HBO Boardwalk Empire Series Finale

Evil, why have you engulfed so many hearts...Evil

Evil, why have you destroyed so many minds...
Leaving room for darkness, where lost dreams can hide..

Stevie Wonder-"Evil"

It’s nice to imagine that everyone is or would be outraged at sexual abuse of children and would do anything within the law or beyond it to prevent an adult from harming a child. We often chortle self-righteously at the imagined hell that a convicted child abuser suffers in prison. We'll say he (and men are the ones for whom most of our justified rage is held) is getting what he deserves. But that's just not reality. Adults often turn a blind eye to child abuse. Whether it's international cinema stars claiming that Roman Polanski really isn't that bad of a guy despite his rape of a thirteen year old girl, Hollywood or music industry producers and agents with casting couches for teen actors/actresses/musicians, R&B musicians like R. Kelly who hang around junior high school girls, Orthodox Jews in New York City trying to prevent other Jews from reporting Jewish pedophiles to non-Jews, men in Afghanistan with teen or even younger male concubines, Baptist Church choir directors with scores of teen male "assistants", the various Catholic Church scandals or the fact that so many different people in authority pretended not to know what Jerry Sandusky was up to at Penn State, there are plenty of people in all walks of life and among both genders who will ignore evil committed against children. Some will even assist. One moral cretin at Rutgers has the nerve to counsel us to find sympathy for pedophiles. The world is full of people who make peace with such evil. They can justify their decisions by pointing to a greater good (usually for themselves), claim that they could not commit career or literal suicide by taking a stand, whine that they don't really know what happened, claim the child was no virgin or provide any number of other excuses designed to kill a conscience. 

Atlantic City Treasurer/Sheriff/Mob Boss Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) was such a man. As one character poignantly said of him "You want to be good but you don't know how". Much of this season and finale was shown in flashbacks. Brought up impoverished in an abusive family atmosphere, Thompson had big plans for himself and his wife. Working in a corrupt political system he decided to play by the rules that existed. And rule number one was to give the boss what he wanted. The boss during Thompson's youth and rise to power was the Commodore Kaestner (John Conlee). And the Commodore liked to have sex with young girls, children really. The Commodore read people well. He skillfully played on Nucky's ambition, fervent need to belong and to have a paternal figure. Nucky became aware of the run of the mill corruption that the Commodore directed, the store shakedowns, real estate payoffs and murders. He also slowly learned of the Commodore's interest in young girls. At the Commodore's direction, Nucky paid off a rape victim's family. And finally, in an act that would cause his death many decades later, Nucky turned over a barely pubescent teen girl to the Commodore. This twelve year old girl, Gillian Darmody, was someone who could and should have been Nucky's adoptive daughter. This ugly betrayal gave Nucky the Sheriff's job. It laid the foundation for his transformation into a corrupt political boss and later mob boss. It also gave him a permanently negative outlook on life, one that could only be temporarily alleviated by romantic love (which he rarely had), sex (which by this final season had lost some of its luster) or the love of his nieces and nephews (which was complicated by his difficult relation with their father), his brother Eli (Shea Wigham). Tormented by sibling rivalry and the knowledge that Nucky really was smarter, Eli was involved twice in serious plots to kill Nucky and at least on one occasion tried to do so all by himself.

Over previous seasons we knew what Nucky had done but it wasn't emphasized. It was years in the past after all. The grown up Gillian (Gretchen Mol) was hardly a sympathetic figure. She committed incest with her son, made a living as both a high class and streetwalker prostitute, pimped out other women and girls just as she had been pimped out, became a junkie, murdered an innocent youth in order to get her son's inheritance, tried to murder Nucky and was often needlessly cruel to those she saw as damaged or rivals for her son's affections. Still, one could make a good argument that if she had been taught kindness at a young age rather than learning that her only value lay between her legs, then perhaps her life would have gone differently. Nucky could have made different choices when the young Gillian appeared in his life but he didn't. He never seemed to feel guilt either. He felt some annoyance, yes, occasionally a twinge of sympathy, but never guilt. He thinks that all anyone ever wants from him is money. It's about all he's willing to give, anyway. It's very difficult for someone like Nucky to love. He lacks children of his own. His wife is estranged. His girlfriends keep getting killed. Sympathy and love are not things which Nucky has in abundance.

So when visiting the desperate Gillian in an insane asylum, (out of options she had written Nucky for help) Nucky shows little care for or understanding of the fact that the sadistic and misogynistic doctor has performed a hysterectomy on Gillian, believing it will cure her "insanity". This was actually based on a real life Dr. Cotton who behaved pretty much as depicted. Gillian knew this was coming; she wrote to Nucky in a vain attempt to win freedom. But it was too late. Even it if hadn't been it's unclear as to whether Nucky would have helped. He couldn't even tell Gillian he was sorry for pimping her out or killing her son. So it wasn't too surprising when Nucky, after having been deposed as Atlantic City Boss by the burgeoning syndicate, found out the hard way that one of his previous employees, a child really, was Tommy Darmody, son of the man he had murdered and grandson of Gillian Darmody. The youngster murdered Nucky. From a karmic point of view this made sense but given that Gillian hadn't been around the orphaned Tommy very often while he was growing up it's not clear where or how he inherited his sense of grievance. So that ending was a bit sloppy as far as narrative goes. Was Tommy visiting Grandma Gillian in the loony bin?

