The dark side of Hollywood: child sex abuse
Thanks to the media, even a mere accusation of sexual abuse committed by a priest long ago will irreparably shatter the livelihood of the priest. No matter how flimsy or how long ago the accusation, a priest is always presumed guilty in the media, and his reputation is destroyed as the accusation is splashed across the front pages and the media floods the story with coverage.
But when it comes to Hollywood stars convicted or accused of abusing children, the convictions or accusations are largely ignored by the media and then quickly forgotten and can sometimes even be a boon for their careers. Consider these Hollywood celebrities and the price they paid for abusing children:
The funny woman of NPR
Paula Poundstone
What audiences may not know is that on June 27, 2001, Poundstone was arrested and charged with three counts of committing a lewd and lascivious act on a girl under the age of 14 and one count of child endangerment.
To avoid jail time, Poundstone pleaded no contest to one count of felony child abuse and a misdemeanor count of "inflicting injury upon a child." (The New York Times cited a Los Angeles Assistant District Attorney who said the misdemeanor charge involved "inappropriate touching.")
The court records were sealed, but naturally there was no outcry by the media over the secret proceedings or demand that the records be made public.
Puff the Magic Pardon?
Peter Yarrow
However, Yarrow only served three months in prison for the molestation. And in the waning days of his administration in 1981, President Carter magnanimously pardoned Yarrow. (That's right. A president pardoned a convicted child molester.)
Yarrow's career continued unabated by his pesky conviction on child molestation charges. (Yarrow even performed publicly between his arrest and his sentencing!) Peter, Paul, and Mary continued to enjoy several years of touring to adoring fans, and Yarrow even pursued solo projects including one ironically of a children's book.
Woody's case in focus
Woody Allen
The precise truth may never be known, but none of the compelling evidence in the case has hindered Allen from continuing to be one of the most heralded directors in Hollywood. Tinseltown continues to shower Allen with awards year after year, and actors fall over each other in hopes to star in one of his films.
Interestingly, one of Allen's most successful films is Manhattan, whose plot revolves around a divorced writer who dates a 17-year-old teenager. And right on cue, Hollywood showered the ironic film with numerous awards.
Granting coveted awards in Hollywood to accused child molesters in nothing new. In a previous post, we noted that Kevin Clash, the actor behind the popular Sesame Street character Elmo, won three Emmy awards even though at the time he had been accused by four different individuals of abusing them.
Then there are the well-known cases of Michael Jackson and Roman Polanski, whose careers were wildly successful following child sex abuse charges against them.
Meanwhile, it has been nearly three years since popular 1980s actor Corey Feldman boldly declared:
"I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia. That's the biggest problem for children in this industry … It's the big secret."
Yet the mainstream media continues to remain deafeningly silent about sex abuse in Hollywood today, busy as they are with issues of abuse in the Catholic Church many decades ago in the 1960s and 1970s.
5 "Hollywood" names. 5,that's all you've got? You left out Spencer Tracy (many rumors about Spence) and Lex Barker, a former '50's Tarzan acused very credably by Cheyrl Crane, Lana Turner's daughter.
3 found guilty, Poundstone ;Yarrow and Polanski. 1 found not guilty, Jackson and 1 not charged Allen. That's 5 compared to 10's of thousands priests who have never faced criminal charges for their more than real child rapes. Oh yea Hollywood trumps catholicism in the child abuse race.
Sorry I left out Kevin Clash. ( I don't know whether he's gone to trial I don't think he has.) That's 6 compared to thousands of priests and only 3 of those 6 found guilty.
Jim, you did not do very well in math did you?
Hollywood is intensely small coprared to the 1.2 billion member Catholic church.
And in other news….
It aint that small. Val
Gee! It's hard for me to think of a puppet voicer from Baltimore who worked in D.C. as "Hollywood" exactly.
So does "Hollywood include all show biz every where?
If you judge the church's abuse perps statistics by the number of attendees the church attracts; why not judge Hollywood by the number of attendees they attract. Why it probably is well over 1 and 1/4 billion world wide.
So how's my math now?
Except Jim there are now about 45,000 priests in the US alone today and over the last 50 years there were hundreds of thousands of priests. How does that compare to the number of movie stars?
And you miss the point of the post entirely: nobody cares if movie stars molest kids because this all NOT about sex abuse but hating on the Catholic church.
JR’s “math” is what it is and it can join the list of his other issues. But the sly tossing-up of “10s of thousands of priests who have never faced criminal charges for their more than real child rapes” is clearly a howler. Unless perhaps he has documentation or some form of explanation for the “math” of it. But the only listing of formal allegations that has been compiled (the Jay Reports) indicate no more than eleven to twelve thousand allegations and of those rape was among the least numerous claims.
Talk about the beam in your own eye, Pub rather than the mote in mine. Try following the tenents of christ. It could be a real break through for you.
11 to 12 thousand victims world wide? I don't think so.
All sexual actions with a minor is rape you dip.
The MSM is Hollywood, all acting, all fake – all the time. They won't investigate themselves or their lackeys. The double standard has always been the left can do anything it wants, and it's glorified, but, the right is demonized just for not being left.
Speaking of math, how many Catholic priests, over the course of 2000 years, globally, have been convicted of minor abuse? Hollywood, as an industry, has been around about 100 years, how many sexual abuse scandals, proportionally, did/do they have? And, then, compare all the good the Church has done for children with Hollywood's treatment of children.
No one serious or logical would attempt such a ridiclous comparison.
It's funny how some people choose to worship their golden calf.
How would you have known about the above listed performers if not for the media and the reportage by the victims?
The right is demonized for behaving demonically. Patting oneself on the back for being a follower of jesus while behaving like a follower of satan is demonic.
Hollywood has raised tens of millions for children's charities. The church has Tuam.
The reason why more abusive priests have not been brought to justice is the very reason your church and others are in a scandal. The abuses of privilage and power.
Ed,not all those 45,000 priests were rapists of children. about 7% or less were. If you take all the Hollywood/ show biz personalities. 6 or 7 people do not equate to 7%. of that population.
P.S. Wasn't Jimmy Saville a knight of Malta? The John Jay reports were funded by the church were they not?
Tuam is another antiCatholic hoax, same as most of the allegations against priests.
Saville was an 'entertainer', not a priest.
[edited by moderator]
Got any proof of all that love (aka money) Hollowoody gives to childrens charities?
Catholic Church has plenty of evidence, of both their charity, worldwide, and of the bias/bigotry practiced against them, for thousands of years.
[edited by moderator]
What does this have to do with WWII?
Readers may now easily compare the factual points I raised in my comment of the 1st at 1106PM and the response JR has made on the 2nd at 1031AM.
Rather than try to defend his assertion, he will quote scripture (a pericope which neatly makes JR’s little fact-y problem merely “a mote”). And tells me to “follow the tenents of Christ” [sic]. Which of those tenets would those be? And of what relevance to JR’s failure to substantiate his assertion?
Then he moves matters to “world wide” [sic] and offers merely his ‘thought’ that there are more than those 11 to 12 thousand ‘victims’ formally recorded in the Jay Reports (had he forgotten that the Jay Reports only dealt with the Church in the United States?). And if the numbers don’t support his assertion as to the United States, then what are the odds that his surmises about “world wide” are any more reliable?
And then, lastly, two points relevant to the last sentence in that comment.
First, there were 11 to 12 thousand allegations, very very few of which were ever proven or even tested in open court (the torties used the Anderson Strategies to preclude that threatening possibility) and now those stories and claims are under a seal of secrecy (demanded by the torties).
Second, his assertion that “all sexual actions with a minor is rape” is not legally accurate. Or perhaps he could cite the legal source for his assertion? This bit seems on a par with his other ‘rape’ definition issues. Or has he once again confused ‘statutory rape’ and actual ‘rape’? And that is an issue that has been dealt with at length more than once here.
And the concluding epithet is so nicely pitch-perfect.
Statutory rape isn't called rape for nothing, princess. Words in law mean much.
Statutory rape is rape because if you have sex with a minor; that minor is not capable, according to law, of making any adult choice; because they are children. No contracts. no sex. no autonomy.
LDB isn't funny how the faithful shore up their caving "reality"? By changing science to prove their magic is the one true magic that works.
Well history along, with science, is not your forte.
The catholic church has only been operative as such for about 1700 years; not "thousands of years".
Yes the church has done world wide charity; as the richest religion on the planet they should be expected to. But it has invested more time money and attentionin making sure the institution itself remains at the core of power.
"Bias/bigotry practiced against them"? You mean like when the church killed the Gnostics and other "heretics" Albegensians; protestants etc.?
Or when the church called for the Crusades and we invaded Jerusalem and the muslims didn't like being invaded so they fought back? (So very much like today.)
Or the expulsion of the Jews from Spain?
Or the destruction of the Mayan written lanquage by bishop Landa?
Or the trials and house imprisonment of Gallileo?
The simple fact that so many child rapists, Maciel (and in Saville's case he was also a necrophiliac) receive such honors in your religion, should tell you something about corruption in the house of the lord. I know you'll blame the gay priests for this. you blame everybody but the institution itself that's been in charge these 1700 years.
If the fish stinks, it's from the head.
Goodness, sir, your ignorance of history is stupefying. I'll just cover two.
1. The Muslims invaded Catholic Jerusalem and with the help of the Jews began the ethnic cleansing of the Holy Land (not all Jews were complicit but, sadly, many were). Finally, in the face of rape, murder, looting and burning the Church called for a Crusade to fre the Holy Land. The Crusade failed, of course, but the effort wa a noble one.
2. The Jews were made to leave Spain by the rulers, Isabella and Ferdinand, in 1492. That may seem a very harsh thing in your eyes but you also have to read the reasons why they were expelled. You will find the documentation in the historical writings of William Thomas Walsh and others. Also, it was the Church that demanded that the Jews be protected during the expulsion, decreeing that anyone who hurt them would be excommunicated, and the Church did this despite what many Jews had been doing to destroy the Church in Spain.
If you are going to spew out "facts", make sure you have ALL the facts first.
JR did not say "foreigners should butt out". JR said you should butt out Mr Harris.
I suppose you don't believe in evolution or the Big Bang either? How about the earth being flat? You may not believe in that. You do live in Australia after all. But then again: With faith all things are possible.
Really amazing! What reactionary nonsense.
I don't slander and oppress anybody. You do.
So not only butt out but shut up while you do it.
Deal with the mess your church has made in your country.
Deal with the mess SNAP has made in your country. I'm dealing with the mess it's made in mine.
Your pope is a fraud. As is your entire take on this issue.
As far as loser P goes: "Antics"? i provide antics? While you provide what? Sober reasoning with your anti-evolution lunacy?
If you want to pretend you represent gravitas in your delusions; feel free. But you are about as worth being taken seriously by the sane world as Delphin is. Which is not at all.
Your church has been dealing with priests sexually abusing minors since it's early years,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ1_aQz6IuU Yet you still pretend it's all a fantasy on the part of victims. Somebody in the church was taking our rapes seriously for a thousand plus years with no public trials. Not seriously enough to stop the abuse but more seriously than the faith filled here do.
Your version of history is bunk. Can no one, but the Australian Mr. Harris, give their real names when they post? Come out of your closets.
Tuam has, as yet ,not been investigated fully.
Let's reserve words like "hoax" and see what the governmental investigation brings to light. How quickly the myth believers are to call out, hoax. You want hoaxes? Look to your own house first.
Delphin's post of July 2, 2014 at 1:32 pm is the best!
Yup
While not addressed to me, the JR comment of the 3rd at 1015AM has a couple-three howlers that really can’t be allowed to pass.
The Catholic Chruch “as such” has been “operative … for about 1700 years” … ? What does “as such” mean and is he saying that for the first three centuries of Christianity there was no Church? (A position which echoes the old Protestant bit about “primitive Christianity” being undermined or taken over or subsumed-into the ‘Catholic Church’ only with Constantine’s legalization of Christianity (it was a subsequent emperor who made Christianity the religion of the Empire).
