The good and the bad of 2014: MPR's Madeleine Baran; SNAP's Barbara Blaine;
Ralph Cipriano; Judy Thomas; and Rolling Stone's Sabrina Erdely
As we now approach our eleventh year, we would like to thank everyone for making 2014 another great year at TheMediaReport.com! Our strength and influence continue to grow dramatically, thanks to you. And we look forward to an even better 2015!
As we close out our year, we take a look at our most compelling posts of 2014.
#5 Minnesota Public Radio's 'Betrayed By Silence': A New Low In Vengeance Journalism
We have likely reviewed several thousand news articles, television episodes, radio interviews, and documentary films in our mission to encourage accuracy in the media's coverage of the Catholic Church abuse story line.
However, we don't believe we have seen a piece of media as grossly inaccurate and irresponsible as a recent multimedia special presentation, "Betrayed by Silence," produced by Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), which purports to chronicle the history of the Catholic Church abuse scandal as it relates to Minnesota.
The Kansas City Star may not have been officially listed as a party in the recent high-profile clergy abuse trial in Kansas City, but the credibility of the Star was certainly on trial. And by all accounts, it lost.
A splashy, three-part series in 2011, entitled, "The altar boys' secret," by the Star's Judy L. Thomas, relayed the shocking charges of a man named Jon David Couzens, who claimed that an abusive priest, Msgr. Thomas O'Brien (who died in 2013), had forced Couzens and three other altar boys thirty years earlier to perform an orgy with each other and him only minutes before Mass was to begin.
And according to the Star, Couzens claims that these forced orgies happened not just once, not twice, but on three separate occasions.
In the past, the hyperbolic founder and president of the anti-Catholic group SNAP, Barbara Blaine, has said that it is "reckless" and "irresponsible" for Church officials to fail to call law enforcement and keep an accused cleric in ministry "even for one day" before calling police and yanking an accused cleric out of ministry.
But if nothing else, SNAP is rich in hypocrisy. So it should come as no surprise that, according to an Archdiocese of Chicago press release, SNAP itself did not call police or alert Church officials even though it knew "for several weeks" about an allegation of sex abuse by a Chicago priest.
Rather than acting according to its purported mission to protect children, SNAP instead held a press conference, strategically timed for a slow news day on the Monday after Easter. The conference was led by Blaine herself, who in the past has also personally written a letter of support on behalf of a friend arrested with over 100 images of kiddie porn on his computer.
Prosecutors in Philadelphia deliberately withheld evidence that would have exonerated a Catholic priest and a teacher wrongfully convicted of sex abuse, according to an explosive new court filing recently uncovered in an article by investigative journalist Ralph Cipriano.
This remarkable development now adds further proof that three men – Rev. Charles Engelhardt (Rest in Peace), former teacher Bernard Shero, as well as ex-priest Edward Avery – are most certainly in prison serving time for crimes that they never committed thanks to the witch-hunt mentality against Catholic priests fermented by the mainstream media.
#1 Rolling Stone's Erdely Finally Outed For Phony Abuse Stories
Now that the mainstream media has finally concluded that the tale by Sabrina Rubin Erdely in Rolling Stone magazine of ceremonial gang rape at the University of Virginia was bogus, we hope that it will now revisit her preposterous 2011 story about abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
In her 2011 article, Erdely eagerly recounted, among many other salacious tales, the bizarre claims of "Billy" – whom readers of this site know to be Florida resident Dan Gallagher – who has claimed to have been somehow raped, molested, and sodomized by three different men – two priests and a Catholic school teacher – years ago as an altar boy in Philly in the late 1990s.
But as we have repeatedly chronicled here at TheMediaReport.com, veteran journalist Ralph Cipriano at BigTrial.net has doggedly uncovered layers of information that demonstrate that Gallagher's madcap stories were most certainly fabricated. The lives of these three innocent men have been shattered in part by Erdely's irresponsible and reckless reporting.
Kudos to DP for his work!
On the Reason magazine site, Cathy Young has put together a review of the UVA rape-allegation story:
http://reason.com/archives/2014/12/26/the-year-the-crusade-against-rape-cultur
I think it provides a useful and relevant summation of much of what the TMR site has been working on all along: if we look at the Catholic Abuse Matter in the same way that Young looks at the UVA (and related) rape-allegation stories, we can see so many of the same dynamics u tropes and memes and tactics deployed.
This should not be surprising since they are all drawn ultimately from the same Playbook: the Gramscian-Alinskyite Playbook for whomping up Stampedes against this or that targeted entity for the purposes of a) weakening them so that b) one can make room for one’s own agenda and visions.
Readers can consider the Young article as they wish.
But I will also add (again) that we are looking at the interesting prospect of the current Pope seeking in 2015 to somehow build bridges, possibly by looking to cut deals with an Abusenik agenda and a Stampede (and perhaps also a Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism) that increasingly demonstrate their fundamental and ultimate shortcomings.
The coming year will be a very interesting time to be a Catholic, I think.
Publion, Very interesting comments. Could you elaborate on the Pope seeking to build bridges, possibly looking to cut deals, etc? By the way, I appreciate this web site very much and also Publion's commentary. I surmise he has a few IQ points on me, and probably more education (I have an M.A.) Both the web site and the comments are doing a very important service.
Responding to Julie, I’d put it this way:
Relevant elements in regard to the Pope: a) he is seeking to be more ‘pastoral’ and seeking ‘outreach’ and wants such ‘pastoral’ concerns to outweigh a primary (perhaps even fundamental) concern for the integrity of doctrine and in that regard he has warned the members of the International Theological Commission not to be so concerned for abstractions and not to do their theological thinking in a “vacuum” (which I interpret as a euphemism or code for doing their thinking with a primary concern for the integrity of doctrine rather than a primary concern for making the Church a “welcoming” ‘experience’; b) he is a Jesuit and in both long-past and recent history we have seen the Jesuit approach to be one of giving-in-today in order, it is hoped, to get something on some undetermined future tomorrow.