 It is interesting also that while we thought this series was about 20s-30s gangsters and hoodlums what it was really about how one man sold his soul for power. He could never find peace until he found the absolution that everyone gets eventually, the peace of the grave. So it goes.

The criminal sellout with grand delusions of national and religious redemption, Dr. Valentin Narcisse ,(Jeffrey Wright) was murdered by syndicate hitters when he refused to come to terms with Luciano and Lansky. This was based on reality but it was actually Dutch Schultz and Owney Madden, who were the first syndicate bigshots to muscle in on Harlem rackets, not Luciano. This season felt a little rushed and the finale was somewhat anti-climatic. We know that Lanksy, Luciano and Siegel survived the wars of the thirties. We know that Luciano and Lansky had Siegel murdered in the forties. We know that Capone was convicted for income tax invasion and suffered the horrors of syphilis and Alcatraz before being released to die insane in Florida. We even know that a crusading special prosecutor, aided by the first black woman ADA in NYC convicted Luciano of pandering and extortion in the prostitution racket. Luciano got a 30-50 year sentence and was later deported to Italy. The finale didn't show any of this once again choosing to spend too much time on Nucky's estranged wife Margaret (Kelly MacDonald) and her forays into white collar crime with Joe Kennedy (Matt Letscher). I never liked Margaret so this storyline was wasted on me. The season's strongest goodbyes were delivered in the penultimate episode when both the Knight Templar Treasury agent turned mobster and cuckolded husband Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon) and the fallen on hard times gangster Chalky White (Michael K. Williams) were suddenly murdered by their enemies. This finale just tied up some loose ends and made explicit a horror that had previously been subtext. I enjoyed the show but I don't think it ranks with HBO's greatest hits. I did appreciate the work that the actor Stephen Graham did as Capone. Michael K. Williams always impressed. And Gretchen Mol did a great job making a despicable character sympathetic.

Do you remember when we met? I'll never forget your smile. Jimmy sometimes, he has it. I look at him and I see you. That first night, how you plied me with wine... Why, I'd never felt such a sensation. We were downstairs. And I'd fallen asleep on the divan. You carried me to the bedroom, went to say good night to your guests. And I laid there in bed, dreaming of the waves. I'd been on the beach that day. Suddenly I felt a crushing feeling. I couldn't breathe. I opened my eyes to find you atop me. Your breath smelling of whiskey and tobacco. One hand covering my mouth and the other groping at me. Do you remember that? Still, sometimes when I sleep, it wakes me with a start. Do you remember that night?
-Gillian Darmody speaking to the Commodore

Child Support Gone Wrong: Michigan Man Paying For Child That's Not His

Apart from extreme purist libertarians and anarchists, I think most people would concede that a certain level of government is necessary. However I also think that many people outside of devoted statists would also admit that government has become in some cases too large, too powerful and far too dismissive of individual rights. There have been some recent incidents which do remind me of the fact that a government which has too much power will inevitably seek to exercise that power in ways that harm all of us. Now we all may have our pet peeves and biases. That's part of being human. I may be more concerned about police brutality than you. You might be worried about arrogant and bullying EPA workers when they are not even on my radar screen. Someone else might have good reason to really dislike ICE workers. And so on. Government is made up of flawed men and women, like every other institution. It makes mistakes just like we do. That's ok. But what's not ok, is when government, which has the right and the power to put you in prison and take money from you, makes a mistake, admits it made a mistake but continues to treat you as if it didn't. Do you have an extra $30,000 lying around? Because if you don't you have something in common with one Mr. Carnell Alexander of Detroit, Michigan. He doesn't have that money either. But even he did he wouldn't pay it to the State of Michigan. The state claims he owes them that money for something he did not do. Read more and see the video below the fold.
DETROIT (WXYZ) - The State of Michigan is ordering a Detroit man to pay tens of thousands of dollars, or go to prison. The reason? He owes back child support for a child that everyone agrees is not his.  "I feel like I’m standing in front of a brick wall with nowhere to go," said Carnell Alexander. He says he learned about the paternity case against him during a traffic stop in Detroit in the early 90s. The officer told him he is a deadbeat dad, there was a warrant out for his arrest. 

“I knew I didn’t have a child, so I was kind of blown back,” said Alexander. The state said he fathered a child in 1987, and ignored a court order to pay up. It was the first Carnell had heard of the court order. He'd never even met the child. Eventually he, by chance, ran into someone he knew would know where the woman was, and got a DNA test. It proved what he had been saying all along: the child he had never met was not his.

