DreamWorks' Steven Spielberg: A keen eye for bad cinema
As we reported last fall, Hollywood producers began work for a movie based on the story of the Boston Globe's reporting in 2002 about the Catholic Church abuse scandals. The planned pic was envisioned as an investigative journalism thriller in the same vein as All the President's Men (1976).
Now, both the Hollywood Reporter and Variety trade publications are reporting that the uber-studio DreamWorks, which was set to produce the project, has dropped its plans to move forward with the film.
Seeing a box office bomb?
There is really only one conceivable reason that a Hollywood studio would abandon its support of a film project: Money.
Apparently someone at DreamWorks eventually came to realize that rehashing the tired story about abuse committed decades ago in the Catholic Church is not exactly the kind of topic that will send swarms of moviegoers to the box office.
People should know the real ending of the movie: The Catholic Church has become the
Sounds like a smart move on DreamWorks' part.
I certainly agree that money was a major consideration – in the sense of box-office receipts.
But I also think there were other concerns. As we on this site saw (and I’m sure the studio people saw too when they read it), Michael D’Antonio’s book – in seeking to add some dramatic narrative hook and framing to the story as MAD chose to tell it – also unintentionally revealed a lot of the seamy or calculating bits that went into the ‘success’ of the Abusenik maneuvers, especially in the sue-the-Bishops strategy that Jeff Anderson implemented in the early 1990s and also in the questionable maneuvers behind the 2002 Boston phase.
To make too many ‘heroes’ out of all these (often alcoholic) Players might well expose the film to ridicule if it either a) portrayed them with all the sly and calculating and perhaps sleazy bits left-out or b) left them in and portrayed these Players as they really are (which might well leave the script and the film in the unacceptable position of having no real ‘good guys’).
Additionally, it may have dawned on the studio that – especially if they looked at such victim cases as have been actually examined with some degree of detachment (and I am not equating ‘cases’ with simply accepting the ‘stories’ as told by the allegants) – then it might well pan out that any particular story they chose to use in the film might, after release of the film, be looked-at more closely and might be exposed with all their dubious if not outright impossible elements. (We have certainly seen that here in such ‘stories’ as have come to light.)
And it is not unreasonable to imagine that not too many allegants or settlement-recipients would want to have their story (especially as put forth in a formal and sworn allegation) looked at too carefully: the elastic ‘abuse’ or ‘rape’ that looks so nice and vivid in website commentary on computer screens might very well look like a lot less if a demanding film director actually tried to stage the story for the mercilessly objective camera. Imagine, for example, the problems for a film director in trying to film Billy Doe’s ‘story’ from the second (Englehardt-Shero) Philly trial: a) which of Billy’s several ‘stories’ to choose to film (they are at points incompatible, to say the least) and b) how to make them ‘work’ believably for filming (e.g. the alleged 5 hours of pounding rape in what appears to be an easily accessible and well-travelled room).
You might actually ask yourself: doesn’t or shouldn’t a police investigator or prosecutor do this sort of thing too? That is to say: sit down with a blank sheet of paper and plot out the elements of the story to see if they actually can create a coherent picture of the allegation’s ‘crime’ taking place. But I would say that investigators and prosecutors don’t have to be concerned about losing their own money if the allegation-dots don’t connect – they ‘win’ in other ways; studio-heads and producers do have to worry about their own money. And directors need something believable to film – unless they want to bill the final film product as a fantasy rather than a ‘real life’ story (but then: what would that say about the Abusenik movement generally?).
So – when you get right down to it – Hollywood actually does have to do precisely the type of figuring that was almost never done by media or legal or law enforcement players in the actual Catholic Abuse Matter.
And I don’t think anybody involved really wants to have their story or their case looked at that closely. It’s one thing to have a press-conference and repeat your rehearsed lines to a stenographic and sensitive audience of media and fellow-travellers and cadres. But it’s something else altogether to have your allegations actually filmed as they were supposed to have happened. Especially if the ‘rape’ money-shot turns out to have been, in truth, a pat on the honk. From a filmic perspective, that’s not sufficient payoff for a plot-point. (Let alone any viewers then asking: he got all that money for that?)
If the sly and mendacious SNAP statement (delivered with the Innocence-Aggrieved wig) that ‘all victims want is their day in court’ is just so much pabulum cooked-up to be poured into the mushbowls of a public that simply gobbles down whatever is placed in front of them for breakfast, then the Hollywood approach is going to wreck that menu and that Game: Hollywood here – for its own purposes – does the hard and skeptical analysis that most of the media have never done.
And – as DP observes – Hollywood may well realize that the Moment for this type of Hero-Victim or Victim-and-Heroic-Lawyer genre has passed now. Too much has been exposed in the actual dynamics of the Catholic Abuse Matter and – in the larger affairs of the country – there are far more urgent and actual and dangerous problems that need to be addressed.
