Limbaugh: He Said it First!!

We all know that recently right-wing radio show host Rush Limbaugh said some viciously ugly slurs about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. Fluke spoke before a Congressional panel to advocate for a government forced change in the insurance benefits covered by Georgetown University and Law School.

I disagree with Fluke's policy POV but that's not important here. What is important is that Fluke rejected Rush's apology (in part because she thought it insincere but MUCH more because Rush didn't back off his opposition to her policy prescriptions).

Bill Maher jumped in this mess to say that the apology rejection made liberals look bad and that he didn't like the tactic of going after advertisers to shut people up. I guess he would say that, having had experience of losing his "Politically Incorrect" show due to advertiser abandonment after he made comments about 9-11 that were, well, "politically incorrect". Brent Bozell, who you may have just heard saying the President of the United States looked like a "skinny ghetto crackhead", decided to launch a "I stand with Rush" website, and piously chastised liberals for trying to shut down free speech.

Well.
Hypocrisy all around folks. I don't like hypocrisy. I think it is part of being human. We all have it. But I think we should try to minimize it, not embrace it.
If you're going to get upset when Limbaugh maligns Fluke with ugly hateful language that is meant to insult and demean then you also have to get upset when Maher does the same thing to Palin or Bachmann. It doesn't mean you have to LIKE these people.  You may disagree with their ideas. You may think they are wrong on everything, not very smart and immoral to boot. That is a different thing entirely from calling someone a "dumb t***" or a "dumb c***". You may think that Carrie Prejean is wrong to hold that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. That doesn't mean that it's okay for Perez Hilton to call her a "dumb b****" or that Keith Olbermann and Michael Musto get to question her femininity or make fun of her breasts.

If standards and logic mean anything then they must apply to everyone. That means that Rihanna can't get offended when a Dutch magazine uses racial stereotypes against her and then turn around and use racial stereotypes against another woman. That means black people can't get upset when the clueless Republican racist of the day makes a racialized joke about Obama or Black people and then be quiet when a liberal Obama supporter does the same thing.

If something is wrong then it's wrong. It doesn't matter that someone is more popular so his words are heard by more people or someone else is sponsor free so feels entitled to say things that are raw. Those may be reasons why they are able to avoid certain consequences or their audience expects to hear such things. But it doesn't make it any less wrong.

To be clear I believe that the overwhelming majority of this ugly language does come from the Right. That's a provable fact. I do not think, to put it charitably that Limbaugh is a good person. I think that Bachmann and Palin are often misguided and regularly vile. But that doesn't mean that people should turn a blind eye to ugly language when it comes from their team. Or does it?

h/t Rippa
QUESTIONS
1) Is this a false equivalence between Limbaugh and Maher? 
2) Is it ever okay to call a woman a c*** or t***?
3) Where is the line between comedian and political figure?
4) Can you disagree without insulting people?
5) Do some people just invite or deserve insult?

DSK Accuser Speaks Out!

The Guinean woman who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, Nafissatou Diallo, has come out publicly to tell her side of the story. You can watch her here on Good Morning America. She also gave an interview with Newsweek here. This is evidently pretty unusual for an alleged rape victim. Given that everything seems to indicate that the prosecutors do not intend to move forward with the case, this could be her method of pressuring them not to drop the case. Diallo will be doing a Nightline interview on Tuesday.

“Hello? Housekeeping.”

The maid hovered in the suite’s large living room, just inside the entrance. The 32-year-old Guinean, an employee of the Sofitel hotel, had been told by a room-service waiter that room 2806 was now free for cleaning, “Hello? Housekeeping,” the maid called out again. No reply. The door to the bedroom, to her left, was open, and she could see part of the bed. She glanced around the living room for luggage, saw none. “Hello? Housekeeping.” Then a naked man with white hair suddenly appeared, as if out of nowhere.

That’s how Nafissatou Diallo describes the start of the explosive incident on Saturday, May 14, that would forever change her life—and that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and, until that moment, the man tipped to be the next president of France. Now the woman known universally as the “DSK maid” has broken her public silence for the first time, talking for more than three hours with NEWSWEEK at the office of her attorneys, Thompson Wigdor, on New York City’s Fifth Avenue.

I honestly can't call it. Strauss-Kahn has a long history of alleged extra marital affairs. He has also been accused of rape by a French writer, Tristane Banon, whose mother also weirdly claimed she had brutal consensual sex with DSK.  Ms. Diallo holds to her story and says she wants DSK to go to jail. But since she lied to the grand jury and prosecutors does she have any credibility now?