The mother had realized that, and the real father was in the child's life. Alexander took this information to court. The judge was unmoved. Carnell's ex had a baby, and didn't know who the father was. She was struggling to care for the child. When she applied for state assistance, the case worker told her she had to name the father....

Now although I think that the entire alimony/palimony/child support/divorce industry needs an overhaul this really is beyond what I thought the worst could be. The man has irrefutable proof that he's not the father and the judge really doesn't give a ****. This is precisely the sort of thing that could make people explode. Yes you should take care of your kids. And if need be the state should be able to "help" you do that. The flip side of that though is if the kid in question isn't yours then the child isn't your responsibility. For the state to try to make that child your responsibility goes beyond corruption and slides into tyranny. It's exactly like being convicted and sent to prison for a crime you didn't commit because the prosecutor and judge want to send a message to other criminals about the cost of defying the law. They aren't interested in the fact that you are not a criminal. This sort of thing really bothers me. If the so-called justice system is treating the innocent and the guilty exactly the same, something that I'll be discussing more in a future post, then what incentive does anyone have to pay attention to the system or as Peter Tosh referred to it, the s***stem. Absolutely no incentive at all. A system that behaves like this loses legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens. Ultimately it relies on pure power, little different than the Mafia hoodlum shaking down construction companies for the weekly payoff. But when people start to withhold their consent and stop obeying the system, the results will be unknowable. When there are more cases like that of Mr. Alexander more people will start to do just that.  And I'm sorry but if, absent rape, a woman doesn't know who the father of her child is, she should be shamed and criticized just as much as the lazy lothario with multiple children by multiple women and no way of supporting his women or children.

What are your thoughts?

If you were this man what would your next move be?

Bill Clinton tells President Obama to man up

Reality is a funny thing. It exists independently of our perceptions yet our perceptions are the only way in which we know reality. Our perceptions can color our "version" of reality. There are literally an infinite number of ways by which to generate the number 4. 2+2 = 4 is likely the first one that came to your mind. But let's say you work for a boss who who was taught to express the number 4 as the square root of 16. And let's say that is the only way which he permits anyone who works for him to express the number 4. His version of reality is accurate but it's not accurate to suggest that that is the ONLY version of reality. So just as in mathematics, in politics there are a number of competing and complementary narratives which all might describe reality yet look very different from each other. I suppose if someone had soundly beaten my wife, sister or other close female relative for something which she wanted very badly and yet asked for my help or her help shortly after doing so, my feelings for that man might best be described as complex. There is a Ben Harper song "Roses from my friends" which has the chorus "The stones from my enemies, these wounds will mend, but I cannot survive the roses from my friends". Former President Clinton may have shown how his version of reality differs from President Obama's while handing the President a thorn covered rose. Both in 2012 and in a recent interview with PBS, former President Clinton said that as far as personal attacks go, he's had it worse than President Obama even as he concedes that the partisan gridlock is worse today.
"Nobody's accused him [President Obama] of murder yet, as far as I know. I mean it was pretty rough back then. I think that most people underappreciate the level of extreme partisanship that took hold in '94."

President Obama heads into midterm elections in which he may face crushing losses. He has been spurned by his own party, whose candidates do not even want to be seen with him. The president’s supporters say the toxic atmosphere in Washington has made it impossible for Mr. Obama to succeed. Whatever Mr. Clinton’s motivations, his comments, which his former aides frequently refer to when the topic comes up, do not permit Mr. Obama to excuse his legislative setbacks by simply citing hyper-partisanship. As one former White House aide to Mr. Clinton put it: “They impeached our guy." 

Even Mr. Clinton’s old rival, Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the House, said people had a gauzy view of the Clinton years. “Everyone is doing the, ‘Gee, Newt and Bill got things done, why can’t Obama get anything done?’ routine,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Maybe it’s driving Bill nuts.” The underlying implication is that Mr. Obama does not have it so rough. Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Clinton criticize the current president for being less able or willing than his Democratic predecessor to woo congressional Republicans. 

Some of the venom directed at Mr. Obama has a racial component that Mr. Clinton, a relatable white Southerner, never had to deal with, said Douglas G. Brinkley, a presidential historian and professor at Rice University. “The Clintons created huge problems of their own making,” Mr. Brinkley added, while “Obama’s problem is that he bullheadedly pushed Obamacare, and he happens to be African-American.” “You can’t get more personal than questioning a person’s veracity for where he was born,” said Mr. Galston, the former Clinton aide, referring to the “birther” conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama’s birth certificate."