With the Church’s reforms in place and the number of allegations now reflecting that success, then such a script and film would have to necessarily assume a ‘once upon a time’ timeline that is fatal to any genre except that of the fantasy.
God know's Catholicism has no connection to Hollywood. The Church is powerless here.
Anybody else ever have to check the Legion of Decency column in local Catholic papers as a kid before seeing a film. I know we did in my family.
I also remember being warned in 2nd or 3rd grade about "The Moon is Blue" an Otto Preminger film. Condemned by the Catholic Church.
I also rember our entire school paid to see The Ten Commandments (dir C.B. de Mille) with Charlton Heston. We were bussed there through the arrangement of the Archdiocese.
No Catholicism has no power in Hollywood.
Paramount and Hollywood created the construct of the Happy Priest,(Bing Crosby in Going My Way)(Just as L.B. Mayer created the nuclear family with the Andy Hardy series at M.G.M). as compared to the grumpy old priest played by Barry Fitzgerald. Whose characterization was much closer to reality.
The script could just as easily be not good enough. Compared to a fear of box office failure. Matt Damon is still shopping the project.
Was there something the Boston Globe shouldn't have said about Cardinal Law and his cover up and transfers of abusive priests?
The Moon is Blue" was condemned because of a line about someone in it being described as " a professional virgin".
When we were kids we thought that the devil himself made a personal appearence in the flick; but it was only William Holden.
By the way, does the Catholic Church have a very good record regarding truth, that wasn't forced out of them by a few victims settlements.? No wonder you guys hate the majority of us truth tellers. You hate us by pretending we are liars. but reality says, your side set the lying record for decades bar none. So why is it the biggest liars, are calling everyone else that?
Delph in your last post in the last thread, you mentioned why should you take advise on godly behavior from an athiest, communist.
Didn't Jesus say to treat all men as though they were he?
It's got to be better than what you've got. I mean really. Dolan? George? Donahue?
Not much of the old J.C. in that crowd.
And I mean lying on a one and one quarter billion Catholic size scale. That's some big lying.
And they were lying to your family and my family.I got burned you didn't. All the families got burned.
How many families fit into one and one quarter billion?
Going to Process, for a moment: readers who also keep up with the BigTrial site will have noticed a pitch-perfect example of what happens when certain mentalities are allowed to roam more or less ‘free-range’. The comments on the most recent article about the second Philly trial have pretty much become an episode of Abusenik open-mic night.
That’s not a complaint. First of all, the site-moderator (Mr. Cipriano) has been offering some rather candid assessments of the quality of the material thus being submitted for comments.
Second, everyone can see what there is to see coming-in from that part of the outfield.
Some of the material clashes with other material (even from the same commenter) such that you wonder: do some mentalities a) actually realize what they are demonstrating about themselves but just don’t care or b) are some mentalities so utterly un-self-aware that they don’t even notice the problem?
Thus, wigs are changed quickly and with obvious abandon, perhaps in the sure and certain knowledge that if Emerson was right that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, then inconsistency must indicate a great mind, and the more inconsistency then the greater the mind.
So, for example, JR – who had in a prior comment on the thread used the “F” word – then shortly thereafter puts on the Reasonable-Moderate wig and says “we are all ladies and gentlemen here”.
And actually says – in what is now an on-going, stagey, just-entre-nous exchange with commenter Ecker – that if it weren’t for the wiggy Abusenik open-mic material the BigTrial site would have nothing. One thinks of barflies who interpret the silence and aversion that rapidly grows around them as nothing less than clear and distinct evidence that their brilliant and witty material has simply reduced the surrounding blockheads to impotent silence.
Also a nice bit about “stopping fraud” being JR’s “personal vendetta”. Which apparently works out – in best revolutionary-Playbook style – to the belief that fraud committed in the (putative) service of combating fraud is truthy. One can only wonder what effect such a belief would have in the development of stories in the accusing-for-dollars Game.
As always, my idea here is that we are very usefully offered front-row seats to vivid (florid, perhaps) demonstrations of the various mentalities that have for so long constituted a major element in the Catholic Abuse Matter.
It seems the Beasley Firm who financially supports Cipriano's posts. Has a former partner who left after a publically reported bar fight. That former law partner McLaughlin is the famous Billy Doe's lawyer. Descramble them eggs.http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202483228475&slreturn=20130521140212
I am starting to think that some of these abuse victims know no other relationship with humans than adversarial- it is better than nothing, I suppose. If you can't stomach returning to the Church as a result of what happened to you (fear, hatred, confusion…?), the next best thing you can do to be close to God is to "buzz" His flock. It might be akin to the little troubled boy who taunts the girl of his dreams just to have some/any interaction- it's better than nothing.
If we can bring God, and perhaps some peace, into the lives of these poor tortured souls by 'suffering" their hatred (yet, hopefully making some Christian-truth inroads into their tilted world thinking, as we are required), I'll have some mo', please-
Thank you –Vatican and Fox News for last Sunday!!
