allegations, because what they did and said was indefensible. Michael Moore is an asshole for engaging in rape apologist rhetoric. Keith Olbermann is an asshole for engaging in rape apologist rhetoric. Just so we’re completely clear, I BELIEVE THAT BOTH OF THESE MEN ARE ASSHOLES FOR ENAGING IN RAPE APOLOGISM!!

Having thoroughly established where I stand in regard to the the words and deeds of Moore and Olbermann in relation to Julian Assange, I will not support the reductio ad absurdum contention that Michael Moore is just as much of a proponent of patriarchal misogyny as Newt Gingrich, because it is entirely disconnected from the reality of who these two men actually are and how much of a misogynist each one actually is.

All misogyny is wrong, and all misogynist behavior is worthy of scorn. But not all misogynist acts are equally bad, nor are all men who ever said or done anything misogynist (which pretty much includes 100% of the male population) equally guilty of oppressing women and reinforcing the patriarchy.

A guy who chooses to utilize the vile word “cunt” to attack a woman he is angry at is a misogynist asshole. But he’s not nearly as much of a misogynist asshole as the guy who slams his girlfriend’s head into a wall when she angers him. And he’s definitely not as much of a misogynist asshole as the guy who rapes drunk women while they are passed out. When you take the position that the misogynist who calls women “cunts” is just as deplorable and despicable as the misogynist who drugs women and rapes them while they are passed out, you insult those who have actually had to face the most violent and despicable forms of misogynist behavior imagineable.

That doesn’t mean misogyny is acceptable so long as it is a less severe form of misogyny, but it does mean that some misogynists are a lot worse than others, and some forms of misogynist behavior are a lot more deplorable than other forms of misogynist behavior. In this particular case, I think it’s fair to say Newt Gingrich is a bigger misogynist asshole than Michael Moore, which doesn’t mean Moore isn’t a misogynist asshole, it just means that he’s not as much of one as Newt Gingrich.

In spite of the Shrub’s claim that you are “either with us or with the terrorists”, the real world just ain’t that black and white, and pretty much everybody lives somewhere in the many shades of gray.

Oh, this is rich…

There’s a dude named Roscoe there who posts longwinded dissertations about the wonders of Julian Assange and liberal malehood and how wonderful Michael Moore is, you bitches just don’t appreciate it. I’m Loling so hard at the ‘inoffensive buddhist’ remark—-Hello, I think I just put my finger on why poor folks don’t want to read pretentious bullshit about ‘praxis’ and shit like that. No, you dumb shit, I don’t have to or want to look it up, because the point is, aren’t all the little yoga school hipsters so <>enlightened?</i> Ugh. There’s no privilege in that kind of bullshit, oh no indeed.

You know what ginmar, go fuck yourself, you lying sack of shit.

You don’t know the first goddamn thing about me, and how dare you accuse me of posting “longwinded dissertations about the wonders of Julian Assange”, when I HAVE DONE NO SUCH FUCKING THING!! Where the fuck did I post anything about the “wonders of Julian Assange and liberal malehood”? I have never once defended Julian Assange in anything I’ve written here, and for you to accuse me of praising that POS is deplorable.

And really, why in the fuck are you even here, when you’re pretty blunt at your own blog about how much you can’t stand Amanda and virtually everyone who posts here:

Oh that htread at Pandagon is full of asholes taking me to task for being sarcastic to an ‘unoffensive buddhist’ and being a shellshocked bulldozer’ who won’t appreciate what that stalker sees while he’s sucking Assange’s dick. I’m too angry at liberal bros like Dark Avenger, who went on and on to defend Olbermann when he held up a photo of a woman who’d been harassed by football players and called her the worst person in the world. Or maybe I’m too angry at the so-called liberal assholes who act like liberal men and liberals in general have no privilege issues with the peasants, Massa. Maybe Amanda will go on a three-post tear about how hipsters are being unfairly maligned! Or maybe another so-called rape victim will whine about ‘innocent till proven guilty’ like rape discussions online never use that phrase to declare women to be lying whores.

Seriously, Amanda did three posts about OMG hipsters and how you’re all jus jellus of their joy, and not annoyed with how fucking smug the little bastards are.

This entire thread brought to you by lots of wealthy mostly white people with few hard responsibilities falling in love of the image of their own entertainment preferences. Seriously, to a father of two disabled kids representing low-wage workers in court, this entire thread and discussion makes we want to call Ted Nugent, buy a 12 gauge and go blast the living shit out of a bunch of herbivorous animals who did nothing to me first. #getajob #pleasespankitmorequietly.