Even if we accept as accurate JR’s as-ever unsupported assertion here (i.e. that the Church – despite its charitable activities – “has invested more time money and attentionin making sure the institution itself remains at the core of power” – then the question remains: what alternative does JR envision here? That an institution not ensure its own survival in order to continue its good works? Or, rather, do we simply see here yet another example of convenient plop-tossing?
The various heretics constituted a threat to the civil as well as the religious order and it was the civil authorities (such as in Spain) as well as the Church, who realized what fragmentation would result if various revolutionary sects were allowed to expand their influence. What alternative did JR have in mind here?
And it appears that JR is under the impression (or thinks he surely ‘knows’) that the rampant Moslem militarysurges from the 7th to 10th centuries did not take place and they were simply minding their own peaceful business in Jerusalem and other places native to them. But the Muslims were not at all native to North Africa, Spain, Asia Minor, the Middle East (as we would call it today); and while ‘people of the book’ were spared the worst of the Muslim approach (although higly taxed), ‘pagans’ were ruthlessly eliminated.
So what then does JR make of the following historical list?
Jordan, the Lebanon, and Palestine – 630; Syria – 637; Armenia and Egypt – 639; North Africa, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco – 655 to 665; Spain – 711; Southern France – 732; Southern Italy – 827; Sicily – 850; the borderlands of Turkey – 900; Georgia – 1050; Central Turkey – 1070; Greece – 1300; Bulgaria, Serbia, and the Balkans – 1400; Constantinople – finally fell in 1453. And perhaps JR forgot that less than 100 years before the Independence of the United States they were turned back at the gates of Vienna in 1685?
All the great initial Patriarchates of early Christianity except Rome (arguably a later Patriarchate) fell to the Muslims.
So much for Abusenik self-serving cartoon history.
And then – donning the Wig of Sober and Patient Judgment – JR doth declaim that “Tuam has, as yet, not been investigated fully”. My, how sober and mature and prudent. And how many – may I ask – of the abuse claims and stories and allegations have been “investigated fully”?
But what has been established is that the government has been responsible for funding the orphanages (since, perhaps, they provided a public service). So we shall have – in essence – is the government investigating itself; readers may consider how that might turn out.
The word “hoax” is certainly not alien to what we have been seeing, although it is not yet demonstrably the final word on the subject.
Do we want hoaxes closer to home? Let’s look to the Stampede first.
As if we hadn’t discussed this ‘statutory rape’ matter before and in depth and at length, we simply get (the 3rd, 241PM) precisely the same 3×5 bit that we always get when the subject of defining ‘rape’ comes up. But this is a vital play-block in JR’s little mental construction of his mental block-pile (i.e. that whatever he experienced was ‘rape’ so he was ‘raped’), so it has to be protected no matter what.
Specifically – and to repeat prior material: ‘Statutory rape’ is indeed called ‘rape’ for nothing – because actions which do not constitute ‘rape’ if they take place with other adults are termed ‘statutory rape’ merely and solely because they take place with minors (which includes but does not totally comprise ‘children’).
Thus too, JR’s legal ‘theory’ here is now confronted with the fact that ‘statutory rape’ in various jurisdictions can be charged as a misdemeanor. So either a) we have some States charging actual ‘rape’ as a mere misdemeanor or else b) the term ‘statutory rape’ is a misleading misnomer which includes activities which do not rise to the level of actual rape and thereby do not constitute a felony.
Then – ever a giveaway with this commenter – the queasy gender-bending epithet.
And the rest of JR’s legal block-playing can be set aside until he produces a coherent explanation of the statutory rape-as-misdemeanor problem (all of which here repeats material I put up a while ago on this subject).
Then – with his usual conversation mate ‘Dennis Ecker’ out of action – JR will engage in a tad of histrionic tete-a-tete with LDB about how “the faithful shore up their caving ‘reality’” (echoing my point recently made on this thread about the evolutionists).
And – in a marvelously incomprehensible bit of ploppy blabber – the substance of “the faithful” shoring-up a “caving reality” is that we are engaging in “changing science” … in what way are we “changing science”? Or are we merely pointing out new developments that require changes in current scientific conceptions? Or in JR’s cartoon universe are these two possibilities the same thing in one large undifferentiated mush-bowl of incomprehensible conceptual mush (suitable only for plop-tossing by the handful)?
Or perhaps JR already has some substantive theoretical refutation or response-to some of the profound scientific issues and problems with Darwinian/neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory? That would be nice.
Of course Muslims aren't human. Neither are Communists; Athiests ;Protestants or Jews. No need further to even speak to those lesser animals. Happy now?
Muslims at the gates of Vienna? Sounds like a painting by Goya.
Let's see if I can "wing" what follows:
USA supports the Saudi royal family – 1920's till forever
The creation of the state of Israel by the USA as a "client" state (read colony or weapons testor or pied a terre for the USA in the middle east.) in Palestine. 1947
The USA through the CIA topples the democratically elected government of Iran (because said government had nationalized it's own oil) and establishes it's puppet Shah Palevi – 1953.
The USA supports financially with a monthly cheque from the CIA, Saddam Hussien, a known fascist,(Bath party) as leader in Iraq -1960's on
The USA supports and supplies money and weapons to Iraq for the blood bath that was the war between Iraq and Iran -1980's
The USA produces the gas weapons used to kill the Kurds by Iraq.- 1980's
USA encourages the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait through it's ambassador in Iraq -1990
The USA almost invades Iraq in the Gulf War of the '90's. Establishes a no fly zone and an embargo which kills tens of thousands of Iraqi children . Drops radioactive bombs, made with depleated uranium from our nuclear reactor wastes, on Iraq, a war crime.
USA invades Iraq with "shock and awe" (read slaughter and war crimes) because Iraq has "weapons of mass destruction" that were known not to exist well before the illegal invasion.-2003.
The invasion of Afganistan by the USA even though it was Pakistan's secret service leadership that funded 9/11. – 2000's
Need i go on. If I was wrong with dates; my apologies. Like I said I "winged" this.
And now we are supposed to fear The Muslim Horde riding on Arabian steeds into st. Patricks cathedral on Broadway?
America is so fear based. Fanned by right wing pundits for the benefit of war profiteers and called "Patriotism". Sad. Sad. Sad.
The Arabs already own huge chunks of America. Why would they blow up what they own?
America set the standard for Islamofacism by destroying democratically elected governments and allowing reactionary religion the high ground. (Your exact goal here.) You reap what you sew.
The USA has been sewing the whirlwind and then is shocked when it reaps it.
Happy 4th of July. USA! USA! USA! Hoo Yah!
There does seem to be an element in every society that if you tell them they've been harmed, true or no. You can aim them to kill any where and anyone you've deemed: Today's Enemy! The Enemy du jour. It's Sociopathic. It's Psychopathic. all that blood and carnage; sadness and horror to be friends the minute somebody in charge says 4 little words. The war is over.
And tells his/her people it's time to be friends again.Time to practice being friends again. Orwell said it all.
So if somebody takes over a place that's our business to change it by taking over and holding it and keeping it? Till we are sure it's completely meshed into our empire. If we want to? What gives us the right to do what we've been doing since WW2? Who died and made us the demonic god of here and now?
Happy Fourth of July!!
Keep up the good work.
Possibly JR realized he had no answers to make to the problems noted in my comment of the 3rd at 1009PM and the 4th at 1014AM.
Thus on the 4th at 1211PM we are simply proffered a hash of distractions and evasions.
I neither said nor implied anything about Muslims, especially about their being human or not-being human. I was simply pointing out the faulty elements in his assertion about the Muslims and the Crusades. He avoids his own problems and attempts to create a position that is certainly not mine, and then has a pillow-fight with his own phantasm.
All he can say about Jan III Sobieski’s defeat of the Muslims at Vienna is that it “sounds like a painting by Goya” – a distraction and evasion right out of the Playbook. (Or should we be impressed that JR even knows who Goya was?)
But then he will “wing” a whole bunch of stuff, none of which has any relevance to my correction of his material. Why waste the time on it?
It would be very difficult for the USA or any other nation or person to be “sewing” the wind, would it not?
On the 4th at 347PM we get a different type of distraction: the sentence make no sense as written. Thus the first sentence in the comment fails (intentionally or otherwise). Then a stab at epithet deployed in the style of psychological diagnosis. Then – apropos of nothing that has been established in the prior sentences – the concluding declaration that “the war is over” … what war?
Then 10 minutes later at 357PM we get the creation of another phantasm with which JR can create a problem that wasn’t raised in order for him to avoid having to face all the problems with his material that actually were raised: He attempts to apply to the Crusader era the diplomatic approaches of the present day.
Thus he is apparently going-for the idea that since the contemporary USA should not be going around trying to “change it” when “somebody takes over a place” then … what? What relevance does this have for the historical question of the Crusades?
And does he realize that in order to try to make this approach work, he has had to admit that the Moslems did indeed “take over a place”? (And more than a few places, as the list in my comment indicates.)
But in the period of the later Dark Ages and the early Medieval era, religion rather than national-polity was a key defining dynamic in ‘international’ affairs, and the Christians felt that they had a rather clear stake in the Holy Places and the ancient Christian Patriarchates (which antedated the Muslims themselves by some centuries). Thus even by today’s standards, the Holy Places and ancient Patriarchates were not some vague and alien bits of land with no substantial connection to the Christians.
So once again we wind up with nothing except a number of pixels expended over issues of no relevance (in order to avoid actual issues).
Listen you low I.Q.ed chump, I've owned a Grant Wood painting.(That I paid $1 for)
I've owned John Marin drawings. I know from art. Auction houses have asked me my opinion on art.( Bonhams , L.A.) So you can kiss my southern hemisphere. Pompous t%@d!
If the Muslims behave badly that's your excuse for us to behave badly?
Readers are welcome to make what they will of the assertions about art (the 5th at 1057AM) and the marvelously un-ironic (if also probably unintentional) self-revelations.
Of more substance is the excuse then proffered about the Crusades: “if the Muslims behave badly that’s your excuse for us to behave badly?”.
First: I don’t see where “us” comes into it here. Just who is this “us” connected in any relevant way to the Crusades? Catholics? American Catholics? Americans generally? Or is JR merely pillow-fighting with his own material about contemporary foreign policy and politics, rather than sticking to the actual focus on the Crusades?
Second: since the “Muslims behaved badly” by invading territories not native to them, then are we to presume that the only appropriate response by those who were historically connected to those territories was … to do nothing?
And further that to do something in response to such invasive aggressions was somehow to be unjustifiably aggressive? (Which rather nicely echoes the contemporary Abusenik bit that if the Church defends itself against the Stampede and the allegations then the Church is ‘attacking’ the allegants.)
Third: the military reality of the Crusader era was that a militarily unripe West mounted responsive campaigns against one of the most competent and successful militaries of its era, i.e. the Muslim armies.
Everyone needs to stop trying to talk to Mr. Robertson and simply pray for him. His hate for the Catholic church is palpable through the screen. He will not be swayed no matter what is said.
Elizabeth on the 6th says that we should not talk to Mr. Robertson and just simply pray for him, because his hatred of the Catholic church is palpable. Well she has actually raised a very good question, which is central to the whole Abuse Matter. Should we simply forgive and pray for those who slander and oppress us. Or should we speak up in our own defence? Incidentally Mr. Robertson is articulating the bigoted opinions of thousands like him. Do we care what others think of our Church and our clergy? Should we choose not to speak up then half the population will interpret our silence as being guilty.From our childhood we are conditioned to protest loud and long when falsely accused. Silence in the face of a slanderous attack is usually seen as weakness at best, or an admission of guilt at worse. This is the way of the world. Anyway I think that God helps those who try to help themselves. Also there is a bigger picture here for all discerning people. Western justice is all that stands between us and barbarism. The Abuse Matter has been facilitated by a derangement of western justice. Not to mention a derangement of our free press, and that has enabled a witch-hunt. So I admire those who argue back against Mr. Robertson.
There are always faint hearts who are easily swayed by dubious facts and opinions. So unless his rhetoric is challenged, it will stand as the last word.
Elizabeth, No one here is "trying to talk to" me (sic)" about anything. I don't hate the "Catholic" church I do a hate liars and obfuscaters and swindlers and child rapists and their enablers. If they equate to the entire Catholic faith, which they don't I hope, then I don't hate the church. If they are your entire faith. Then you are right about me "Swayed" to what?