Delphin– Or some people recognized the injustice of the circumstances, and, did the best they could to help.
How else can the Beasley firm get back at the lawyers who once worked for their firm who took a very lucrivtive clients such as Billy Doe and Jerry Sandusky victims but telling a writer that is sponsored by them (Cipriano) he must trash a victim of sexual abuse in a way to discredit the attorney who is only guilty of representing that victim of abuse.
Something everyone should read and gather your own opinion.
Once again a classic example of the Shoebox: “bar-fly” seems close enough to “bar-fight” so they must connect, right? (Sorta like: two years equals a career; abuse equals rape; and so on.) After all, there’s that “bar” in each one of the words so that must mean they are connected here, right? No flies on the fry-flies down in the cafeteria, no siree!
In this case I can’t figure out what eggs need to be de-scrambled. Doe’s attorney (Slade H. McLaughlin, Esq.) is a former Partner in the Beasley Firm (who left the Firm in February of 2011, and filed the 600-page Doe Complaint on July 25, 2011, as a member of a different Firm). The Beasley Firm hosts the Cipriano blog.
So … where is the scrambling? Presuming that the scrambling exists outside of the commenter’s own mind.
Or will we be told that if we aren’t genius enough to see what JR apparently sees, then he is clearly under no obligation to explain his mystic mystery vision to anybody who doesn’t know the mystic handshake? What exactly is the connection that JR sees here (though apparently it didn’t occur to him to explain it right off the bat)? Which would dovetail nicely with the sophomoric Playbook idea that ‘suspicion’ – no matter how vague – counts for ‘thinking’ and actually, for purposes of the Cause, is even better than ‘thinking’.
Or – beyond the similarity of the “bar” bit – is there no JR vision to explain in the first place? In other words, “there is no there there”.
I just visited the Cipriano blog. His summaries are clear-headed and logical, wish I could say the same for the comments/ers – such that they are.
Nasty business…being bitterly and viciously antiCatholic, isnt it, fellas?
Can you imagine if every female (at every lifestage, and those numbers are huge) that was ever abused by a male (father, brother, uncle, spouse, cousin, teacher, cleric, coach, friend – shall we go on?) held on to that same intense hatred for their abusers, which, again, are men of all stripes – where would humanity be? Is it that some males (what kind?) just can't emotionally resolve being victimized and being able to eventually thrive? Our women, do it every day – since the beginning of time. Buck up, boys, whiney time is long over. Do something useful with all that wasted "energy", how about advocating for the masses of abused women – in the white slavery trade, in their homes, on the street, in the workplace, at school, by their oppresive governments… and everywhere.
It isnt about the abuse you suffered generations ago and we all, and you, know it; it is about the Catholic Church, the religion and the parishoners as has been often "outed" via the dialogue here, and apparently, a few other places. You are frauds of the first order not because you weren't abused (who knows?), but because you lie about your crusade against the Church. Your gripe has nothing to do with advocating for any victims – in or out of the Church, it is purely based upon your selfish, bigoted and unquenchable quest to trash the Catholic Church, period.
The Catholic Church has trashed itself through it's actions.
All we, victims did was tell the truth about their behavior.
Did I agree to not tell my truth about your Church I still don't hate the Church. It just seems silly to me. That's to me .
I didn't ask you to think that. (Why you don't think it probably has more to do a life long commitment never questioned. Your every right). But why is it so important to you to limit what I think?
Why would you want to talk to vermin?
Evidently I'm mentioned in D' Antonio's book.
I don't know what he wrote, probably about the handcuffing. Obviously if he's pushed by Doyle and SNAP, he doesn't get me.
And I'm sure many of you wish you weren't getting me either.::>)
Five minutes before I submitted my comment of 432PM on the 21st, commenter Ecker had submitted a comment that apparently explains Ecker’s – and JR’s? – take on the Beasley bits: as a way to somehow “get back at” a Partner who left the Firm and went into business on his own (eventually representing Billy Doe in his civil suit that is still pending), the Beasley Firm ordered its paid writer – Mr. Cipriano – to shift his stance 180 and oppose the credibility of Billy Doe in the second Philly criminal trial, that of Englehardt and Shero.
Readers may recall that in his Spring 2012 comments on the first Philly criminal trial – that of Msgr. Lynn et al – Mr. Cipriano’s position was supportive of the prosecution. The second Philly criminal trial has seen him begin a marked change in position: not so much for the Church as for the integrity of the legal system which, he sees, has been seriously and vitally deranged in this recent trial.
While former Beasley Partner McLaughlin wasn’t directly involved in the second criminal trial, he is the attorney for Billy-Doe in the still-pending civil lawsuit Doe brings against the Church (through various Parties Defendant).
It is this, apparently, that Ecker (and possibly JR, after a rather uncharacteristic foray into referenced-research, although not into clear explanation) proposes as either a or the vital determining dynamic in Mr. Cipriano’s change of attitude.