Yeah, I appreciate the sentiment, because really, the only reason I post there is so there’s a peasant calling bullshit on their pretenses and their self importance. Fuck a duck. I really hate the so-called liberal left. You have to wonder how liberal they’re going to be in a few years. Then again, I wonder how liberal they are now because they give off the unmistakable air of people who write about po folks but won’t actually listen to what we have to say. (Well, unless we suck their dicks and marvel over how wonderful they are.)

You are a seriously delusional human being, and I really hope for your sake that you eventually learn how to live your life without being such a vile and hateful person.

She is plenty pissed, and perhaps unreasonably so in this instance, but there is a lot of history here, roscoe, that you were not here for.

I remember ginmar of several years ago, who used to be much milder.  And then it seemed that she just got tired of it.  Got tired of the name calling, the accusations, the accumulated bullshit.

As a result of that, I think there are times here where I see her reacting more strongly than I might.  But I’m not her, and I don’t have the negative history she and other posters here have with eachother, and calling her vile and hateful as a person is pretty lousy.

You want to call her on her actions?  Then do so.  But if you use the same tactics you criticize her for doing, if you judge her, you really aren’t fixing anything.  You’re just being a jerk, too.  And in the case where you’re inserting yourself into conflicts that span several blogs and several years, it is possible that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

I don’t think you are a vile and hateful person.  I do think that your name-calling and accusations are wrong, and you should stop them.

WOw roscoe, I never whined about innocent until proven guilty either.

She is definitely a bald-faced liar and anyone who defends her is a shit stirrer.

But you shouldn’t put yourself through going to her blog and reading her fabulist rants.  She’s delusional.  Let it go, for your own self.  That’s just my advice of course, I don’t mean to sound like I’m telling you what to do.

If it makes you feel any better, I’ll say it again; she’s fucking delusional and every word she wrote there is made up.  And anyone who refers to someone as a “so-called rape victim” really doesn’t care about women at all.

That’s just something she hides behind in order to vent her rage.

I’d stay away from her, far away.  Don’t let her get to you.  She’s a liar, and any fair minded person sees that.  You don’t have to keep defending yourself against a liar.

Ismone, shut the fuck up.

She hasn’t “reacted strongly”  She’s fucking lied and invented statements people made, including myself, that they never made.

When she does that to you, then you can talk.  Until then, shut the fuck up.  You’re enabling someone to make up stories about other people, including about rape victims.

LEt me say this one more time: Ismone shut the fuck up.,

Can you believe that after making up stories about people on this blog calling Assange’s accusers lying whores and being rape apologists, she called me a “so-called rape victim” right before she invented out of thin air something that I never said?

And Bagelstan and Isomone will defend her and then claim they are worried about ableism.

Fuck it all man. 

If I come back to this thread I’m going to slap myself in the head, because this is sooo destructive, but FTR before anyone repeats what Ginmar invented as if it has any basis in fact (yeah that’s you bagelstan) go back and read what I said.  I never said that Assange was innocent until proved guilty, I said that the presumption of innocence does NOT mean the presumption that the victims are lying.  That is a simplistic reading of the legal concept of presumption of innocence, and a very damaging one.  Because if you accept that to be true, then YES, it aids and abets the morons calling these and other rape victims lying whores.

You know, the way your big buddy Ginmar did to me.

Further claiming that i “whined about presumption of innocence” is a sexist statement ON ITS FACE.

But keep defending her.  You’ll have to peddle your ass pretty hard to defend what she did here.

Personally I could never peddle my ass that way.

Have at it.

I’m having trouble expressing the level of irony I find in denial of a rape victim’s claim being the outcome of a post supporting Sady’s protest of rape apologia.  I’m sorry, Daisy.

If a man has “anger management” issues, and he doesn’t use therapy because beating his wife is just so much more fun than counting to ten, he just doesn’t have the right to call ableism.  We’re NOT TALKING ABOUT SOMEONE WHO IS INCONVENIENT TO OTHERS, OR MAY POSE AN INCONVENIENCE TO OTHERS.

OMG, I’m sorry shah8, I didn’t realize ginmar was physically beating you! Or that she was a man, you were a woman, and the two of you were cohabitating! Please excuse me for misreading the situation so badly—I inexcusably mistook it for ginmar doing as ginmar does, people seeing the excuse for a pile on onto an easy, widely disliked target, and then you coming in and acting like the God-of-Crazy’s final absolute word on when it’s okay to “call ableism”... Gee, I just had it all backwards didn’t I? Your absolutely dickishness and ready excuses for ableism—oh right, I forgot I wasn’t allowed to call out ableist language until I fucking cure MS or something—were actually self-defense against physical battery!

