…but they sound so neat, and even though I’ll never ever meet ’em, I wish ’em the best!

(Via Sheila)

To:    Classmates.com
From: Mitch Berg
Re:    The Tenth Anniversary of your ad.

To whom it may concern,

You (pl) have been running the “She Married Him?” banner ad featuring this misbegotten couple…

…roughly since 1994. 

Yes.  They got married.  They had seven kids.  they were a happy couple, oddly enough, given the the odd nature of their “Bowser Meets Mr. Dreamy” relationship.

Then came your stupid ad in all of its permutations, and things were doomed from then on.  The stress of being “that geeky pasty-faced redhead” and “the jockboy who married the weird chick” probably got to them.  Their kids will be in therapy forever.

Are you satisfied, you bastards?

That is all. (more…)

In the previous post, I decried the intellectual provincialism of the (usually) female voters who claim their vote will be based on gender first and foremost.

I have never, ever, met a guy who claimed he’d vote “men first”.  I suppose such a guy exists out there; an angry fathers’ rights advocate, a militant gay, someone – but if I met such a guy, it’d be a first.

In the meantime, I’ve known quite a few women (and a few men) who claimed – as I noted in my previous post – that a pair of Y chromosomes was basically all they needed to earn their vote (although presumably they’d make exceptions for Michele Bachmann and Mary Kiffmeyer).

And I knew, in the pit of my gut, that I’d find more on the subject by reading the Twin Cities’ media’s most reliable Tic flak, Lori Sturdevant.

And it goes without saying that the key to the story will be a “Republican who is disaffected by the current state of the party”:

The story was that one longtime Republican backer of womenwinning (which at the time was called the Minnesota Women’s Campaign Fund) phoned another to announce that she was organizing a Republicans for Choice rally at next September’s GOP national convention in St. Paul. It was the sort of thing the two of them used to love to do 25 or 30 years ago — back when there was something called the GOP Feminist Caucus and when Minnesota’s Republican leadership had not yet alienated or exiled almost all of its backers of legal abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment.

“Can I count on your support?” Sally Pillsbury asked Marilyn Bryant.

“I’m sorry,” replied Bryant, “but I’m supporting Hillary.”

So is womenwinning. The still officially multipartisan state organization sends money only to candidates who are female, prochoice and viable, and this year found itself able to endorse a candidate for president for the first time.

Bryant, a womenwinning founder, explained her choice last week: “I’ve seen women move into the professions — business, law, medicine — with great success. But in politics, it’s been a terribly slow process. I’d love to have the opportunity to vote for a woman for president, especially a woman who’s as articulate, smart and qualified as Hillary Clinton is.”

That longing among female voters — some of them former Republicans like Bryant — is getting much credit for Clinton’s resurgent victory Tuesday.

To keep women’s votes coming the way they did in New Hampshire, Clinton has to make sure they see her the way Bryant does: articulate, smart, qualified, and a woman to boot — and not the way her opponents cast her in Iowa: too calculating, cautious, controlling and connected to a certain previous administration.

Clinton emerged from New Hampshire as both the establishment and the feminist candidate. That’s a complex and somewhat contradictory dual identity that no previous major presidential contender has borne. She’s traversing uncharted territory.

A lot of politically ambitious women are watching her for a lesson in how to do it…Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, state Senate Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark and Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner — would have to decide how early and how often to play the gender card if they run for statewide office in 2010 or beyond.

In the wake of Clinton’s New Hampshire experience, all three played it boldly Wednesday.

It’s a phenomenon I’ve long found perplexing; otherwise-smart women who, when the subject is politics, will always vote for the woman first.  Or, should I say, “always” vote for the female candidate, since they are frequently women who grunt and roll their eyes when the likes of Margaret Thatcher or Condi Rice are mentioned; what they mean, naturally, is liberal women.

Oprah endorsed Obie.  And it’s ruffling some of that same wad of feathers:

Yet a backlash by Clinton supporters appears to have prompted a rethink by Winfrey, the African-American media titan who is routinely described as the most influential woman on television…a reader called austaz68 said she “cannot believe that women all over this country are not up in arms over Oprah’s backing of Obama. For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She’s choosing her race over her gender.”

I’ve met people – most of them women – who literally say, in as many words, they vote for women first, regardless of their policies.  Of course, most of these people are in Saint Paul, where the only real choice in politicians is “liberal” or “more liberal”.

Back when I was a kid, Erica Jong was the it writer.  Her books were the ones that my friends’ moms kept carefully tucked under all the other books on their nightstands, out of view.  We – the 12 and 13 year old versions of the neighborhood kids – snuck furtive glances at the oh-so-risque covers, got uneasy about the chances of getting caught, carefully put the books back where they belonged, and snuck carefully away.

Jong is still alive, but – if this post from Monday’s Huffpo is any indication – should have stuck with writing romance novels for women who’d just discovered the pill.

Social commentary would seem to be way beyond her.

I am so tired of pink men bombing brown children and rationalizing it as fighting terrorism.

And I, Erica, am so tired of purple(faced) women – women whose faces have turned bright purple from constant unrestrained ire – reducing complex questions to facile “racisms”.  D’ya suppose the Huffpo will take note?

I am so tired of pink men telling women (of all colors) what to do with their wombs–which connect with their brains–in case you forgot.

Nope, Erica – unlike you, I am a genuine feminist.  And, as it happens, a Christian humanist; I believe that when that egg gets conceived, the mom and dad have kicked off something that transcends either one of their own lives.  To reduce it to a matter of female anatomical politics is…well, yet another thing I’m tired of purple(faced) women doing.  And doing.  And doing.  

  I am so tired of pink men having wives who stand behind them and nod sagely on television.

I am so tired of “pro-choice” purple(faced) women who have nothing but contempt for choices not their own.

I am so tired of pink men expecting that someone–a brown, black, yellow or white woman–will trail behind them changing light bulbs, taking out garbage, washing laundry, keeping food in the house, taking care of kids of all ages, of parents of all ages.

And I’m sick to death of purple(faced) upper-middle-class over-famed dingbats and their sneering paternalistic preconceptions, bigotries and prejudices.

I am so tired of pink men whose wives double or triple the family income thinking they can spend it without doing a damn thing at home.

I’m a little peeved about purple(faced) women who ignore Warren Farrell’s research – that shows that between working more on the job and sharing more responsibility at home, men actually work more per week than women do.  I’d like those purple(faced) women to keep their purplefaced opinions out in Scarsdale and Beverly Hills, where they belong.

 I am so tired of pink men spouting nonsense on TV. I am so tired of pink men arguing, blathering, bloviating, predicting the future–usually wrongly–and telling women to shut up.

And I’m dog-tired of purple(faced) women who think that the marketplace of ideas is a zero-sum game, where a “pink” man speaking necessarily shuts up a woman. 

 I am so sick of hearing that another pink man has dropped his children out a window, off a bridge or killed his pregnant wife or killed his unpregnant wife because he was infatuated with another pregnant woman.