LINK (Please read this entire article as it's actually quite good)

It's true that as of this writing President Obama has not been impeached. Of course as far as I know he's not getting intern provided oral sex in the White House and lying about it under oath either. So there's that. Should that happen and President Obama not be impeached then we have a better "apples to apples" comparison. Still it can be true both that President Obama has had to deal with a level of opposition which other Presidents didn't face and that President Obama has had rose colored glasses about the fact that the opposing party doesn't like him and is not in fact, required to work with him. In my opinion he's only belatedly arriving at that realization. I disagree with former President Clinton about the nature of the attacks that President Obama has faced. Conservatives and Republicans have attacked President Obama's religion, race, citizenship, intelligence and sexuality in a way that they didn't do to President Clinton. I don't say that Clinton had it easy. Right wingers compared his daughter's looks to that of a dog, called his wife a lesbian and suggested he and she murdered people. Nevertheless they were willing to work with President Clinton in a way which they have generally refused to do with President Obama. IIRC no mainstream conservative intellectual called President Clinton's mother a fat whore with a fetish for non-white men. 

It's difficult to walk in someone else's shoes. Empathy only goes so far, especially with someone who has a completely different personality than you and who came out of nowhere to defeat your wife. Apparently that still rankles.

What do you think?

Did President Clinton have it worse than President Obama?

Is President Clinton making inaccurate and self-centered comments?

Will President Clinton's comments help his wife if she runs again for President?

Movie Reviews: Supernatural Season Seven, Dead Snow 2

Supernatural Season Seven
created by Eric Kripke

If Season Six was a bit iffy and a virtual series reboot Season Seven found the story back on more familiar ground. The Winchester Brothers are still doing what they do best, saving people, hunting things, you know, the family business. But this season there are two new extra dimensional threats, further challenges to the relationship between Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), and personal losses. While the show started with the Winchesters and their allies very firmly on the side of good, over time the series has subtly and not so subtly played with that perception. Both brothers have been to Hell and returned somewhat the worse for wear. Each of them did things or suffered things there that they don't want to talk about. Dean's arrogance can be matched by Sam's self-righteousness. Although the first reveal of angels, in the form of Castiel (Misha Collins) was awe inspiring and a reminder that pure good exists, later events showed us that although God might be omniscient, His angels certainly weren't. They were just as prone to bitterness, rivalries, jealousy and squabbling as humans were. The only difference was that angels played for higher stakes. By the end of Season Six the war between Castiel and his superior, the Archangel Raphael (played by Demore Barnes and Lynette Ware)  was concluded. Over Season Six Castiel realized that he lacked the raw power to defeat an Archangel. His army was badly losing the heavenly civil war. From desperation Castiel made a secret deal with the demon Crowley (Mark Sheppard). Souls are power. So Crowley would manipulate the Winchesters into helping him search for Purgatory (the dimension where the souls of deceased non-human monsters reside) while Castiel would keep the Winchesters misled about the fact that it was he, not Crowley who had rescued the now soulless Sam from Hell. 

Once they found Purgatory Crowley and Castiel would split its souls. With this additional power Castiel could go toe to toe with Raphael. This plan might have worked were it not for the fact that the Winchesters were too smart and too independent to be manipulated for long. They called upon Death to restore Sam's soul to him, damaged though it was. They figured out that Castiel was lying to them. Dean took this rather hard as Castiel was something akin to a big brother. Once they learned that Castiel was actually working with Crowley all bets were off. But as Castiel sadly pointed out, no matter how tough the Winchesters thought they were, they were still just human. And humans rank below angels on the power scale. Castiel removed the wall that Death had placed in Sam's mind to protect him from his memories. Sam stated to alternate between having hallucinations and being comatose. Castiel wanted the Winchesters to stop interfering in his affairs. Castiel opened Purgatory. He betrayed Crowley and took all the souls for himself. Crowley ran. Castiel then killed Raphael with a mere snap of his fingers. The Winchester Brothers and their paternal stand-in Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver) tried to kill Castiel but it was too late. By taking ALL the souls for himself Castiel had transcended angelic status. He was now God. He forced the Winchesters and Bobby to kneel to him. He took a trip across the world and Heaven, righting wrongs and settling scores. His idea of righting wrongs usually involved smiting sinners, often in great numbers, but that's what God does, right? That is what Castiel thinks He does. After all Castiel was there watching when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. He's pretty sure he can do this Ruler of the Universe thing. I mean what could go wrong?

Sam, Dean and Bobby were almost out of ideas. But Dean remembered that Death (Julian Richings) once told him that some day he will even kill God. Hoping that that's true, the trio summoned and bound Death. Death was more amused than irritated by this as he liked Dean but before he left he warned Dean not to ever try this again. He also revealed that Castiel is not God but merely a low level angel struggling to control all the souls inside of him, in particular things called Leviathan. Leviathan were God's first creations, before angels and humans. Like many beta models they were scrapped. They were too dangerous. Leviathan were confined to Purgatory, that is until Castiel foolishly took them out. Feeling the effects of the Leviathan Castiel comes to Dean and Sam for help in reopening the gate to Purgatory and releasing all the souls back into that dimension. They do this but it turns out that the Leviathan are able to hold on. They "kill" Castiel and release themselves in the water supply. This allows them to take and reshape bodies on our plane of existence. And thus Season Seven sees the most dangerous yet threat to humanity. Leviathan are virtually impervious to any of the Winchester's normal weaponry, material or spiritual. Bullets don't bother them. They can reform after total body disintegration. Holy water and exorcism makes them giggle. Even decapitation just temporarily slows them down. They're very intelligent with utter contempt for all other life forms. The Leviathan are basically humanoid white sharks. And they are always hungry. The best way to deal with a Leviathan is to run. But John Winchester didn't raise his boys to run from a fight.