/sarcasm

Yanno what? Screw you. I’m not “apologizing” for shit; I think ginmar’s gone off on way too many people in this thread, and I don’t really agree with what she’s saying. I think she really needs to back off for a bit (which, in fact, she seems to have done, unlike yourself Mr. I-Hope-I’m-Not-Late-To-The-Pile-On!) and it probably wouldn’t kill her to stop flinging accusations at people either, or even to apologize for some of the pretty harsh (and generally undeserved, and not all that coherent or truthful) stuff she’s said.

But, yeah, she is exactly only an “inconvenience” because, your fucking insulting hyperbole about wifebeating aside, she is not beating you she is writing stupid shit in the comments section of a blog. It’s not even your blog. Hell, it’s a blog you say stupid shit on all the time as well—maybe “stupid offensive shit” is not a stone your ass wants to be throwing right now, yeah? You’ve already played the “blog comments = physical abuse” card, the tone argument, the “why don’t you worry about the real issues?” card… just sit your damn self down. Ginmar didn’t do a thing to you, you just want a pile on. It make you feel big to pick on a woman with issues, from the safety of your computer screen, now that a bunch of other commenters have softened her up? Fuck off, I’m sick of it.

Thank you Emmett, I’m sorry myself.  I hate when my emotions get the better of me.  It was ten years ago, and I don’t trigger easily, I really don’t.  If I did, I’d be at Shakesville.  I really need to get off the thread or I’ll be up all night obsessively posting on it.  But I wanted to say thanks to you because you made a few supportive and very smart posts on this thread.

Good night!  Better day tomorrow. 

but FTR before anyone repeats what Ginmar invented as if it has any basis in fact (yeah that’s you bagelstan) go back and read what I said.

I don’t care. I haven’t repeated a single thing you’ve said, or have been alleged to say (the presumption of innocence stuff? It’s kind of boring to me, frankly.) You guys are fucking obsessed with ginmar. Just ignore her, seriously, no one here thinks she’s credible about this stuff, okay? You don’t have to nuke her to defend yourself; she is not a threat to you.

All I want is for people to stop throwing rocks at the crazy lady, and not make “off her meds” jokes. Okay? Fer fuck’s sake. Who are you even arguing with, Daisy? I’ve literally been skipping your comments, because I’m pissed at how some of the (dudes in particular) are acting; I haven’t particularly been talking to you, or reading you (I just saw a lot of “bagelstan"s up there and wanted to know what small baked-goods-based country you were railing against. :p) You didn’t make the meds joke, and you are probably one of the only people on this thread with a legit grievance, so I have if anything the least problem with you. Happy?

LOL @ the bagelstan joke.  Sorry I got your name wrong.

Alright, thanks for explaining that.  I apologize.

Okay, yeah, sorry if it seemed like I was piling on you Daisy. Definitely not pissed at you, and no ginmar shouldn’t be saying that stuff. Take care, have a good night, you shouldn’t have to listen to bullshit even if it’s from someone who needs a little help herself. (Besties forevah! :p)

Bagelstan…how did I miss that?!  Thanks, Daisy, and goodnight!

Again…

I…Don’t…Care

I stand up against bullies, because I haven’t always have, and because I should.

You can be offended and saying glass houses all you want, but you are defending an abusive person.  Getting mad at the accusers is a favorite tactic, but it’s fucking transparent in this case.  You might think you can talk your way around it, you might even believe what you’re saying, but it doesn’t change that you fundementally weren’t in the right.  And I don’t sit my ass down.  I stand up, and try to say how I feel about it as best as I can.  So what if I’m high and mighty about ableism is?  I’d really like it not to be a part of a liberal circular firing squad’s arsenal, and treated with thoughtfulness and respect and on times when someone *doesn’t* want to use it as a “card”.  I have significant personal investment that this should be so.

Daisy,

I wasn’t talking about you.  I asked her upthread what on earth you could have possibly said to set her off, because I genuinely could not understand.

I have significant personal investment that this should be so.