I’m sick of it too!  And just as sick when pink women, or women of any other color.  I’m just as sick of purple(faced) women yammer ignorantly about “pink” mens’ infatuations, and ignore the fact that women (especially “pink”) ones, are the ones that initiate the vast majority of divorces, with all their attendant social cost to our kids – pink, red, brown, black and none-of-the-above. 

I am so sick of pink men appointing their mediocre cronies to judgeships, to political advisors, to cushy jobs, to columns in the paper, to multimillion-dollar posts as CEOS or actors…

…and I’m sick of purple(faced) women barbering and phumphering about “pink male” mediocrity on the one hand, and voting for the likes of Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton on the other. 

I am so tired of pink men.

And for this pale pink fella, it’s very mutual.

Especially when referring to purple(faced) women who, were they not arrogant, overrated skags whose fifteen minutes expired thirty years ago, would have remarks like the below condemned as the bigoted, ill-informed, patronizing tripe it is:

So let’s just remember our mothers–who bore us, protected us against our fathers and grandfathers 

Ms. Jong:  if your many face-lifts will allow sound to past through your ears, listen up: Rot.

In.

Hell.

“Protected us from our fathers?”

There is no form of scum lower than you, you dessicated old plastic-surgery-lab-project slag. 

I am not stupid.

No.  You’re something much, much worse. 

 I know all generalizations are false. I know there are bad mothers, bad women, bad sisters, bad aunts, and bad females of every stripe. But I have seen enough men in high office to last a lifetime. Let’s give women a chance!

Ms. Jong; if you’re an example of what women in power are like – and I’d like to think you are not – you’ve set your cause back a few decades.

Whether it’s this story – about a Polish couple that is divorce after meeting in a “client-to-provider” capacity in a brothel:

A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees.

Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

 …or that Ed was able to seamlessly correlate it with Rupert Holmes’ “Pina Colada Song” (AKA “the day Satan conquered the Seventies”).

I’ll get back to y’all on that.

…is an unstable child star who’s going all Dana Plato on us.

What’s the perfect birthday gift?

We can reveal that Kevin Federline feared his ex would use the Beretta pistol he bought her as a birthday gift to MURDER their two young sons.

I’m not sure I’d want to be the lawyer for either of those crazy kids.

(The “funny” part to note, of course, is that either Britney or KFed would have a better shot of getting  a carry permit in New York City than would, say, a rape victim or a person living in a crappy neighborhood.  Good thing they don’t live in New York, hey?)

Upside:  Conservative who brings economic and law-and-order common sense to a nation that’s desperately needed it since DeGaulle passed from the scene.

Downside:  I predict the the rebound marriage will last about as long as France’s defensive campaign in 1940.

Hope I’m wrong, naturally.

Bonne chance, Nick.

…congratulations to Ben from Hammerschawing and Mall Diva from Nightwriter on their recent engagement announcement of courtship.

They’re a cute couple…

…if you tape a piece of paper over Ben’s side of the picture, anyway.  Lucky is the guy who can “marry up”.

On the other hand, be careful, kids. Strom is lurking.

UPDATE:  Not engaged yet; courting, as the father of the bride notes in the comments.  I plead fatigue on first reading.  I’m not so familiar with this particular institution. 

My stepson – my ex-wife’s son from her first marriage – is getting married in New York next April.

He and his fiance were in town on Friday for a bridal shower. Bun and I drove out to Saint Louis Park to attend (Zam, being a typical 14 year old, was more interested in going to the party at the Rec Center than hanging around a condo with a bunch of grownups, even if it included his brother and future sister-in-law. Although he did call as the party was breaking up – Rec had let out early, and could I please drive back to Saint Paul through the freezing rain and come and get him and bring him out to the party? He’s so cute…)

Pardon a little reminiscence, here.

I was Will’s stepfather from age nine to about 17 or so. He graduated from high school roughly about the time of the divorce. I haven’t seen him much since then – not so much through alienation as the scrum of life for a couple of adults in fairly different worlds.

Will’s always been a fairly amazing guy. Blazingly sharp as a kid, he was also a very typical teenager; an awful lot like Zam, in fact, they look very similar when they sleep and act kinda alike when they’re awake (and are equally hard to wake up, come to think of it).

After high school, he took a part-time job with a store in a local “move it yourself” chain. The store – on University Avenue, in Frogtown – was a tumbledown wreck, a dysfunctional mess. Will started as a part-time employee, and in six months was not only managing the place, but had turned it into the region’s star performer. I talked with another store manager in the chain after Will had been there a year and a half or so; “You’re Will‘s stepdad?”, the guy exclaimed. “He’s a rock star in the region!”

He met his fiance, Eve, back in high school. The idealist in me sees the kind of story you want to see in this day and age; they met, they got together, they dated for years; even after she moved back to New York, they had a commuter relationship for several years (and it worked!), he finally moved to New York a few years ago (aided by the company, where he was considered such a key performer that they gave him a regional management job in their Metro NYC office when he said he wanted to move), they got engaged.

The cynic in me thinks…

…oh, who cares what the cynic thinks. I’m going to shut him up for a while.

Anyway. I’m proud of him. And happy for him.

Will has one thing I really envy; having lived in one place into his early twenties, he has one, big, close-knit group of friends, the same people who’ve been in his life since way back when I knew him. It was fun seeing them all again, all grown-up and…adult, in a way that I’d never expected ten-odd years ago. I talked with some of them for the first time in close to ten years; scatterbrained teenagers had turned into…

…well, all manner of adults. Noah – Will’s main pal back then, with whom Will got into all sorts of scrapes and trouble and plenty of fun as well, is a construction project manager (he does a ton of work for a former employer; we know some of the same people), married, with a one-year-old.

It kinda gave me some hope, I thought, after I got home and dealt with another day of Zam-related turmoil.

…
And the cold whack upside the head of realizing that Will is almost exactly the same age, now, as I was when I met his mother. Was I really that…young, then?

Don’t start singing “The Circle of Life” on me, capisce?

Anyway – congrats, Will and Eve. Can’t wait for the wedding.

Katie (?) from Yucky Salad notes:

Pamela Anderson has filed for divorce from Rick Solomon, whom she married 2 months ago fresh from her divorce from Kid Rock after a 5 month union.

The woman is actually making a mockery of divorce.

She may be the best thing to have ever happened to marriage. 

Sort of.

(Extra kudos to Katie for coining the epithet “dern goblet”.  I’m gonna use it).

I’m going to guess that this little flap resolves itself – one way or another…:

Former Brady Bunch star Christopher Knight threatened to leave his model wife Adrianne Curry when she posed for sexy lesbian photos – as a birthday gift.

…just in time for May sweeps.

I’ll take “trial separation, resulting in ecstatic but reserved reunion during November sweeps” for $20.

 (Via KAR)

Bun and Zam, my kids, are both teenagers now.  They bring all the things kids usually bring to one’s life; sullen, crabby disobedience, stubborn crankiness, a level of consequence that I as an adult know all too well and that they as overgrown babies do not.