Pope Frank meets the heterosexualized hand picked "survivors" to "beg forgiveness" today or yesterday. Yet no mention of amelioration of damages done all your victims. You want forgiveness without fixing the wrongs done. Maybe you should pick a dead victim (no suicides of course) and make her/him a saint on the quick. So cheap and such good pr.
Strange that Peter Yarrow's and Roman Polanksi's and Woody Allen's careers do not seem to have suffered. Not sure Rolf Harris will be so lucky.
Peter Yarrow's served his time and so far, as far as we know, hasn't re offended.
Polanski's in Europe and as far as I'm concerned he's an offender.
Allen has never been charged. Therefor he is innocent untill proven guilty.
More interesting bits on the 7th at 532PM:
The use of “sic” with either brackets or parentheses is supposed to indicate that the quotation is somehow flawed grammatically and the quoter’s use of “sic” indicates that the quoter is aware of that problem. JR’s use of it here, however, is nothing but empty mimicry since the quoted phrase “trying to talk to me” is not grammatically flawed and thus there is no need for deploying the “sic”.
It is for the readers to consider whether anyone is or can-be ‘talking to’ JR, since the record demonstrates clearly that we are confronted with nothing but Playbook plop-tossing, resulting in no sustained exchanges on any particular topic; instead, we simply get bits tossed-up, and then any responsive comments are merely dealt with by Playbook distractions or evasions, until the next time the gambit is tried.
Which explains why there has been no (and most likely cannot be any) ‘discussion’ or progress : the Playbook plop-toss strategy precisely does not seek any advancement of the conversation or discussion (because that would require sustained analysis and examination); instead, the Playbook plop-toss strategy is designed to prevent progress and simply sustain continuous repetition of the original plop-tossed bits (perhaps on the queasy propaganda theory that if people hear or read the same thing often enough then they will simply pre-consciously assume that it must be true).
Then on to content here: the pious disclaimer that JR doesn’t “hate the ‘Catholic’ church” (notice the odd capitalization which also belies his actual attitude) but – yes – he just does happen to hate “liars and obfuscaters and swindlers and child rapists and their enablers” (which – yes – do happen to exist in great numbers in the Catholic Church, he would like us to assume).
Then – in a fine example of a giveaway – we are given the bit about the Pope meeting with “survivors”: it doesn’t mean anything because – doncha see? – they aren’t actually genuinely representative “survivors” (such, perhaps, as JR) but rather are merely “heterosexualized hand picked” (sic) “survivors” and so – but of course – the meeting is meaningless.
Frankly, I can’t see the Pope resolving this particular problem until he meets with JR. And on a larger scale, I can’t see the Pope ever resolving this meeting-with issue to the satisfaction of the various interests: the whole strategy on the Abusenik side is to whack the piñata; if the Church attempts to satisfy the complaints, then the complainants will simply find something else to complain about because that is their fundamental objective in the first place and always has been.
We have seen this dynamic in operation for quite a while now: even though the Church has instituted substantial reforms, and even though the numbers of allegations (let alone clearly-proven allegations) have dropped precipitously and substantially, yet we still see the ‘goal net’ continually being moved: if the Church has instituted written organizational policy reforms, then those are either fake or ineffective; if the numbers of present allegations drop, then there are all those hypothesized myriads of past un-reported cases; and on and on.
And – but of course – the ultimate piñata-whacking mechanism is that no matter what the Church does it still hasn’t succeeded in “fixing the wrongs done”. Although a) no way has ever been proposed of actually determining who is and who is-not genuinely a victim of “the wrongs done” nor b) have any Abuseniks volunteered a solution to this utterly vital problem. But why would they even want to try? To solve the ‘genuine victim’ problem would be i) to expose the whole Stampede for what it has always been and ii) to deprive the Stampede of its core pretext.
The meeting with survivors is meaningless if there is no compensation for ALL your victims as it's major outcome; rather than the pr clip for the papacy and Frank, it really was.
The church is no pinata. It's a well funded corporation. And corporations need be held responsibile for it's employee's actions while on duty.
No get out of jail card free; just because you worship imaginary beings.
So far you have not paid your injured. When will you compensate your injured?
Since you don't have to pay taxes don't you think you could at least do that?
May I offer you your church's latst scam on how to get more money. That dotty old ladies' money Pope Frank is like Mel Gibson. He's selling his star power. He's going to the religon tailors (televangelists) for a new suit of T.V. clothes (not the best metaphor. forgive me). .Frank's own pr advisors have a plan to take the viewing little old ladies for their cash just like Copeland and these other scum buckets do.
The pope wants to be the new bishop Sheen. He wants to make some money by selling himself as the star of a t.v. show. You don't believe me? Check this out because that's what's coming. A Cult of Personality just like Hollywood builds.: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/3563374432.html
We are praying for you Jim.
Stop the hate!
And now what?
Marvelously, JR informs us (the 8th, 424PM) that so-and-so “has never been charged. Therefor he is innocent untill proven guilty” (sic). And yet that does not appear to apply to priests, for whom any allegation is sufficient. And one might also point out that one is “innocent until proven guilty”, even (and especially) if one is charged. This was perhaps an unintentional giveaway here.
Then (the 8th, 440PM) we are merely informed Ex Wiggedra that “the meeting with survivors is meaningless” – waittt for itttttt – “if there is no compensation for ALL your victims” … and thus once again we merely get this old 3×5 card bit. Are there any of the 12 or so thousand allegants formally on record who did not get a check? Or are we here supposed to imagine those hypothesized (or fantasized) myriads of allegants who have not yet stepped up to the plate?
And how (to repeat the question for the umpteenth time) do we distinguish the genuine from the otherwise-classifiable?
Then the mere assertion that “the church is no piñata”. What then is it to be called when the claims cannot be litigated or even assessed and examined and yet billions have been paid out? But we do get the civil-law theory of Respondeat Superior (which has provided the legal basis for the 2002 phase of the Stampede. Yet – and again – it has rarely been established what “actions … while on duty” of its “employees” actually have been proven to have happened as claimed.
Then a couple of one-liners of the epithetical type.
Interspersed with the utterly unsupported mantra yet again: “when will you compensate your injured?”. To which – yet again – I would respond: when they can prove injuries suffered through allegations of priestly abuse. And does JR have any solution to the ‘proof’ part?
Then (the 8th at 417PM) JR simply puffs up the quantity of his material with a long but contentless (and for the purposes of this thread irrelevant) epithetical riff on what he thinks the Pope is up to. Which apparently works out to be some sort of “Cult of Personality” (as in Stalin or Mao – what “Hollywood builds” is movie-stars, which is not quite the same as the historical term “Cult of Personality”, which is built around political leaders, not movie-stars ).
But the linked-to article itself merely riffs on the backgrounds of those with whom the Pope met, with no actual indication of what the substance of the meeting was. So it’s just another Abusenik exercise in innuendo, as ever unsupported by any substantial information whatsoever.
Let me think, Why would the pope want to meet Copeland and Co.? To talk about 20,000 square foot houses? Maybe to work out the contradictions between catholicism and Calvin? To have the pope condemn them for their excess of greed? To pick their minds for skills to aid the poor? Gee! I don't know what they possibly could have talked about. Possibly the poverty of Jesus?
How dare you? I've never said someone is guilty simply because they've been charged in criminal cases .
Since the church ; the state; the insurors; the lawyers (at least the victims lawyers) and the victims do not want lengthy expensive trials (and jury awards) civilly. They have a grid on which information, research, psychological studies and personal histories of both accused and accusor and the number of accusations, against said accused, are examined. The evidence given by both sides is presented and believability is honed out from all of that information.
Yes, when groups settle cases they settle them all. So some frauds may have passed the lawyers screening and the shrinks screening and the insurors screening. But that's the cost of doing "business" when you employ; hide and enable child rapists.
That's not fair to you? Being raped as children was unfair to us. Consider the tiny fraction of false claims that pass the winnowing tests, to be the price you pay for not having to pay more through jury awards.
Think John Wayne.
I wish the RCC was a pinata! So that we could have fun smashing it open and gathering all of the treats that spill out. Once the fun was over, we would throw what's left of the pinata out with the trash. Catholicism and pinatas are very much alike in that they are both man-made diversions.
Amen and amen regarding "are both man made diversions".
I abhor violence. No smashing of anything but delusions on my part. Peace and love and justice to and for all.
P sets the rules for metaphor.
P sets the rules for who was abused and who wasn't with no proof on his part.
P says there's a stampede of victims and media even though he can provide no false claims or numbers for his invisible herd of false claiments.
If P's issue is a stampede of the media then only talk about the media's reportage not the victims who he has absolutely no information about. Saying we are anything with no info on us is ludicrous.
P everything you say about victims is "innuendo". You have no facts.
As far as the foreigner, Mr Harris of Australia goes: Butt out!
Pete I'm praying my atheist prayers to my atheist god for you too. No donation required.
JR on the 9th says that the foreigners should 'Butt out'. He obviously means to convey that the Abuse Matter is only the concern of U.S. citizens…. and therefore not the business of outsiders.
If only that were true……because if it were true then another foreigner, Pope Francis, would not be drawn into JR's phantasm of alleged cover-ups. But we know that JR will not hesitate to accuse anybody… if it will serve his purpose of 'keeping the ball rolling'. JR well knows that the Catholic Church is a universal church and that it's figurehead is Pope Francis. Smearing his reputation is really like whacking the pinata, in the hope that more goodies will fall into the greedy hands of the false accusers and their equally greedy lawyers.
Well, there was (and remains) a great deal of substantive material to which the Abuseniks might make such response as they can, between this thread and the immediately prior thread (the Darwin material towards the end there, plus the material available there for ‘Jack’ to return comment).
So what have we gotten? From ‘Jack’, nothing.
From the usual Abuseniks:
The (claimed) elite and professionally trained mind of LDB gives us what we have on the 9th at 1005AM. The first sentence slyly tries to move us quickly by a presumption that the Stampede has not used the Church as a piñata – but with no supporting explication (the Playbook requires that all such supported-explication be avoided, of course). This is reinforced by a subjunctive-mood imagining of what LDB would like to see happen if the Church were a pinata – which, marvelously, pretty well describes what actually has happened.
Then, in an effort to wrap the whole thing up with a catchy one-liner exit line, LDB winds up describing a piñata as a type of “man-made diversion[s]”. If he is referring to the actual piñata game, then it is so accurate as to be a truism; if he is referring to the metaphorical making of the Church into a piñata, then I could certainly agree that the entire Stampede has been constructed upon the many types of diversions now familiar to those who are keeping a Notebook on the Playbook.
And that’s all from the elite and professionally trained mind of LDB. As to the serious problems with his dearly-embraced Darwinian/neo-Darwinian theories, and the significance of such problems for matters relevant to this site and to Western and American culture and religion generally … nope, not a thing.
Let us not be further detained then.
But that then brings us to JR’s most recent profferings.
Apparently unaware of the problematic nature of the “diversions” trope, JR will (the 9th at 402PM) simply agree. But of course.
But then (the Wig of Bespangled Innocence) JR doth declaim that he doth “abhor violence”. Perhaps he doesn’t recall his statement of the 29th at 208PM on the immediately previous thread: “If I ever met P ( which will never happen) he deserves to get his A#% kicked.” And that’s just for the matter of physical violence; if we presume other types of violence – the violence done to rationality, coherence, accuracy and so forth, say for example – then the list gets much longer very quickly.
Then we get a list of the type of ‘violence’ he does go in for: the “smashing of … delusions”, which is precisely what I have been working on here in regard to the assorted and multiform Playbook manipulations in the service of a very premeditated bunch of illusions.
Then – also a good recommendation he might want to tape up on his mirror – “peace and love and justice to and for all”. Wouldn’t that be very nice if the Abuseniks began to take all that seriously?
