Letters to the Editor
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Talent
The kindest thing I can say is that it is something of a special skill to describe yourself in such an appalling situation but manage to generate zero sympathy.
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Response to CherylF
It might be useful to point out to CherylF that the author was flying on an international flight, provided by a non-US air carrier, to a country other than the United States of America, and that therefore, her whine about the violation of the author's constitutional rights has as its centre a fatal flaw: US citizens have no constitutional rights outside of the United States of America.
Somewhat a parallel to how non-US citizens have no rights INSIDE the United States (or other countries which the US feels owe it some loyalty), don't you think?
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this is about prison, this is about men
I read the most amazing article -- about prison, about the UK, about being gay, about being HIV+, and then I went to read the letters page & I ran into some kind of kangaroo court.
Folks, if he had actually shot someone on the plane it would not have changed this article very much for me. This is not what the prison system should be. Is this what it is like to be stuck in the company of men? Constant brutish short sex & nobody out as gay? Is Islam really the most civilized religion, is that why he could only have interesting conversations & positive exchanges with Muslims?
Where is your intellectual curiosity? Your empathy? How could you read through this whole story if the only thing you care about at the end is being defensive trying to prove it couldn't happen to you? Why do you subscribe to Salon? What would your life be like if you lost two months of it?
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bad vs worse
To paraphrase another -- "Sometimes worse things happen to bad people".
I should start by saying that I'm not sure how much of Kurth's story I believe, to be honest. And that is going to color my comments. His story seems, at best, highly embellished and suspect. I wonder, as have many others, how much fact-checking Salon's editors did on this piece. This is not just because of the piece itself, but also because of the comment attributed to Kurth elsewhere -- "All writing is fiction". Furthermore, many of the story's details either don't add up, or are strangely glossed over. I won't go into them all, as other commenters have touched on most of them, but Kurth certainly has a slightly loose hold on the facts and details of his experience, and every reason to embellish, judging from his personality, the position he put himself in, and his profession.
I suspect what actually happened was that Kurth got thrown in jail, decided it was going to be his way to write a story and get paid for it no matter what, and exaggerated the rest. And if that's the case, he's a pretty horrible person. His fiction minimizes the horror of those who actually ARE raped in prison, and Muslims and/or gays who actually ARE discriminated against. It sounds to me like he was treated badly because he was an asshole, not because of his background.
Not only is he very misleading and vague about whether or not he was actually raped (and whether he was or not, I think it's despicable that he didn't make his HIV status known or tell the authorities about the contact afterwards); but he also loses huge amounts of credibility for GOING BACK IN instead of paying the fine. If I was going back into a place that bad, and faced anal rape at the hands of other inmates, I would literally do ANYTHING to stay out of there. I'd borrow the money from a loan shark and sell a kidney to pay him back, if I had to. I seriously doubt there wasn't anyone amongst all his friends and family that wouldn't front him a few thousand dollars to get himself out of what he clearly wants us to believe was a horrible situation. But no, he went back in?! I suspect he simply felt he probably didn't have enough material yet to make himself a sympathetic character. Ironic that in the end he still failed at that.
I think all the polarization in the comments is caused by the fact that Kurth is clearly an egotistical, rude, jingoistic asshole who deserved something bad to happen to him -- but just not quite that bad. However, he certainly put himself on the path he travelled. Had it not been a holiday and had he paid his fine, he might not have been in prison very long. If that had happened instead (and excluding the "rape", if that is in fact what happened), I think we would all agree he was justly punished.
I don't think the horrible conditions at the prison are acceptable, but think about it -- EVERYone who goes to that prison experienced them. That's the fault of the local authorities and doesn't excuse Kurth's behavior. People have to accept that there was no "good guy" in this situation. Both sides are wrong. What happened to Kurth was far too severe, AND Kurth was wrong, deserved to be punished, and was therefore ultimately responsible for his own fate.
Sometimes worse things happen to bad people.
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Jaibe, yes those are some questions
"Is this what it is like to be stuck in the company of men? Constant brutish short sex & nobody out as gay? Is Islam really the most civilized religion". but then, you have an IQ. who knows what we are living with masquerading as humans?
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The Self-Regard Provokes a Lack of Sympathy
I understand Peter Kurth suffered unfairly dangerous treatment for a minor infraction - nothing can justify rape. I also get what's behind the negative reactions, even if those writing harsh responses couldn't explain it themselves.
Prison is a topic in which individual observations are read in a larger context. Kurth seems to ignore the bigger picture - not his intent, but it comes off as unaware, privileged maybe arrogant.
Not to dismiss his suffering, but the lack emphasizes how this is a middle class white guy experiencing a fraction of the horrors faced by those who outside Salon's demographic. I immediately thought of prisoners who don't get adequate HIV medicine, prison teaching jobs, embassy representatives, personal diaries, etc.
The poor and minority prisoners at much greater risk of harsher imprisonment without trial with less guilt. In Louisiana after Katrina, arrests on minor offenses could result in more jail time without trial than a conviction.
Kurth was wise not to compare himself to the less fortunate, but wrong to not mention them at all. He doesn't touch on how there are others in Wormwood Scrubs are like him, giving the impression he thinks he's the only one "imprisoned unjustly or necessarily".
Then there's Kurth's introduction, in which he admits his mess was largely self created, but keeps implying others were to blame in petty ways.
He admits being "a humorless and probably exhausted flight attendant" implying she's to blame for objecting to being called a cunt.
He says "I was in full-blown air rage, something the airlines used to understand but, on the evidence, no longer do." as if the airline is to blame for diminishing tolerance of enraged passengers. He admits to refusing to leave a restricted area, because he used to see people there "without anyone making a fuss about it."
He says he was provoked when "I'd been given a seat that wasn't tailor-made to form blood clots in my legs." Implying it was the airline's fault, but the next paragraph admits he didn't tell them about his condition.
Kurth would be far more persuasive if he'd admitted his fault without caveats, and then argued it didn't justify prison rape. Instead, his tone of self-regard (intentional or not) make it seem like he learned nothing at all.