Yes. FSM knows no one else on here is likewise invested. 9.9

Sure, I’m defending a verbally abusive person ... specifically against ableist slurs. I’m saying, “you can’t say that to her” (with a helping of “ignore her” because she literally can’t abuse you if you don’t read her comments.) ‘Cause no, just because someone is an asshole doesn’t mean justice goes out the window and we get to start winging whatever hurtful terms we want around. You don’t get to start calling people “faggots” or “n****rs” even when they’re doing something that’s wrong. You don’t get to pretend, for one, that only the target of those slurs is affected, and two you don’t get to dehumanize people even if they’re really super mean.

And honestly, I’ve been pretty consistent on this point. This really isn’t the first time I’ve called out that kind of language; don’t blame me for being consistent in my application, even if it means calling it out when used against people you don’t like.

(But please, tell me more about how I’m just using a “card” ... how telling people to stop using the “crazy bitch” meme and to not make a joke of “off yer meds!” makes me a “bully” and part of a “liberal circular firing squad.”)

Yeah, Bagelsan... seriously, I’m only doing this dialogue with you because I respect you and I like you.

Read the upper part of this thread.  It sets off alarms in my mind.  I’m pretty much the same age as Amanda, but I’ve been around the internet for a decade and a half now, and knowing about it for years before.  I wasn’t around before Eternal September, so while I’m not long in the tooth as an Internet Dude, I am middle-aged.  The stuff that was going on there isn’t really an argument.  It’s a person who feels to me as volatile, and not in a good place, mentally.  It’s a damned near internet trope that message boards will have these borderline stable personalities, who are friendly with the managers and gets to pull a lot of crap…until they start getting progressively worse and have a meltdown.  It is my feeling, that ginmar was coping by being aggressive.  It’s not as if I haven’t read ginmar before.  If she was like before, I wouldn’t be concerned.  The managers, or the personality’s friends defend him or her by talking about how people are meanies.  It’s only in the liberalsphere where we’d talk about ableism instead. 

Thing is, when people like ginmar are going off, there is always a fucking twat that talks about taking your pills or some stupid shit like that.  And it’s always taken as this huge offense that everyone should pay attention to instead of what the real drama is about.  In a case like this, nobody even really gives a shit about ableism in the particulars.  It’s just a strand in the metaconflict between factions and catalyzed by an individual.

You are missing the forest of what matters, for the trees, Bagelsan.

Yeah, Daisy, this is your first comment to Celda:

BS Celda.  Presumption of innocence means no such thing.

That’s you.  She pointed out that the presumption of innocence carries with it the risk of having a corresponding belief that the victim is ever not so innocent.  In good faith, because that has not happened at all in discussions about rape on the internet. Never. Nope.  Not even in this thread, or in any discussion of rape, ever, has anyone ever attacked a rape victim as a liar while waving the bloody shirt of ‘innocent till proven guilty.’

Dark Avenger? You repeatedly and dare one say it, hysterically defended both Olbermann and his awesomeness in two long discussions. Guess that victim complex is as strong as ever.  Guess what? Sauce for the goose. If you all think it’s okay to go to town on me then expect the same in return. 

Eric_RoM is a guy I banned from my blog more than two years ago after giving him several warnings.  It’s so ironic to be bitched at by a guy who so many people complained about…for being rude, snotty, and, well, a troll.  Omitting that fact gives a whole new flavor to his complaints here.

  What I find so amusing is that my anger gets dismissed, but when it’s a troll like Smart Patrol accusing me of shit that Twisty Faster said, or that I wasn’t polite enough when I had a breakdown or whatever else he’s shouting about…..my, my, my, look at that big huge glaring double standard. For example, look at Roscoe, who’s so upset that I’m sarcastic about his Asssange dick-sucking ways in my own blog that he’s going to suck up to Smart Patrol, who has in fact posted bullshit about me repeatedly here over a period of months, but because Roscoe isn’t aware of it and is still smarting because I don’t respect his awesome love of liberal males, is obviously some kind of feminazi lie.

And Phoenician? Don’t you have some rape victims to blame? Maybe with “Um, safe word?”

Bagelsan, I truly appreciate your honesty and help.  But only hipsters get to be angry, and I’m not a hipster.

Dark Avenger? You repeatedly and dare one say it, hysterically defended both Olbermann and his awesomeness in two long discussions. Guess that victim complex is as strong as ever.  Guess what? Sauce for the goose. If you all think it’s okay to go to town on me then expect the same in return. 

Too bad you can’t cite any actual writings of mine here to quote from and demonstrate your proposition, ginmar, saying the same thing 10 times doesn’t make it anymore true than it was the first 9 times you’ve done so.

Using sexist language like “hysterical’, like accusing Amanda of various things, now that is really progressive and useful, isn’t it.