Relevant elements in regard to the Stampede: a) the Stampede is a descendant – through Saul Alinsky’s adaptations – of Gramsci’s strategy for undermining and taking-over Western democracies by using their own principles and practices against them in order to destabilize their traditions and first-principles in order to replace them with the Gramscian revolutionary agenda; b) this requires Gramscian agitprop agents to masquerade as ‘ordinary people’ (who are the key characters in the democratic world-view) and thus, employing a friendly media and perhaps even friendly elements (or at least “useful idiots”, to use Lenin’s own term) within Western governments and elites in order to achieve all this.
For the past half-century this strategy (if not the actual original Communist content of the visions and ideas) has been widely deployed and deeply successful in many Western countries, including the USA, where Victimism has proven a perfect mask for the agitprop ‘advocates’ to demand and effect the fulfillment of their various agendas (i.e. the ultimate destabilization of major Western institutions and traditions – such as the Church – that stand in the way of the achievement of the revolution’s various goals and agendas).
Now the Pope is coming to the USA in September (and in February there will the convocation of that Vatican commission on sex-abuse). In best Gramscian-Alinskyite style, the Abuseniks will seek a place at the table, masquerading as ‘ordinary people’ and – of course – ‘victims’ (genuine or otherwise) in order to provide an apparent justification for their demands and their agenda (which will be to Keep The Stampede Ball Rolling).
This will be the Abusenik gameplan even though – or perhaps especially because – the Stampede is now declining in strength and also in fundamental credibility.
My concern is that when the Pope and his predilections collide with the Gramscian-Alinskyite agenda then what will happen is this: the Pope will seek to demonstrate his ‘pastoral’ and ‘welcoming’ creds by yielding to Abusenik demands in order to placate (one might even say ‘appease’) whatever demands are pushed his way. This will be spun as an effort at sensitive ‘outreach’ and constructive ‘bridge-building’, to the (short-term) satisfaction of both the papal and the Abusenik agendas.
Thus what I fear may happen is that the papal party may wind up – willy or nilly – being “useful idiots” for the Stampede’s Gramscian-Alinskyite agenda.
And as a result the already-declining Stampede may receive papal assistance in re-constituting or at least re-invigorating itself. And thus the Game will spark-up all over again and The Ball will not only be Kept Rolling but might actually now become ensconced even more deeply (through papal assistance).
This is all, of course, part of much larger and deeper dynamic having to do with how the Church under this Pope will seek to relate herself to the secularized and Victimist reality that American (and much Western) culture has become. I have discussed this aspect at length before so I won’t extend this comment by going back over that right now.
I could go on (as you may well imagine) but for now in this comment that would be my response.
You are a complete and utter idiot and a liar, P There are no victims in this debate just "Victimist" (s), according to you?
The pope is your Obama. He says one thing: "Who am I to judge?"; but changes nothing for gay people in your church. Victims of Roman catholic anti gay policies in Uganda know full well this pope is all show and blow and no friend to the victim IZED.
And speaking of all show and blow we have the sad TMR where Julie has an M.A (certainly not in logic). and Publion has an M.A. in B.S..
Happy New Year! Children of the Corny. I wait, with baited breath, to see if your paranoid delusions, ever, bear fruit. They won't. You just get sadder.
And what's wrong with being a Communist? Pope Leo X, I think, said one can be a Communist and a good catholic too.
And, by the way, I went on Ancestry. Com.
It turns out my 22nd great grand father was Pope Gregory the X (Thomasino Visconti, who sent Marco Polo to China) !!! My 23rd and 24th great grandfathers (Pope Gregs parent and grand parent) were the archbishops of Milan. I'm a distant cousin to Luchiano Visconti, the genius film director and gay communist.
I also stem from an excomunicated Holy Roman Emperor, 7 or 8 Holy Roman Emperors actually; and Zwingili the Swiss reformer.
I have one great grandfather, Rudolph I, Holy Roman Emperor, mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy in the Purgatorio.
My 10th great grandfather was Hans Herr, a Mennonite bishop, who fled Switzerland then the German Palentine, finally finding freedom from catholic religious persecution by buying, with other great grand parents, 10,000 acres of Pennsylvania from William Penn and whose 1716 house is the oldest standing house in Lancaster county Pennsylvania and a museum.
There are also 6 catholic saints who are my direct predessesors; including St. Louis IX, king of France, my 24th great grandfather (and 15 other French kings who weren't saints).
Of course I had far far far more ancestors who remain unknown to me; because they were neither rich nor royal.
I mention all this because i did not know any of this. It's all a big surprise to me.
I come from popes and excommunicated emperors; religious zealots and reformers. saints and sinners. peasants and kings in other words just your average Joe, just like you.:^)
Well, once again the Abusenik Cher returns from yet another farewell tour and yet another histrionic sweep off the stage.
And – also no surprise – none of the matters or questions left unanswered just before the most recent farewell are addressed as the band starts up again. Instead, as if de novo, we get … what? (Stage direction: we are not supposed to remember any of the unaddressed questions from the last time around.)
On the 8th at 1039AM we get – waittt for ittttt! – epithet.
And right after that we get the invention of something I have never said in order for JR to try and get into his favorite Wig, that of ‘victim’ (without, but of course, having to actually demonstrate the genuineness of any such victimhood – a gambit right out of the Playbook).
Then a riff on the Pope and Obama. And something about Uganda where – apparently in JR’s cartoonish thinking – the Church has gone and unilaterally imposed an “anti gay” agenda on what we are to assume is an otherwise gay-agenda-friendly Ugandan culture.
Then we get JR’s phantasms as to the academic achievement-credentials of ‘Julie’ and myself. He – we may recall – has simply done a lot of “reading”, just like they do at Oxford and Cambridge.
And then – tossing formal psychiatric diagnosis around as if he were educated into clinical diagnosis and praxis – he asserts the clinical phrase “paranoid delusions” (used here – surprise, surprise! – epithetically).
And as a wrap-up line, while inching toward the curtains, the Wig of Bemused Regret (again used epithetically) that “you” (singular or plural?) “just get sadder”. Whereas JR, of course, might be seen as simply remaining a sad case.
But it gets better (or worse, depending on one’s point of view): JR returns for a matinee performance at 1206PM on the 8th.
