The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Trial by headline

    By Flavius on Thu, 11/30/2017 - 11:22pm |

    Roy Moore, Al Franken, Bill O'Reilly ,Charlie Rose ,John Conyers etc. etc. are guilty of the crime of being accused of sexual harassment. 

    And Giles Corey was found guilty of being a witch and pressed to death...oh that was in  17th century Salem.

    Well continuing. Some one (maybe Moore again) was guilty of that same crime of being accused of sexual harassment by a woman who approached the Washington Post . But in that particular case the headlines didn't appear because the WAPO smelled a rat, suspected she was a part of a scheme to undermine its credility by feeding it a false story which could then be revealed as a false story  thus casting doubt on its Moore revelations.

    Clearly the guys who confessed to sexual harassment were guilty of it. And I accept that anyone who paid a large sum to an accuser was almost certainly guilty of whatever it was of which he was accused.

    But as of the minute I consider Moore and Conyers and anyone who hasn't been convicted,   to be innocent.

    Until proven guilty..

     

     

    Comments

    Franken hasn’t admitted guilt either.  He just isn’t calling the women liars.  He has admitted to making them uncomfortable and apologized for it.  He asked for an investigation into the accusations.  That is not admitting guilt.


    by CVille Dem on Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:37am

    I agree. It's unimaginable that we should administer serious punishments  without trial. And that we should delegate the entire process to the private sector. Suppose one of Trump Inc's  female employees was accused what punishments would he choose?

     


    by Flavius on Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:53am

    You're aware that 90% of cases are settled outside of court, right? Perry Mason was just a TV show.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 12/01/2017 - 4:17pm

    Wrong.

    .000000001% are "settled" outside of court; 99.99999998 are never raised .

    I'm reminded of  an evening at an  NY Hotel bar , a tense conversation underway  between some of the drinkers , until   an attractive and very self assured woman  appeared and said " so who's going up  with me tonight? "

     

    spelling corrected


    by Flavius on Fri, 12/01/2017 - 10:00pm

    So there are self-assured wonen who like to fuck. There are also a shit-ton of women raped and harassed on the job and abused in the home, etc, etc. I'm pretty sure the latter greatly outweigh the former, and of course keep many women from ever becoming self-assured.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:19pm

    I think you're missing the point. I'm sure the point Flavius was making is that a woman can provoke a knock down drag out fight between two men with just seven words.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 12/02/2017 - 1:27am

    Well actually Peracles was right. I was too vague.  The "self assured " woman was clearly the one in charge, I thought at the time that they were from an ad agency  but who knows? The intense discussion before her appearance was to insure some one was ready to  "volunteer" to go with her. Implying that an appearance of reluctance would not have been a good idea.

    The actual volunteer  did a good job of appearing to welcome the assignment. Maybe he did.

    Seems like a movie script of course but so be it.

     


    by Flavius on Sat, 12/02/2017 - 9:43am

    We're all walk-ons in somebody else's play. We just don't often notice or acknowledge it.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 12/02/2017 - 10:48am

    Of course you're right. But the solution is not vigilante justice by corporate America. 

    It's a crime  and it should be treated as a crime.  Somehow.

    There should  be a better procedure than just showing up at the station house to complain to Officer Krupke 


    by Flavius on Sat, 12/02/2017 - 9:53am

    So O'Reilly will never be guilty. Nor Roy Moore. Nor pretty much anyone without a mic or camera. All just conspiracies... Say g'night, Dick. "G'night, Dick".


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:45am

    Yes if the alternative is Corporate Justice.


    by Flavius on Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:54am

    O’Reilly’s accusers likely had evidence, ala Ailes, or the payments and ultimately his firing wouldn’t have taken place.  In fact he wasn’t ‘found guilty’ at all. Roy Moore’s accusers will never “convict” him of anything because he can’t be charged at this point.  Moore’s accusers seem credible, but there will never be a trial.  It comes down to whom the voter believes, or more accurately, what the voters think matters.  

