Letters to the Editor
Renegade Iconoclast
Published Letters: 554 Editor's Choice: 10
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Does every drama have to be about cops, lawyers, or doctors?
[Read the article: The Beautiful Hospital]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't watch House because I'm really ultra tired of "edgy" doctor shows. If they're all "edgy," then what's mainstream?
Six feet under, now that was a great drama. I like Big Love a lot too. Rome, The Tudors, Deadwood. All these shows are proof positive that it is possible to make a drama that is compelling, that in no way involves doctors, lawyers, or cops.
I wonder if the boards of the major media compainies have a lot of ex lawyers, doctors, and cops among their members. It would explain why they don't laugh out loud when some new dufus comes in with an idea for an edgy cop show.
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Soccer on the front lines
[Read the article: Letter from Gaza]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Does it make sense to play soccer in a field that is basically the only open front of the war?
It couldn't have been news to Nahid, or his PARENTS, that that field was where the militants liked to launch their rockets, and Israel liked to shell.
Is it the only soccer field in Palestine?
Instead of blaming the Jews for it, how about we donate some plots of grass to Palestine so that the Palestinians can build a soccer field somewhere else? I'm in for 25 bucks.
Use the front parts of your brains, people. Nahid's parents let their 12 year old boy play soccer in the field that shells land in. Or, Nahid defied his parents and went to play in the field where the shells hit.
What does that say of Nahid's parents?
Everyone seems to be laying the blame for Nahid's death on either Israel, or Palestine, rather than exactly where it belongs. His parents. Would you let your kid play in the shelling field?
I would not. I don't care if it meant he couldn't play soccer. It would mean he would live.
If I had any inkling that he wanted to play soccer there, I would do my utmost to prevent it, including camping out there myself.
Wouldn't you?
And if the answer is yes, what conclusions might you draw about his parents, and the society at large?
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To Anon "Let's really do the numbers"
[Read the article: Duke players cleared]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anonymous makes the incredibly dumb argument that because he/she/it can recall of only a couple more high profile rape cases that turned out to be false, rape charges must be pretty much always true.
Well, here are the actual numbers directly from the government. http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/dnaevid.txt
In fact 23% of the time the defendent is excluded! Meaning, 23% of the time rape accusations are false!
I do not hate women as some who write letters here so obviously do, so my immediate reaction is not one of crying foul harpies be damned. I rather think that most of these 23% have in fact been raped, just not by the accused person. I have a feeling they're pressured to just pick someone from a lineup, whether the rapist is present or not.
The real story here is that even if you are rich it's hard to beat false allegations and a hungry prosecutor, both of which abound. Even when you have unassailable evidence of multiple types that you could not have been an attacker, or were not even present at the crime scene!
My heart goes out to women who are raped. I was abused as a child. I didn't remember it until I was older, but when I did (on my own) I had all of the predicted symptoms of anger, helplessness, guilt. I'm glad the man who did it died in a crash when I was young because I'm sure I'd have killed him.
But if these kids hadn't had the money that they were so sneered at for having (from their parent's second mortgages), they'd have spent a year in jail. They likely would have been raped, or perhaps castrated, or killed. Rapists are the lowest form of life in prison, and the prisoners don't subscribe to the notion of innocent until proven guilty.
Rape and assault of men in jail isn't very big on the radar of the womens' rape advocacy groups, unfortunately. An appalling number of feminists appear to believe any accusation a woman makes is true, and if men are raped in prison because they're rapists, it's justice. Republicans tend to agree, but not because they are feminist, but because they feel that pretty much everyone who gets charged with anything is probably guilty. I've heard many argue that if a few innocent people got killed, the death penalty was still worth it, for example.
So who's left to stand up for the thousands of men falsely accused each year? Only liberal men, pretty much.
To those who say prosecution of Mangum will bring about a "chilling effect," of rape reporting, I say that's unfortunate, and blame Mangum. Falsely accusing someone of rape is not a game you get to play and go home when you're tired of it. It is an act of violence, metaphorically as an assault on someone's liberty, and literally, in that men accused are tremendously more likely to be assaulted in prison.
Care should be taken in prosecuting it, and I think in most cases it would be impossible, or difficult to prove, and perhaps this is as it should be. But in Mangum's case, she claimed these three players with various "90%," and "100%" certainty raped her with no condom. This was false. There are no two ways about it, it's a scientific fact. And if she had gotten away with it, she would have ruined the lives of these men and their families, more than she has already.