And on the 9th at 1212PM JR proffers a bill of indictment (a curious style for this commenter since extended categorization and recitation of points is not demonstrably his style of processing at all):
Apparently it is I who “sets the rules for metaphor”. Aside from the fact that there is no explanation of just what he means here (an example would have been very helpful – but it’s the Playbook scam precisely not to be very helpful when it comes to clear understanding). Further, he seems unfamiliar with the content and provenance of the general rules of metaphor (which I did not invent).
Apparently it is I who “sets the rules for who was abused and who wasn’t with no proof on his part”. First, it is a matter of readers having to work with probability rather than proof, precisely because the Anderson Strategies have made sure that the actual allegations and the supportive evidence (such as it may have been, if any at all) cannot be examined. Second – and again – I did not invent the “rule” that if one is to demand legal action against any Party for an alleged tort or crime, then one must provide proof that the allegated-against Party did actually commit the alleged tort or crime. Third, is it not the case here that it is actually the Abuseniks who have indeed invented their own “rule” to the effect that i) no allegation can be examined or questioned nor ii) may any allegant be examined or questioned nor iii) may any third-party reviewer raise doubts as to the credibility or probability of the allegation-story without incurring the epithetical status of one who ‘attacks victims’ … ?
Apparently there is no “stampede of victims and media” because I “can provide no false claims or numbers for his invisible herd of false claiments” (sic). Once again, since the evidence (or lack of it) contained in the allegation-stories have now been safely hidden from anybody’s review by the agents of the ‘victims’ themselves (as federal judge Schiltz revealed) then all we have to work with is probability, gleaned from such stories and material as we have. Let the readership judge whether any of the Abusenik material we have seen proffered on this site enhances a sense of the credibility and the probable veracity of their stories and claims.
Apparently “the victims” cannot be discussed since we have “absolutely no information about” them. Let us charitably presume that he meant that we have no information about their particular stories and allegations, since otherwise JR would be making the claim that since we don’t know these persons personally, then we can’t really rightly assess anything at all – which would be patently ridiculous.
With that charitable presumption made, we can then proceed: A) we have compiled a rather substantial and extensive list of Playbook gambits and strategies. Then B) we have even got a general template for all such allegations: the allegant was sexually abused (however defined) / as a child / by a priest / and the local authorities (clerical and civil) did nothing about it / and all of this was long long ago / and the current and cumulative history of the allegant’s life problems and personal problems are ‘proof’ that the priest did it (or else how could a perfectly normal and happy and high-functioning child devolve into the current condition of the allegant?) / and neither the allegation nor the causal link of ‘proof’ can be closely questioned or examined /and in consequence of all the foregoing, much money should be paid to the allegant forthwith / and profuse apologies must be made for not forking it over sooner / and everybody (but only if they are or were clerics, not the civil authorities of the era) who in any way played a role in the aforementioned cash not being forked-over sooner should be severely professionally – if not also civilly and criminally – sanctioned.
That’s the template and it contains a lot of information. Have any of the stories we have had a chance to examine on this site deviated from it in any substantial way? Are we dealing with just a whole lot of innocent coincidence here? Let the readership decide.
And – certainly in terms of the Abuseniks whose material we have been given the opportunity to examine on this site – it is not accurate at all to say that there is “no info on” them. Once again – and no competent clinician or even teacher would be unfamiliar with this – we see inveterate story-tellers who are somehow personally convinced that nobody but nobody could see through their antics and stories to grasp the operative dynamics underlying those antics and stories. Thus, if anybody does see through them, then those persons must be “sociopathic” and just making stuff up (because, as just noted, nobody but nobody could ever see through the antics and stories).
Thus JR’s subsequent and unsupported assertion that “everything you say about victims is ‘innuendo’” and “you have no facts” fails, most certainly in the case of any Abusenik material we have had the opportunity to examine here on this site.
And – in another lovely example of projection – JR delivers yet another candidate for taping-up on his mirror: “You have no facts”.
But we do have a whole lot of information that leads rather unavoidably toward a very low probability of credibility. And until we can conduct some substantive assessment of the allegations and claims of the “victims” (genuine and otherwise) then it is the Abuseniks and their torties themselves who have given-us and left-us-with “no facts”. And that can hardly be innocent coincidence.
And then – as if deliberately attempting to prove just how juvenile the Cafeteria Mentality can be – the comments of ‘Malcolm Harris’ are dismissed apparently because he is “of Australia” and therefore (waitttt for itttttttttt) he should just “Butt out!”. Can a more vivid example of juvenilia possibly have been provided to us here? (And yet Abuseniks will incessantly and loudly claim that nobody knows anything about them personally … go figure.)
The concluding bit – about an atheist praying to an atheist god – is impossible on its face, since ‘atheism’ by definition means ‘no god’. Or have I made up the rules about language?
You have no immagination when I say "athiest god" but you imagine a "real" god existing sans evidence. Oh O.K.! I'm the wacko.
Here's a gift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6mXLEKk&index=7&list=RDhJ1_aQz6IuU
I don't know how my last post wound up two thirds of the way above the comments I was responding too but it did. Can you fix that Dave?
Let me first note that in my immediately previous comment on this thread I had mentioned that ‘Jack’ had not made response on the previous thread. ‘Jack’ has and I have now submitted a comment in response to his response on the previous thread.
Here on this thread we get the 10th at 1157AM. “Why would the pope want to meet Copeland and Co.?” it might seem nothing more than an unnecessary question, since the Pope meeting with “victims” (genuine or otherwise) would have something to do with their claims, and since nowadays ‘meeting with victims’ (genuine or otherwise) of anything is considered to be de rigeur.
But actually, the question is posed here merely as a pretext for epithetical snark and that’s as may be. It does serve, however, to avoid and distract-from any actual substantive discussion – as so very often.
And then (1218PM) we get the Wig of Outrage (“How dare you?”). Which need only be left up where it was put.
Then this rather curious reference to a “grid”, possessed by “the church, the state, the insurers, the lawyers (at least the victims lawyers) and the victims do not want lengthy expensive trials (and jury awards) civilly”. (sic)
Which idea (with the exception of this term “grid”) doesn’t break any new ground here in light of numerous prior comments over time concerning the reasons for Parties seeking to avoid civil trials.
And both the Insurers and defense counsel and also the Anderson Strategy torties would have done their calculations, mathematical and legal-strategic, as to whether or not civil trials were the desirable way to proceed. As has often been pointed out, a) multiple-Plaintiff and multiple-allegations trials would be prohibitively expensive for the Party Defendant and its Insurers. And b) the Anderson Strategies surely did not want to subject to actual intense scrutiny the stories and allegations seeking money. Nor – as has also been pointed out in prior comments – would they want to put the allegants and story-tellers on the stand to face such scrutiny of their claims and stories (and surely we have seen here just how poorly such stories and story-tellers perform under even the modest examination that can be effected through comments on this site).
And I think by now we have established how careful one has to be with “psychological studies”, in light of such purportedly scientific and psychological studies as have often been churned out by ‘advocacy science’ sources that are either looking for funding or looking to support a predetermined conclusion or both.
And “personal histories” – especially when uncorroborated – cannot simply be accepted at face value (although we have seen even here what happens when such “personal histories” are questioned).
And as for examining cases of multiple allegations against the same individual – and I do not doubt that some few individuals were responsible for multiple offenses – reference sites such as Bishop-Accountability provide all sorts of possibilities for ‘specific details’ to be selected out of its treasure-trove of details for the purpose of putting together a more credible story against someone already accused. And I have already noted in my immediately previous comment the general template which all of these stories and claim seem to invariably follow. (To which list of elements I would also have to add: the frequently-seen but never-examined facts that i) reports were not made to the police at the time and/or ii) the presumption is slyly made that it was the Bishop – rather than the alleged victim or his/her parents – who should have called police.)
And, as I have said so often, if the Anderson Strategies worked right in any particular lawsuit, then the Church and the Insurers would have been dissuaded from going to trial simply on the practical grounds that it would be too expensive to conduct separate trials for each Plaintiff or each allegation. And if JR is going here for the implication that the Church and Insurer attorneys conducted a full if informal investigation of each allegation and Plaintiff and decided on their own that they were veracious and thus based their decision to avoid trials on that basis, then such an implication or inference is not probable; the simple problems of the practicalities of conducting so many individual trials would have been enough to dissuade from going to trial regardless of the probable veracity (or lack of it) of any specific individual story or allegation or claim.
Thus there were no trials simply on practical grounds, and thus JR’s statement as to what would have happened in an actual trial (i.e. that “The evidence given by both sides is presented and believability is honed out from all that information”) is precisely what did not happen.
And then and then but then: JR now allows as how “some frauds may have passed the lawyers screening” (sic) But – doncha see? – “that’s the cost of doing ‘business’ when you employ; hide and enable child rapists” (sic)
How perfectly and marvelously revelatory.
He uses the presumption that has yet to be proven to justify the Anderson Strategy Stampede dynamics.
And that presumption is itself grossly faulty because – as has so very often been pointed out – ‘child rape’ is one of the least numerous of the allegations made according to the compilation of formal allegations as pointed out in the John Jay Reports.
And there is no distinction made between i) ‘employing’ and ‘hiding’ and ‘enabling’ “child rapists” and ii) Church hierarchs respecting the rights of an accused (to the extent that those rights were and have been respected and will be respected in the future).
So thus in response to JR’s question – “that’s not fair to you?” – I would respond No, that’s not fair at all.
And yet we immediately then see – and yet again as ever and always – the inclusion of the presumption that precisely has yet to be proven (i.e. that “being raped as children was unfair to us”).
So, since there were no “winnowing tests” actually and demonstrably or even probably performed (which tests were allegedly ‘passed’ by each allegant’s claims and story or stories) then this assertion of JR’s also fails.
And ditto the sly presumption about “the tiny fraction of false claims”, which most certainly has yet to be proven.
And there exists no small possibility or even probability that if more of these cases had actually been contested in court cases in the first place, then the stories and claims and allegations would have fallen apart under examination and the Stampede might well have never achieved the ‘legs’ that it went on to achieve under the aegis of the Anderson Strategies.
Yes I did offer violence to you P after you've called me a liar and a thief; over and over and over again. Since I don't know who, or what, you are. I can't sue you in court for libel. Which I would do.
That's no excuse I should not have offered you violence in return for you smearing my character; morality and veracity.
I'd still love to kick your behind from where ever you are to Rome right up the Via Appia. But I wouldn't do it. That doesn't mean that you don't, still, deserve it being done.
Ah well, yet again (the 13th, 1016AM): JR was just – waitttt for itttttt – joking with the “atheist god” bit. Strange, since grammatically it seemed quite indicative. Perhaps this is a dynamic that was also operative in the story.
But – doncha see? – it’s not JR’s fault that people can’t tell when he’s just joking and when he’s being truthy.
One can only wonder how this bit would have played out on the stand.
O.K. There were no child rapes only teenage ones if any. perpetrated by your clergy Right?
And a huge mass, still unnumbered by you, of criminials attempting to or in fact committing perjury and fraud extortion according to your lies. Is that correct?
Well why don't you petition and organize your poor victimized church and make your complaint known to and have it investigated by the Federal government?
The U.S. Attorney General's office should be informed about these "crimes" of yours. Your local police should be informed.
Why, instead of posting your well worn fantasies here, don't you trot down to your local Federal building or police department with all the evidence at your disposal of Jeff Andersons' crimes and get him disbarred; and get all the fake victims, including me, arrested?
If so many crimes are being commited against your innocent church, why aren't you doing more about this international "fraud", that it seems only you know about, instead of flapping your gums here?
Here's the latest on Tuam http://www.thejournal.ie/tuam-infant-deaths-1563994-Jul2014/
At long last the anti-Catholic smear campaign has run out of steam. There’s only so many times you can recycle decades-old non-news.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the tip of the iceberg:
http://nypost.com/2014/07/15/dozens-of-disney-world-workers-arrested-in-child-sex-stings/
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-28326128
And a gazillion other examples. Happening now.
Mark, the difference between a Disney worker and a catholic priest is what? You tell me.
Also has the Disney corporation been proven to pass their abusive employees to Disneyland Paris or China; because that's what your church did with it's employees. That's the core of your scandal: the cover up.