But some things from their younger, more innocent years remain.  For instance – blood-curdling, hair-yanking sibling rivalry.

So I read this bit from Sheila O’Malley about a passing observation while walking amidst the trick-or-treaters in rural New York City, and smiled at the familiar…emotion.

Emphasis added:

I became aware that 2 small boys, probably aged 6 or 7, were literally rolling around on the pavement in a scuffle. Rolling. They weren’t throwing punches, or being too rough, they were just wrestling fiercely. One was dressed as Elvis in Elvis’ bloated Vegas later years, and one was a skeleton. Standing over the two fighting boys were two mothers, and as I approached I heard one of them say – in a voice that could only be described as FLAT – she wasn’t pleading, or cajoling, or scolding. She had been in this situation 5,000 times and was merely speaking the truth. She is an ADULT being faced with the absurd intensity of children – and she accepted it – but she did not succumb to it. I heard her say, “Nobody’s costume is better than the other’s…” which already made me start laughing. Elvis and the skeleton were rolling around due to competitive feelings about costumes. But it was her TONE that really struck me. I just fell in love with her. She was barely paying attention, actually – she was chatting with the other mother, and broke focus long enough to say, “Nobody’s costume is better than the other’s …”

On the one hand, I’m picturing Fran Drescher pulling on a piece of chewing gum as she grinds the language through a North Jersey accent.

On the other – I’m at the point where “flat” is all I can personally muster for yet another kid squabble.

Yeah.  We…

…are everywhere.

While I think my parents thought I might grow up to be an academic, I turned off that track bright and early. One of the things that sparked that swerve was the notion that you could – and many would-be professors do – slave away for years and years, and are still not really considered professors until they get “tenure”. Until they got tenure, life was an endless parade of crummy jobs, moving constantly, being treated like (by academic standards) crap.

I preferred the much more stable world of radio.

The point, of course, was that life on the academic track was nasty, brutish, and tenuous – until one achieved that magical state of tenure.

Which was, if nothing else (in theory) a fairly objective state. Either one had it, or one did not, and one usually knew what was required to get it. It was pretty black or white.

Some of life’s issues break out like that – with a black or white answer. Others, not so much.

And with still others, it really depends on how you come to the issue.

———-

Abortion’s never been my biggest topic. The way I figure, if we lose the war on terror, the Planned Parenthood staff and the Pro-Life Minnesota staff are both pretty well screwed. If this nation isn’t secure, none of us will be protesting at abortion clinics; if the nation is prosperous (ergo Republican), people will be either financially secure enough to want the babies, or working too hard to have sex enough to make it an issue.

Make no mistake about it, I’m pro-life. I think abortion is wrong. A pro-“choice” dogmatist will try to read some big pathology about “wanting to control women” into that. It’s garbage, of course; with two teenagers, I realize that my odds of “controlling” anyone are slim to nil.

No, it’s because I value human life and because being pro-“choice” involves a leap of faith that I can’t justify.

That’s right. The “anti-religious” stance on abortion requires the leap.

Bear with me here.

Last week, I was reading Jeff Fecke,writing over at “Shakespeare’s Sister”, your one-stop shop for shrill, skin-deep “feminism”. Now, I’ll admit – I’ve given Fecke a hard time this last year or so; partly due to things like this, sometimes for things like this, and largely for his nonpareil skills as a single-A-league Atrios impersonator.  Sometimes I read, sometimes I ignore.

But since he refers to me (later on), I figured it was worth a read.

My memory was tripped by this Monday quote from Mark Steyn. Ordinarily you’d expect he’d be saying something about how the Muslims have taken Oberammergau,

Given the influence of John Stewart on the left’s sense of humor, in a generation no liberal will be able to dismiss an opposing idea without some sort of labored exaggeration. I may hold a telethon.

But I digress:

but on Monday, he decided to take a break, and instead defend the stalking of a 12-year-old boy and his family:

Michelle Malkin reports that the blogospheric lefties are all steamed about the wingnuts’ Swiftboating of sick kids, etc.

Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game. [Emphasis mine]

“Fair game.” Now where had I heard that before?

I’m tempted to answer “the same place the writer learned – or didn’t learn – about context”.

But never mind; we’re about to find out!

Back in May, my friend and then-editor at Minnesota Monitor, Robin Marty, announced she was expecting a child. It was great news for Robin and her husband Steve, and obviously those of us who know them were happy for them.Now, Robin was and is a longtime supporter of abortion rights. Something about women having the right to determine what happens in their own bodies.

Well, let’s cut the euphemism; abortion rights is the ability for women to (depending on your point of view) destroy an inconvenient (or, rarely, dangerous) tissue mass, or destroy a human that can’t quite exist outside the womb yet.

Everyone can “control what happens to their own bodies”; it’s called “wearing a rubber”, “taking precautions”, “being aware that sex has consequences”, or – heaven/goddess/physiology forfend – keeping your clothes on.

The usual response is “sex shouldn’t be tied to having kids”. And it’s there that pro-life and pro-“choice” people split.

We’ll get back to that very shortly.

Anyhow, like many pro-choice women, Robin was still able to enjoy her pregnancy, knowing that even though it was early in her term, the fetus that she carried was going, eventually, to grow into her child.This is, of course, something those of us who are pro-choice get.

I remember that moment back when my daughter was in about her 25th week, when I was almost certain she was going to be a Crock Pot. The funny part was, I felt the same thing about my son!

I’m not quite sure what Fecke means by this; as a pro-life father of two, I most definitely knew my kids were – God or physiology or blind capricious fate willing – going to grow into the vexing, voracious teenagers they are today. Does he really think that there’s something about being OK with abortion that grants some special perspective on rearing children?

I’m willing to chalk it all up to sloppy writing – Fecke is nothing if not reliably imprecise. If, on the other hand, that is what he (or any other pro-“choice” person) believes – well, I’d love to hear more.

Let’s chalk it up to “sloppy writing” and ignore the digression and move on:

I knew that at one month, two months, even four months, my daughter really didn’t exist yet.

Let’s stop right here – since it does, in fact, illuminate the entire difference between the sides in this “debate”.  The overarching question is “when does life begin”; the empirical answer is “we don’t know yet”.  To the pro-life person, the response is “err on the side of life, since life is absolutely sacred”.  To the pro-choice person, it is…

…whatever it takes to support the fundamentally political thesis that undergirds the pro-“choice” movement.  In other words, a leap of faith.

Let’s start at the beginning.

A fertilized egg – without the aid of any medical intervention, either either caring for it or “terminating” it – will spontaneously abort itself, or “miscarry”, about 1/4 of the time.

And in places with no medical care whatsoever – including Minnesota, not much over 100 years ago, during our great-great-grandparents’ lifetimes – a child was 1/3 likely to die in childbirth, or within the first year thereafter.