And we are informed – no doubt using the term far too generously here – that JR comes from a long line of impressive and impressively-accomplished people, including a whole bunch of Holy Roman Emperors (from which dynasty, one wonders, or from a smorgasbord of them, or – in best Playbook style – what difference does it make?); and a Pope and a couple of archbishops; and – on the other side of the fence – from Zwingli the radical Reformation figure; and – this should come in handy for his Hollywood career plans – the Italian film director Visconti. And – waitttt for ittttttttt! – some saints too, who are his “direct predecessors” (correction supplied), including a King of France, Saint Louis IX – oh, a whole bunch of other French kings too.
But – as if this point would not have been rather obvious to anyone – he also has “far far far more ancestors” (sic) whom he doesn’t know. The ones listed in his comment are just the “rich” and the “royal”.
Then we are informed in a rather blasé by-the-by that he has gone to the trouble of ‘mentioning’ all of this simply because he “did not know any of this” and “it’s all a big surprise to” him. Really? Of what use is all this ‘information’ to readers here and of what use to the matters under consideration on this site? (Time-saver: the recitation is of no use or relevance but – in best Playbook style – the whole performance distracts from the uncongenial reality that a) he has no relevant material and b) we should imagine ourselves well-advised not to disagree with a Wig that has perched atop it a collection of papal tiaras, imperial crowns, and even halos of formally-declared sanctity.)
And perhaps c) we are apparently meant to be so impressed with this puppy’s registry-papers that we won’t actually let our minds roam to any question as to – say – the credibility of anybody who would make such claims.
Oh, and he’s a “Communist”. How nice for him. And – doncha know? – Pope Leo X (any relation?) has said that “one can be a Communist and a good catholic too” (pitch-perfectly, one of the terms is capitalized and the other isn’t). And might JR want to produce the (accurate) quotation from Pope Leo X that grounds this assertion? Wouldn’t that be nice?
Of what use is anything you publish (at mamoth length) here? You only write to hide the sins of your institutional church. You're a fraud. A fake. A lying sack of excrement. Any more questions i can help you with?
You are very sad indeed because you are still hiding in the shadows.
What a stupid religion if it produces asses like you.
I will send you a copy of my family tree when you swing down from yours. You may have it the minute you say who you are. We already know what you are. The question is: who you are?
Hollywood film plans? At the age of 68? You do believe in miracles. You've confused me with Helen Mirran or Judi Dench. Better keep your genders "straight" or Jesus won't love you. You are one bitter, inhuman lady.
There’s not much new but here’s what I would say is useful:
Overall I had noted a while back that we seemed to have reached the bottom of JR’s 3×5 card collection and nothing we see from the various submissions on the 12th indicates otherwise.
At 128PM we get mostly epithet.
But we can notice that anyone who disagrees with any of the Abusenik cartoons is merely writing “to hide the sins of your institutional church”. Whereas, apparently, whatever plop is tossed in the service of the Stampede is pure and fearless truth-telling.
Leaving us with all of those questions I posed in regard to Darwin: those questions are ones that JR might (and perhaps should, since they flow directly from his own assertions and subject) “help” us with. But, of course and by the most amazing coincidence, it is precisely those questions that JR has chosen not to help us with, and instead we get what he gives us here in this little series of tosses.
Then – pulling out another time-worn and irrelevant 3×5 – JR will try to go for the question of who I am (as if my ideas weren’t enough for him to handle). Apparently, the long-list of his lineage – such as it may or may not be – was intended to be further burnishing of his creds (his actual Stampede material, clearly, not being up to the job at all). Nor – let’s face it – does JR’s most recent submission as to his lineage do much to take him out of “the shadows”; indeed it would simply seem to shed some self-introduced light on him for those readers wishing to give the matter some thought and assessment.
His concluding epithet works rather well as a bit of projection, although it is hardly imaginable that it is “religion” that has produced his present condition.
Then at 132PM we get a distracting and yet sly attempt to prove his openness by claiming that he is willing to send along a copy of his family tree. If – of course – he can get me to bring the whole exchange down to his (and the Playbook’s) preferred level … and thus avoid any substantive discussion of the issues involved in the Stampede.
But there is no “question” in all of this, I would say. I think that simply from the lengthy amount of material already in the record on this site it is crystal clear that Abuseniks – working from the Playbook – do not at all want to address the hugely problematic actualities of the Stampede at all. Rather, they want to toss up their ‘stories’, and then simply proceed from that hugely dubious basis to Keep The Ball Rolling with such numerous sleazy and shifty gambits as we have seen so often deployed in their comments here.
For that matter, I note again that in all of the material submitted on this site by Abuseniks we see distinctly that when it comes to examining the Stampede’s problems there is no there there: there is no effort to put forward a rational and logical analysis on behalf of the Stampede by any of its supporters. Instead, we have simply gotten what we can already see in the record here.
There appears to be no effort by anybody who could be considered ‘pro’ the Stampede to actually explicate its dynamics and the issues arising from those dynamics and elements. Where are the Stampede’s competently rational supporters? Why is there such a glaring lack?
Instead, we simply get the various variations on the Playbook, which are precisely designed not to examine or assess or explain, but rather appear precisely designed to prevent examination, assessment, and explanation.
That lack in and of itself raises a very bright red flag.
And in his last submission in this sequence, JR gloms onto the hardly major point that at age 68 he is too old to entertain any “Hollywood film plans”. Perhaps so – although I don’t think he would be averse to being approached by a studio looking to make a movie out of his ‘story’, so long as he would be cast as the truth-telly hero fearlessly declaiming against a rapine-besotted Church.
At any rate, the record here might surely offer food for thought as to the fact that someone who has reached that age produces so uniformly remarkable a body of submissions as we have in the record here.
And at 321PM he concludes – but of course – with more slyly distracting and typically queasy gender-bendy epithets based not on anything I wrote but on what he has constructed for himself as a ‘straw-man’ thought at which he might more conveniently toss his stuff while assuming the Wig of Insight (bedizened, as it now is) by that inherited collection of imperial crowns, papal tiaras, and the various haloes of formal sanctity).
And the final sentence works far better as projection than as description of actual fact about me.
And that’s all for now, folks.