This season had its share of dramatic setpieces, including a point where a crippled Dean and concussed Sam are taken to a hospital infested with Leviathans. Sam continues to hallucinate that Lucifer is still with him. As always though, especially post-season five, the show's emotional center remains the fractured yet enduring relationship between the Winchester Brothers. They don't always like each other. They split up for a while due to what Sam sees as an unforgivable betrayal by Dean. They seem to have a knack for getting their friends killed and destroying each other's outside relationships, romantic or otherwise. But when the chips are down and their backs are against the wall they would each rather die than fail to help each other or anyone who they consider family. Dean, more so than Sam, has always had a very black and white approach to their job. Monsters are bad. They kill people. Hunters kill monsters to save people. It's just that simple.The end. But in an ironic echo of Castiel's mistakes, Dean will discover that sometimes things aren't so cut and dry. Some monsters are worse than others. And sometimes you may have to overlook a lesser evil in order to deal with a greater one. Season Seven introduced new allies for the Winchesters, including the goofy and entirely too touchy feely hunter Garth (DJ Qualls) and the IT expert/nerd/expert hacker/gamer Charlie Bradbury (Felicia Day). It also saw the reveal of the Leviathan leader, Dick Roman (James Patrick Stuart). 

Roman has nasty plans not just for the Winchesters but for all of humanity. As he is a corporate CEO there's a slight Omen feel to some Season 7 episodes. If you will forgive a small pun Roman chews up the scenery. The Leviathan swiftly organize. They know all of the Winchesters' aliases. They use the police and FBI to go after Sam and Dean. The Winchesters try to find a way to kill the Leviathans, stay alive and do their regular job. We learn more of the cost of the hunter lifestyle, especially as it applies to Dean. You deal with threats no one believes. You can't tell anyone about it or you'll be locked in an insane asylum. You never make any money. You often run afoul of the authorities. And if you ever do manage to find a woman you love you dare not put her in danger by hanging around. You may even have a few "love children" out there. As Dean would say, awesome. The season is not without its humor, even as things look their bleakest. Those of you who avoid fast food or any processed food may find amusement at a turn of events that finds the healthy eating and organic loving Sam proven right in his choices. Dean, who religiously consumes burgers, french fries and especially pie, has reason to reconsider his diet. And Sam, being Sam, can't help but take a few opportunities to say "I told you so".
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Dead Snow 2 : Red vs. Dead
directed by Tommy Wirkola

If you don't like horror movies at all then you really should skip this sequel. Although the first film (reviewed here) had a deliciously twisted sense of humor this film just increases the carnage and put its hero in more perverse positions. I didn't find this that amusing. The first film was a real horror film as the heroes and heroines were isolated, outnumbered and surrounded in the snow, cold and dark. This wasn't the case with this film. This film is more of a "monster" film. There's less horror and much more campy humor. YMMW on this. I was less than impressed. You can get this film in English or subtitled. I went with English.
The director retrofits the original's final events to create the sequel. At the end of the first film, the sole surviving member of a group of Norwegian medical students has made it to a car and is about to (absent the arm he cut off with a chainsaw to avoid zombie infection) escape some very vicious Nazi zombies, who are upset that the students have disturbed their gold.  Martin (Vegar Hoel) is about to drive off when a coin falls out of his coat pocket and he realizes he has not returned all the gold and is thus still fair game. The Nazi commander (Orjan Gamst) realizes this too and knocks politely on the car window before breaking it. Martin starts screaming and the scene fades to black. Well the sequel shows us that Martin didn't die then and there. He manages to get the car started and drives off. With one hand this is no easy task, let me tell you. However the Nazi commander doesn't let go and when Martin sideswipes a truck the Nazi commander loses his arm, which falls into Martin's car. 

Obviously Martin has an accident. I mean how many wounded zombie fighting one armed men do you know who are excellent nighttime drivers? When he wakes up in the hospital he's happy to be alive. But things go badly for him. The authorities have found all the dead bodies of his friends and classmates. He's considered to be a serial killer. No one wants to hear about how much he loved his girlfriend or that Nazi zombies were to blame. To make matters worse though, the doctors have found the Nazi commander's severed arm in Martin's car and, thinking it's Martin's , have attached it to his body. This was quite reminiscent of Evil Dead 2. The Nazi arm has a life and will of its own. Soon it's killed other people and Martin is free. However the Nazi commander has found Martin's arm and attached it. So they have a link. Completely inexplicably Martin is contacted by a so-called Zombie Squad, a group of American nerd siblings, who are convinced that zombies exist and are just delighted that Martin has proof. They promise to come help him.