BTW, this is ‘typical’ of your behavior here:

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/gun_sales_fall_off_as_wingnuts_realize_obama_is_not_actually_coming_to_take/

I wrote this in response to your mention of this incident:

Jeff, ginmar, it was covered on Good Morning America and in contrast, they focused on the coolness under pressure of the people dealing with the gunman and no belittlement of anyone whatsoever.
Comment #29: Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein on 12/15 at 12:12 PM

to which you quite reasonably responded:

Gee, Dark Avenger, are you going to tell me what I think and see, too? Thanks….Not.
Comment #33: ginmar on 12/15 at 01:25 PM

You’re crazy like a fox and I only mean that in a good way.  :-D

As much as I agree with most of Sady Doyle’s post, I have to point out that she is lying and “giving false information” - in the very same post, even the very same paragraph, where she decries those exact same things.

Following Amanda’s link, I noticed that Sady wrote:

And now Moore is telling people that WikiLeaks intentionally gave false information to the Guardian [..]

This claim is completely unsupported, and false on multiple levels. Neither is Michael Moore saying that WikiLeaks “intentionally” or “knowingly” gave false information to anyone, nor is there any indication whatsoever that WikiLeaks did in fact do so, as far as I’m aware.

Yesterday, I posted a perfectly civil comment on Sady Doyle’s site pointing out these falsehoods. Not surprisingly, my comment was not allowed past moderation.

When I first read Sady’s post, there were about 250 (supportive) comments, and I was wondering why no one appeared to have noticed this rather large whopper. Today, there are a few dozen more (supportive) comments, and I’m not wondering any more …

One of my current favorites (which here means “things that make me want to beat my fists against the wall in frustration”) is the replaying of the old anti-feminist meme “You don’t have any right to complain about the situation in place A when women in place B have it much worse.” seen here in this new article from the Huff Po.  Yes, women (especially lower caste women) are brutally raped in India. Yes, their rapists frequently go free.  However, that has nothing to do with Julian or his case.  Letting him go free without investigating his case is not going to help the women of India.  In fact, shrugging it off may make rape cases all the more difficult to prosecute, a point that seems to elude the writer.

I see that the plan to divide Wikileaks’ and Assange’s potential supporters on the left is working out just fabulously…

For example, look at Roscoe, who’s so upset that I’m sarcastic about his Asssange dick-sucking ways in my own blog that he’s going to suck up to Smart Patrol, who has in fact posted bullshit about me repeatedly here over a period of months, but because Roscoe isn’t aware of it and is still smarting because I don’t respect his awesome love of liberal males, is obviously some kind of feminazi lie.

...says a lying asshole who just makes up her own facts when the actual facts don’t support her delusional perception.

Feel free to climb down off that cross anytime you’re ready, ginmar. Nobody’s pay attention to your self-pitying martyr bullshit anymore.

Bagelsan, I truly appreciate your honesty and help.  But only hipsters get to be angry, and I’m not a hipster.

You’re right, you’re not a hipster. You’re a petulant child completely detached from reality.

Alright, I think I’ve pretty much said my bit (only took me about 10 pages to do it… :p) shah8, I’m definitely being genuine about the ableism thing, and I think/hope you recognize it—just because it crops up a lot on liberal sites doesn’t mean it’s a card being played, I believe, so much as it’s a thing that a lot of feminist/liberal/online types deal with in some incarnation or another. I’m trying to stick to my principles here as well as just express my personal feelings; I don’t want ginmar cruelly targeted like that because I think it’s the wrong way to make a point to her, and I don’t want to see ginmar targeted like that because it makes me sad and adds to stigma about meds/etc. which is something I’ve really worked on in my real life.

And ginmar, I certainly see where you’re coming from being so angry… but I think you went too far with some of your comments to Daisy, and yeah, I can see why people think your language is abusive. I’m not going to lecture or condescend to you—FSM knows telling someone to “calm down” is 100% guaranteed to piss them off further!—but I think it would be really valuable to separate out the angry ranty bits (which are absolutely valid emotions) from the actual arguments you make to other people, if only to get listened to better. Anyways, I certainly can’t tell you what to do, but I’ll ask you nicely to please take a little more care not to lash out at people who really don’t deserve it (like Daisy, imho.)

And Phoenician? Don’t you have some rape victims to blame?

Nah.  My time is being taken up with planning Christmas within a stable relationship, and exploring where that is going.  I’ve managed to acquire a whole set of pseudo-nieces and nephews who enjoy me being rude to them, and I’m dealing with strong hints about silver jewellery as a suitable present.