Thus – without any aid (or assault) from medicine – a conceived egg left to its’ own devices has a 50-50 chance of becoming a living, breathing, independent human being, through a process that exists for no other reason than to create human beings, using physiology that – pleasurable and species-reinforcing side-effects aside – exists purely to create more human beings. Human beings that need some help getting started – a place to quickly evolve, we hope, from zygote to fetus to baby.

To the pro-“life” person, the implication is that one of sex’s consequences is that, if the right sperm meets the right egg, the couple – fella and dame – are entering into something that transcends either of their own lives, much less their own bodies; the creating of another human being, who will – physiology or God or remorseless chance willing – will one day be just like us, only maybe a little better. Because sex has such far-reaching, legitimately life-altering consequences, we alter our behavior accordingly – we abstain (even to the point of abjuring sex outside of marriage), or we are extra-cautious, believing as we do that a “fetus” is something that might not be “viable”, per se, but that is intended to be viable (knowing also that no “fetus” is “viable” until it can hold a job and pay its rent), and which is imbued with a moral significance by the very fact that it is intended to be human one day. Something we have no more right to extinguish for being inconvenient than a hospital has to euthanize intensive care patients (who, indeed, are often no more capable of living outside the ICU than a 18 week old fetus is of living outside the womb.
To a pro-“choice” person, the zygote is a mass of tissue until – at some hard-to-determine point that nonetheless seems to usually swerve to the side of convenience, including up to the moments before birth in all-too-many cases – it isn’t.

In summation: cohesive view about the role of reproduction in life and the ethical and place of the “fetus” in that process, versus belief in a mystical change in state from “tissue mass” to “human” that takes place…when? When the head comes out? When the “fetus” gets past the earliest point medical science has been able to sheperd a preemie to life? When government, in the infinite wisdom of a body of people who eschew studying either science of philosophy for the here-and-now noodling of the law, says it turns into a human?

Given that, wouldn’t it be much more fair to say that “given my attachment to the notion of this mystical unknown threshold, I believed she didn’t really exist yet”. Because you have no objective, empirical measurement – nothing analogous to, say, “it exists”. Such a belief is, objectively, no more grounded in fact than belief in a flat earth or Ron Paul.

And – since this post moves on to talk about thresholds for taking offense at satire – Fecke should be aware that the notion that a fetus “doesn’t exist” is no less objectionable than saying a profoundly handicapped child or a comatose person “doesn’t exist”.

Had my ex-wife suffered a miscarriage, we would have been sad, of course, but I know in my bones that we would not grieve the way we would…well, let me put it this way. I can type “if my ex-wife suffered a miscarriage.” I can’t even bring myself to type out the hypothetical that would apply to my daughter now. The mere thought makes me sick to my stomach. If anything happened to my daughter, a part of me would die, forever. I would never be the same, and I would never want to be. Had my ex suffered a miscarriage? It would have been sad, and we would have grieved for the idea of the child we’d expected.

Which is true, as far as it goes; every day of my then-wife’s pregnancy, I hoped and prayed for her health, and theirs – just as I hope God or blind cruel fate keeps the drunk drivers and diseases and random tragedies at bay for them. I hoped for this before they were born, and as they’ve grown and turned into people with personalities with whom I have three combined decades of history, it’s only grown.

But – this is rather important – that’s a matter of human nature, a sign that you are a fairly normal parent.  One has developed attachments and history with a seven year old; with a “fetus”, there are only hopes.
It’s not an objective metric about the beginning of life.

This is a roundabout way of saying that one can believe a fetus is not yet a person, and still be excited about pregnancy.

Abortion is, obviously, one of the most contentious issues there is. Like many such issues, there is a hard core of 10% on the right that wants it banned and criminalized, and 10% on the far left that wants to make it a civil sacrament. In between, there are an awful lot of shades of belief, including many – myself included – who are fundamentally libertarian, but believe personally that life begins at conception and that a “fetus” – given the fate that God or physiology or remorseless fate has in mind for at least half of them if you leave them alone – is attended with a little more moral gravity than a toenail or a plantar’s wart, and that just because God or evolution or what-have-you has set things up so that that incipient life form needs a female uterus for a few months isn’t a sign of its lack of ethical and moral weight, but a sign of how much weight the whole idea of physiology, sex, pregnancy, reproduction and men and women themselves have in the great scheme of things.

Is it a belief? Yes. Not much different than “a fetus is a blob of tissue until we really want it not to be.

Which ties us, at long last, into the real subject of this post – something that was even more contentious than the abortion issue itself, at least among regional bloggers, few months back:

And Robin was. So like any good blogger, she posted an image of the first ultrasound.

At this point, enter Tom Swift, crazy Minnesota blogger and erstwhile GOP candidate for school board in St. Paul. (I won’t link to him, and if he finds his way back here, Melissa, terminate him with extreme prejudice.) [As good a symbol of gutlessness as I’ve seen, really – Ed] He blogs under the name Swiftee, and he created an image to welcome Robin and Steve’s child into the world:

You get it? Because Robin was pro-choice, she might decide to abort the child she wrote about, so let’s get it some protection.

Not to speak for Tom Swift – a person who truly needs nobody to speak for him – but that is the most overdramatic possible reading of his point.

What was his point? Maybe that any “fetus” – not Robin’s, in particular, or not just hers – might have reason to be nervous, since the same consciousness that decides he or she is important enough to carry to birth can change his or her mind. Or maybe – given the number of people who don’t credit a fetus with “existence” until the umbilical is cut – that given the existence of partial birth abortion the “fetus” is never really safe. Maybe that a mythical, cognitive “fetus”, lacking an objective, hard-wired standard like “Tenure” that’d cause his/her parents (in general, not Rew and Smartie) to consider him/her a real person, isn’t any safer than that non-tenured professor – except the fetus isn’t going to wind up teaching freshman literature at Normandale if he/she doesn’t make the convenience cut.

Caustic, tactless and very, very pointed? Sure. Not that that’s ever really stopped anyone from ripping on commentators before.
But we’ll come back to that.

That’s not the interesting part of the story, though. Swiftee’s image got those of us on the left seething, but we let it go, primarily because we don’t want to give him the traffic. But that seething got back to local blogger Mitch Berg, who styles himself as a “reasonable conservative,” someone who believes in hitting his opponents hard, but fairly. And Mitch’s response to Swiftee was what I remembered:

Is Robin and Smarty’s baby “fair game” for satirists, given that

1. she put the ultrasound out on her public website, and
2. she and her colleagues from the “Minnesota Monitor” rentablog she “edits” have stumped for abortion on demand and partial birth abortion, and fumed and phumphered when the SCOTUS shot the procedure down?

Well, I’d say “I hope not” – but of course, in the world of internet “cartoonists”[…]pretty much everything is fair game. If there’s an unflattering or embarassing pic of yourself out there somewhere online, it’s going to pop up sooner or later, intended to dink at some belief of yours or another.