Unsurprisingly DSK's lawyers were not amused and put out this terse statement.

Ms. Diallo is the first accuser in history to conduct a media campaign to persuade a prosecutor to pursue charges against a person from whom she wants money.  Her lawyers and public relations consultants have orchestrated an unprecedented number of media events and rallies to bring pressure on the prosecutors in this case after she had to admit  her extraordinary efforts to mislead them. Her lawyers know that her claim for money suffers a fatal blow when the criminal charges are dismissed, as they must be.

This conduct by lawyers  is unprofessional and it violates fundamental rules of professional conduct for lawyers. Its obvious purpose is to inflame public opinion against a defendant in a pending criminal case. The fact is, however, that  the number of rallies, press conferences, and media events they have orchestrated is exceeded only by the number of lies and misstatements  she has made to law enforcement, friends, medical professionals and reporters.
It is time for this unseemly circus to stop.

QUESTIONS:

Do these developments change your mind about what might have happened?

Do you think it's time to do away with anonymity for alleged rape victims? If not why not?

If someone lies about one thing is it safe to presume they will lie about other things?

He Say, She Say: The DSK Case

Rich man flirts with poor woman. Flirting becomes aggressive sexual advances. Agressive advances become F*** me and I'll pay you. Poor woman sees the payday and agrees. After it's all over she decides to cry rape.

Sound familiar?

No this isn't the scenario of the latest episode of Law & Order: SVU this is the case of one of the most powerful men in the world Dominique Strauss-Khan former head of the International Monetary Fund.

Nearly two months ago the man was pulled off his plane to Paris and arrested on sexual assault charges. The accusation was made by a hotel maid. Working in television news,I have followed this story closely. Immediately after his arrest, I ran a story in my show from France with women's reactions there. The general consensus was that this arrest was coming because he's always been a playboy; the kind of man that gets whatever girl he wants even if it is by force.

He was arrested, charged, spent a day in jail, and then released on a six million dollar bond, and put on house arrest in a penthouse in TriBeCa. As he stay holed up in luxurious confinement the case against him began to fall apart.

It was found out that the 32-year-old Guinean woman accusing Strauss-Khan of rape waited to report the incident. She cleaned Strauss-Khan's room, as well as another room, and then made a phone call from a pay phone saying she was about to get paid, all before reporting her rape to the police.

Furthermore, the Guinean woman is now found to be an illegal immigrant, one who did not gain asylum to be in this country and may find herself deported when all of this is over. Meanwhile, Strauss-Khan may be able to save his political career and run for President of France; another sexual assault case in his home country not-withstanding.

So what have we here, a potential rape victim who's lost all credibility because she's told more lies than Casey Anthony, and a playboy regaining his only slightly blemished reputation day-by-day by doing nothing.

This is a problem not only for rape victims and the justice system but the way society looks at such crimes as a whole. For the better part of the summer, women in the United States, Canada and elsewhere around the world have been holding "Slut Walks." The initial protest was against a Toronto cop's statement at a college campus safety event. The cop said, "Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."

The sentiment is not one that women haven't heard before. The line of questioning for a rape victim that goes, "What were you wearing? Did you in anyway suggest sex?" For true rape victims these questions, I assume, are humiliating. No woman wants to be forced into sex against her will.

Yet when cases such as the one against the Duke Lacrosse Players or Dominique Strauss-Khan come about, the validity of rape as a crime as a whole is undermined because the victims have ulterior motives even if they are truly victims.

Strauss-Khan now joins a long line of men who have been able to take advantage of women, either by force, coercion, bribery, or charm and get away with it even after an investigation is initiated.

No one is winning in these cases. Not the men who get off freely or the women who are reduced to greedy whores and gold digging sluts. We are all losing. A violent crime is reduced to a game of who touched who first and how will the alleged victim profit from it.

Real victims are losing out at the hands of high profile would-be suspects and less than witness stand ready victims. The charges against DSK may be dropped come his next court appearance on July 18th, and his accuser may be deported, but what happens to the women just doing their jobs as a hotel maid, a secretary, a waitress, a teacher, an executive Vice President or even a CEO that is approached for sex by a colleague, a friend, or even a stranger and the advance is more sour than sweet, more power than love, and the aftermath is hatred and humiliation, shame and embarrassment? What happens to those women and their cases?

If we've learned anything from this DSK case it is that it is not the named suspects and victims that we should concern ourselves with over their guilt or innocence, but the ones whose names we don't know, whose statuses are not front page news, whose backgrounds are average, who are just like us, who are hurting more than any rich man and his accuser that sees dollar signs.