Ecker – equally uncharacteristically – simply puts it before the readership and is willing to allow readers to decide. That’s always a good approach, I would say.
But I would also add this: In keeping with my long-held and previously-expressed belief that there never ever seems to be a ‘normal’ Catholic Abuse Matter trial, I think that it is very possible that Mr. Cipriano simply realized as a reporter that there was some serious scamming and derangement going on in the legal system, which overrode the (claimed) stories of abuse. And while the first Philly criminal trial – of Msgr. Lynn et al – might have been – at least at the beginning – an opportunity to shed light on some insufficient past practices in the American Church, the second Philly trial (of Billy Doe) clearly presents far more substantial and extensive ground for doubt as to the integrity and legitimacy of (what I would call) the Stampede and the consequences that have demonstrated and contributed-to the derangement of the legal system.
Further, all of that may well have dovetailed with Mr. Cipriano’s own awareness of the ins-and-outs of Philadelphia’s legal milieu: its coziness with national and local political influences, the synergy between the DA and the police union (to some of whose officials Doe is closely related), the drug-tolerant working-class attitude toward kids who have gone seriously astray in the matter of drugs and all the characterological sequelae of addiction, and the still un-plumbed capabilities of a Philly DA to load a jury.
I would submit to readers that all of these elements – and surely the second Philly trial (Billy-Doe’s allegations against Englehardt and Shero) – constitute more than enough probable cause for an experienced local reporter to decide that there are and have been far more dangerous and darker and deeper aspects to the Philly Catholic Abuse trials than had been presented by the mainstream press and the various Abusenik advocacies.
Further, I would submit that the very experienced Beasley Firm would not have risked its own and its premier reporter’s credibility by insisting upon a sudden 180-degree reversal of approach (if you read the blog of the first Philly trial the difference becomes vividly clear). Especially since the putative target of such a plan – Doe’s civil lawsuit counsel, the former Beasley Partner McLaughlin – is not directly involved in this second Philly criminal-trial case.
To try to reduce the whole matter to a sly effort by the Beasley Firm to obliquely and indirectly wreck the case of a former Partner, when there has been so much obvious difficulty with the DA’s prosecution of Engelhardt and Shero, is – I would say – grossly insufficient.
But it is, as we have seen here before, completely congruent with the Playbook’s maxim that if you can’t explain-away the weaknesses in your Cause, then just go and find a way to attack the credibility of the person pointing-out those weaknesses.
And the “get back at” trope curiously projects the basic Stance of the Abuseniks onto the law firm.
But even if, in the alternative, we were to grant that the Beasley Firm were going to make such a move, the gaping and glaring weaknesses in the Billy-Doe case remain as independent elements that are perfectly capable on their own of explaining and justifying Mr. Cipriano’s change of view.
Lastly, would this not be a theory better taken by its proponents to the BigTrial site?
I love a good conspiracy theory, but the idea that Cipriano was ordered by his boss to reverse course and start carrying water for the archdiocese just to get even with a former employee who left The Beasley Firm years ago after some bar fight is just plain goofy.
Almost as goofy as the two goofballs peddling it.
In 1998, I got fired from my full-time job at the Philadelphia Inquirer for not taking direction when I was ordered by my boss to deep-six a story highly critical of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and its leader, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.
The story was about how the cardinal lavishly and secretly spent $5 million to renovate and redocrate at a time when he was closing poor churches and schools in the inner city, supposedly because of a lack of money. Instead of killing the story, I got it published on the front page of the National Catholic Reporter. The New York Times, Washington Post, Editor & Publisher, etc., all ended up writing about it, and the story became a much bigger deal than if the Inky had just run it in the first place.
When my boss, the editor of the Inquirer, subsequently trashed me in a Washington Post interview, I sued him for libel. It was the first time in the history of American journalism that a reporter sued his own editor for libel. The Inky had to settle the case, print a public apology, and pay a confidential sum.
The idea that I would roll over on a free-lance gig on somebody's orders and start defending that same archdiocese is really silly to anyone who knows me. I don't take direction well. Jim Beasley doesn't know what I'm writing until he reads it. He's frankly got more important things to do than worry about what a part-time blogger is up to.
Look guys, I know it's hard to believe, but Billy Doe's stories are just plain ridiculous and are not credible. People in the D.A.'s office know that. The evidence gathered by the D.A.'s own investigators disproves Billy Doe's crazy stories.
Dennis Ecker and Jim Robertson have probably more comments printed on my website than anybody. They see everything through one set of blinders; the victims are always 100 percent right and truthful and the priest-predators are always 100 percent evil.
They will seek out any cockamamie theory to try and invalidate the mountain of evidence I have published on my blog. That evidence shows that Billy Doe's stories cannot possibly be true, that the DA botched the investigation, and that the DA also published a dishonest grand jury report riddled with more than 20 factual errors
Rather than talk about that, Ecker and Robertson would much rather discuss their latest conspiracy theory that somehow proves I took a dive.