In the meantime the Nazi commander is leading his troops to Martin's town. But Martin discovers that his new arm has additional powers besides just killing people. Again I think that your enjoyment of movies like this depends entirely on your expectations. I was expecting a little more so I enjoyed it less. It does have what must be film's weirdest and most ironic use of the classic Bonnie Tyler ballad Total Eclipse of the Heart. And I always liked her voice. So there's that at least. TRAILER

Michigan: Michigan State Game

Today in East Lansing my cherished alma mater, the University of Michigan, will play Michigan State University in a football game. Unfortunately this game is highly unlikely to result in a U-M victory. At the time of this writing U-M is a 17 point underdog. Since 2008, MSU is 5-1 against U-M. In their last two matchups U-M could not even score a single touchdown against MSU. In 2013, MSU dominated U-M so thoroughly that some people who saw the game left questioning the manhood of the U-M players. There was a time when U-M was the team that went around punching other teams in the mouth and daring them to do something about it. Those days are long gone. Now, sadly even a diehard Wolverine fan such as myself must admit that there is a certain softness, a certain weakness about U-M. MSU on the other hand has an attention to detail, toughness and even arrogance that used to be U-M's domain. The programs are headed in different directions. Although the Big 10 and Midwest college football in general is not competitive with the juggernaut that is the SEC, MSU has risen to prominence over the past eight years, displacing U-M as the power in the north. This has come about under the leadership of MSU's smirking head coach Mark Dantonio. Meanwhile U-M has floundered and failed, never more so than under the "leadership" of current head coach Brady Hoke, a hapless and oft incoherent man who will likely hopefully be fired at the end of the season. Still, this is a rivalry game. Both teams should be excited. MSU's defense is not quite as good as last year's. MSU's QB makes more mistakes than he should. So anything can happen. And if there is one thing that could save Hoke's job it would be going to East Lansing and laying an old school Schembechler style smackdown on the Spartans. That almost certainly won't take place but dreams and memories are increasingly all U-M fans have left. Anyway, below the jump there are two videos summarizing the two schools and the types of people who attend them. Obviously the stereotypes aren't true but as with any stereotype you can always find an example to buttress it.

            

              

It's On Us and Yes Means Yes: Bad Ideas or Overdue Requirements?

The Obama Administration recently launched a public relations campaign to combat sexual assault. The campaign was titled "It's on us". You can check out the video here. I do indeed feel a special obligation to look out for some women. This group would include all related women, particularly younger ones, some really good women friends or close co-workers, and any woman with whom there is, was, or might be an intimate connection. For those women I will risk confrontation and physical danger. I was raised to believe that it's my job to protect such women or offer advice, even if occasionally they eschew such assistance. So that is indeed on me. I wouldn't like it were I ever in a situation where I could have helped a woman and chose otherwise from fear or sloth. But strange women, women who I don't know from Eve, are not my primary concern. This is 2014. Many women proclaim that they are independent and can look after their own affairs. I don't think that they need or want a stranger monitoring their alcohol consumption and clothing choices, or deciding on his own that their planned sexual rendezvous with that dangerous looking biker is too risky and must be halted. It's one thing to see a woman being physically assaulted and callously refuse to assist her. I'm almost 100% certain that I would run to her assistance. There's no ambiguity about what's happening when someone is screaming for help or getting throttled or beaten. But the PSA is discussing preemptive bystander intervention. That's a horse of an entirely different color. That means someone would be overriding the woman's judgment with his own. That might not be such a good thing. It also means women can't be trusted to make their own decisions. I disagree with that.

Police officers make errors. They don't get it wrong all or even most of the time but they do make plenty of mistakes. They arrest people for non-existent crimes, wrongly accuse women of being prostitutes, harass people walking down the street, shoot people's dogs from pure spite, make drug raids on the wrong address, shoot people armed only with wallets, and make other errors that result in people being insulted, arrested, tased, imprisoned, beaten, shot or even killed. And these are the experts! If they make mistakes why wouldn't untrained men make even more mistakes. Police are paid to serve and protect. They often enjoy legal protection for that. But if I preemptively intervene in a couple's private affairs because I think something looks wrong, I could be making a horrible mistake for no gain. Such action contradicts my worldview that, generally speaking, grown people handle their own business. So is it really on me to watch out for people who I don't know? No it's not. Sorry. My Superman suit is at the cleaners. If you, like the woman in the debunked Hofstra "rape" case, happen to think it's a good idea to have simultaneous sex with three or four men in a bathroom , I won't stop you. You're grown. I avoid interfering with grown people's romantic and/or sexual decision making. There's a crude word for this that rhymes with dock locking. And it is an excellent way to get your lights punched out. I can't read minds. I can't distinguish between the couple fondling each other because they're drunk and will shortly have sex that one of them may later describe as rape and the couple fondling each other because they've reunited after a three month business trip and are happily anticipating numerous Kama Sutra approved activities. I don't find anything malicious about the PSA. It amuses me that it calls for patriarchal protection when "patriarchal" is considered a dirty word. I think this PSA is well meaning, if misguided in today's world.