Anyone who quotes Porky Pig, shouldn't talk about cartoon thinking.
Substantive thinking" as defined by you?? LOL! LMFAO! Cartoons have higher I.Q.'s than you do.
You think getting nasty equates to substantive thinking? You are one sad dude.
Let me remind you of what you are not: You are not the definer of anything other than your own tiny, stupid opinion. You can pretend your opinion is direct from god but it's still just your opinion. (Since god does not exist) Just as mine is my own.
I claimed nothing from my predessesors other than they existed. The fact that they were in history books says nothing about me. Could I be anymore interesting?
Funny how I don't have to hide and you choose to.
Did you actually thing your pedantic nonsense could drive me away? I'd love to see the demographics for TMR with me and without me.
Je Suis CIA plot.
Je Suis Wag the Dog.
How convenient The i.d. found in the car and the killing of both accused as ususual.
How come the rightwing keeps winning when they don't have the votes? Read Naomi Klein's
"Disaster Capitalism"
It couldn't be a plan to wage a never ending war on the enemy du jour, Islam, could it?
We invade their countries; define their borders; define their governments. Slaughter them by the millions. Steal their oil. And they are the terrorists?
Never ending war = Never ending profit and fear fear fear.
We're blowing them up in their own countries and they are the problem?
How much freedom does drawing a cartoon of Mohamed give me or anyone?
For millions their faith is their ownly education. It's all they have.
We can't refrain from drawing one person? That's just asking too much?
I'm so sick of this bull and how quickly the left signs up. This isn't about our freedom it's about ending theirs. whom ever we deem the "terrorist". Have we learned nothing?
You on the right need another POV; than U.S. government and that's why I wrote this.
Before we get to the most recent tosses, let us pause for a moment and consider that JR has Pope Leo X speaking about Communism. That rather nicely puts the problem in a nutshell.
Thus to the 13th at 824AM:
Readers may recall that I didn’t quote ‘Porky Pig’ but rather the cartoonist who created Porky and his dialogue. Rather, in fact, it was JR who actually referred to the cartoon character of Porky Pig as if it were an actual source of thoughts and statements, thus demonstrating rather clearly that JR has trouble distinguishing fantasies and cartoons from actual reality. As we have so often seen here.
Then an epithet which is all he has in regard to the definition of “substantive thinking” (about his own “thinking” – to use the term rather too generously – we can consider his Leo-X remark, his inability to distinguish a cartoon character from an actual human being, and his recent recitation of – we are to accept it as credible – his lineage going back to the age of the Holy Roman Emperors.
And then a further epithet which apparently confuses “getting nasty” with “substantive thinking”.
Then we are to be lectured (or ‘reminded-by’) JR as to what I am and am-not. Readers can consider the source and judge as they will (bearing in mind that it takes some real temerity to disagree with a scion of Holy Roman Emperors, Popes, archbishops, and saints – so, be warned!).
If JR can point out with any ()accurate) quote of mine where I assert that my opinion “is direct from god” then he can put it up here. Otherwise it appears that on top of his many other issues, he is unable to distinguish between humans and God (possibly a problem stemming from his own inability to distinguish himself from God, but in swampy territory like that who can really know?).
We are then informed that he really had no ‘claim’ to make from the publication of his list of “predecessors” (correction supplied; and note that he uses the term “predecessors” as if he too held some sort of exalted office or officium … just like they did). So, then, he had no purpose whatsoever in putting that long list of claimed ancestors up here (and is now thus victimized since he cawn’t think why anyone would make such a big deal of it and imagine that it had any meaning or purpose at all).
Whether or not he himself could “be any more interesting?” is a question for a clinician in the appropriate setting.
He then finds it “funny” that he doesn’t “have to hide” and I “choose to”. I choose to keep the discussion on ideas and content material and substantive thinking; JR – in line with the Playbook – wants to toss plop and needs a target to really get things going for himself. But he is absolutely correct that he hasn’t ‘hidden’ himself at all – and, indeed, has revealed far more about himself than he would ever have intended to.
I have no idea why the Abusenik Cher has left the stage so many times, only to return with an insistence that the stage was never left in the first place. It is JR’s idea – and not mine – that my “pedantic nonsense could drive [him] away”. As the record shows, he last left when presented with a series of questions, flowing from his own assertions, that he wasn’t going to be answering.
Then at 848AM, we get some sort of stream-of-consciousness thing having nothing to do with anything on this site. Were it not for JR’s screen-name I would have imagined it to be some form of spam or some mistaken post intended for a different site entirely
Shut up. No one wants to read your nasty bullshit. You are a liar; a provacatuer and an evil fool.
Those are the so called "ideas' you peddle here. Can you spell hypocrite?
I was wrong it was Pope Leo XIII mea f'ing culpa. When will you admit a mistake; or are you infallible too?
I write my thoughts on the latest bamboozle that will cost millions of lives and trillions in wealth. Yet you see no relevance that it be mentioned here in a public forum of religious people?
This is the village square and you are it's idiot.
I wish i could put a gold star on your collar for spelling.
I want to encourage you to get one for "ideas" ;but, so far, your "ideas" are all about hiding truth not revealing it.
Why the need to hide in general? It doesn't help your argument. It only shows you have a need TO hide.
Why? What will be revealled if we know who you are?
If this is a public forum and you pretend to be a (the only) witness against major crimes being perpetrated against your church; why the need for anonimity?
Why can't we, the accused, know who our accusor is?
You keep calling what you write "substantive thinking". Why?
Substantive obstruction or substantive lying would be more truthful.
Go away. Take a break. Give the world a rest from you.
To other readers, try this:
http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm
On the 15th at 1238 we get in that comment’s first paragraph a nice glimpse of the essential JR and perhaps the essential Abusenik. In addition to the juvenilia of “Shut up” we also see JR attempting to mask his own agenda in the global authority of all readers (“No one wants to …”), reinforcing that dodgy bit with a string of mere epithets.
He doesn’t recognize any of my material to be characterizable as “ideas” – and readers may judge his inability as they will.
And while I can “spell ‘hypocrite’”, I find it interesting that he can too, given his usual performances.