Regarding my website, just decided not to go down this road and waste anybody's time with a story line that I happen to know is just not true.
Ralph Cipriano
Boring!
P, Cardinal George, You need a thesarus.
You are banned from using these words.Types; Mentalities; Gambit; Trope; Cafeteria; Sly effort, Foray and Playbook.
You are also banned from posting anything lengthier than 6 paragraphs.
How can a Philly D.A. "load" a jury? Did the defense's lawyers let him or her do this. Are they victims in this trial also?
Explain please: Why a law firm needs a reporter? Can you think of another law firm that has it's own reporter? And particularly on a criminal case it has no connection to.
Also Cipriano refuses to publish and or answer my and other victims questions about this former connection and former partner in the Beasley firm; and his connection to Billy Doe.
I make no claim about said law firm making Cipriano do anything. I think it odd Cipriano failled to mention said former partnership in his "reportage" or answer any questions about it now.
I also have no idea why Cipriano would be pushing the Church's line about all victims being in a "cult of victimization" (Do we wear vestments like your "cult" does?) and roaming the countryside like a "lynch mob". When the only victims who publish at thebigtrial are 2 maybe 3 in number. None of whom said we knew if Billy Doe was telling the truth or not.
We waited for the verdict. The jury found Billy truthful. The victims' "mob" (me and Dennis) said how sad it was for all concerned, suggested the appeals process might bring the other side the "justice" they wanted; and even extended sympathy to the priests and teacher's families. They did no wrong yet they suffer. Not quite the" Ox Bow Incident". (a lynching of innocents).
Some "lynch mob"
Who tried to "explain away" the "weakness" in my (sic) "Cause"?
You, like some dyslexic Rumplestillskin, seem to be weaving your "gold" from your "straw". all for your "pleasure" and to suit your needs not truth.
IMNSHO.
JR demonstrates his signature TimeWarp problem again here: his examples of the Church’s influence on Hollywood go back to the days of the Legion of Decency and being warned – when he “was a kid” – about a movie that should not be seen. Thus to the Administration of either Truman or Ike. And back to the Hollywood of “Going My Way” and “The Ten Commandments”, of Bing Crosby and Cecil B. DeMille and – waitttttt for itttttt – Louis B. Mayer.
The effort to keep the Catholic Abuse Matter locked into some era several or many decades back seems to have seeped out into his view of the world generally.
I had mentioned in comments on the D’Antonio book that one “James C. Robertson” was mentioned once in a sentence; I had also mentioned at that time that D’Antonio – who usually never distinguishes between an allegation of victimization and a fact of victimization, and for no discernible purpose since he wasn’t examining anything in any detail about that “Robertson” – yet describes that “Robertson” as somebody “who said he was abused” [italics mine]. As I mentioned in my comments on the D’Antonio book, that phrasing seemed curious, and especially so since the author doesn’t take the time to make such precise distinctions with any other of the myriad ‘victims’ and claims noted in the book.
We also note “the truth” that a) is the only thing JR tells and that b) was “forced out of them through a few victims settlements” [sic].
In regard to (a), enough has been said over time here about that conceit.
In regard to (b), we see again the Playbook play that since the lawsuits were settled (and mostly out of court) then that somehow establishes “the truth” of the many allegations and claims. And enough has been said here over time about that sly bit.
And we also see yet again the clanking conceptual machinery that keeps this bit of the Game rolling: if you disagree with “the majority of us truth-tellers”, then you must “hate” us and also – but of course – hate the truth. Thus neatly avoiding any examination of just what “truth” they ‘told’ or claimed to be telling. As, apparently, even D’Antonio realized, as noted above in this comment.
Publion, with you respect to you and with respect to Mr. Cipriano he has failed to answer any questions on the subject. He has failed to answer simple questions as if the Beasley Firm has the final say on what he reports and/or how he reports its.
Mr. Cipriano has always answered my questions in the past regarding different questions through e-mail, however it seems that he has stifled himself regarding this subject or maybe it is the Beasley Firm who truly does have the final say.
He knows I am here to listen to what he has to say, but he continues to avoid the subject.
You can only lead a horse to water and if he fails to drink that's on him.
Yes, Dennis. And to quote Dorothy Parker: "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't maker her think." Seems equally true….. here.
I have to thank you, Cardinal George,P,
So the, SNAP; Doyle friendly, D' Antonio's Book says (and according to you that's all it says about me)?
"who said he was abused".
Yes and SNAP and Doyle say they work for victims but it's me who D'Antonio damns with no praise
Well the Church paid me a lot of money on an allegation. Not as much as I deserved.
On second thought you're never pleasant towards me or any victim who posts here. You don't deserve my thanks.
At 1044 on the 22nd we are informed that one of the ranking fry-flies in the cafeteria finds me “boring!”. (Yet he will be “proof-reading” a book and perhaps is in the process of doing so even now.) Which wig goes with the delivery of “Boring!”, I wonder.