I'm not sure I could say that the "yes means yes" law is well meaning. California recently made a change in the law by passing the so-called "yes means yes" bill. This only applies to college students who are studying at institutions that receive state funding. All non-savages want to reduce the incidence of rape but I just don't see how this law helps with that goal. All I can see coming from this law is unintentional comedy and further degradation of the innocent until proven guilty standard. The very best that could happen is that nothing changes. All we have is a reframed version of the current conundrum in such cases. There are no witnesses other than the accused and the accuser. The accuser says she was raped. The accused claims the accuser agreed to consensual sex. At trial everyone else has to weigh the evidence, such as there is, and decide if the accused was proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt means that the prosecution has the larger burden of proof. In other words a woman's word alone is not enough to convict a man of rape in a criminal court of law. Nor should it be. There has to be something else. Feminists have never really liked the presumption of innocence as applied to rape accusations and have been chipping away at it for quite some time in the criminal justice system and in the court of public opinion. "Yes means yes" is a way to do that in the college justice system. The Obama Administration has already informed colleges that under Title IX legislation, colleges are to use a weaker "preponderance of evidence" standard when adjudicating rape accusations, something that received serious pushback and criticism from Harvard professors across the political spectrum.

The main problem with "yes means yes" legislation is that such legislation does not at all comport with the reality of how people really initiate or have sex. Although it might be amusing to imagine that everyone sounds like this when engaged intimately, the reality is that they don't. The "yes means yes" law virtually makes this reaction a requirement for every discrete sexual action. So if a man and woman are fooling around on their living room couch the man might ask the woman if she wants to go upstairs. Now both adults know damn well that this question is shorthand for "Would you like to get naked and combine body parts in interesting ways for the better part of two hours?". However under this law if the man did not get explicit permission for each separate action of inserting tab a into slot b, a woman disappointed with his performance, disappointed with her performance or annoyed for any number of other reasons, could come back at a later date and correctly claim that she was raped. A defender of the law might claim that well, better safe than sorry. That's always true when it comes to sex in a lot of different ways. But it's also true that the steps which a man would have to take to avoid liability under this law also happen to be steps which would destroy many women's erotic interest in that man.

More than once I saw disappointment in the eyes of women when I didn’t fulfill the leadership role they wanted me to perform in the bedroom. I realized that women don’t just desire men, they desire men’s desire―and often they don’t want to have to ask for it. I also realized that I was in many ways ashamed of my own sexual desire as a man, and that this was not healthy. 

At this point I was experiencing some cognitive dissonance with my upbringing, but in time learned to take an assertive lead unless I got a “no” or otherwise thought I was about to cross a boundary as indicated by body language.One night I ended up back in a girl’s room after a first date (those do happen in college). She had invited me in and was clearly attracted to me. We were kissing on her bed, outer layers of clothing removed, but when my hands wandered downward she said, “No, wait.” I waited. She began kissing me again, passionately, so again I moved to remove her underwear. “Stop,” she said, “this is too fast.” I stopped.“That’s fine,” I said. I kissed her again and left soon after, looking forward to seeing her again. 

But my text messages received only cold, vaguely angry replies, and then silence. I was rather confused. Only many weeks later did I find out the truth from one of her close friends: “She really wanted you, but you didn’t make it happen. She was pretty upset that you didn’t really want her.”“Why didn’t she just say so then, why did she say we were moving too fast?”“Of course she said that, you dumbass. She didn’t want you to think she was a slut.”

The man was correct to stop. The risks of not doing so were too great. No means no. But a law that presumes that men and women behave exactly the same in or out of the bedroom and that most women still don't expect men to be the ones to "make it happen" is a law that will be abused. The bedroom is not necessarily a place where there is constant talking, negotiating and begging going on. It's not always "Mother may I" unless you happen to be Norman Bates. Some people like other people to take charge. Some people like to take charge. This doesn't indicate lack of consent any more than a man taking the lead in a dance indicates lack of consent. Rape is a horrible crime. It is second only to murder in how despicable it is. Rape means lack of consent. That means someone does something to you without asking OR you are unable to consent OR you tell them no and they proceed anyway. Rape should not mean that you and someone are having sex, one of you tells the other one to move to the left and a week later one of you is in front of a college kangaroo court because after all there was no explicit permission granted for that "move to the left" order.