But the mistaking of Leo X for Leo XIII offers more for reflection. If a person were familiar with the line of Popes, it could easily be ascribable to a slip or a rather simple mistake if one were to, say, mistake something Leo XIII said for something Pius IX or Pius X said: they are all closely connected in the line (Pius IX immediately preceding and Pius X immediately succeeding Leo XIII).
But Leo X reigned in the Renaissance, far removed from the Popes mentioned above. To make a mistake like that indicates rather a profound ignorance of the line of the Popes itself (let alone the history of the Popes). So the mistaking of Leo X for Leo XIII is an error of a completely different order of magnitude. And one might ascribe it to a person ignorant of that history merely transcribing a papal name and number about which he otherwise has no knowledge whatsoever.
As I have said before, Wigs can only mimic competence, but they cannot provide or bestow it.
Thus too his juvenile effort at pooh-poohing or – as they like to say in some circles – ‘minimizing’ his error here. Nor does the use of scatology do much to improve the matter.
Why go into all this? Because, I say again, i) it gives readers a chance to see just what type of mentalities were involved in the Anderson Strategy calculations in the era of the internet and ii) it gives readers a chance to see just why the Anderson Strategies sought settlements rather than having to put such mentalities on the stand to be examined.
In regard to the 15th at 1PM:
We get nothing but an epithetical assertion to the effect that my “ideas” are “all about hiding truth and not revealing it”. Just what “truth” might that be that JR asserts me to be hiding? I would say it is the ‘revolutionary’ truth of the Stampede, which – as I discussed above – requires one to forego any actual truth achieved via the Scientific Method and instead to merely presume that revolutionary ‘truth’ and then selectively shoehorn any ‘facts’ that are convenient to the agenda. And that’s how “facts” have “become obsolete” to use Thomas Sowell’s phrase.
JR then tries to run his ‘hiding’ meme again – since he certainly isn’t going to try to deal with my voluminous “ideas”. But then – in a pitch-perfect example of the Playbook’s neat revolutionary economy – why should he try to engage any ideas that are inconvenient-to and uncongenial-to the already-presumed revolutionary truth? Wheeeeee!
The sense of the sentence beginning “If this is a public forum” escapes me. But certainly this is a public forum and I have put my ideas in this public forum, so what’s the beef? (Time-saver: JR and the Playbook cannot address the ideas so they have to find something else for their signature plop-tossing.)
Also, while it is absolutely true that in a court of law one must be informed of the identity of one’s accuser (well … except in sex-allegation cases, and what does JR have to say about that Victimist ‘reform’ in the legal system?) yet this is not a court of law. It is actually more of a public forum for ideas and it is precisely ideas that I am putting forward here.
And on the 15th at 108PM JR once again goes with the effort to claim that he cannot understand how any of my material qualifies for characterization as “substantive thinking”. Readers may judge his inability as they will. Perhaps if he were to proffer an example of what to him seems “substantive thinking” then that might move things along in resolving his confusion.
But such a suggestion would be antithetical to the Playbook. And – sure enough – his next sentence quickly tries to avoid any such danger of further analysis … by instead donning the Wig of Authority and insisting that I “Go away” and “Take a break”, while also conflating – again so characteristically – JR’s authority (such as it may be) with the authority of “the world” generally. (And might we also presume the authority of that collection of imperial crowns, papal tiaras, arch-episcopal mitres, Reformation creds, and haloes of sanctity?)
In response to which, with Luther, I can only say: Here I stand.
My 22nd grandfather was Pope Gregory X. His relationship to me was a shock to me. I mistakenly refered to Leo the X because I had X on my mind.
Leo XIII was the corrected answer I gave. I admited my mistake.
In normal dialog, decent people who correct their mistakes are forgiven. not continually attacked for an admited error. But Jesus' " best friend" here choses, not to forgive; but to ignore an apology and move on continuing to attack. So jesus like!
P demands complete defeat for me, personally. He demands this while hiding who he really is. Accusors in any court are required to identify themselves but not P. He's a shill. A shill for a corrupt chrch hierarchy that adores not an imaginary diety but privilage, arrogance and elitism.
However, the obfuscator here wants a confused readership, so much easier to control you that way."don'tcha know"?
This time around we see JR doing two of his favorite things: making excuses for himself and making himself out to be a victim.
Who knows if Gregory X (1271-1276) was his “22nd grandfather”? But the key is in that “X”: to hear him tell it, JR was so shocked when he found out who his 22nd – back grandfather was that it stayed on his mind as he wrote his comment. Apparently any knowledge he might have had of Leo X or the papal line generally was simply obliterated by his “shock” at finding out about Gregory X, presuming – of course – any such knowledge existed in the first place.
Readers can consider for themselves whether they are seeing the material of somebody simply beside-himself with “shock” after finding out who his grandfather 22 times removed was or whether they are seeing somebody whose energies were never really focused on knowledge but instead invested in coming up with excuses in order to put one over.
But we got the correction only after it was pointed out to him and all I was doing was applying some of that “counterintelligence” technique he occasionally mentions: forensic document analysis. Apparently the term “Gregory X” drove the memory of that knowledge out of his head too, presuming – of course – any such knowledge existed in the first place.
Once again though, Anderson’s strategic judgment seems confirmed: this type of excuse-making and story-telling only works for a short distance; if it is questioned, it proves rather fragile and has to start imagining evil forces ranged against it to distract from the essential lack.
Thus suddenly we are treated to the inference that this is all merely “normal dialog” between “decent people” and readers can consult JR’s record of comments to gauge the accuracy of his characterization. Once again, the sly smarm only lasts for as long as you don’t think about it too much.
Then an epithet to the effect that I am the “best friend” of “Jesus”. I have never suggested that, but he had to come up with something to help distract from the actual point at issue. But there is a method to the madness: by dragging Jesus into it, he can then work in the epithet that I – in assessing his material – am clearly not “jesus like” (sic). Abuseniks certainly do like to pronounce their little anathemas – but then, JR is the scion of many Popes, so maybe some of that authority rubbed off on him, even after almost 750 years and all of those generations.
Then the assertion – utterly unsupported by explication or demonstration – that I am a “shill”. Standing alone as it does, it remains nothing more than another of his plop-tossy and distracting epithets.