Also that I am “banned from using” a list of words. The “thesaurus” suggestion implies that I clearly have a problem coming up with new words. What I’m actually doing is sticking with words that rather nicely convey the realities that I see us dealing-with here. And the words keep popping up because the realities we are dealing-with keep popping up. And as I have said, “mentalities” is a more polite word than “diagnosis” – a word that stems from a universe of discourse and reality that certain commenters simply cannot bear to discuss. Anyway, this is a double-wig bit: both the Authoritative wig and the Innocently-Exasperated wig.
Longer posts are also “banned”. We have so often seen how useful and reliable and informative shorter posts can be. Especially in taking walks down memory-lane to an era that is separated from today by as much time as that Hollywood Golden Age was separated from the Civil and Indian wars.
“How can a Philly D.A. ‘load’ a jury?” I’d like to think it wouldn’t be possible but we’ve seen so many other theoretically impossible things in the second Philly trial that nothing appears to be off the table. A Philly D.A., perhaps in conjunction with the local police union, and backed up by a powerful synergy of political interests (secular-liberal Democratic, mostly) and a working-class blue-collar ethos that is still robust in Philly … with a synergy like that in the atmosphere who knows what storms might be brewed? Surely JR, who has been around so long and remembers (or at least was alive during) the age of Big City Machine Politics, and who has no doubt watched so many of the pre- and postwar noir detective fliks, cannot be ignorant of the possibilities there. It’s like “Chinatown”, to use one of his own references.
Additionally – does he think readers here don’t on occasion visit the Big Trial site? – there is the curious silence of the former-jurors, who don’t seem to want to talk about their handiwork at all.
And defense lawyers only get so many vetoes in jury selection; a sufficiently loaded jury-pool can overwhelm the defense options there.
I don’t know why a law firm has a reporter – or several – but it’s an interesting idea and the Big Trial site appears to support on-going reviews of several significant trials. I think it certainly performs a public service you won’t find in the mainstream media. And it certainly has uncovered some useful material for the public’s review and consideration.
And now we get an interesting echo from both JR and commenter Ecker: in a curious coincidence they are suddenly claiming on the Big Trial site and now here that their “questions” are not being answered. Readers here may recall my comments on recent articles to commenter ‘Learned Counsel’ (ex-‘Boston Survivor’ … who also has not, by the by, revealed his actual name and yet has won the esteem of other fry-flies for whom the use of one’s own name in commenting is usually considered an indispensable proof of truthiness): it appears that not-getting-questions-answered will make a nice wig for such commenters who figure that if you use some of the same phrases as intelligent-discourse, then most people will figure you are making intelligent discourse. It’s all a matter of how you can sell yourself to the audience for these mentalities. And it’s all a show: get the right wig, deliver the right dialogue, and you too can hold yourself forth as being whatever you want people to believe you are.
One wonders how much this scam was not used in the allegations and claims when accusing-for-dollars.
As that The New Yorker cartoon put it: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”.
But as we have seen here, that isn’t actually the whole of it. Revealing pawprints show up in the material, no matter how many wigs or how much mimicry of serious and informed discourse the posting pooch tries to lard into the act.
Asked directly what he meant by his reference to the former-Beasley Firm Partner (“Descramble them eggs”) JR now backs off and says he will “make no claim”. Instead he just “think[s] it odd”.
And that “question” was not actually put to Mr. Cipriano as a “question” at all; rather, once – on June 17th – commenter Ecker simply put up a headline and then did not ask Mr. Cipriano to answer “questions” because Ecker didn’t put any “questions” to Mr. Cipriano and instead simply said that he (Ecker) might (in some undetermined future) be posing some “questions I may ask” and that “I for now will only leave a headline”.
So Mr. Cipriano hasn’t not-answered any “questions” because none were put to him.
Instead, we get a bit from the Playbook: innuendo or suggestion, but rather cheaply put forth merely as dark mentionings. Is there a question that the commenter sees fit to put? Then put it directly and see what response is forthcoming. But the Playbook isn’t interested in answers or information, let alone truth; the Playbook is interested in the innuendo and indirect emotional undermining of the target. But all of this carried out – as I said – not by direct and clear putting of one’s questions, but by sly and cheap and chicken-like suspicion (that, neatly, the sly suspicion-caster cannot directly be held accountable for).
I thought Mr. Cipriano’s characterization of certain commenters on his site as “cult members” was rather spot-on. Especially since cult-members, like certain diagnoses I have discussed in comments recently, are mostly un-self-aware and cannot even see their own ‘cultiness’. Which a) enables them to maintain the fantasy that they are the ‘right’ ones, and that b) everybody else is against them because everyone else is against the ‘truth’ that the cult-members see and nobody else does.
There is a neatness here in the psychic economy, but in the long run it simply serves to insulate the cult-member from any larger and deeper engagement with truth and reality. And the cult rolls on.