So – did Swiftee “cross a line” with his cartoon? What line? Where? In the coarse thrum of the political blogging interchange, I’m not sure there’s a line left anymore; any line one person draws is someone else’s sport to cross, and ones’ best bet is to strictly separate the personal and the public (as, indeed, I do). The one that civil people try to observe when dealing with one another…

Very Pilate-like, Mitch was. But it was that line — “fair game” — that caught my memory. Mitch styles himself as reasonable, but if you cross out the official hemming and hawing, [I’m official? Who knew? Did anyone catch my title? – Ed] Mitch’s meaning is clear: heck yes, the child of Robin and Steve is fair game. If you can make a political point by attacking the Martys, then by all means, go for it.

Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

Here’s something else I wrote about the whole flap last spring – something that reveals a lot more about my side of this flap than the bit Fecke chose to quote:

A fetus baby with a helmet. It’s kinda funny, if you don’t know the people involved. Still funny when you do, but it makes me a little uneasy. I generally prefer to keep politics impersonal. And yet it’s hard to look at, say, this (not safe for work or queasy stomachs; it’s the end-result of a “partial birth abortion”, and it’s horrific) and not want to make it very personal and not-abstract-at-all for those who support it.

One thing that most of us who favor free speech accept as a given is that nobody has a right not to be offended. Many of us – myself included, and the orthodox Catholic Tom Swift even more so – are offended by the existence of abortion, especially the partial-birth variety, via which parents not a whole lot different than Rew or Smartie could decide that the baby, as Fecke noted at the beginning of this post, “didn’t exist yet”.

Did it bother me that Swift took a photo from someone I actually know, like and respect? Of course it did. I like the Martys. I wish ’em the best; I’d be pleased as punch to bring a basket of garf rags (cloth diapers), A’nD and Desenex to the baby shower. I also think that, as people who’ve assumed the role of public figures (when Rew took on the job of editing the local sorosblog “Minnesota Monitor”) they were nuts to put any part of themselves or family life out in public. I’ve been a “public figure” of one sort or another since I started in radio when I was 16; I’ve had anti-semitic death threats (I’m not Jewish), I’ve had stalkers (and still do, although they’re really not very smart ones) – and so I keep my kids, my job, my girlfriends (when I have one) and their kids religiously out of this blog and everything else I write. Partly because anything you do put out there is “fair game”; partly because the concept of “fair game” is unfair.

Tom Swift is also a friend, someone I know and respect – but to call him a “bull in a china shop” is to underestimate a bull’s tact, as least on the blog. He’s the kind of person every pro-“choice” activist wishes would just shut up and go away.

And while I wish that the world – and its agent, in this case, Tom Swift – had left Rew and Smartie’s ultrasound pictures alone, and that this flap wouldn’t have involved two sets of friends of mine (and that puppies didn’t die, for that matter), the fact is that Swiftee was right. It was perfectly-aimed satire – and for left-leaning public figures (as Fecke is) to barber that it’s “tasteless” opens us all up to an endless dissertation about “tasteless” satire that the left defends even more blythely on principle, and with even less consideration, with counterexamples and counter-counterexamples, ad infinitum.

It sucks that it involved people I know.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Fecke post without the jump from out-of-context to unsupportable:

What is happening to the Frosts is not unusual, and not unique. It happened to Melissa and Amanda when they had the temerity to be women with opinions who wanted to work in politics

Who had made a blogging career out of saying some things that were every bit as objectionable as Fecke finds Swiftee, and which a bunch of unpaid conservative bloggers had the “temerity” to point out to people. That’s what we do. To paint Melissa Macewan and Amanda Marcotte as hapless victims is both a crime against context and, oddly, intensely anti-feminist.

It happened to John Murtha, who had the unmitigated gall to be an anti-war ex-Marine. It’s happened over and over, and will happen over and over again.

Just ask Gennifer Flowers!

Mitch was right: there is no line anymore, at least for the right. Everyone is “fair game.”… If they can attack a woman using her own ultrasound records for the sin of being both pro-choice and an excited expectant mother, they will do it.

Leave aside Fecke’s sloppy use of the omnipresent “they”, as if right wing bloggers are part of some monolithic medusa controlled by some central brain, and the irritating victim-mongering. Let’s shoot for honesty, here (on the off-chance that any of Fecke’s audience read this) – nobody “attacked” Robin.

And if the “fetus” “doesn’t exist” as a person yet – that was Fecke’s line, remember – then where’s the attack?

I’ll ignore all criticism, by the way – I think I’ll adopt Jeff’s “I know you’re not really a person” as a defense…

(more…)

…to get new art moved in and placed…

…just…

…right.

TREBEK:  “Mr. Berg, you have the board…”

BERG: “I’ll take “Relationship Roulette” for $600, Alex”

TREBEK:  “This is ‘about as promising as dating Courtney Love…”

(Ding!)

TREBEK:  “Mister Berg?”

BERG: “What is marrying Amy Winehouse?”

TREBEK: “You are correct, and you control the board…”

It was a huge weekend for my NARN friends and colleagues.

The Brodkorbs welcomed twin daughters Abigail and Elizabeth on Saturday…

…on the same day that Brian and Rachel at long last tied the knot!

Congrats to all.  It was a great weekend.

In one of the funniest recent episodes of South Park, Stan’s little brother Ike’s kindergarten teacher seduces the toddler, gets caught, and, in a press conference before the trial, declares to be sorry, and that “…I am an alcoholic”. 

The crowd of reporters, cops and specators nod their heads, and eventually cheer the woman as she goes to rehab. 

It was funny (in South Park’s sick little way) – and pretty dead-on. 

As it were. 

But we’ll get back to that.

———-

Domestic abuse, of course, is no joke.  People get killed.  Although research shows that men and women are about equally likely to initiate domestic violence, women are more-usually injured or killed in these incidents.  Nobody is denying that. 

And it’s galling to have to make sure I’m understood on that point, since if I don’t some moron will pipe up “ah, so you condone domestic violence”.  Far from it.  But pointing out, for example, that women commit any violence, much less initiate their fair share of it, inflames some of this issue’s dogmatists.  And when  you start trying to address some of the problems in the system itself, some of them get downright apoplectic.

Those problems are pretty serious, though:

• In Minnesota, much of the funding to deal with domestic abuse is allocated according to the “Battered Womens’ Act”, a piece of legislation that, in effect, legally ignores abuse of men, and covers its eyes and plugs its ears and screams “nya nya nya I can’t hear you” when one tries (legally) to address the issue. 
• Some studies estimate that as many as half of domestic abuse allegations are brought immediately before and during divorce proceedings, and that as many as half of those are fake; charging domestic abuse is the “Nuclear Option” in custody battles; the allegation alone is frequently an insurmountable trump card.

Abuse is wrong.  And so is abuse of abuse.

———-

The issue became front-page news last fall…

…well, no.  “The issue” barely made a dent in last fall’s Strib pre-election hatchet job on Alan Fine. The Strib reported that Fine, who was running against DFLer Keith Ellison for the Fifth District congressional seat, had been arrested for domestic abuse in 1994.  The report ran at the top of Page A-1, naturally.  When Scott Johnson at Powerline brought up that there was never any physical evidence against Fine, and that he’d been released, never charged, and that eventually Fine’s ex-wife lost custody of their son to Fine – for domestic abuse! – the Strib carried Fine’s response.  On Page B7.