Enjoy your Christmas, ginmar.  You make the life you end up living.

I take my job to uphold both the Constitution and the laws of my State quite seriously, and I have never, ever treated an accuser/crime victim as a presumed liar simply because she has not yet proven that she is telling the truth.  That would not only serve to further victimize such a person, it would also arguably violate her own human rights.  Which is just all shades of wrong and horrible.

I never said accusers should be treated as lying.

I said, if you believe in the presumption of innocence, you must believe that the accusers are lying. The two are not equivalent.

One could believe that the accusers are lying, but still treat them as though every word they said was gospel. On the grounds that it’s better to take someone at their word but find out they are lying as opposed to dismissing them as liars but finding out they were telling the truth.

I understand the legal significance and meaning of innocent until proven guilty. I’m not arguing that.

I’m arguing the logical implications of the concept. I realize that the conclusion seems distasteful, but we cannot dismiss a logical and valid conclusion simply because it is distasteful.

If you believe that a defendant is innocent until proven otherwise, you MUST believe the accusations are false. Otherwise, they could not be innocent.

If you believe the accusations are false, you MUST believe the accusers are lying or mistaken. Otherwise, the accusations could not be false.

Thus, if you believe a defendant is innocent until proven otherwise, you MUST believe the accusers are lying or mistaken until proven otherwise.

There is no getting around this logic. It seems distasteful and the natural impulse is to reject it, yet it is an inevitable conclusion.

It does not literally mean that every person who believes in the justice system in the United States must believe that defendants are innocent and accusers are liars (or mistaken) until and unless the jury convicts.

You’re right, they don’t have to believe that.

People can believe whatever they want. People can and do believe they are not racist but also believe that black people should only date “their own kind.”

That doesn’t mean the beliefs are logically consistent, and it doesn’t mean the beliefs can co-exist with each other in reality. They would have to be dismissed as the one contradicts the other.

So yes, people could believe in the presumption of innocence but also not believe that defendants are innocent and not believe that accusers are lying or mistaken. However, these beliefs would be logically invalid and anyone who held them would have to be dismissed.

Aw, Roscoe, sweetie,  you’re still whining about how mean I am to liberal douchebags like maybe PiaTor, who in addition to pretending to ignore that he’s said things previously like, “But we’re not getting the whole story here! And do rapists usually try and commit suicide?” acts like he’s fair and balanced.

If you believe that all or most liberal guys love to “get their sexist hate on”, you’re basically promoting similar beliefs about gender as those promoted by evolutionary psych quacks, who tend to insinuate that misogyny is an innate and immutable characteristic of all men. In our patriarchal society, all men have unearned privilege, and I think all men have abused that privilege in a sexist manner at some point in their lives, myself included. That said, your tone comes across as a blanket condemnation of all men everywhere, and it reveals a disturbing worldview in which the Michael Moores of the world are just as repugnantly sexist as the Rush Limbaughs of the world. If every man who has ever said or done anything even slightly sexist or misogynist in their lives deserves to be condemned and banished from the cause of progressivism, it’s going to be an entirely female cause. If that’s what you want, then fine, but I’m not sure how practical it is to try to make the world a better place when you view nearly half of the planet’s human beings to be the enemy.

    Oh, do I spy an “but you’re saying all men?!” Why, yes, I do. I also see that you’re determined to downplay, confuzzle, obfuscate, and ignore the issue of liberal male sexism and have a hissyfit about it even though you’re a guy and it’s in your best interests to get more offended over the tender feelings of male fauxgressives than actually listen to women. But go ahead, whine, bitch, moan, and type yet more long-winded screeds about the injustices faced by male fauxgressives. Oh, the humanity!

I’ll spell it out here one more time because you couldn’t be more obtuse if you tried. Neither Moore nor Olbermann give any sign of being repentent or even giving a shit about women.  Being anti-abortion—-like Bart Stupak is—-means that he really shouldn’t call himself a fucking Democrat.  Womens’ rights—-such as the right to have an abortion—-are not optional. Moore and Olbermann both smirked and joked about how the victim in this case is a lying CIA plant.  Sorry if sarcasm about male assery offends you, but I don’t give a shit if a guy calls himself liberal or conservative. Amongst other things, being anti-choice and prone to saying that women lie about rape is what I’ll look for. You can whine about liberal men all you want but if they do those things, or things which assist other men in doing those things, then fuck ‘em all.