Nor – again and again and again – do we know on the internet who is and who isn’t a genuine victim (as distinguished from those who simply got in on the Game when the prospects of cash became sufficiently attractive and possible). But the cultiness works here: presuming what they cannot prove to anybody else, the cult-members can keep an entire selection of wigs in business: Victimized, Exasperated, Hurt (at not being believed), Shocked (at the refusal of so many to accept the truthiness that they don’t seem to notice they can’t prove). And the cult rolls on.
JR – in a marvelous demonstration of cultiness – has “no idea” how any of all this can in any way seem like a “cult” to anybody. He has “no idea” – there it is then.
Again with the literary references that don’t quite work (perhaps because the only thing on a hastily-scribbled 3×5 card is the title of a book or the name of a character, without any real grasp of the significance). But – hey – if you sprinkle the titles of books and characters from books in your stuff, then you must be really reliable, right? On the internet nobody knows … and so on.
One thinks here of the image of cargo-cult natives encountered in the Pacific War: they watched US troops talk into little tin things, and then before long great silver birds or huge canoes would show up and disgorge all manner of wondrous stuff. So they rummaged around and built an exact replica of the set-up that seemed to have that magic-power, perhaps using a discarded ration-can as a microphone and a strand of vine as a ‘wire’ connected to another large block-like object. They spoke into the microphone, mimicking the sounds of the US troops as best they could … and then couldn’t think why (they had ‘no idea’) the big birds and canoes didn’t show up on cue. After all, they had mimicked as closely as they could the radio operators they had seen and heard. But – alas – they had “no idea” of the concept of radio or its operating prinicples. Discarded tin-cans, vines, and coconuts do not a radio set make.
To what extent this dynamic has been operative in the course of the Abusenik Stampede is something historians may well want to consider.
Ah, and – marvelously – JR even quotes fairy-tales. “Rumplestillskin” (was his copy of the book not handy?).
And I am even “dyslexic”. Really? Compared to … JR? And I ask this “question” again: does JR here open up the floor to diagnostic speculation in regard to himself? Still waiting for an answer to that one.
But we see here, and it is even more vivid on the Big Trial site, the ‘projection’ dynamic (from that universe of discourse that cannot-be-named): the projector – aware on some pre-cognitive level of all of his/her issues – displays an acute ability to ‘see’ those issues in everybody else but – of course – not in him/herself. And the dysfunction rolls on and on.
Nice use of internet slang too. So informed and up-to-date.
Then from commenter Ecker we get (at 1133PM on the 22nd) a claim that neither I nor Mr. Cipriano have answered “simple questions” about the Beasley Firm. But as I demonstrated above in this comment, Ecker has posed no questions (and certainly not to me). Neat – and I will venture that commenter Ecker has “no idea” of the holes in his position here. (Of course, if commenter Ecker does have a very clear idea of what he is doing here, then that rather clearly and directly opens up other issues.)
There is no way for anybody else to know if Mr. Cipriano has communicated with commenter Ecker ‘off-site’ in emails. My own thought here is that it’s usually better to keep all communications on-screen precisely to avoid the possibility of claims like this surfacing: we who were not party to the (alleged) emails have no way of knowing what was actually said.
So whether “the horse” here has indeed been led to water and whether the horse did or did not drink … becomes merely a matter of taking commenter Ecker’s word for it. Readers are at liberty to make of that what they will.
But again, since cult-members are almost by definition unable to see their own cultiness, and presuming from extant material that commenter Ecker does indeed display some of the core characteristics, then commenter Ecker is not a candidate for the clear and rational exchange of ideas. The BigTrial site comment-record offers a great deal to consider in that regard and Mr. Cipriano has put himself on record about that matter rather clearly.
And JR (at 1206AM today) has – who can be surprised? – now classified D’Antonio as one of that ever-increasing conspiracy of persons (including SNAP and still-Father Doyle and so on) who are clearly in cahoots with the Church (since they don’t seem to buy JR’s stylings). I myself wonder if D’Antonio didn’t have access to information – perhaps in lawsuits or connected to sworn claims – or opinions by actually informed persons that led him to characterize JR’s claim in so tentative a way.
Being “pleasant” to (self-styled) victims seems to require buying the act or being tarred as a nasty ignoramus. That’s not how showbiz works – surely as accomplished a trouper and hoofer as JR should know that. But it’s a nice opportunity to trot out another wig.
Lastly, I would suggest that comments primarily relevant to what is being discussed on the Big Trial site belong on that site. Mr. Cipriano seems to be quite capable of dealing with the Big Trial site and commentary material.
How many were involved in the conspiracy to kill Julius Ceasar? How many were involved in the failed wolf's lair assasanation of Hitler? You don't have to be a paranoid, if at times people do conspire. I don't know D'Antonio yet Doyle and SNAP support him. I know them to be fake etc. etc.
Hey you've called me every name in the book. Your opinion means less than nothing to me.
What I would like you to rationalize for me is how 2 victims represent 1,250,000,000.