The Strib, acting as an organ of Keith Ellison’s campaign, used society’s partly-justified myopia about domestic abuse to put ill-informed votes in Keith Ellison’s column – votes that, in the long run, he scarcely needed, but wrong is wrong.

———-

All of that is a lot of background to a really sad, pathetic story; that of Mary Winkler, who was released from jail after serving a little over two months, after being convicted of shooting her husband in the back with a 12 gauge shotgun as he lay in bed.

Her defense?  Abuse, of course.

She then packed her three young daughters, ages 8, 6 and 1, in the family car and drove to Alabama, where she was taken into custody the following day.

During her trial in April, she claimed that she had been abused by her husband, with whom she had appeared to have an ideal marriage. She claimed not to remember getting the shotgun from a closet in their bedroom nor discharging it.

Winkler said that her husband, mortally wounded, rolled off the bed and asked her, “Why?” She said she told him she was sorry.

She was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder, but on April 19, after eight hours of deliberation, the jury found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter. On June 8, she was sentenced to 210 days in prison, with credit given for 143 days she had spent in jail the previous year before making bail. The judge allowed her to spend 60 of the remaining 67 days of her sentence in a mental health facility.

She was not, of course, a person with a long record of being abused.  Indeed, there was no record at all.  Not one domestic abuse call to their house.  Not one shred of physical evidence; not a single bruise, not a single scratch that Mrs. Winkler herself even saw fit to put on the record with a visit to a single doctor. 

Matthew Winkler was a minister at the Fourth Street Church of Christ, a denomination that believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible, including Saint Paul’s teaching that women should be submissive to their husbands.

Mary Winkler’s attorneys claimed that she was beaten by her husband. She said at her trial that he made her watch pornographic videos and wear “slutty” outfits for sex. She said he was controlling and criticized her constantly.

Leave aside the alleged beatings – of which there was apparently no evidence, physical or documentary, whatsoever – for a moment.  All Mrs. Winkler’s other allegations are grounds for, perhaps, examining one’s theology, having a long talk with hubby about one’s bedroom practices, and calling a family therapist or a divorce lawyer. 

Not 12-gauge justice.

Let’s re-iterate; at no time did Mrs. Winkler introduce any evidence that she was “abused” in any sense that’d be recognized, at all, by women and men who do get beaten, punched, stabbed, slapped, burned and kicked every day in this country. She would seem to have introduced no evidence that would have convicted her late husband of any form of domestic battery, were he alive to participate.

None.

No, she introduced a pair of high heels – PG-13-rated strappy “FM” shoes that wouldn’t draw a second glance at all-ages night at any Twin Cities nightclub as evidence of the late Reverend Winkler’s untrammeled perversion. 

The defense responded:

At the time of the killing, the couple had been having arguments about their finances. Prosecutors introduced evidence that Mary Winkler had gotten involved in an online Nigerian check-kiting fraud and had written checks for thousands of dollars. That, the prosecution argued, was the real source of the friction in the marriage.

We’ll probably never know, of course, the real truth of what happened in the Winkler marriage (other than “nothing that Mrs. Winkler managed to bring to any official attention, in a society that meets abused women much, much more than halfway, and that is indeed biased, perhaps justifiably so, toward excessive caution in matters of domestic violence”).   We’ll never know, it’s likely, whether Mr. Winkler did anything that, in a rational universe, would justify having his insides turned to Innard Hash with a 12-gauge blast through the back as he slept (and please bear in mind that I am an advocate for the rights of genuinely-abused people to resist violence with lethal force, and for giving them the means to do so via the Minnesota Personal Protection Act), or whether he was a “controlling” jerk with some “quirks” who was too horny and “kinky” for his wife’s tastes.  It merely seems that the only evidence introduced at trial pointed toward the latter.

Apparently those are now capital crimes in Tennessee.  If you’re a husband, anyway.

Abuse – the real thing, genuine violence – is absolutely wrong.  And this ruling cheapens and devalues the meaning of the term for all the people out there who are suffering from the real thing, day in and day out, no matter what the Winkler’s situation was.

I’ll pray for the daughters.  Especially if their mother ends up getting custody. 

Ed and I talked about Ellen Goodman’s intensely stupid wrapup from Yearly Kos (Motto:  “If you’re not irate to the point of incontinence, you’re probably a spy”) in which she lamented the supposed dearth of female bloggers, on the show last Saturday. 

Nevertheless, there is another, less flattering way in which broadband has followed broadcast and the liberal political bloggers mimic the conservative talk-show hosts. The chief messengers are overwhelmingly men — white men, even angry white men.

I began tracking the maleness of this media last spring while I was a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. An intrepid graduate student created a spreadsheet of the top 90 political blogs. A full 42 percent were edited and written by men only, while 7 percent were by women only. Another 45 percent were edited or authored by both men and women, though the “coed” mix was overwhelmingly male. And, not surprisingly, most male bloggers linked to male bloggers.
…
Next year, Yearly Kos will undergo a name change. The assembly of progressive bloggers will call themselves Netroots Nation. But when will the members of these netroots look more like the nation?

The answers, of course, are head-smackingly obvious to anyone who doesn’t depend on Media Matters for their talking points; when non-whites and non-males want to. 

Because setting up a blog is probably easier than subscribing to the typical newspaper.  In fact, I’ll let you prove it to yourself.  Anyone who’s interested – especially you ladies out there – go to one of these sites (like this one if you’re right-of-center, or this one no matter what you are) and go to town.

From that point on?  It’s entirely up to you!  The blogosphere doesn’t care (indeed, needn’t know, and frequently has no idea) if you’re white, black, female, hispanic, gay, or even human. Indeed, many of the best conservative bloggers are, counter to the left’s inherently paternalistic stereotypes, women:  Michelle Malkin, the Anchoress, Ann Althouse, Little Miss Attila, Mary Katherine Ham, Baldilocks, La Shawn Barber, and the list goes on and on.  Good female leftybloggers are much rarer – hysterical scolds are more the norm – but they do exist. 

But we’ll come back to that.

Jeff Kouba notes the blazingly obvious in a way that eludes Ellen Goodman (with my emphasis added):

Hard to imagine anything more wide open than the blogosphere. There’s no gatekeeper standing there with an iron rod ready to beat back any woman who aspires to enter.

Women have just as much opportunity as men to wade out into the Sea of Bytes and try and carve out an audience for themselves.

And Jeff notes…:

The blogsophere is both a seductive angel and a cruel mistress. It is fair and not fair. It rewards talent, or loses it in the shuffle…Maybe female bloggers (I refuse to use “women” as an adjective) do experience abuse in ways that men don’t. Just ask Michelle Malkin. But to allow oneself to be cowed and driven away by sickos, maladroits, cowards, misogynists and neanderthals is a choice one makes for oneself.