Then the victim bit: I am seeking his “complete defeat”. That would be an objective that doesn’t seem to require my help. But in any case all I am doing is assessing his material. Which assessing, as we have so often seen, is considered by Abuseniks to be an “attack” (but when they do it, it is ‘truth-telling’).
Then merely the repetition of two of his 3x5s: i) accused in a court of law should be able to know there “accusors” (sic) and ii) I am ‘hiding’ my identity. But i) we are in a forum for the exchange of ideas and not in the legal forum and ii) I am certainly not hiding my ideas, and they are the key element for what we are doing on this site. But not what JR and the Playbook are doing, on this site or anywhere else.
And for lack of anything better, he reverts to his signature I’m not/You are gambit, claiming that it is I and not he who is seeking to confuse and control the readership.
This is the type of thinking and verbal maneuvering that’s almost second nature to the Abusenik. And they don’t like it when their material is looked at too closely. They just want you to read and stampede … in the direction they have chosen.
Treat your opposition (enemy) like they aren't human or your peer and equal. De-humanize. Pretend you are reaching for a real truth in your efforts to ignore the truth as it is.
Rant on endlessly. Accuse sans facts or evidence. And above all never say who you really are because…. why exactly?
Can you, in one small sentence, expain your "rational" for annonimity? Why do you choose to hide? Zola signed his "Je accuse".
You hide under the illusion that your "ideas" (read false accusations) are enough to convict the majority of the people who were raped as children; to be liars and thieves and felons. With zero proof. Not even one case to offer as an example of proven fraud by a victim.
You have to write at ponderous length to cover the blood of the truth you murder. You are shameless.
I ask the readership here: Has anyone ever read in P's writing one moment of compassion for any human being any where? Why the need for an enemy when there are none? Don't you want to stop child rape in your church? I assume even P wants that.
What he doesn't want is to compensate those who were raped by calling people "cattle" i.e. "stampede". or "abuseniks". Somehow, Commie led, church attackers?.
And all done behind a mask of anonimity. P, Shouting out : "Stampede"! "Abuseniks"! from behind a screen. Accusing wildly with never any proof.
The world has embraced pope Frank as a ray of hope in your church. As of yet nothing substantive has changed only a PR image. the world buys Frank like they buy Coke (the frigid beverage) because he's being sold like a product. Whether the product works to the world's benefit or not is another issue.
P, step into the light. Come out from hiding. It's mandatory that you do if you are going to accuse people of crimes. What's your need to hide about? It makes it easier to throw stones?
Also victims don't want anyone or any "cattle" to "stampede" anywhere. (Why do you see your opposition as cattle?) We want compensation for sustained injuries caused by our/your institutional church period. (Thanks to the false flagged SNAP that's not happening).
Hey, I'm the scion of merely one pope, Greg X, who's considered a saint in Rome, and 2 arch-bishops of Milan Greg X's pa and grand pa.:^)
By the way I was talking to a very religious; very well educated catholic woman yesterday and asked her if Constantine, the emperor, was a saint. She said, "No way. He murdered his wife and son".
I'm also the progeny of 2 Emperors of Constantinople; 6 Holy Roman Emperors; 16 Kings of France, including st. Louis IX; and a partridge in a pear tree. Why don't you go on Ancestry.com? it's free for 2 weeks and give us your background.
750 years is nothing in terms of human history.
Could you deign to explain, how I want to confuse and control the readership? How by asking you to say who you are? by telling you the truth of my own rape? By asking you to give an example, just one, single, tiny proven example of fraud by someone claiming falsely they were raped by clerics. Some "stampede" with no examples!
One of your bigger lies is the " Anderson is the brains behind the "stampede" nonsense. Anderson couldn't lead a horse to water or a whore to culture. That's why he was chosen by the church conspiritors, headed by fr. Tom Doyle, as a stupid lawyer easily led/bamboozeled into following anyone who can bring him clients. He is more immoral than intelligent. Maybe that's why you place him as the" brains" because he like yourself passes himself off as brighter than he is. And you pass yourself off as more moral than the rest of humanity. You like he are both dupes at best, At worst you are just plain old evil. Evil not because you question victims experiences, you have every right to, but because you don't know what was done to us to question thanks to your church.
Where are the commisions, the public hearings about your church's systemic criminal behavior? There are none. Why? We victims want it. Ireland's had i.t Australia's has one now. But here we have only the hidden you, inventing cattle drives gone bad; and pretending you're the catholic John Wayne.
Well, on the 17th at 1258PM we get more to demonstrate for readers just what sort of mentalities and gambits underlie the Stampede.
All of the old familiar dodges and tropes are marshaled once again:
The conflation of “opposition” with “enemy” (thus: to oppose Abuseniks is to attack them); the personalization of discussions about ideas (if you don’t agree with their ideas they you are implying they aren’t human); the conflation of ideas and personality (if you don’t agree with their ideas then you don’t admit that they are your peer or equal – although the comparison, once again, is between ideas and not persons, which shows us once again that the Abusenik mind is not at all interested in the principles and praxis of the Scientific Method when exchanging and explicating ideas). And – but of course – the presumption of the Abuseniks’ preferred ‘truth’ as if it were a) real and b) can be demonstrated to be such.
Then epithet (“Rant on endlessly”).
Then try to go for the victim-y high ground: JR is being ‘accused’ without facts or evidence (when really – of course – it was that priest from half a century ago who was actually the target of that gambit).
And then – yet and yet again – the bit about my anonymity – although my ideas, which are the actual gravamen here, are published for all to consider. But – again – the consideration of ideas is not JR’s or the Playbook’s game.
Then a question which I shall answer: I use a screen-name simply to keep the focus on ideas, which are the real crux of the issue, and to keep the focus from being distracted into personal history and claims which (as we have seen with JR’s many bits) aren’t really worth a hoot in the internet medium. (As if the Abuseniks aren’t already aware of that and try so very often to use the fact to their manipulative advantage).
Then the effort to claim that the discussion on this site is a matter of “proof” when actually, especially in the internet modality, it is and can only be a matter of probability. Although, again, one can work quite rationally and logically and empirically in constructing a proposition as to probability, as I have been doing. And which is precisely what JR and the Playbook strive by various gambits to avoid.