    Al Franken, as I said above, disputes the facts but acknowledges that anything that made a woman feel uncomfortable should never happen.  He apologized and requested an inquiry, and since there actually are witnesses to the first accusation (when he was mugging for the camera), we should be able to get a view as to how others viewed things.  The last one was also photographed.  Was no one looking seconds before the photo was snapped?  Who wouldn’t want to get more facts if they are available?  

    But guilty or not guilty will not be a part of this (except for the GOP and Democrats pointing fingers at Democrats)


    by CVille Dem on Fri, 12/01/2017 - 4:02pm

    What strikes me right away by the examples you've chosen: live by the prevailing societal consciousness, die by it. A requirement for the jobs of those like O'Reilly, Lauer and the one Moore is applying for is that they are popular with their public.So I have no sympathy.

    The situation of like Weinstein is a somewhat different case. But even there, a producer depends upon schmoozing and goodwill within the "film community." In the olden days, the ":casting couch" was generally accepted as a fact; nowadays consciousness has been raised about feminism in that community. Sooner or later the rumor mill would get him if he kept playing like it wouldn't. Only because women have made enough advances for there to be a few with power. What's kind of amazing about his case is how women with power waited to say "me too" until women with lesser power came out. And they are now ashamed that they didn't react sooner. "Hollywood" is ashamed of itself, and in the end: that's a good thing. The "casting couch" will be even less acceptable than before. It's a gradual process, culture change.

    Overall, in the end, though, we've got issues in western civilization on this that are far from resolved. That struck me when I ran across this Market Watch article: Here’s one thing British princes and American men have in common which in itself is mostly bogus simplistic statement about evolving-or-not female roles and status in our societies, citing a poll or two that doesn't get at the complexities. But this quote that they chose for a blurb struck me as very eloquently getting at the whole problem:

    ‘Oh, how fragile is the ego of a man. We must never let him feel like a bonsai in a grove of California redwoods — no, he must always see himself as a towering tree, magnificent in comparison with his female partner.’

    Julia Baird in Glamour Magazine

    Too many of all sexes haven't let go of this yet. It's even deep in a lot of the sexual fantasies both female and male. Lots of porn encourages it.  Feminist boomers raising kids hasn't gotten rid of it. Kids in like Japan go asexual rather than deal with it. Is not going away soon, and until it does, workplaces are not going to have true equality. I have some confidence, though, that the human brain can eventually evolve to have different male/female roles than most animals that reproduce using two sexes. After all, their are examples of species that haven't evolved to use two sexes...

    Let's go back to: the work world is going to change radically in two decades. That's the big picture I think we should keep in mind. Life as the western world knows it to be turned upside down.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 12/02/2017 - 2:06pm

    Weinstein appears to be a very special case .Listening yesterday to an  interview  with  an experienced male director who'd made films for many producers.  The one he made with Weinstein stands out  by a wide margin not only as by far the most difficult film experience of his career,but as his most difficult experience, full stop.

    Didn't explain . Sadism ? But towards a powerful collaborator and towards an unwilling sex partner?  Clearly he is unrelenting at getting what he wants

    Just to put the turkey on the table I'll state there are gradations  of female  behavior and  self awareness. (And male of course.)Towards one end of the spectrum : Monica Lewinsky-who  behaved  admirably in the aftermath- was  explicit that she was maneuvering to encourage some response from Bill Clinton .As I recall arranging her skirt so that in some way her underwear would create a line.

    And an infinite number of variations in behavior on either side which I have no qualifications to discuss. 

    Garrison Keillor's explanation -a friend  had some  bad news  and  meaning to pat her back inadvertently touched bare flesh-seemed plausible to me.

    Endless subject so I'll end.

    edited to insert  "end" in front of "of the spectrum"

     


    by Flavius on Sat, 12/02/2017 - 10:45pm

    So far I haven't seen any details about the accusations against Keillor. Not the number of accusations or what  they are. Only his claim over why he was fired. His explanation doesn't seem plausible because it doesn't seem likely he'd be fired over such a trivial offense that could easily be accidental. Either there's more to the story, more stories, or his firing was a grave injustice.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 12/02/2017 - 5:46pm