One can sure invite abuse when you write a blog – or, indeed, put yourself out there in any way at all.  I remember getting anti-semitic death threats twenty years ago at KSTP-AM (although I’m as Jewish as a bacon cheeseburger; this was two years after Alan Berg was murdered in Denver, so it wasn’t entirely an academic issue to me (“Gosh, Mitch, why do you support “shall issue” laws?”).  And while I’ve done OK since the blog started, I’ve drawn my share of drooling moral incontinents to my comment section (never moreso than when Democratic Underground, Jesus General or the Freep linked to me, although most of the real persistent jagoffs came from another pack of delusional hysterics. 

Threatening anyone for what they say, or believe, is a loathsome thing, and should be punished to the full extent of both the law and society’s ability to inflict shame.  It doesn’t matter who the sender or receiver are.  Period.  If it were in my power to find out and punish (or at least humiliate) someone who sent a threatening email to, say, the shrieking hysterics at Shakespeare’s Sister, I’d do it as quickly as I would for someone threatening Michelle Malkin.  There is no compromise there.

Speaking of shrieking hysterics, MNob – a woman who writes for pretty much every leftyblog in the Twin Cities sorosphere, and who is reputed to be a lawyer, although I know I’m not paying her for legal advice, ever – tried to take Kouba to what passes for “task”, in her little world, writing this time at “Yowling From The Fencepost“:

Shorter Jeff Kouba: “Why, no, I’ve never received anonymous email with images of my face photoshopped onto a mutilated and ejaculate-covered corpse with my home address posted below. Why do you ask?”

So to sum up the “logic” of MNob’s “keen” “legal” mind:

• Kouba: the blogosphere is a meritocracy.
• MNob: But some women get threatened!  Come see the violence inherent in the system!

Even a strawman can get blog space for free at blogspot, I guess.

I don’t go to any leftyblogger for cool, incisive logic, least of all any blog that’d publish MNob – but sometimes, one has an academic craving to try to follow these “ideas” to their conclusions.

The blogsphere is (putatively) a male preserve, BUT there is no barrier to entry to anyone so there’s no real reason for this, BUT some slimebags send abusive emails to some female bloggers.  So – what do we do?  Create a DFL-like quota system? 

Aren’t women “tough” enough to handle the scrum of political blogging?  Clearly not true – Michelle Malkin, the Anchoress, Ann Althouse, Little Miss Attila, Mary Katherine Ham, Baldilocks and La Shawn Barber all give much better than they get. 

Besides reveling in misplaced victimhood, what would MNob suggest?  An affirmative action program for under-blogged womyn?  A non-profit that teaches women and minorities how to blog (oh, wait, we already have that)?  A “Fairness Doctrine” and a set of “Speech Codes” to “level the playing field?”

Or is it just more fun to complain about the thin little fringe of a***ipes, politics irrelevant, whose anonymity gives them cover to say and do things they’d never dare in person? 

Sort of like a lot of anonymous bloggers, come to think of it?

Lesser “feminists” than I are bragging about their “performance” on yet another blog toy.

Since I am, in fact, the Twin Cities’ blogosphere’s best feminist, I figured I should take a shot at this:

You Are 107% Feminist

You are better than a “total feminist”. This doesn’t mean you’re a man hater (in fact, the odds are about 50-50 you are a man) – indeed, you realize that the antiquated notion of ginned-up intergender strife is an anachronism that both genders need to get past for eveyone’s good.    You believe that not only should men and women be treated equally, but that the identity-feminist notion of eternal female victimhood is a corrosive, crippling pathology that needs to be stricken from world feminism. It’s a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Last April, when I noted that I am the Twin Cities’ best feminist, there was a phalanx of phumphering from frothing, faux (compared to me) feminists – and one “scientific” attempt to debunk me.  “Tild”, from “Norwegianity”, noted that at that according to this website, personal pronouns on Shot In The Dark broke 71% male, 29% female. 

Just thought I’d point out that as of today, I’ve moved to 70/30.

The juggernaut advances.

…or what’s Heaven for?

Just saying:

Jessica Alba has split from boyfriend Cash Warren.

The Hollywood beauty reportedly called time on the couple’s two-and-a-half year romance during an emotional telephone conversation, in which she told the movie producer she “didn’t love him anymore”.

After delivering the heart-breaking news last weekend, Jessica, 26, allegedly sent an aide to the Los Angeles home the couple shared to help Cash, 28, pack up his belongings and make sure he moved out.

Apropos not much.

Back in college, during late-night sessions in the computer lab (during my brief, misapplied stint as a computer science major), a friend of mine, Rich (who actually did finish the degree and go on to a career in the field) joked:

“the speed at which we process data is increasing so fast that by 2005, there’ll be huge industry to generate data to process”.

I laughed.

I laughed too soon.  He was right. Only the shortage isn’t “data”, per se, but “content” – the stuff people read. 

Case in point – this piece from Men’s Health about what guys’ celeb crushes say about them.

Throughout their lives, men have all kinds of crushes. When they’re growing up, they may have crushes on their teachers. When they’re all grown up, crushes can come in the form of co-workers, neighbors, coffee pourers, spinning instructors, you name it.

“Spinning instructors?”

I digress:

One kind of crush that sticks with a guy: the celebrity crush…Though the characters may change from time to time, guys often choose their celebrity crushes based on some deeper longing for what they want in women.

That’s profound.  Why, the next thing you know, they’ll be saying that’s why we choose girlfriends and spouses as well. 

And you know what that leads to.  Don’t you?

Either does the author:

Early on, the overriding factor may have been the prevalence of skin (Bo, Farrah, Pamela, and SI swimsuit models being excellent examples). But as men grow up, it’s more than just physical attraction to the kind of woman he features in his cerebral movie theater – it’s the total package that includes not only her looks, but what her looks, lifestyle, and personality may also represent.

 So in other words, they provide a idealized, fantasy-world version of their feminine ideal?

Hmmm. I’ll need to absorb this for a moment. 

If he fantasizes about…Angelina Jolie
It may mean… He’s attracted to a do-gooder woman who also isn’t afraid to show a bit of a wild streak. It’s the reason why Jolie tops so many men’s wish lists: They want the woman who is good, but not too good. And the woman who is sultry, but not too sultry.

If he fantasizes about…Jennifer Aniston
It may mean… Attracted to Aniston’s innocent persona, he likes the girl next door and yearns to be the household protector. Though traditional gender roles have certainly changed and evolved over the last several decades, many men still enjoy playing the role of the prince who rescues the damsel in distress.
 
If he fantasizes about…The young, troubled beauties (Paris, Lindsay, Britney)
It may mean… He’s attracted to risk-takers-and women who don’t care what other women may think about them. That, and perhaps the boy has got more loose screws than a hardware store.  

If he fantasizes about…Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson
It may mean… That he has darn good taste. Physically, they represent classic feminine beauty-their curves, their skin, their heart-stopping faces. That may mean he has very high standards-and seeks relationship perfection.