As if we hadn’t gone over the Jay Reports at some length on this site, we get the comment of the 14th at 1121AM: “There were no child rapes only teenage ones” (sic). To repeat yet again: the category of rape – with no specifications as to age – was one of the smallest categories among the formal allegations listed in the Jay material.
So in response to JR’s question “Right?” the answer is No, wrong.
As to the question in his second paragraph, he would first have to demonstrate my “lies”. Although there is a high probability of relevance to his point about all the “criminials” who are “attempting to or in fact [are] committing perjury and fraud extortion” (sic). However I would refine that point by putting the action in the past-tense – i.e. that many have already done so – since the number of allegations has dropped precipitously. Perhaps JR has an explanation for that drop?
In regard to the (uncharacteristically logical) suggestion that the Church “have it investigated by the Federal government”: i) one doesn’t “have” the Federal government do anything – the government does what it wants to do and doesn’t do what it doesn’t want to do; and ii) if my theory of the interests behind the Stampede is correct, then the government is in this thing behind the scenes already (about which I have written at length in various comments over time here).
If JR can demonstrate what “fantasies” I have come up with then he is welcome to demonstrate that.
It is in the nature of a Stampede that things don’t work properly in all the dust and brouhaha. But then Stampedes are over, eventually, and once things have calmed down and the dust has settled, folks can come to their senses and see things more clearly. And that – as I have so often said – is why The Ball absolutely must Be Kept Rolling.
Meanwhile, I would say that the value of this site is that the material put up here can help clarify and perhaps even hasten the end of the Stampede, when The Ball is no longer Rolling and things become much clearer. How Abuseniks will feel about having a lot of material come to light – perhaps even material they imagined was safely buried beneath their torties’ secrecy-demands – will be an interesting thing to watch indeed.
Thus for JR’s rather uncharacteristically legal-ish argument, which may be his first ever.
Then on the 14th at 1201PM we get a marvelous bit for those who are clinically inclined. As so often, when caught in a howler, JR will work the Playbook. Here, in a neat and twisty try, JR will acknowledge that he did “offer violence” but then immediately excuse himself – because (doncha see?) he is a victim.
The record here will show that the only time the descriptors of “liar” and “thief” have been connected to JR is when JR has done so himself. And once again, being unable or unwilling to deal with the points I have actually made, JR will create phantasmic points I did not make and then have a pillow-fight with himself over those phantasmic points.
As to the bits in his own material that might rise to a claim of “libel”, perhaps he might want to consider the record he has compiled here. Whether pointing out dots that do not at all connect is definable as “smearing” a writer’s character – rather than such bits simply revealing a writer’s character – is a bit of authorial and literary philosophy he might wish to reflect upon. Or not.
Then readers can consider the last sentence of his comment and see if they can trace the path of the bouncing ball.
Thank you for commenting Publion.
". . . if my theory of the interests behind the Stampede is correct, then the government is in this thing behind the scenes already (about which I have written at length in various comments over time here).
If JR can demonstrate what “fantasies” I have come up with then he is welcome to demonstrate that." – Publion, July 17th at 8:09pm
Pubion asks JR to put up the 'fantasies' but in this case Pubion has just posted a fantasy in the previous sentence. Thank you, Publion, for the laugh.
*Warning* Watch out everyone for the shadowy 'government'! Whoever 'they' are and whatever 'branch' they work for! All we know is that they are lurking in the 'background'. You can bet though that the government's interest is to "Keep the Ball Rolling." *Warning*
But OK, this is just another one of Publion's, not 'fantasies', but 'theories'.These are not conspiracy theories, mind you, they are just theories that involve many disparate groups of many people working together on a global scale, often in a clandestine manner, all for the single purpose of making money (which they cannot do any other way) by attacking/damaging the catholic church, that they hate. Oh, and the Feds are, at least in part, behind it too!
Without going into the myriad details (conspiracy theories are always really intricate and detailed), just reject any Pubion 'theory' on its face. The 'theories' just require too much and have too many moving parts. Just as you know, without having to sift through all of the details, that the OJ murder defense theories are bunk, so too you can be certain that the catholic church defense is wrong. Look at Pubion, reduced to quibbling over the definition of 'rape' or 'adolescent', of all things. If some man sexually touched or kissed or did whatever sexually to your 10 or even 15 year-old's body by force or by trick, would you care about the precise legal definition of 'rape' or 'assault' or 'battery' in your particular state or country or would you just be upset and concerned that something really bad has been done to your 'child'? Oh wait, how would you know that your child was telling the truth? What if it was your son and he said that the priest tricked him into letting him touch and kiss his genitals? What proof could ever be offered of this crime? Would you go to the police right away with your no-possible-proof, he-said-he-said story?
Anyway, back to conspiracy theories. People just cannot organize (and stay organized and focused) and act in order to conspire to the scale involved in the catholic sexual abuse scandal like Publion writes that they do. Minimize and call it a sexual abuse 'matter' all you like, of course, but hopefully people will not soon forget what the church did when it was strong.
Publion has done work for JR here by putting the thoughts so close together in two sentences and 'demonstrating' how his 'theories' are just catholic-defense 'fantasies'.
LDB on the 18th refers to Catholic defence 'fantasies' when describing some comments made by Publion. It is clear that both commentors know more about the law than I ever will. Nevertheless will venture my layman's opinion on the subject of Catholic defence 'fantasies'. It is surely not a fantasy to say that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides, inter alia, that the following rights should apply to all.
1. The right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. 2. The right to a good reputation, and 3, The right to a fair trial.
It is patently obvious that anti-Catholic bigotry has resulted in the denial of all these human rights to our Catholic priests. A complicit mainstream media has destroyed their professional reputations by a relentless with-hunt. People have said to me "but aren't all priests pedaphiles". The entire profession has been demonized… so that any trial proceedings are prejudiced from the start. It is now almost impossible to find an unbiased jury. So that trashes their right to a fair trial. The prejudice also means that they are not presumed innocent, by the public or the jury, so out goes that particular human right as well.
If anybody imagines this is just academic theory, then I would point them to the conviction of Father Engelhardt, in Philladelphia, a couple of years ago. He was railroaded… because his human rights were disregared by all the church-bashing bigots.
So is it 'fantasy' to insist upon the preservation of our Universal Human Rights?
You lie about your lying. What a gift god has given us in you!
For convenience, let’s dispose of the usual bits first: on the 18th at 1025AM JR tosses up a one-liner that simply makes a further assertion (i.e. that now I “lie about [my] lying”). But not a single example or demonstration of this further assertion or of any of the prior assertions. So it turns out to be nothing more than a riff on “lying” without actually engaging or supporting his own assertion(s).
But the elite-educated and professionally-trained mind returns at full gallop: LDB weighs in on the 19th at 1012AM.
But he also simply makes an ungrounded assertion (i.e. that I have “just posted a fantasy”) and then – with ketchup-stained ballcap on sideways – snarks a ‘thank you’.
Having set off on that swampy path, LDB will then simply allow himself to riff on the trope of “conspiracy theory” generally (thus – but of course – avoiding any actual engagement with the rather sizable amount of discussion of the probability of government involvement that I have put forward over time here).
That takes us down to the marvelous self-exculpation in which LDB excuses himself from engaging in any of my actual material (i.e. “Without going into the myriad details”) while then indulging himself in his own characterization of his own take on material of mine which – but of course – he does not specifically engage.
LDB can do this – doncha see? – because “conspiracy theories are always really intricate and detailed”. So are legal issues, one might observe, even if one is presumably addressing someone allegedly possessing a law school education who has also been admitted to the Bar (although not to do trial-work … go figure).
And here we see, I think, echoes of the overall tortie legal attitude embraced in order to support the Abuseniks stories: details and complexities don’t matter / just go for the main elements we need / you won’t have to explain anything anyway so just be ready to keep repeating your story once it’s been put together and polished up.
Thus, LDB can simply advise or instruct “just reject any Pubion ‘theory’ on its face” (sic). Neato, is it not? LDB and the Abuseniks needn’t engage all that material; they can – doncha see? – simply reject it out of hand because it’s just a “conspiracy theory”. And back to the burgers and fries and supersized soda without further ado.
Curiously, LDB then seems to confess that “the ‘theories’ just require too much and too many moving parts” (although a trained legal mind might be presumably aware that it is in the nature of a conspiracy to have “many moving parts” and how many is “too many” when you’re up to big stuff?). But at any rate, I had said in my prior expositions of my theory about the Stampede that it is more of a “synergy” than a full-blown “conspiracy”. Need I explain the difference between the two terms?
Then we get – again from an allegedly trained philosophical and legal mind – the bit about problems with “definitions” being mere “quibbling”. And again, this is fatal stance for any competent philosopher or attorney to take. But again we see, I would say, an echo of the tortie skein spun to justify the Stampede stories: don’t worry about definitions / evil is evil / anything else is just thinking too much. It is on precisely such treacherously incompetent assessment and presumption that the Stampede has been built.
But we see more as well: LDB doesn’t take the point of view of a trained philosophical or legal mind but instead takes the point of view of an imagined victim (precisely what I have called the Victimist stance). And from this treacherously insufficient point of view – as is inevitable by its very dynamic – flows the consequence that actual ‘law’ is to be put aside so that ‘feelings’ can run the show.
And in response to his rhetorical question I would say that if ‘law’ is put aside, then we don’t even know if the crime was actually committed, and thus ‘feelings’ would flow to contaminate the process of assessment, and on top of that those feelings would not be based on any sufficient demonstration of the fact that the crime was actually and demonstrably committed.
Notice as well the treacherously sly conflation and substitution here: a) one is asked to imagine oneself as being the victim of the alleged crime, although one is not in such a position; and b) one is then asked to make a major decision on the basis of that phantasmagoric gambit, and that decision c) requires dispensing with the hard-won fundaments of Western law and jurisprudence.
Thus the allegedly trained legal mind at full gallop.
But – as so very often – LDB then steps on the gas and drives himself off his own cliff: he inadvertently proffers an explanation as to why parents didn’t go to the police in the first place, i.e. they didn’t believe their own kid’s story was sufficient to go to the police. (And yet in the standard Abusenik Playbook – tah dahhhhhhhhh! – the Bishops are invariably taken to task for not believing the stories and going to the police.)
Then – having inadvertently shot his own horse out from under himself yet again – LDB blithely proceeds (“Anyway, back to conspiracy theories”). But “conspiracy theories” was his point, not mine.
And in that regard we get nothing more than yet another unsupported assertion: “people” just can’t keep themselves sufficiently organized to pull off what I would call the Stampede so – doncha see? – there couldn’t be a “conspiracy” anyway (although I had used the term “synergy”).
And if I am correct in my theory, then it is not merely “people” who need to keep organized in order to keep the Stampede going … it is a government. And governments – in their complexity and power – are capable of far more focus and organization than mere collections of individual “people”.
Thus too: what do we “minimize” when there is i) so very little evidence and ii) so very high a probability of mischief on the part of the allegants and their tortie counsel and the various Abusenik groups?
Rather – I will say – it is the Abuseniks who indeed minimize … they minimize law and Law and the fundamental principles of Western law, in order to lubricate an outright regression to a more primitive type of ‘law’ from which the West so painfully developed its principles of law and Law.
And we cannot easily “forget” what hasn’t been proven or demonstrated in the first place. And so once again we see here the Abusenik gambit of presuming what has yet to be proven.
Then finally, “Publion” (spelled correctly for once in this comment) is snarkily asserted to have “done work for JR here” … “by putting the thoughts so close together in two sentences”, and yet we have seen here how the material I put up in my prior comment (and in all the many comments over time where I have discussed the elements and dynamics of government involvement) are precisely not what LDB would very much like them to be (i.e. “just catholic-defense ‘fantasies’”).
And instead my material demonstrates that LDB and JR have done a great deal of work by demonstrating so clearly the profound and treacherous abyss upon which their Stampede is and always has been so manipulatively based.
I'm 67 years old, pal. It's been a long time since high school for me. 50 years to be exact. The only person who's continualy imagining them selves as being in a high school cafeteria here is you. That you may juvenelize your opposition, While you "pose"/ Posture as the "adult voice of reason". Except actual adults accept responsibility they don't deny resposibility.