JR finds the “length” of my writing to be “ponderous”. This ‘finding’ of his is, I have said, a function of both a) a cartoonish processing style and b) the visceral aversion Abuseniks experience when confronted with analysis and assessment of their material. They recoil from analysis and assessment like vampires from holy water.
Then the effort to conflate objections-to-material with lack of “compassion” (going, once again, for the victim-y high ground).
Followed by the effort to conflate analysis and assessment of Abusenik material with an effort to avoid ‘stopping’ “child rape in your church”.
Which –but of course – must also bring back the sly presumption of the genuineness of the many claimed rapes. And, further, one must establish the genuineness before one can legitimately deploy the term “compensate”.
Sly buttressed by the effort to make it sound like it is I who call (and treat) people (readers?) like “cattle”. Rather, it is the Anderson Strategies and the Abuseniks who have sought at all points to avoid engaging readers’ rational capacities and instead to manipulate and spook them into a Stampede.
Then the further creation of something I never said: that attacks on the Church in this matter are “Commie led”. When what I have always said that it is the Gramscian tactics and strategy – filtered through Alinsky and deployed by the Anderson Strategies and the Abuseniks – that are enabling the Stampede. Although it is certainly also true that the erosion and undermining of the Church’s and all religion’s public credibility and stature were key objectives of both the Communist game-plan and the secularist game-plan (which, as I said, adopted Gramscian techniques for its purposes).
Then a further effort to characterize my material as ‘wild accusation’ “with never any proof”. Building upon what I have so often said about proof and probability, I can say that all my material coherently and cohesively works toward a high probability – nor has any of JR’s mere plop-tossing done anything to contradict my material. (In fact, one might even wonder if JR himself isn’t a “shill” hired by the Church in very deep cover to make victims and Abuseniks look really really baaaaad – which would be quite a plan indeed, and one could hardly say such a plan, if it were to exist, has failed.)
Oh, and the “anonymity” bit (correction supplied) again.
Then some distracting side-bit about the Pope and it is what it is.
Then a repeat of the meme about my ‘accusing’ people of crimes (probability discussions by their very nature can’t do that).
Then an effort o connect my “anonymity” with ‘throwing stones’ (i.e. if you don’t agree with Abuseniks and explain why, then you are ‘throwing stones’ and – but of course – re-victimizing them).
Then a mere asserted denial that Abuseniks (or ‘victims, genuine or otherwise classifiable’) “don’t want anyone … to stampede”. If he has any ideas or material that can counter what I’ve been saying then he has never put it up here; we have only gotten mere-assertions and denials unsupported by any counter-explication.
Then the return to his alleged papal forebears. (And are we now informed slyly that actually he is “the scion of merely one pope” (sic)?
Then an utterly un-corroborated claim that he just happened to be “talking to a very religious; very well educated woman yesterday” (perhaps the same one who helped him write this long comment of his?) and she – by the by – says that Constantine is not a saint. How remarkably not-informed she is, if she actually exists.
Then the weirdly ambivalent if not schizzy comment that simultaneously attempts to recount his alleged forebears while then undermining the credibility of that list with “and a partridge in a pear tree”. Perhaps he reveals more than he intends to here.
But that bit leads neatly to his suggestion that I too can go to an ancestry website, learn about (my or his?) forebears and then share that to break my “anonymity” by giving “us your background”. Of what relevance would it or could it possibly be to the purposes and subjects of this site? (Short-answer: None.)
Then an utterly irrelevant observation that “750 years is nothing in terms of human history”. How very true. Or perhaps he wishes to remind us that his ancestry goes back – ala Darwin – to lesser life forms? If so, that’s a truism and hardly needs to be pointed-out.
As for his final question: he basically wants to begin de novo and ignore the weight of my material over the course of years here. Readers – including JR and/or his sources for these new long comments – can read up if they wish, including a simple reading of my comments on this thread and one or several immediately prior to it.
Then the sly effort – yet again – to start the play on 1st or 2nd by manipulating readers to presume “the truth of my own rape”. And asking me “to say who you are” – the answer to which is: I am my ideas and he clearly can’t or won’t even deal with those, let alone any further information.
So we are left, still, with a Stampede with some very high probabilities of insufficiency (to say the least). But then we also have the Philadelphia Billy-Doe case(s) – and what does JR have to say about those? Or, casting the net beyond the Catholic Abuse Matter to sex-offense allegations generally: the Duke and U/Virginia cases. Ditto.
And a final pitch-perfect demonstration of projection: submitting material “with no examples!”. Could there be a better revelation of the Playbook gambit?
What I have to say about the Billy Doe case is this: A jury of their peers found the priests guilty.
If you are your "ideas"; You are delusional.
The "weight of your ideas"!!!! That self agrandizment speaks for it self.
There is nothing simple in your cover up but you are simply trying to put one over on an easily led, hyper religious, simple flock.
I'm sorry I was raped as a kid. I'm sorry your church leaders chose to cover up and transfer perpetrators. (My perp was given a high school in Hawaii to head. He recieved no consuling after my reporting his abuse of me.) I didn't do these things your church leaders did. Around the world they behaved exactly the same. Explain that coincidence on a global scale if you will. Protecting the priests and ignoring or maligning the raped. You still do it here at this blog hourly.
I'm also sorry that you exist P. Jesus should call u home. You are not a decent person, I'm afraid. You don't treat people with respect.
I've said no one need take victims seriously without asking questions. You don't ask victims questions. You disrespect the facts of our lives from the jump.
That behavior is a) Not normal, and b) not just.
So what are we left with about you? Abnormal and injust. Not exactly adhearing to the rules of Jesus. So you are also an apostate passing yourself off as a true believer. I know more athiests more christ like than you. Now why would that be if you claim to be his follower and we athiests don't?
So "vampires recoil from holy water"? Do they really?
What if the true life vampires, the real blood suckers, are the ones flinging said "holy water"?
I always and only in this thread claimed one papal grand father. One pope is more than enough for me thank you. Why to you try so hard and so badly to make me out a conscious liar?