If he fantasizes about…Julianne Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer
It may mean…He appreciates that experience, knowledge, and just the right amount of sass and humor goes a long way to making for strong relationships. Mrs. Robinson jokes aside, he appreciates maturity-and all the good things that come with it.
 
If he fantasizes about…Pam Anderson
It may mean… Do I really have to say it?
 
If he fantasizes about…Beyonce, J. Lo, Fergie, Janet
It may mean… That he’s not only into curves and lovely lady humps, but that he’s also into women who have some relationship rhythm. He wants a woman who’s able to let loose, show her moves, and someone who’s confident being on center stage-sexually and socially.

If he fantasizes about…Any character from Grey’s Anatomy
It may mean… That he’s a sensitive dude. Not because he’s got a thing for Meredith, Izzie, or the rest of the crew, but because-instead of being at a bar or a ball game-he’s obviously sitting next to you on Thursday nights.

Bottom line on all this: Fantasy crushes are kind of like practice for the big game, allowing someone to keep one’s emotions and instincts in check while imagining the big event with a partner.

Never mind.  It’s too shallow to absorb. 

OK.  So it’s just a toss-off intro by a toss-off writer.  Let’s get down to brass tacks.  What would a series of celebrity crushes including, say, purely hypothetically, Ingrid Bergman, Teresa Wright, Audrey Tatou, Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Ally Sheedy, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez, Gina Gershon, Mikki Steele, Chrissie Hynde, Madeline Stowe, Sara Silverman, Sonia Braga, Selma Hayak, Mariska Hargitay, Diane Neal, Dana Delaney, Reese Witherspoon, Neve Campbell, Silvia Bernier, Julia Ormond, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nancy Travis, Annabella Sciorra, Ida Lupino and Angie Harmon – just to pick a few names more or less at random – mean?

Hypothetically, of course.

On the one hand, it’s good to see that justice had prevailed in the Nifong/Duke case:

Time and time again, Mike Nifong strode into court and confidently proclaimed that three Duke lacrosse players raped a woman at a team party. He smirked when anyone suggested otherwise.

The Durham County district attorney thundered away in interviews, calling the players “hooligans,” framing the case as a racially motivated attack by privileged white students. He never even hinted that his case started out weak and soon became fatally flawed.

That self-assured Mike Nifong of 2006 couldn’t be more different than the disgraced man who left a courthouse through a side door on Saturday — quiet, humbled and disbarred.

This is a victory in many ways; for the judicial system, at a time when people are being released (not commuted, mind you) from death row at the rate of three every two years, in most case due to prosecutorial misconduct and witholding of evidence. 

It’s a victory, of course, for the lacrosse players who were found guilty by many of the lesser minds among the punditry due to nothing more compelling than “they were men”.

And maybe it’s a victory for people who refuse to smugly believe that rape is a crime immune to abuse.

Here are some things we hear a lot: Vindictive women use rape charges to get back at men. Women’s sexual histories can be informative in a rape case. Women who were “really raped” are easily identified by the way they behave.

None of them are true.

“None”.  Paradoxically, it’s a very big word.  We’ll come back to that.

Yes, there are some women (and men) who file false rape charges. They are, however, rare, usually quickly identified as false, and are almost always thrown out long before trial. In truth, many genuine victims of rape never see their cases reach trial due to lack of evidence; a genuine rape victim is exponentially less likely to see her attacker prosecuted than an erroneously charged man is to be prosecuted.

The piece goes on to claim that rape charges are about a third less falsely brought than auto theft.

Let’s accept a few things right up front (since if I don’t, some peabrain leftyblogger will write “Why Does Berg Hate Women?” or “Blogger Berg: Soft on Rape” or some such BS); society was disgracefully tardy in accepting rape in its many forms as a “real” crime.  For my part, I’ve done my bit of societal penance not only by advocating for women’s (and men’s) rights to self-defense, but by teaching one rape victim to shoot.  I am firmly behind empowerment.

But claims of false accusation vary widely:  one study claims that around 2% of rape charges are false, while on the other hand…:

A study of rape allegations in Indiana over a nine-year period revealed that over 40% were shown to be false — not merely unproven. According to the author, “These false allegations appear to serve three major functions for the complainants: providing an alibi, seeking revenge, and obtaining sympathy and attention. False rape allegations are not the consequence of a gender-linked aberration, as frequently claimed, but reflect impulsive and desperate efforts to cope with personal and social stress situations.” ( Kanin EJ. Arch Sex Behav. 1994 Feb;23(1):81-92 False rape allegations. )

In 1985, a study of 556 rape allegations found that 27% accusers recanted when faced with a polygraph (which can be ordered in the military), and independent evaluation showed a false accusation rate of 60%. (McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64.)

One interesting discussion on the internet is at the CrimProf Blog, where this topic was raised, and a number of former AFOSI (Air Force Office of Special Investigations) comment on this 30% number.

But let’s take the shriekbloggers at “Shakespeare’s Sister”‘s numbers at face value (always a dicey proposition when leftybloggers are concerned), and assume that “only” 1.6% of all rape accusations in the US are false.  Each of those false accusations has every bit as much potential to destroy a life, a family, a job and career, as an actual rape does.  Even though the three Duke lacrosse players have been completely exonerated, there’ll be an asterisk by each of their names in the minds of some people forever – and the only thing that makes their case more egregious than any other is that so many in the media and the Sorosphere piled on their case (because nothing satisfies like lynching a “rich white male child of privilege”). 

So what about the other cases – where a person’s reputation is destroyed (indeed, “raped”) on a more local level?  Saying, as so many now are re the Duke case “Oops, I screwed up!  My Bad!  Sorry, although I’d be sorrier if you weren’t “rich” and white!” doesn’t really cut it.

People making false accusations of any crime – but especially extra-heinous crimes, like rape, where the punishment for real charges is and should be exceptionally harsh – should be charged, and punished ferociously – not merely because they intend to falsely destroy someone’s reputation, but because when the law can be openly abused without retribution, confidence in the law suffers.  Jonna Spilbor writes:

It’s not just about punishing one person for a very serious misdeed – though that is surely important, given the devastating impact on the three defendant’s lives. It’s also about the way her lies will wrongly be used by some to question the veracity of genuine victims of rape. Protecting Crystal Mangum isn’t protecting a victim; it’s making every future victim more vulnerable, in the prosecutor’s office and in the courtroom, to being wrongly disbelieved.

Thus, Crystal Mangum not only wronged the three defendants, but also all the women in this world who ever have been truly victimized, or who, sadly but unavoidably, one day will be. These are the unseen victims of Duke.

The law already allows those who falsely report crimes to be punished. I can’t imagine a better case for invoking it than this one.

Mangun committed a crime, counting on society’s justifiable revulsion with rape to carry the day.  Prosecutor Nifong abetted the crime for his own careerist profit.

Prosecution may be the least they deserve.  It’s the least society should do.