Captain_Maclaine posted:

quote:

Democrats accuse Russia of meddling in the 2016 election. What do they mean by meddling? Apparently it means “exposing the fact that Hillary Clinton and the DNC cheated to deny Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination.”

quote:

From Clarence Thomas to Jerry Sandusky to Bill Cosby to Harvey Weinstein, those who doubt their accusers always ask something similar to what Roy Moore said about those who accused him of sexual harassment and assault: “To think grown women would wait 40 years before a general election to bring charges is unbelievable.”

What takes so long? Why don’t alleged victims head straight to the police?

There are 17 good reasons in this great article.

Let me add two more that we don’t talk about enough: shame and fear of disbelief.

I’m not referring to the well-documented victims’ fear that they somehow brought the attack on themselves (for example, a woman who worries that she somehow sent mixed signals to a suitor who then raped her), but to something one rarely sees discussed in the media or talked about in typical conversations about victimhood.

Society doesn’t like victims. Victims make us uncomfortable. It’s probably a vestige of our Darwinian instinct for survival: the monkey clan prospers when its members are healthy and lucky, but finds life perilous around those who are sick and unfortunate. We turn away from the unlucky: the homeless man, the woman whose face bears burn scars, the black guy getting choked to death by cops. Not our business, not our problem, these are troubles to be avoided. I do it too.

This instinct goes double for those who refuse to soft-pedal their victimhood. Not even the most active social justice warriors have Rose McGowan’s back in her Twitter crusade against Harvey Weinstein — she’s a bit too angry for comfort. (Her recent drug arrest doesn’t help.)

I am not judging humanity here. I am trying to answer Roy Moore et al’s question. One of the answers is shame — the shame simply of being a victim in a shallow capitalist society that loves winners, hates losers and despises victims. Fake it to make it has a corollary: never let ’em see you sweat.

My friend Cole Smithey the critic told me a bit of film theory, after a character in a movie gets maimed (loses a hand, gets shot and acts shot, getting weaker and visibly bleeding, whatever), the audience stops liking and identifying with him or her. There are exceptions. Typically, however, a screenwriter will have a maimed character die, vanish or completely recover. Because no one likes a victim.

Getting fired and libeled by the LA Times reminded me of that anthropological truism. Immediately following my firing, I hardly heard from my fellow cartoonists. (That’s rare.) Friends resurfaced after I presented exculpatory evidence. A pair of taints (Loser and Liar) had been erased.

Then I sued the Times for defamation, and things tipped back. Some of my friends stayed true but others dumped me because they were scared that if they sided with me the Times and Tronc might deny them work, also because I’d gone Rose McGowan-y crusade-y. It’s true that the LAPD bought Tronc and the Times fired me for the LAPD, but it’s weird and anyway, no one likes a victim. Especially not an angry one.

Fear of not being believed is another underdiscussed yet potent inhibitor to victims considering whether to step forward, whether by filing a police report or going to the press.

I grew up poor with my single mom and we were short of money. To bring in some cash, my mom hooked me up with a job helping the janitor wash the blackboards after school at my junior high school. Looking back now, it was a situation perfect for an abuser: no one but an older male custodian and a 13-year-old boy in the otherwise empty building.

One afternoon the dude snuck behind me while I was working in a classroom and grabbed me, pinning my arms to my side. “Do you trust me?” he whispered in my ear. I remember his exact voice, the smell of his breath (alcohol, bourbon maybe). I felt his penis harden against my back.

I did not trust him.

But I told him I did, several times, and he believed me and let me go and I bounded exactly three steps toward the door, turned the knob and launched myself down the hall and flung myself down the stairs and hurled out the emergency exit, and I ran and ran and ran and it was so drat beautiful outside and I could hear the fire alarm ringing.

When my mom came home, I lied. I told her the job was over, the custodian no longer needed me.

Later a kid I didn’t know approached me at school. He might have been a year older. He asked me if I had worked for the dirty old janitor and whether he’d gone after me because the same thing had happened to him. I didn’t ask if he’d gone to the principal or told his parents and he didn’t ask me. It would have been the stupidest question in the world because no one would have believed us.

No one ever believed kids back then. About anything. The school administration wouldn’t have believed us about the English teacher who kept pot in his desk or the algebra teacher who seduced my friend or the driver’s ed instructor who grabbed my classmate’s breasts right in front of me and my best friend.

We Gen X kids understood the world as it was: survival was up to us. Adults didn’t care; adults wouldn’t help. Decades later, when I told my mom that story, she admitted I was right. “I assumed you were lazy,” she said about my quitting the job.

If you’ve never been a victim of some kind, you may find this strange, but there is something worse than knowing (or suspecting) that you may not be believed, and that is coming forward and letting cops and courts and human resource officers decide for themselves, based on the evidence and their biases, whether they believe you or not.

As long as you keep your victimhood to yourself, you know your experience was real.

(Ted Rall’s (Twitter: @tedrall) next book is “Francis: The People’s Pope,” the latest in his series of graphic novel-format biographies. Publication date is March 13, 2018. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Horrible Lurkbeast posted:

I have a garbage bag full of rotting vegetable scraps, much like Tedd Rall it stinks.
Very much unlike Rall it will nourish the earth as it decompose.

Selachian posted:

hooman posted:

Rall's so full of poo poo he could single handedly reverse soil degradation for the entire continental USA.