You ask me to point out your lies? I don't have that many years left.
If you are typing and posting you are lying.
Your major lie, of course, is La "Stampede". Your Ye Haw, Western allusions are supposed to make you appear what: "more honest" to the readership, Hoppy?
With out a shred of evidence of a conspiracy against your church; you battle on. Not against the "conspiracy" itself but against two of your church's victims who post here.
You produce insults by the kilo yet provide us with no evidence for anything you say and then you demean the evidence we've provided about ourselves.
Not surprising when, according to you, fantasy is fact and the imaginary, real..
I didn't figure out a real conspiracy like SNAP and Tom Doyle on my own, you know. Other people had figured it out before me. I just talk about it more.
And what do we get from JR?
He is a victim – of Time, if nothing else. It’s been sooooo long since high-school (yet he has previously surmised I am older than he is).
Nor did I ever suggest that JR ‘imagined’ himself as being in a high-school cafeteria; my point is and always has been that he (and other Abuseniks) demonstrate – whether they realize it or not, and probably not – the characteristics of the high-school cafeteria mentality. And more specifically, the mentality of that level of the spectrum of high-school student that spends most of its time and energy in the cafeteria, convinced that they didn’t need to do the homework or learn the class material because they already knew everything that was necessary for them to know. And that all the other students who did apply themselves were dumb, and that teachers who didn’t recognize their cafeteria wisdom were simply evil authoritarian oppressors who were ‘out for’ them.
And is it possible for me to “juvenelize” (sic) the Abuseniks? Would any such hypothetical effort succeed if their actual juvenilia were not put up – by themselves – for all to read and consider? (We notice here, as well, an uncharacteristically alert effort here: from my use of “juvenilia” in a prior comment, to this current invention of the word (as it were) “juvenelize”. )
Readers are welcome to consider the proposition that I am merely ‘posing’. And what “resposibility” have I ‘denied’? (Time-saver here: bets are that JR is trying for the old ‘anonymous’ bit; as if the only responsibility a commenter might have is to use his name and all other responsibility – to logic, coherence, and carefully considered commenting – doesn’t apply.)
In response to my challenge to point out at least a few of the “lies” he has claimed I tell … we get nothing but a Playbook distraction by means of a weak one-liner joke. Buttressed, then, by an even grosser howler to the effect that if I am posting I am lying.
Could I make that bit appear to be any more juvenile that it clearly is all on its own?
But then JR does give an example: my theory of the Stampede is a lie. But it is a theory, based on enumerated probabilities that I have discussed and explained at length. And not JR nor any other Abusenik has ever refuted it with demonstrable counterproposals or material.
Then something involving Hopalong Cassidy – charitably out of the Playbook but perhaps out of some bit of fried circuitry.
Concerning his assertion about there not being “a shred of evidence” I refer him to all of my comments over a period of years explaining the various elements and probabilities. And I refer readers to the almost total dearth of any substantive and relevant response he made to any of those comments.
And to the glaring fact that the lack of evidence inherent in the ‘stories’ themselves has been buttressed by the torties’ deliberately-demanded secrecy clauses sealing-off those stories from any post-settlement examination. (Nor did the fact of settlement establish or demonstrate the credibility of any story.)
Then – as so often – a repeat of the effort to move us all to presume what has yet to be demonstrated: that the Abuseniks posting here are genuine ‘victims’ of “your church”. And to substitute any substantive material from the Abuseniks with – instead – the Wig of (claimed) Victimization.
And if we presume that LDB is the other one of “two of your church’s victims who post here”, then LDB’s vividly dodgy moniker-and-comment history – and his by-now utterly implausible claims of possessing an elitely-educated and professionally-legally trained mind – raise for all to consider the question as to whether these Abuseniks are not somehow rather loose with the truth as a general rule. And such consequences as might flow from that.
And – yet again, as if de novo – the claim that while I have provided no evidence, yet the Abuseniks have indeed provided “evidence” about themselves. I have provided significant amounts of information as to the elements leading to the high probability of the Stampede and the dubiousness of the stories lubricated and nurtured by the Anderson Strategies; the Abuseniks have provided no “evidence” except their own stories – buttressed only by the assorted distracting Playbook gambits with which we are now all familiar.
Then a rerun of the old I’m Not/You Are bit: the Abuseniks and their stories are “real” and “fact”, while my material is “fantasy” and “imaginary”.
That’s neither new nor “surprising”.
And then – alas – having delivered so uncharacteristically extended a comment, with some curiously advanced bits of rhetoric, JR adds his own bit and throws it all off: there is a “real conspiracy” and it’s the one between “SNAP and Tom Doyle”. So perhaps the “conspiracy” theory that LDB saw was this one that JR got from “other people”; surely LDB would be on more solid ground, since JR even acknowledges that it’s a conspiracy theory.
But however that case may be, JR has forgotten – or neglected to mention – that my position has always been that there is no evidence of a conspiracy linking i) SNAP and Doyle and ii) the Church. I certainly have not denied the connection between Doyle and SNAP, and I have further connected SNAP (through Barbara Blaine) and Jeff Anderson (to which JR’s response was merely that Anderson too is a tool of the Church).
And JR is more accurate than he wants to acknowledge: all he does is “talk about” things. ‘Talking about’, like his prior ‘mentioning’, is hardly sufficient for the seriousness of the material we are dealing with on this site.
How do you know it was the "torties" who demanded the secrecy clause in our settlements? (You don't know)
In ALL the agreements before 2002, it was the church that demanded secrecy clauses in it's settlements with victims; not the victims.
If a victim spoke out, the church could and would nullify their settlement.
Since your church was "curing" it's abusors and moving them on to fresh fields of children. It was they who "needed" the secrecy in order to "wipe clean" the abusors past. Otherwise, why the penalties if we talked about what happened to us? No-god knows the church wasn't going to publicize it.
Lucy, you've got some 'splaining to do.
As far as the SNAP/ Doyle/ Anderson/ Berry conspiracy goes, only one or two people need to conciously be creating it: Doyle and Berry.
Blaine; Clohessy;( SNAP); McKiernan; and Ann Barret Doyle (Bishop Accountability)( All active catholics.) were young people with young families to support. Good jobs don't grow on trees. So when a well paying job came along they took them and stayed in them because they need the monetary support to build their families on.
The institutions, they all head, are formed to aid the church not the victims by posturing like a real opposition but never really rallying the troops. In fact encouraging the troops (the victims) to stay home and never meet up unless SNAP controlled the show.
Anderson would acceed much power to SNAP because SNAP brought, him, home the "bacon": (us) great numbers of clients.
Berry plays the part of main chronicler of the U.S. scandal . Focusing, not on victims; but on the machinations of the scandal by the church. Which everyone already knows anyway. Hence the scandal. No news there.
No other reporters there either except piece meal, local scandal to local scandal. No over view or under-view from Berry. Just a conservative catholic posuer taking up the space where a real investigative reporter should be; but aint.
The title of this thread is "Child abuse no big deal when committed by the rich and famous." Isn't the catholic church the richest and most famous of all? Aren't the church's apologists here acting like what the church has done to it's children is "no big deal"?
"But – as so very often – LDB then steps on the gas and drives himself off his own cliff: he inadvertently proffers an explanation as to why parents didn’t go to the police in the first place, i.e. they didn’t believe their own kid’s story was sufficient to go to the police. (And yet in the standard Abusenik Playbook – tah dahhhhhhhhh! – the Bishops are invariably taken to task for not believing the stories and going to the police.)"
Too many metaphors in this last one, Publion. Early on, you have me 'galloping' and at 'full gallop' but then 'shooting my horse'. OK. But later, I 'step on the gas' and drive off a cliff. I guess I got a car after I shot my horse. Maybe I had both cars and horses. Cool. But then, you say that I am shooting the horse 'yet again' so I must have a decent supply of horses or I keep mounting and shooting the same one out from under myself. Your style is so over the top.
Also, why the parenthesis in the short paragraph above? You are making your point in the paragraph with contrast. You contrasted the treatment of the parents v. the treatment of the bishops involved. Strange move to mark with parenthesis and thus separate the sentence as a sort of aside. Probably just another grammar mistake. Silly.
The significant informational mistake that you make here, though not unintentionally, is your omission of the knowledge of the predator priest that the bishops had and that the parents did not have. The bishops knew all about these abusive priests prior behavior such that they thought to move the priest when complaints came in. He's at it again! Where can we send him in order to avoid scandal? The parents did not have the advantage of knowing that there were these predator priests moving about and that the particular priest that may have abused their son had a history of sex abuse of minors. That knowledge is a big difference maker. IThat goes a long way toward explaining why the bishops are blamed for not reporting and the parents are not.
Also, it is often true in these sex abuse cases that priests who abused targeted types of families and befriended parents. Particularly devout mothers and often absent fathers comes to mind as a favorable profile for the predator priest. The predator priest selected and manipulated the parents as well as the child/adolescent. The parents were duped and the bishops were not. The bishops had information that they did not share and the parents did not have access to that information.
Some of this information, what the bishops knew about predator priests, is in the written records like assignment records that the dioceses have had to release. The best that the bishops, like the still cardinal Law, could do is say that they thought that the predator priests were curable. That the priests were in many cases sent for treatment is part of the written record so the bishops have been forced to explain that. They like to say, "I did the best I could with the information that I had at the time." Lies on top of lies.
I had said in my prior expositions of my theory about the Stampede that it is more of a “synergy” than a full-blown “conspiracy”. -Publion of July 19 at 4:40pm
. . . and that has made all the difference! Thank you for the laugh. I have accused you before of making a distinction without a difference and here you go again.
So you are a 'synergy' guy who just observes the way that different dynamic systems interact and effect and increase each other. Right. Nothing wrong there. 'Conspiracy' guys have it all wrong though. They come up with 'theories' as to why events or situations like a 'stampede' result from secret plans or non-expressly stated agendas or 'rolling balls' by usually powerful people like lawyers or herded groups lead by 'strategies'. I would say that you are both a synergy guy and a conspiracy guy. Wouldn't you? Also, an extreme metaphor guy.
By the way, have you expressly stated your agenda. I apologize for asking, if your agenda is supposed to be secret. I forget your agenda though, if you have stated it. Perhaps, you do not have one? Or you have several? Are you an impartial critical observer of history on the TMR site? Are you a dutiful catholic, determined to serve and protect holy mother church. I know, because you have said so, that you are created in the image and likeness of god. That's awesome, in the sense of actual 'awe'. But what else informs your perspective?
Oh, and no thanks. I do not 'need' you to 'explain the difference between the two terms', synergy and conspiracy, to me. I love it when you call out my 'snark', when you are the snarkiest writer on this TMR comment section. Irony. Snark attack! Ahhhhhhhhhh!
Now, where's my reasonably sized soda . . .
The elite-trained philosophical and legally-trained professional mind returns on the 23rd at 0947AM.
Yes, I’ve used metaphors. Too many for LDB to follow? I think they capture the actualities nicely.
Then, continuing to avoid the actual substance of the material by trying for some grammatical bits, LDB continues with my use of parenthesis. I used it because the material in parentheses was not directly the subject of the paragraph, but rather a secondary element.
Probably LDB’s claimed Harvard education neglected much training in grammar.
As for LDB’s general assertion about the Bishops having “knowledge of the predator priest”: the number of priests with a single allegation against them has to be compared to the number of priests who had multiple allegations against them, and – further – the number of those with multiple allegations has to be compared with the number of priests about whom the Bishop might have had earlier reports or allegations. From what I gleaned from the Jay Reports, the classic or stereotypical Abusenik scenario (i.e. the Bishop had extensive files on a priest who had had multiple prior allegations) is not applicable to the majority of priest-abuse cases. The effort to get us to imagine that all or most of the priest-abuse cases conformed to the desired Abusenik stereotypical scenario is not grounded in any demonstrated facts at all.
To how many priests and Bishops does his general assertion actually apply?
For that matter, how many cases were referred to a cognizant police agency and nothing came of it?
And we are still left with the fact that the parents themselves, in a number of cases, did not call the police.