Now you would think that civil libertarians would be the ones leading the charge against this law. Well some are. But as I've always said we are all hypocrites in some way or the other. There are some people on the right who are big defenders of the Bill of Rights, except when it comes to black people being harassed or searched without warrant by the police. At that point they will talk about black criminals, say that there's an emergency and claim that the police are justified in unconstitutional activities against the black population. They will demagogue on the issue by claiming that if you're against stop-n-frisk you must be for "black crime".

Well not to be outdone in contempt for the underlying values of our legal system, Ezra Klein, while openly admitting that "yes means yes" is a bad law and that innocents will be harmed, still says that he supports it because the rape crisis on college campuses justifies extreme actions.

If the Yes Means Yes law is taken even remotely seriously it will settle like a cold winter on college campuses, throwing everyday sexual practice into doubt and creating a haze of fear and confusion over what counts as consent. This is the case against it, and also the case for it. Because for one in five women to report an attempted or completed sexual assault means that everyday sexual practices on college campuses need to be upended, and men need to feel a cold spike of fear when they begin a sexual encounter.

Colleges have settled into an equilibrium where too little counts as sexual assault, where the ambiguity of consent gives rapists loopholes in which to hide, and forces women to spend their lives afraid. The Yes Means Yes laws creates an equilibrium where too much counts as sexual assault. Bad as it is, that's a necessary change.

Da Kommissar! That should be the law's primary purpose. These evil men need to feel fear when they start having sex. They should know that the state is watching them. There are no innocents in Klein's world when it comes to rape. There are only guilty people who haven't been caught yet. And if well a few eggs get broken while making an omelet, well we can't build our Brave New World without a few sacrifices along the way. Anyone who disagrees is obviously pro-rape and need not be taken seriously. Klein shows shocking disregard for one of the basic foundations of the Anglo-American legal system, the Blackstone Ratio. Obviously Klein would reverse that ratio. In his ideal world it's better that ten innocents suffer than one rapist go free. And if this "yes means yes" law makes those college men live in fear, so much the better. Again, for those of us who are not in college, do not live in California or have sons going to college in California, this may not seem like too much of a big deal. But make no mistake, this law will eventually spread beyond California and beyond the college judicial system. And that would indeed be a big deal because even more men would be convicted of crimes which they did not commit. This "yes means yes" law is simply alien to our stated values of law. It's also important to point out that over the past twenty years there has been a large decrease in the numbers and rate of sexual assault against women and girls. The idea that there is some sort of epidemic of rape is just not accurate. The way to reduce rape is to harshly punish convicted rapists and teach men and women that drunkenness is not a necessary precursor for sex. You don't reduce rape by claiming that almost every man is a rapist and making men prove their innocence. 

I thought we wanted the state out of people's bedrooms? Unless you want men bringing a public notary and video camera into the bedroom or avoiding college women altogether, this "yes means yes" law may have some unpleasant unintended consequences. Everyone is against rape. But there must be a better way to combat it than this.

What do you think?

Jayru Campbell Felony Charges Dismissed

We talked previously about former Cass Tech QB Jayru Campbell and his run-ins with the law. Now I don't know about you but if I had just gotten out of jail for assaulting someone I would make sure that at least for a while I would lay low and you know, try not to assault anyone. However Jayru Campbell apparently has a brain that doesn't work normally. Just hours after getting out of jail for body slamming a school security guard, Campbell assaulted his girlfriend, allegedly because he was concerned about text or other messages on her phone which hadn't come from him. While I can certainly understand a man or in this case a boy being deeply concerned that his girlfriend has concluded that his best just wasn't good enough, the fact remains that putting your hands on people in violence is usually a bad idea. It's a horrible idea when you were just released for doing the same thing. This shows everyone that whatever you experienced in jail, the experience apparently wasn't bad enough or long enough to make you realize that you never wanted to go back. Campbell did manage to dodge a bullet so to speak when the judge decided to dismiss the most serious felony charges that Campbell faced. It's quite possible that the prosecutors overcharged. I can't say yes or no to that. I'm no attorney. It's also possible that the judge bent over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who doesn't deserve it. It's true that there are far too many people, particularly black men and boys, who are wrongly caught up in the criminal justice system. It's also true that there are some individuals of all races and both genders who do need to spend some time away from the rest of us until they know how to act. Check out the video below and let us know what you think.


Detroit Cass Tech football star Jayru Campbell received a surprise in court today.
Campbell, who has had previous run-ins with the law, had his most serious charges dismissed for assaulting his girlfriend.
In 36th District Court Judge Ruth Carter dismissed charges of intent to do great bodily harm, unarmed robbery and fraudulent use of a computer Monday.

The 17-year-old is still facing a domestic violence charge, a 93-day misdemeanor. He remains in jail for a circuit court probation violation hearing. Some have questions wondering what kind of message today's decision in court is sending.
Beth Morrison, the head of Haven, a metro Detroit organization for victims of domestic violence was disappointed but not surprised by the dropped felony charges.
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