A few of the more frustrating news items from this week:
1. This past Sunday the verdict came in for the Steubenville rape case. The two defendants, Trent Mays and Malik Richmond, were found guilty, putting them among the few rapists to actually get convicted. The two boys expressed remorse....about being caught. Mays apologized profusely to the victim and her parents...merely for filming the rape, not....you know...engaging in it. They both received sentences befitting the severity and evil of their crime of.... 1 and 2 years!
Thankfully, CNN, particularly Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow, were there to assign sympathy where it truly belongs, as they lamented the ruined lives and promising futures.....of the rapists! Regarding the fate of their 16-year-old female victim? Not a peep.
And CNN's
Rape-Culture-Palooza didn't stop there. There was
Ric Simmons gratuitously
jacking up the ambiguity levels with
this gem:
The law has evolved as societal norms have changed. Lots of sexual conduct occurs when one or both participants are intoxicated to some extent. The question that the law needs to answer -- but at times struggles to answer -- is at what point one person's intoxication is so severe that she (or he, in theory) is legally unable to give meaningful consent. Ohio law, like that of many states, sets this line at the point at which the victim's "ability to resist or consent was substantially impaired" by alcohol. But how impaired is "substantially impaired"?
Dude, the girl was UNCONSCIOUS!
And lest the anonymous victim be starved for attention, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News had the "decency" to NOT BLOCK OUT HER NAME in their broadcasting of the closing court statements. No, that shouldn't inconvenience the girl or her family AT ALL.
2. Michelle Shocked gave her audience a short, sharp shock this week by letting fly an anti-gay rant. Which I can honestly say, as someone who's attended one of her concerts and seen some of the typical audience, is the equivalent of Bob Barker opening "The Price Is Right" by exclaiming "Why don't all you old people to just die already?" Way to read your fan base, Michelle!
3. What would a post about media stupidity be without DC Comics? Two more writers, Andy Diggle (Action Comics) and Joshua Hale Fialkov (Green Lantern Corps, Red Lanterns), are casualties of the Nu52 Writing Revolving Door, due to DC's recurring addiction to last-minute revising of their writers' storylines. But the eleventh-hour revision that drove Fialkov away was particularly telling: It called for the death of one of Earth's 5 Green Lanterns. Which one? Why, John Stewart, of course! Because apparently there's a GLUT of recognizable black superheroes in the DC Universe.
My reaction to all this stupidity? I'll leave it to Grand Regent Thragg.
Because sometimes only Evil Freddie Mercury facepalm* is sufficient to convey the degree of fail.
(* Courtesy of this week's Invincible#101 by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, and Cliff Rathburn.)