And how many of these stereotypical scenarios played-out before the 2002 Charter and how many after?
These questions remain, and that “long way toward explaining why the bishops are blamed for not reporting and the parents are not” becomes noticeably not so long after all.
And how many of the cases involved what the Abuseniks would like us to consider as a “predator priest” who “targeted” certain types of families? And how do we distinguish between i) a priest simply drawn into the affairs of a troubled family and ii) a priest who deliberately and with malice aforethought profiled (if you wish) a specific family in furtherance of a career of predation?
And – as so often – how many of the allegations made against priests so involved with such troubled families were genuine and veracious? Especially once the Stampede was systematized through the assorted elements of the Anderson Strategies and the prospect of an unchallenged payday increased to an almost certain probability?
And in how many cases did the Bishop have or not-have such certain information about the priest? If I recall the Jay Reports correctly, the majority of cases involved single allegations. How justify the general assertion that while “the parents were duped … the bishops were not”?
And the last paragraph of the comment thus should be emended thus: “what some of the bishops knew” about some specific priest(s); this emendation reduces the (unsupported) generality of the assertion that all of the Bishops had extensive secret files on all of the “predator priests” (and this characterization still requires us to presume that all of the allegations were genuine and veracious).
In sum: how many priests and how many Bishops accurately conform to the Abusenik and Stampede stereotypical scenario?
And thus: how many Bishops can be legitimately characterized as fomenting and perpetrating “lies on top of lies”?
And how define “predator priest” clinically in such a way as to professionally establish that a specific priest could be legitimately characterized as “curable” or not-curable? “Predator priest” is not a clinical term; yet “curable” calls us to the clinical forum – so how do we handle this (manipulative) conflation of a rhetorically-vivid phrase that has no grounding in actual clinical praxis with the conclusion that an individual so characterized is not-curable and thus that the Bishop (or every Bishop) was simply lying about the genuineness of the effort to ‘cure’ the priest?
If there are demonstrable answers to these questions, let them be put forward.
LDB then continues on the 23rd at 1051AM.
LDB claims that he does not need to be educated into the difference between the two terms (i.e. ‘synergy’ and ‘conspiracy’) and yet he also claims that I have made “a distinction without a difference”. Clearly the two assertions cannot both be right. Surely, and speaking generally here, there is no such thing as a legal basis for a charge of ‘synergy’, whereas under certain circumstances there are legal grounds for a charge of ‘conspiracy’. Did he not notice this simple legal fact? And if he did notice this simple legal fact, did it not suggest to him that there is both a distinction and a difference between the two terms?
Did he move to his “laugh” without having covered this ground in his assessment?
But – characteristically – having set up his blocks just the way he wants (based on his faulty assessment), he will then simply riff on (what he presumes to be) the outcome of his little construction here: he will come back to his original “conspiracy” theory material. And his riffing here reflects no awareness of the substantial amount of material I have put up over time here.
In brief: i) a government indentured to a secularist worldview and to the advocates of such a world-view; ii) a Victimist sensibility that seeks to collapse the critical distance between third-parties and persons claiming victimization or victimhood; iii) a significant tort-attorney demographic that had proven its chops – to its great emolument – in coming up with ways to sue various types of corporations for large sums; iv) a media simultaneously a) enamored of ‘advocacy’ more than detached and objective ‘reporting’ and b) financially in need of some emotionally gripping forms of melodrama in order to keep readership among its ‘consumers’ of media output; v) a general cultural shift away from rational and objective assessment and toward emotional and non-rational (or, if one wishes, other-than-rational) assessment (a tendency that has gained great traction in both philosophical and legal circles); vi) a general cultural shift away from a Multiplanar and toward a Monoplanar vision of human life and existence … all of these elements synergize into a stance that c) considers organized religion (and thus the Catholic Church as the most organized and influential of the religions in the Western world and in this country) both a threat and a rival and d) creates an arc that bends strongly toward reducing the credibility and influence of the Church that has consistently been most obstructive of the secularist agenda that seeks to establish the secularist worldview and the government as its primary vessel.
Those are the elements of the synergy. It can reasonably be expected that various persons in any of those element-groups will seek to pressure or cooperate-with persons in any other of those element-groups, toward some objectives designed to further the overall tendency.
Can that legitimately be called ‘conspiracy’? I would say No. Is it a complex and large synergy? I would say Yes.
Is there a probability – and perhaps a high probability – that this synergy is involved in the Stampede? I would say Yes.
Then, as always trying to avoid the issues by impugning his interlocutor, LDB will go on about my hypothetical “agenda”. I have expressed it rather clearly on several occasions but either he hasn’t read all the material on the table on this site or else he isn’t much for reading-comprehension. My agenda is that I don’t like manipulative and dishonest gambits, and especially when they are so deep and broad and sustained by such a comprehensive array of forces that they harm and might well undermine the fundamentals of a culture and a society.
And that is precisely what I see in the Stampede. And I have seen nothing proffered by any Abuseniks commenting here that dissuades from such concerns.
And I would imagine that LDB’s soda is precisely where it always is, next to his keyboard. Perhaps the bill of his sideways baseball cap has temporarily occluded his vision of it.
Your metaphors, P, are unholy boredom.
They are redundent; repetative and tired.
They have next to zero wit.
Actually I'm being too kind.
They are the antitheses of wit.
Just as religion, all religion, is the antitheses of truth.
So perhaps the “conspiracy” theory that LDB saw was this one that JR got from “other people”; surely LDB would be on more solid ground, since JR even acknowledges that it’s a conspiracy theory. – Publion of July 21 at 10:24 pm
That I am mistaken as to which theory I am commenting on is, if serious, a crazy suggestion and, if not serious, well then just not funny. I mean, there is not a joke there at which to laugh. But we have not known Publion to attempt humor. In fact, he has often condemned humor in these comments because of the 'seriousness of the material'. So he must be serious in speculating that I might have been commenting on JR's theory and not his. What is this nonsense?
'Surely', Publion confidently offers, I would be better off calling JR's theory a conspiracy theory simply because JR has acknowledged his theory is a conspiracy theory. So the reason, to bring this right to its logical conclusion, that I am not on much 'solid ground' in thinking that Publion's theory of the 'Stampede' is a conspiracy theory is that Publion himself does not acknowledge that it is a conspiracy theory. Next, Publion will close his eyes and tell his mom, standing right in front of him, that she cannot see him. I have to ask, at this point, if Publion can be a serious thinking person/avatar and write such a stupid thing?
On the 24th at 1107AM JR demonstrates the quality of his ‘talking-about’ and ‘mentioning’ for all to see: the statement by federal judge Schiltz as to the secrecy clauses being demanded by Plaintiffs’ counsel and not by the Church was put forward here (with supporting link to the judge’s actual statement) quite a while ago. JR has nothing to “’splain”, however, since I doubt his howler is a surprise to many. Ditto for his assertion “You don’t know”. And while it is at least non-ludicrous to excuse oneself by claiming it’s been a long time since high-school, the Schiltz information is far less than half a century old.
We are then given a global assertion that vividly calls attention to itself with scream-y caps, to the effect that in“all” (scream-y caps omitted) pre-2002 agreements “it was the church that demanded secrecy clauses”. And is this just a rabbit out of JR’s hat or is there some demonstrated support for this assertion?
What “penalties” is JR talking about, that victims would incur if they “talked about what happened to” them? Or is this another rabbit out of the hat (or Wig)?
Moving on to the 24th at 1139AM: We get nothing that responds to my observation that we have no evidence linking SNAP and etc. to the Church. Instead, we merely get – yet again – the 3×5 about the proof of the Church’s involvement being that some of the major pro-Abusenik and pro-Stampede players are – we are told – “active catholics”.
Which howler is then further developed: the “institutions” that these people have built up and now “head” (meaning, apparently, SNAP and Bishop-Accountability) – waitttt for itttttttt – “are formed to aid the church not the victims”.
And how do they “aid the church not the victims”? By costing the Church several billions spread over 12 or so thousand Plaintiffs and their torties? No, that fact doesn’t engage JR’s mind at all. Instead, it’s because these organizations “aid the church” “by posturing like a real opposition but never really rallying the troops”.
And so I say yet again: it is equally possible and even more probable that “the troops” were rallied more than enough to achieve those institutions’ objective, which all along has been to provide feeder and support services to the torties, which – additionally – was all that “the troops” were really looking to do (since none of “the troops”, their checks having been cashed, have demonstrated any interest in further “rallying the troops” – or, for that matter, in drawing any further attention to themselves and their stories). How would JR’s theory counter that rather substantial alternative explanation?
And my theory is supported even by JR’s own assertion that Anderson supported (I would not say ‘acceded power to’) SNAP because it “brought … home the bacon” to him and his tortie cohorts. The bacon” was what interested Anderson and the torties, and so far we have seen nothing to indicate that “the troops” (their checks having been cashed) were interested in anything else.
What “everyone already knows anyway” about the Church is precisely and nothing-more-than the standard scenario embraced and propagated by the torties and their media contacts. And would anyone have ‘known about’ all of it if persons like Berry hadn’t put out their books and articles, which were then trumpeted by friendly and useful media contacts? And what we actually “know” from that material, rather than what that material seeks to manipulate readers into accepting, is a very good question for readers here to consider.
Whether Berry is indeed “just a conservative catholic” (whence this connection between “conservative catholic[s]” and the Stampede … are all “liberal” catholics then pro-Stampede?) is something for readers to consider for themselves.
The bit about “a real investigative reporter” is rich: we have seen how Abusenik stories do not hold up, and how Abuseniks do not take kindly-to having their stories ‘really investigated’ – even if only in the light and modest ways available to commenters on this site. Imagine what “a real investigative reporter” can do (one thinks of Ralph Cipriano and the Billy Doe material on the BigTrial site).
But JR is right about one thing: there hasn’t been anywhere near enough ‘real investigative reporting’ about the Stampede.
Then LDB weighs in on the 24th at 926AM.
We get a hash or mishmash that dances around to distract from such mistakes as LDB has made. Readers are welcome to consider whether the possibility that he has been “mistaken” or is “crazy” or that my material is “a joke” or “nonsense”.
But he is right to say that I am “serious” here; the only laughable bits I put up are prompted by the stuff we get from the Abuseniks.
Is LDB still claiming that there is no distinction between (his) “conspiracy theory” and (my) “synergy” theory? It would appear so, although he is wrapping himself around the axle so torturously in an attempt to toss up enough pixels so as to appear to have made substantive response to my material that it is hard to follow the bouncing ball of his argument here. But perhaps that is his objective; it would certainly be the Playbook’s objective at this juncture.
And if JR calls his theory a “conspiracy theory” but LDB doesn’t consider that sufficient grounds for calling JR’s theory a “conspiracy theory”, then that is an issue he can take up with JR; the statements made are now in the record here.
Then – having piled up such blocks as he can come up with – LDB works himself up to his concluding epithet about “stupid”, which would appear far more accurate in the recoil than in the projectile.
And – in light of all the material I put up that was available for rebuttal or counter-proposal – we have at the end of LDB’s comment here gotten nothing responsive or substantive at all.
An effective propaganda campaign is not begun or furthered or sustained by “quibbling” about ‘details’; rather, you whomp-up a basic and gripping scenario and simply keep repeating it, shoe-horning anything you can come up with into its basic parameters. This will serve to reduce the ‘critical distance’ between a rational-observer and your scenario; instead that rationality and subsequent assessment will be derailed and replaced by an emotional response to the scenario you have devised and propagated, precluding any further attention-to or assessment-of the credibility of the scenario itself.
In this regard, there is an interesting comment made by the historian Gordon S. Craig against the acceptance of George Kennan as a full member of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton in 1955 (published in The Kennan Diaries, edited by Frank Costigliola, published by W.W. Norton in 2014).
On page 346 the editor gives the gravamen of historian Craig’s reservations about Kennan’s work: Kennan is more of a “polemicist” than a “historian”, thus Craig sees Kennan as “arguing the case of 1950 from the circumstances of 1917”. Just so. In Craig’s view, the “historian” works with the past as it was when it was ‘the present’, whereas the “polemicist” works to dragoon the past into some agenda of the (polemicist’s) present, selectively picking and choosing what he needs or can use for his agenda and ignoring any inconvenient or contradictory bits.