</blockquote>  And if they don’t speak out, there are no consequences for raping.  And so the rapists who go unresisted will just rape more.  And while not resisting rape apologists doesn’t mean it’s your fault if they keep making the world safe for rapists, it doesn’t feel that way. </blockquote>

Just wanted to highlight this, because so many of the arguments (including in the initial retellings of Assange’s case) were of the form “so-and-so believes herself to be a victim of nonconsenusal sex because <something about the woman>.” Apologists always have a reason that has to do with the victim, never just that the guy wants to rape.

I also see that you’re determined to downplay, confuzzle, obfuscate, and ignore the issue of liberal male sexism and have a hissyfit about it even though you’re a guy and it’s in your best interests to get more offended over the tender feelings of male fauxgressives than actually listen to women.

I listen to a lot of women about sexism and the destructive nature of the patriarchy and male privilege. You just don’t happen to be one of the women I listen to, and I’m sorry if that hurts your widdle fee-fees.

You don’t speak for all feminists, and you most certainly don’t speak for all women. You don’t get to tell me whether or not I believe in the feminist cause. I neither want nor need your approval to establish whether or not I’m genuinely supportive of feminist ideals.

Try not to have anymore meltdowns on people who don’t deserve it. Maybe let go of your seething resentment towards hipsters for committing the heinous crime of actually enjoying their lives. You are certainly free to spend your life being pissed off at the world 24-7, but I have no idea why you would want to maintain such a chronically miserable state of mind. I don’t think it is making you too many friends, but then again maybe you don’t want friends. If that is the case, then shine on, you crazy diamond.

This thread is pretty much done, but if anybody’s curious, Michael Moore will be the sole guest tonight on The Rachel Maddow Show live from the 92nd Street Y in NYC. I’m guessing he was booked awhile ago, probably before this whole kerfuffle happened. It will be interesting if the subject of the rape allegations against Julian Assange are discussed, but I’m thinking it probably won’t be brought up. The teaser featured Maddow praising more as the biggest reason why Americans have taken a critical look at the healthcare industry and the gun lobby.

Celda,

You are still wrong about the presumption of innocence.  Others have explained it upthread, and yet you ignore.

What it really means is that the prosecution has to prove the case.  Until evidence is presented, you assume that there is no proof, instead of assuming that the defendant has to show he or she is innocent.  You don’t make assumptions about the quality of that evidence, basically, it means the trial starts off as a blank slate.

In fact, to get to trial, you either have to have a preliminary hearing or a grand jury decide there is enough relevant, credible evidence to bind the defendant over for trial.  To do that, you don’t assume the evidence is false, in fact, you cannot.

It has nothing to do with the quality of the evidence, and everything to do with who is charged with presenting evidence, with proving something.

Sheesh.

Aw, Roscoe, sweetie, you’re still whining about how mean I am to liberal douchebags like maybe PiaTor, who in addition to pretending to ignore that he’s said things previously like, “But we’re not getting the whole story here! And do rapists usually try and commit suicide?” acts like he’s fair and balanced.

To update, I got her a nice pendant and earring set in sterling silver.  She deposited her neice back home on Tuesday, and we went shopping today.  On Friday I’ll be going up to her place to spend time with her friends, and on Christmas we’ll be spending the morning with her parents and then having Christmas dinner with my family and associated friends.  We might head to the Wairarapa after Christmas, spending a day or so in the wine country around Martinborough.

I’m sure you’ll be getting the Christmas you deserve, ginmar.

Celda:

Okay, let’s take a case that happened in my state this last week. 

Two roommates got into a verbal argument.  One roommate stabbed the other with a butcher knife.  No witnesses, because they were the only people in the apartment.  The stabbing victim called the cops from the hospital, and the cops arrested the roommate.

Do you assume that the victim who got stabbed is lying about what happened, because “innocent until proven guilty”?

I would not assume that the victim is lying about being stabbed with a knife, since we have evidence (the stab wounds) that proves that is true.

As for the accusation itself (that the other person stabbed him) then it must be treated as false unless there is evidence that proves or suggests otherwise (the person confesses, they find fingerprints on the knife, etc.).

If you disagree, then you must also disagree that the defendant is presumed innocent. It’s fine if you want to presume that the defendant is guilty—but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t both believe that the accused is innocent and that the accusations are true.

Presuming the innocence of the accused does not require jurors to presume that the victim’s accusation is a lie prior to trial, it requires them to presume that the victim’s accusation hasn’t been proven prior to trial.