Jedit posted:

Let's not talk about that. A defecting North Korean soldier came across the DMZ the other day and got shot six times. He lived, but when they got him to the hospital they found he was riddled with parasites from their practice of fertilising with human faeces.

Hihohe posted:

This is a lovely (heh) derail, but why would what you fertilize with cause parasites? Its not like you eat the poo poo. Then again it is North Korea and people are desperate.

Hihohe posted:

This is a lovely (heh) derail, but why would what you fertilize with cause parasites? Its not like you eat the poo poo. Then again it is North Korea and people are desperate.

Kopijeger posted:

"Grosserer" is more accurately translated to "wholesaler" or "distributor".

Selachian posted:

Fathis Munk posted:

SO TOLD YOU

Shangri-Law School posted:

It's odd that he doesn't defend Russia in any of his Sputnik News cartoons. I guess they don't want to be too obvious?

Selachian posted:

posted:

Predictably, many leftist personalities have dismissed Al Franken’s sexual assault as a bad joke–and nothing compared with Trump’s transgressions. Only they have no proof of Trump’s wrongdoings. Photographic evidence proves Franken’s creepy escapade.

To be sure, humans have always had problems with things going too far when it comes to sexual attraction. Men in particular are aggressive and it leads to boundaries being pushed. A lot of the actions can be considered ’sin’ and not necessarily a crime, but sexual assault is criminal.

In Franken’s case, his target was an attractive model, Leeann Tweeden, who once posed for “Playboy.” He wrote her into a comedy skit in which he made sure he got to kiss her. He insisted on a rehearsal. She said ‘no’ repeatedly, but Franken was adamant. He took advantage of her during the practice kiss and forced his tongue into her mouth against her will. Sexual harassment is not considered a crime, but sexual assault involves forceful physical contact.

Franken is guilty.

There’s a bigger picture here. We are now subjected to an almost daily exposé parade of people who engaged in sexual harassment and assault. Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, and Bill Clinton got away with their assaults for years.

It could be that this constant unmasking is a distraction from a bigger issue: Pedophile rings at the very top. “Eyes Wide Shut” kind of stuff. There are many monsters who run the world. One of them–the billionaire, Jeffery Epstein–was briefly jailed for recruiting underaged girls and Bill Clinton frequently visited Epstein’s ‘Orgy Island.’ There are probably many more big names—including royalty—that are guilty of the same criminal behavior. Wikileaks revealed that the Podesta brothers were using coded language in communications. Words known to the FBI as code for pedophilia.

We’re now in a post-sexual revolution era. Who knows—maybe we’ll return to a Victorian-like time when men tipped their hats to a woman instead of making crude sexual advances.Maybe it’s better if we don’t know everyone’s sordid sexual behavior. Straight, gay or trans-whatever, maybe it all needs to go back into the bedroom. But first, the pedophile ring at the top must be exposed.

—Ben Garrison

Trogdos! posted:

just lol at my bolding

Trogdos! posted:

Zanzibar Ham posted:

I don't have the toon handy, but after Donald's grope comments came out Garrison made a toon with him groping a woman as if it's something to be lauded. Also Jeb! was there speaking Spanish?

Trogdos! posted:

Saint Sputnik posted:

Trogdos! posted:

just lol at my bolding

Cloud Potato posted:

Times:

Pants Donkey posted:

I have not seen a single leftist brushing off the Franken stuff. And that makes sense seeing as I don’t think Ben actually talks to any.

Also groping is terrible, but the poo poo Trump has been accused of includes peeping on underage girls so uh go gently caress yourself Garrison.

Johnny Walker posted:

But there's no photographic proof! All you have are witnesses--multiple ones telling similar stories, establishing a pattern of behavior. What does that prove?

Cloud Potato posted:

Mail:
Mac on... Leonardo Da Vinci's Salvador Mundi selling for $450million

Cloud Potato posted:

Stephen Collins:

Jerusalem posted:

Goddammit I got a good, hearty laugh out of a Mac, now I feel guilty.

Chip Bok posted:

Jailbait allegations persist against Republican U.S. Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore of Alabama. They say he chased teenyboppers in his thirties. He’s now 70.

A then high school senior claims she was pulled out of trigonometry class to take a phone call from him asking for a date. Another woman says she got him banned from a mall for for making “unwanted” advances. And another accuser says he tried to rape her when she was 16. He denied even knowing her. So she held up a high school year book he signed for her.

Moore told Sean Hannity he “generally” did not date teens as an adult. The mall manager says he never banned Moore from the mall. And the judge’s lawyer implied the yearbook signature is a forgery.

By the way, Saudi women get to drive next year.

Chip Bok posted:

Bill Clinton survived impeachment thanks to feminists. For them, his defense of abortion rights trumped sexual assault.

You sure you don’t want to file a report, ma’am?
But now the Clinton’s are out of power and the views are a-changing.

Michelle Goldberg led the Clinton revision charge with a NYT piece announcing she believes Juanita Broaddrick’s claim that Bill raped her.

Mathew Yglesias writes in Vox that he was only in high school when Monica took a knee. But now he’s re-evaluating the Clinton years and thinks Bubba should have resigned.

Even Hillary’s senate successor, Kirsten Gillibrand, is on board the new Democratic bandwagon.

She now agrees The Big Dog should have been put down.

Apple Pie Hubbub posted:

7

SirSamVimes posted:

Obviously Al Franklin is worse because apologising and requesting an ethics investigation on himself is admission of guilt and Roy Moore did nothing wrong.