If I say an average Catholic family is 4. 4 into 1,250,000,000 = 300,000,000 families represented by 2 Catholic victims. And no other victims to be seen. Please some math person give me the odds of that being possible, statisticly. More miraculous than a …(name your myth).
Listen up fellow Children of the Corn. Is it just me or where's Thebigtrial" gone. I googled and gone!!!!!!!
In regard to the BigTrial material, Mr. Cipriano’s comment speaks for itself.
JR’s of 618PM (lets’ charitably not-notice the one from 814PM) doesn’t quite hold together. While there are conspiracies in the world, that simple fact doesn’t eliminate the reality of paranoia (a term from the psychological universe of discourse, by the way … still waiting for an answer to my question here). Especially when there is an rational explanation which might handle the issue: in this case, that certain persons may well have information that causes them to doubt JR’s core victimization claims in whole or in part.
Also, that the paranoia would become operative through JR’s realizing that his allegations were less than he claimed and thus always suspecting that somebody somewhere knows that, rendering him acutely sensitive-to the possible exposure of what he has done. Sort of the old Cask of Amontillado dynamic.
Also note the (il-)logic: JR knows Doyle and SNAP are conspiring, and they support D’Antonio, so therefore … and the logic – such as it is – trails off neatly with that “etc.etc”. Which trail-off – nicely – relieves JR of the risk of having to follow his ‘logic’ all the way through to its embarrassing conclusion.
There are quite a few names in “the book” – and more in the DSM – so JR greatly exaggerates on that score. Perhaps he also exaggerated in the original allegations – it seems a rather deep-seated habit.
Since I am not trying to engage JR but merely demonstrate various elements and bits that his material so vividly exemplifies, then I am not concerned one way or the other about his opinions, which he is welcome to have and own and keep.
I can’t make any sense at all out of either a) the point or b) the math in the rest of the comment, and thus I can’t make sense of what we are supposed to be ‘helping’ with here.
And yet somehow it all makes sense to JR; so much so that he can conclude that whatever he is talking about here would require either a miracle or a myth to be possible.
Perhaps there is also a rather large conspiracy of persons trying to make his material look incoherent. Perhaps they or at least some of them are even able to influence his mind and make him put some of this material up. Perhaps he is actually an agent of the Church in deep-cover mode, employed (the settlement being a sly cover for his remuneration as a deep-cover agent) by the Church to make genuine victims look bad. Very very bad. Perhaps then he is indeed having a very successful career. And will get to keep the wig collection too.
So many possible conspiracies.
Listen . If you want to pretend I wasn't abused when Cardinal Mahoney and The head of the Marianist order in California. admitted I was and wrote me apology letters for my abuse.
I have a settlement and the letters. What have you got?
First of all, ad hominem attacks opening up with "goof balls". When I for one never ever said I believed or disbelieved Billy Doe.
Yea I'm goofy when someone consistantly says I've taken a position I have not taken in order to be angry with me. I don't quite know what to do with that brand of crazy.
Not gone.
http://www.bigtrial.net/
I know it's there but I used ,till yesterday, reach it by googling, the big trial and up it would come. now it's not reachable that way. odd.
I see only one hyperlink put up by JR (Jun 21st, 203PM; for the law-dot-com article) and it is still accessible on the web. The BigTrial site is one I access daily and I have never found it unavailable. So “odd” doesn’t really cover it here. Incompetence? Some form of other-than-truthiness? A conspiracy by the Beasley Firm’s IT techs who have identified JR’s computer and are blocking it? Who knows?
I am not ‘pretending’ about anything; I am simply pointing out the difficulties with establishing the credibility here. Nor do characteristics established in the record of the relevant material in this matter justify much confidence.
Whether JR does “have” those “letters” is not something anybody else – in the internet modality – can really know. We have to take JR’s word for it. That’s a decision for each reader.
If form letters were sent out by the AOLA and the Marianist Order as part of the settlement requirements, then I’m not overly impressed. What we would have with the letters is the same thing we have with the settlements themselves: forced by the legal logistics to resolve the 500-plus Plaintiff lawsuit out of court (rather than defend against 500 Plaintiffs’ allegations individually and almost simultaneously), and then also having to send out “letters”, the Party/Parties Defendant opened the door for allegants/claimants to then come back (after the checks were safely cashed) to claim that the settlement – and these letters, presuming that they exist – ‘prove’ the truthiness of their claims (and therefore no further analysis of their claims and allegations need be conducted, thank yew very much).
So then: “what do [I ] have?” Well, I have a whole lotta material from the proponent of this question that doesn’t inspire much confidence as to truthiness and reliability.
But Jeff Anderson’s sue-the-bishops strategy, foretold by Doyle and Lawyer Mouton in their 1985 paper, was a shrewd bit of legal strategizing indeed. And some people made a whole lotta bucks off it. Who says Anderson isn’t a very good lawyer?
To borrow from Gilbert&Sullivan: “It was managed by a job, and a good job too!”.