Questions:

1. Do you believe DSK actually raped the Guinean woman?

2. Do you think the crime of rape is being trivialized by every high profile sexual assault case that falls apart?

3. If there was any blame who does it fall on?

Good and Evil in Art

We recently featured a post concerning homophobia in hip-hop.

Let's go beyond that. Let's include all human creativity-music, writing, film, sculpture, painting, dance-everything. I am no hip-hop devotee. I can't discuss rap's current state. Rap music gets blamed for many issues: out of wedlock births, tattoos, "rape culture", acceptance of public profanity, etc.

But rap isn't the first art form to be condemned for vulgarity or anti-social behavior. The people who gleefully sang "I love to play the piano so baby let me bang your box" or "Big Ten Inch" or "That big long sliding thing" weren't rappers. What do people think of "bad thoughts/actions" in other art forms?

• Do you care that Louis Armstrong appeared in blackface?
• The rock group Queen toured Apartheid era Sun City.
• Rock icon Elvis Costello once called Ray Charles a "blind ignorant n*****" and made similar comments about James Brown.
• Roman Polanski is a pedophile rapist. Polanski is also among the greatest directors of our time. 
• Some consider The St. John Passion by J.S. Bach to be anti-semitic.
• Richard Wagner was anti-semitic. He wrote excellent classical music.
• Leni Riefenstahl never killed anyone. She turned a blind eye to anti-semitism and The Holocaust while cavorting with Nazi officials to advance her career. She too was a film director who greatly improved her chosen field. Triumph of the Will is a (malevolent) masterpiece.
• The Rolling Stones generally paid proper royalties and gave credit to their black influences. They refused to play apartheid South Africa. They also wrote songs in which they sang "Scarred old slaver know he's doing all right/Hear him whip the women just around midnight" or "Black girls just want to get ***** all night".
• As much as anyone not named Chuck Berry, Ike Turner was a rock-n-roll founding father. He had a negative relationship with his wife.
• James Brown allegedly abused his wives and girlfriends. He wasn't above physically abusing his band members, man or woman. Per Fred Wesley, Brown once pistol-whipped Jimmy Nolen.
• Norman Mailer beat and stabbed his wife. He was a giant of 20th century writing.
• Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin wrote great music. He also stole a lot of music and spent much of the seventies addicted to heroin and sleeping with 13 yr-old groupies. 
• Does it bother you that the Detroit NAACP gave an award to Kid Rock, who uses the Confederate Flag in his shows?
• Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft were among the 20th century's greatest fantasy and horror writers, respectively. Both influenced other writers and continue to do so today, some 80 years after their deaths. Both were proud white supremacists, who even for that time (1920's-1930's) stood out for their contempt of non-whites, especially black people. Lovecraft's racism is almost inseparable from his writing.
• William Burroughs killed his wife and said this made him a writer.
• Sunshine of Your Love has one of the greatest rock riffs. Eric Clapton brought attention (and royalties) to black blues musicians. He's regularly hired black band members. He's befriended and worked with many different black musicians. Decades ago Clapton also infamously stated that non-whites needed to be forcibly removed from England. He's never retracted that either. In a December 2007 interview with Melvin Bragg, Clapton reiterated his support for Enoch Powell and again denied that Powell's views were racist.

"I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. F******g w***s, man. F****g Saudis taking over London. B****d w***s. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black w***s and c*** and Arabs and f******* Jamaicans and f****** (indecipherable) don’t belong here, we don’t want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don’t want any black w***s and c***s living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don’t want f*****g w***s living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for f***'s sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he’s a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he’s our man, he’s on our side, he’ll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he’s on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the ***** out! Keep Britain white!

I love you mate, but don't move next door, ok?

Despicable or problematic individuals can create great art.

Or can they?

This debate won't end. I believe that art must be judged on its aesthetic merits first and foremost. I once limited myself to art created by only those people that fit or at least didn't violate my basic political/moral standards. It wasn't sustainable. I had to accept that if I liked the art, I wouldn't care too much about the artist. But if I already knew the artist was a horrible person, I probably wouldn't investigate his/her work. It's not completely logical but it works for me. I can accept that bad people can create good art.

There are limits. You won't see me at a Lynyrd Sknyrd show anytime soon. But Simple Man is a good song. Is this hypocritical? Yes. But I think it's also completely human.

QUESTIONS

What do you think? Do you care about an artist's political views?

Do you enjoy work by people with whom you'd have a confrontation if you met them in real life? 
Did you ever enjoy some art and then find out that the creator was a real piece of .."work" ?

Did that change your viewpoint of the art?