Posted on 12/06/2014 11:30:36 PM PST by SteveH
The media does not know how to talk about rape, how to talk to or present victims. Still. Women are raped every day, harassed every day, and with every news story, there is the vague spectre of controversy. As though there is room for debate. As though anyone other than the victims should have a say in this, and as though the victims ever actually get that say. Time and time again, victims are ignored, shouted over. Just four days ago, the New York Times ran a piece essentially equating rapist and rape victim, actual assaults and false allegations, as though both are equal victims and both occur with equal frequency. Just last night, Don Lemon asked one of Cosbys victims why she didnt simply bite his penis and make him stop.
For victims, and for those of us who live our lives wondering if were just victims-to-be, this is what they facetheir unspeakable, life-wrecking horror is as up for debate as Kirk vs. Picard. Everything they did could have been done differently, better, and could have prevented what happened to them. Everyone has an opinion and those whose opinions are most damaging believe theirs have the most right to be heard. Because, as Lemon said, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you dont want to do it. The female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down, you know.
If you didnt want it, it wouldnt have happened. And if you didnt want it, you would have stopped it. Thats what they want us to think. Thats what they always want us to think. They want a world where the women are lying, the men are infallible, and everything, everything, is up for discussion. Everyone entitled to their own opinions.
(Excerpt) Read more at pajiba.com ...
The entire edutainment system is pure propaganda.
Hopefully these ‘allegations’ will lead to a reform of the laws allowing men to be vilified by scam artists !
Maybe he was a closet Wilt Chamberlain.
No one automatically assumes that someone who plays a murderer on screen is himself a murderer. “Oh, he’s just an actor, he really isn’t like that,” they say.
But what is it that makes people think that someone who plays a wholesome character on TV is necessarily exactly the same person in his private life?
No, hopefully not, and I would not favor that at all. Not sure that I have seen any law reform yet. I do not have any direction on the topic but I agree with you that laws can sometimes hurt more than they help a given societal problem such as rape (eg, some of the most recent date rape laws).
Do you mean to say I'm not really a cannibal?
In Clinton's case, there was genuine physical evidence of a recent abuse of power and that he had lied under oath, but the media backed their hero. In Cosby's case, there is no evidence at all that I know of, and the charges are (as far as I have noticed) decades old. Yet they are going after Cosby and protecting Clinton. Media hypocrisy disgusts me.
No. I want a world where we recognize the fact that some women and some men lie about sex. In other cases, the two people involved have different stories about what happened and they both believe they're telling the truth. Especially when drugs and alcohol are involved.
everything, everything, is up for discussion.
"Shut up," she explained.
The author wants an accusation by a female automatically assumed to be true and therefore the equivalent of a conviction, in the court of public opinion if not necessarily in a court of law.
Regardless of what she says, we're quite close to being there now.
Let us assume a large number of accusations of date rape. Both parties are agreed coitus took place, the only issue in dispute is whether it was consensual or not.
What we might call "street rape" is not an issue here. AFAIK, nobody generally disputes that a rape occurred in such cases.
Some (I assume small) percentage of date rape cases result in conviction of the male. Frankly in such circumstances I find it difficult to see how any jury can find "evidence beyond a reasonable doubt." But they do sometimes. We will assume all such convictions are just. We'll call this Group A.
In another and much smaller percentage, the female is "proven" to have made a false accusation. Even harder to prove one way or the other. Group C.
This leaves, I assume, the vast majority of such cases in legal limbo. Not enough evidence to convict, but also not enough to definitively prove a false accusation took place. Group B.
To the author of this screed, groups A and B are the rapes that took place. Only group C was not rape, and she's not fully convinced even these weren't real.
From a purely logical POV, it would make every bit as much sense to assume B and C are all false, with only A being "really" rape. In fact, it's almost certain some convictions are unjust.
In actual fact, some Group B cases were rape, and some were not. We will never know the percentage or which cases were which. But a large number of cases in Group B is simply not proof of a lot of rape, or of failure to "take rape seriously." Just a consequence of the limits of human knowledge.
When it comes to rape, the 1997 Paula Jones lawsuit brought forward Juanita Broaddrick, who told us of being raped in 1978 by Bill Clinton, and most of us believe her.
In 2005, Andrea Constand, director of operations for Temple University’s women’s basketball team (Cosby’s college, and one he still sat on the board of) filed a lawsuit against cosby after claiming that he had drugged and raped her in 2004, 13 women came forward to describe their own sexual assaults from him, mostly druggings and rape. Cosby settled out of court in 2006.
The DA said that he felt that Cosby was guilty, but that by the time she went to police a year after the rape, there wasn’t enough evidence to go to court with in a criminal trial.
You make some good points...
What happens next?
Pretty clear cut to me. Cosby joins with Charlie Sheen in a sitcom about a
womanizing father-son combination. They share a slick
batchelor pad and women. Sheen plays the
part of the son and uses his own name. Cosby is the dad
but uses the stage name ‘Marty’ due to recent
image issues.
Ding, ding, ding!
the dialog kind of writes itself...:
Marty?! Hey Marty!! It’s your hotshot lawyer on the phone again, Marty!!
(woops, I’ll never work in LA again lol)
The man should be assumed innocent, until proven guilty.
That’s the way our justice system works.
If he did do these things, I would hope he would serve serious prison time. I’m not going easy on him. Abused women deserve to see justice done.
Cancelling his right to work is not justice, until it is known if he is innocent or not.
This is not victory. It is a miscarriage of justice.
did you read this?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3234329/posts
It all but screams bribery at the judicial level.
SteveH, it’s not uncommon for court documents to be sealed.
These are serious charges, and at this point that is all they are.
I admit it doesn’t look good for Cosby. In fact, his attorney and yours would too, advise their clients not to talk publicly about these things.
So at this point, only one side has been told. We don’t know these people. We don’t know what their agenda is. Their agenda may be pure as the driven snow, but we don’t know that yet.
There’s no hurry to issue judgment on our part. We should allow the process to proceed and see what defense is presented in court.
If the guy did it, he deserves serious prison time. Until we know what exactly did take place, it’s pointless to pick at every little detail as if we fully knew everything yet.
So far the current wave is only civil.
The statutes of limitation for criminal prosecution in all the different jurisdictions cloud any criminal proceeding predictions from where I view it, and would probably rely heavily on civil court depositions.
So concern for jail time at this stage imho is a false dichotomy. first, let the civil chips fall where they may.
the article i referred to indicates that the extent to which court documents were sealed is unusual. not just depositions, but all depositional filings including requests and lists. i do acknowledge that sealing actual depositions can be routine in some cases.
Thanks Steve. I appreciate you pointing that out.
I think it’s reasonable to see this and ponder it’s significance.
Cosby is an ultra high profile individual.
He has a right to benefit from his high profile image until such time as he is found guilty. I hope that is he is, if he did these things. I still hold out hope he will go to prison, if he is found guilty.
If he is guilty, then is when I would hope he would never find work again. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing him stripped of a lot of his wealth during the process.
I don’t think this is an instance of it, but I hope this isn’t a case of a lie getting half-way around the world before the truth gets out of the starting gate.
There are a number of women now, and unless the opportunists have decided to feed all at one time, I think the guy is going down.
I can not imagine the mentality necessary to be able to do the things he is charged with. God what poor choices some people make.
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