The polemical or propagandistic purposes behind the Stampede are evident in a great deal of the Abusenik material that has been considered on this site.
And readers might recall my discussion of that late-1970s and early-1980s literary genre of autobiography that queasily mixed and confused factual autobiography and fiction. Thus we got, among others, the alleged autobiography of one Rigoberta Menchu (the title, if I recall correctly, was I, Rigoberta Menchu), who claimed to have experienced, by amazing coincidence, many of the victimizations then-of-concern at the hands of Central American dictatorships and authoritarian governments.
When it was pointed out how evidence existed that she could not have been present for such experiences, the excuse was proffered that she was offering her ‘personal truth’ in a good cause and thus – readers were supposed to accept – that since she was making up her stories in a good cause, then it was all OK and would help you ‘feel’ what it was like.
Was she part of a “conspiracy” to help the Stampede in the Catholic Matter? No. Was this tendency in literature in that era something that dove-tailed with what I call the Anderson Strategy and its objectives and thus worked in a “synergy” with Anderson and which he took full advantage of when he formulated his approach in the mid-1980s? Yes.
Somebody has way too much time on their hands and blood. SNAP Doyle and crew are all active catholics. I.e. catholics who recieve the sacraments and attend mass.
Those of us who've left the catholic superstition behind are not active catholics.
Of course you can be good and be a catholic. Anything's possible.
My question is :Why would you race to make a saint out of a pope who knew about Maciel and his shitpile of victims? A pope who, personally, heralded the man. Do actions like that allieviate or exaserbate the mess you are in?
Dude, you are the sorriest apologist catholicism's ever had.
And now for a handy refresher course of distractions from the Playbook.
On the 27th at 102AM JR (or somebody) tries for a Zen koan sort of effect.
But notice that JR (or somebody) simply keeps the focus on the effect of my “metaphors” on himself: thus they are “unholy boredom” and “redundent; repetitive; and tired” (sic) and have “next to zero wit”.
Readers may take the weight of JR’s literary opinions as they will. And how often have we had a chance to observe the effect of words and ideas and such stuff on certain types of mind?
And, of course, the ever-handy defense of last resort for Abuseniks when they can’t handle the problems their material and their Stampede present: people who think about all that have “too much time on their hands” and clearly are thinking too much.
But notice that what JR avoids is what I would consider the primary point: the accuracy of my metaphors. And that’s not something, as we see here, that JR wants to go near.
And as to the concluding bit in his comment here, readers may take the weight of JR’s theological opinions as they will.
Then at 116AM we get an attempt at snark that derails itself: “too much time on their hands and blood”. Readers are welcome to try and make of that what they can.
He then – through ignorance or design – tries to change the subject to the definition of an “active Catholic”, whereas my point was whether the persons JR named in his assertion in a prior comment are indeed “active catholics”.
And thus the rest of the comment rolls on along that riff-y tangent.
And then, to further change the subject and distract from the rather substantial amount of material on the table in the actual comments on this thread, JR goes on about “Maciel” and so on.
And then tries to bring this song-and-dance home with the epithetical characterization of me as an “apologist” for Catholicism. I am – had JR not read my recent comment to LDB on this thread? – a de-bunker of Stampedes and related mass-manipulations and derangements of public opinion.
But no Abusenik wants to go near that de-bunking-of-Stampedes because – as we have seen – they really haven’t got anything substantial to counter that.
Thus the resort to Playbook distractions, including epithets. Including – now – the use of “Dude” by a putatively matured late-60ish adult. Well, it’s better than “Princess” perhaps. If nothing else, accessorize with the Wig of Coolness and Youthiness. As if that gambit could improve the quality of the material.
And as far as the word "dude" goes we've been using it out here since my '20's .47 years ago..
If the use of the word by adults is news to you; step away from the ivory tower. Princess.
And what difference would it make even if the heads of SNAP and Bishop-Accountability were “active catholics”? Are we to infer here that any or all persons who go to Mass regularly and participate in the sacraments are somehow tools of the Vatican in the Stampede matter? If so, might we share the chain of logic (as it were) that could justify such an assertion?
Every action this lot takes proves they aren't for victims.
I wouldn't have trusted SNAP from the get go had I known that all these clowns were catholic. I thought well a lot of people stayed with the church, I guessed. But ALL OF THEM?????? All of the "helping" ever " steering" hands were from active catholics?
Literally every non victim I've met "standing" with us victims is an active catholic. That's just not probable.
When so many my age and younger(and I'm 67) have gotten the church out of their lives. (You've all seen the exodus). The odds against that leadership happen at random, naturally are unbelievably high. Right next to impossible. That reality alone is a tip off. Look at mass yourselves this Sunday and see how many young people show up. Not like in my day. Only in certain ethnic groups do you see the young showing up: Phillipinos Hispanic but the rest of us on the whole from my age and down have hit the road.
So when up pops all these younger" leaders" of the victims movement. I ask from what matrix?. Where did these young people come from when it was us '60's guys that changed the world. Where were the activists from THE activist generation the, '60's? They were not there. (And only one priest to turn "traitor" to your heavenly cause. Tommy Doyle?)
Oh no it was the young created by JP2's pontificate,himself the most reactionary of rulers, that were "activated" to "help" victims in our need. They came forth, Blaine and Clohessy, from strict catholic education and catholic universities . They sprang from nowhere and have been the entire show for victims ever since they arrived. But what did they spring from if there are no crowds behind them ever? What is their matrix if no matrix can be seen? If a coffee clatch in St. Louis created a movement that became the movement for victims world wide over night???? It simply can not happen.
Are we to believe that little Jeffy Anderson has managed to rule and manipulate the entire show from Minneapolis? Please! Have you ever heard Jeff Anderson? He can hardly put together a sentence let alone a conspiracy that thus far has only helped the church.( By focusing on the unharmed children in catholic schools now; and not on it's already raped victims). The unraped aren't the raped the raped are. So that represents victims exactlly how?.
The church had proved it's virtues to me over the years. Great truly (finally great) about somethings and yet not when most of the victims needed it. Your victims still need justice to be done by you.
On the 29th at 324AM what do we get?
First, in order to be “for victims” – or against them, for that matter – one first has to establish who are and who are not genuinely classifiable as “victims”.
Thus, as far as my own position is concerned, the most that can be accurately said is that I am not-for non-genuine victims.
But the entire Stampede (which – as a propagandistic gambit – I am very much against) has been built precisely upon a) the creation and sustained propagation of a scenario (i.e. innumerable slavering and incorrigible predatory priests and thoroughly-aware enabling bishops) and b) thousands (or tens or dozens or hundreds of thousands, if you wish to hypothesize the myriad ‘unreported victims’) of “victims” whose genuineness has yet to be established and the probability of whose stories’ veracity is most certainly open to question (for all the reasons I have discussed here at length over time).
The Stampede has no answer as to how to distinguish genuine from otherwise-classifiable “victims”, but that is not surprising since it is precisely built upon the manipulative presumptions that i) all or almost-all claimants and their stories are veracious and ii) its core ‘scenario’ is accurate.
And neither (i) nor (ii) have been established by any credible demonstration. Indeed, both (i) and (ii) have – I would say – been shown to have a high probability of being not-veracious and not-accurate.
Then – again – the blocks piled up just-so: if the leadership of SNAP and the other similar organizations are “all … catholic” then they must be tools of the Church. And further, we are left with the problem that JR has said that he worked with SNAP for a period of years – and in all that time he didn’t realize that “all these clowns were catholic”? And – for whatever it’s worth – “active catholics”?
Then a two-sentence paragraph (beginning “Literally every”) that makes no sense as written.
As for the “exodus” from the Church: once again, it cannot be clearly distinguished what drop-off in Western European and American Church attendance is due to the Stampede and what drop-off is due to the general falling-off in organized religious affiliation and participation that has been going on in Western Europe and the U.S. since the 1960s. So that point fails and will continue to fail unless JR or any Abusenik or anybody else can come up with a method of clearly distinguishing the cause of the “exodus”.
Then an extended multi-paragraph riff that seems challenged both in terms of coherence and of relevance to our present subject here.
What is “their matrix”, JR asks, referring apparently to the leadership of SNAP and the other organizations. To which – yet again – I would respond: their “matrix” is the role assigned to them in the Anderson Strategies as devised by Anderson and adopted as a template by numerous other torties.
And then – neatly mimicking again – JR asks “Are we to believe that” Jeff Anderson “has managed to rule and manipulate the entire show from Minneapolis”. As I have pointed out – as recently as this present comment of mine – Jeff Anderson devised the template, synergistically taking advantage of assorted elements available in American and Western culture and society.
I have never said that Anderson ‘rules’ or ‘manipulates’ “the entire show”. This is a phantasmagorical exaggeration created by JR, no doubt for the purposes of having something easier and more convenient to argue about. (But I have also said and say again here that the recent very odd events in Minneapolis itself most probably involve Anderson, as – of course – do any specific cases anywhere that involve his office as counsel-of-record. And readers are always welcome to consult D’Antonio’s book.)
And that klatsch in St. Louis (which is surely ‘minimized’ by such a characterization; it was a business meeting in which Blaine was made an offer she chose not to refuse) certainly led to the formation of the Stampede apparatus whereby torties and media could feast upon the stories proffered by persons ‘coming forward’ once the prospect of substantial payouts with almost no careful and sustained examination and with guaranteed ‘friendly’ media coverage could be taken-advantage-of.
And in its heyday, this Stampede’s dynamics kept attracting more claimants with every media-touted report of ‘success’.
So then, as opposed to it being the case that such a development “simply can not happen” (sic), I would say that such an outcome was rather predictable indeed.
As for JR’s opinion of Anderson’s assorted skills and professional acumen, the record of Anderson’s achievement certainly speaks for itself.
And once again, JR has yet to demonstrate how Anderson’s Strategies having cost the Church several billions (spread over those twelve thousand or so claimants and their torties) “thus far [have] only helped the church”.
Nor has he in any way established the existence of the genuinely “already raped” (however that plastic term is defined and however such claims and allegations and stories might or might-not be veracious and accurate).
Thus his question as to “exactly how” fails because a) it presumes what has yet to be proven or to be demonstrated to have a high probability of credibility and because b) it seeks to start the play at first base rather than with an observable at-bat at home plate.
Thus too, readers are welcome to make what they will of JR’s concluding personal assessment of the Church and so on.
No like every other narcisstic person I thought when I got the newseverybody got the news about religion obviously not.
When I first came into the"movement" of survivors. I thought that if you knew the hierarchs were responsible for this scandal; you were o.k.. They've got it. They understood the trauma caused.
But that wasn't why all those people were there.
I don't usually go up to someone and ask if they practice a faith. I accept people as who they say they are. Never again after SNAP. I expected good catholics to rally round us; just not so close or so controllingly. And certainly not with a party line that ignored the injured for those who haven't been injured.
What a silly a$$ you are. Billions are nothing. And how are those billions being counted? And who's doing the counting.? When it's the insurors who are paying half.
So one and a half billion dollars and 12,000 victims; what does that average out to per victim? Particularly when the huge majority have not been compensated.
SNAP was supposedly "formed" at a coffee klatsch. That's what Blaine's always said. Who suggested it be formed? I have no idea but I know that Fr Tom Doyle had planned for such a committee because he wrote that much. He said, such committees should be secretly formed to protect the church. Now why would he do that, If not to controll victims?
Look who's defending SNAP again. The patron saint of catholic victims, Fr. P.
How can you defend their "validity", when you've never met even one of them, I don't know. It always seems you defend things you know nothing about and attack things (like victims) who you also know nothing about..
Yet you defend the idea that there is a god, without a micro-spec of proof; and that you, luckily enough, just hit the lotto by being born into the only true religion that worships that only true god..
You know they really should have made you pope but your tone is too pontifical. I think the pr people said: No that won't work let's go with humble, and you, definitely, do not have the tone of the boy next door.
Frankly it seems the only thing you know something about is spelling; but then you have spell check so who knows whether you are a good or bad speller.