“Unproven” ≠ “false”

You’re getting hung up on this notion that a juror should take their seat at the start of trial believing either (A) that a victim should be presumed to be telling the truth, or (B) that a victim should be presumed to be lying. The reality is that a juror should take their seat at the start of trial with the belief that (C) the victim’s accusation alone, unsubstantiated by any other evidence, is insufficient to prove guilt.

Maybe this logic example will help… I say that tomorrow, it is going to be 75 degrees and sunny in Chicago. Am I lying? Not necessarily. Am I telling the truth? Not necessarily.

I am making a claim that has not yet been substantiated. That doesn’t mean my claim should be presumed true or false, just that it should be presumed unproven until and unless facts are presented to prove it true.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a jury trial in which defense counsel has been able to strike a juror for not presuming that the victim’s accusation is a lie. They obviously should be stricken if they presume a victim’s accusation is true prior to trial, but that doesn’t mean that they must therefore presume it to be false prior to trial.

Also, it isn’t just that the witnesses’ testimony is unproven prior to trial.

It is that it hasn’t happened yet.

The jury is only supposed to consider the evidence presented before them, not rumor, not preconceived notions.

It is not like “the evidence” exists out there somewhere, and they have to doubt it.  It is that none has been presented, and before evidence is presented, the prosecution has not proved their case.

To update, I got her a nice pendant and earring set in sterling silver.

Half of my darn earring-recipients are allergic to silver… you’re a lucky dude, not having to hunt around for gold or surgical steel. :p

“Presumption of innocence” serves to emphasize that the prosecution has the obligation to prove each element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt (or some other level of proof depending on the criminal justice system) and that the accused bears no burden of proof.[14] This is often expressed in the phrase innocent until proven guilty coined by the English lawyer Sir William Garrow (1760–1840).[15] Garrow insisted that accusers be robustly tested in court. An objective observer in the position of the juror must reasonably conclude that the defendant almost certainly committed the crime.[16]

The presumption of innocence is in fact a legal instrument created by the French cardinal and jurist Jean Lemoine to favor the accused based on the legal inference that most people are not criminals.[17] It is literally considered favorable evidence for the accused that automatically attaches at trial.[18] It requires that the trier of fact, be it a juror or judge, begin with the presumption that the state is unable to support its assertion.[17] To ensure this legal protection is maintained a set of three related rules govern the procedure of criminal trials. The presumption means:[14]

  1. With respect to the critical facts of the case - whether the crime charged was committed and whether the defendant was the person who committed the crime - the state has the entire burden of proof.
  2. With respect to the critical facts of the case, the defendant does not have any burden of proof whatsoever. The defendant does not have to testify, call witnesses or present any other evidence, and if the defendant elects not to testify or present evidence, this decision cannot be used against them.
  3. The jury or judge is not to draw any negative inferences from the fact the defendant has been charged with a crime and is present in court and represented by an attorney. They must decide the case solely on evidence presented during the trial.

This duty on the prosecution was famously referred to as the “golden thread” in the criminal law by Lord Sankey LC in Woolmington v DPP [1935] AC 462:
“    Throughout the web of the English criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen - that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt subject to what I have already said as to the defence of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence#Meaning

Gee, PiaTor, I hope you get what you deserve.  Because you’ve expressed what you want and like is women screaming in terror.

Roscoe, sweetums,  ‘crazy diamond’ ? And some of your best friends are feminists? Gee, I haven’t heard that one before.  I bet you have black friends, too.

ginmar, you can see my wife here, with her bodyguard from the Sacred Blue Buddhist sect we employ whenever she travels out of town.

Half of my darn earring-recipients are allergic to silver… you’re a lucky dude, not having to hunt around for gold or surgical steel. raspberry

Ah well, it was a choice between that or a nice blue pearl pendant.  But I threatened her that if she didn’t make up her mind, I was going to get her a computer game instead (which, of course, she doesn’t play).

So I got her both - one for Christmas and one for her birthday in January.  However, what she gets on Christmas day is a wrapped up copy of the Civ IV box… with the silver inside it.  If I manage to keep a straight face long enough I might even get her believing it…

Gee, PiaTor, I hope you get what you deserve. 

Thank you. I will be spending Christmas with a good woman who loves me, in the company of friends and family.  I am nearly recovered from my medical crisis, and am looking into getting back into serious biking and fitness.  I am also making plans to move ahead in my career in a year, completing a qualification and moving into a new field which will allow me more responsibility and closer work with the public.

Enjoy your Christmas, ginmar.