I don't lie and if I make an error I correct it as soon as i know it was an error. This is how moral people act. You definitely need a tutor in morality. You haven't a clue.
TMR and the posters here are exactly like America's far right wing pro Israel (as the excuse) foreign policy stance towards Islam.
We invade their lands destroy theit cities; homes; jobs and children and they are the boogey men. "Islamofacism"( Bath party facism was o.k. with us for 40 years) is the problem not our behavior in the West. Our horrific behavior in their countries on their turf; on their bodies is only sanctioned in this country; because we are terrorized by the word terror. You are more likely to be hit by lighting or slip and fall in your bathroom and die than you are likely to be killed by a "terrorist" act.
It's a contradiction in terms. We are afraid of them and that's why we have invaded their countries, We believe it was a race as to who would invade first!!! The Arabs already own this country (along with all the other hyper wealthy) they don't need to invade it.
We are being ramped up to an Oily War not a holy one and the Charlie Ledbo attack is just a way of attempting to pull the left into the rulers' camp.
Free speech and Western civilization, my ass!
If you can't yell fire in a crowded theatre. Not drawing the prophet is just about the same thing. And the west knows that because in the large we don't do that, consciously. Not out of fear but because it's no big deal to not draw Mohamed and it shows a little respect to people we are a stealing from.
P and TMR are doing the same exact strategy. Blame the victims for all the horror being perpetrated on them. When the killers; the rapists; the liars and the thieves are really you.
It's the very worst of tactics. The most immoral. Killing us all would be a more moral act than telling us what has happened didn't happen; and expecting as to go on living with that added lie when you know full well it did.
If you don't know it did ask your churh to invite victims to speak in your churches to your adult membership about what did happen to us and how we've been treated by the church since.
You've seen how victims posting here have been treated here. You've given little to no respect but you howl when you are treated in kind.
Is this a place for dialog; connection and healing? Or is it denial central?
And what have we got now?
On the 17th at 120PM we get merely the assertion that my Anderson theory is one of my “bigger lies” … but no explanation as to why except for – waittt for ittttt – an epithet about “Anderson couldn’t lead a horse to water”. We can, apparently , take JR’s word for it and what more does anybody need? And then we get merely a repetition yet again of how Anderson is a tool of the Church and of the still-Father Doyle, laced with more epithetical bits, which then swing from aiming at Anderson to aiming at me.
And among those is the assertion that I try to pass myself off as “more moral than the rest of humanity” (for whom apparently JR presumes himself to speak); and where have I ever made such a claim?.
So – following the cartoon here – I am either “a dupe” or – less bad according to the grammar of the sentence here – I am “just plain old evil”. And why am I “evil”? Because – follow the bouncing ball here – while I have “every right to … question victims experiences” (sic) yet I “don’t know what was done to us to question thanks to your church”. Meaning – as best I can make it out – that I have a right to question but I don’t have the information to question (if I don’t accept the type of stories, claims and allegations we have examined here) and I also don’t have that ‘information’ because “the church” apparently hid it. (In which case, on what basis were the settlement payouts made? Time-saver: they were made on the basis of a victimist-tortie shakedown racket.)
So I have a right to raise questions / but I can’t use that right unless I accept the stories and claims and allegations / which are precisely the material that raise so very many questions prima facie. This is a nice an example of double-talking circular logic as one is likely to encounter.
And then he goes and observes that there are no “commissions” (correction supplied) and “public hearings” – yet doesn’t ask why that might be so. One possibility: it’s becoming clear to a number of authorities that there isn’t all that much to investigate.
Then a juvenile bit to get from the Stampede and manipulating people like cattle in order to provide a lead-in to his John-Wayne bit. For yuks and giggles.
Then on the 18th at 114PM he will simply go for the Billy Doe trial-outcome without noting the results and present situation with the appeals and further higher-court review. About the clearly relevant examples of Duke and U/Virginia (and – why not? – the Tawana Brawley case from the late 1980s, contemporaneous with the start-up of the Stampede) there is nothing. Perhaps they were all Church-directed events designed to make ‘victims’ look bad.
Then the psychiatric pronunciamento that I am “delusional” – tossed as an epithet here to try to avoid the reality of the ideas I have put forth, with which JR will not or cannot come to serious grips.
Ditto the epithet about “self aggrandizement” (correction supplied; he transcribed the term wrongly, perhaps – from whatever source he derived it).
Then – as so often – a mere epithetical assertion as to my being the one trying to “put one over” on “an easily led, hyper religious, simple flock” (sic). Thus: if anybody doesn’t go along with the Abusenik cartoons, then they are clearly and ipso facto easily-led, hyper-religious and simple.
Then another signature reach for the Wig of Sorrow, which conveniently presumes all of the material that is in question, tossing in some irrelevant historical bits about his “perp” to distract from the questionable bits in the allegation itself.
And we are still left with the question as to whether what we are seeing “on a global scale” is simply the effort of other governments around the world to have a go at the Stampede for whatever reasons they might find useful to themselves.
Then the Wig of Sorrow reveals the Teeth of Epithet hidden in the bangles as JR also mews that he’s “sorry that I exist” – which is a splendid example of some mimicry of adult language being used to express a rather juvenile – if not also queasily repellent – thought and emotion.
And on top of that we see in this same paragraph the queasy and repellently juvenile and unripe impulses to violence: he wishes I were dead (that “Jesus might call [me] home”.
Bolstered by the silly effort to mask such repellent material and impulses with the mimicry of adult circumspection (“You are not a decent person, I am afraid”) which also seeks epithetically to move the topic from the material under consideration to JR’s signature pronunciamento to the effect that I am not “a decent person”. We can take his word for it, of course.
And – but of course – anybody who doesn’t buy the Abusenik cartoon doesn’t “treat people with respect”.
I have asked a rather large number of questions over the course of comments here, and have received very few actual answers; instead we have seen the deployment of the Playbook panoply of distractions and epithets and so on and so forth. And – again with the circular logic – I “disrespect the facts of our [i.e. the victims, genuine or otherwise] lives” by questioning those very facts. The Abusenik game is a game specifically and slyly designed precisely to avoid questions.
Followed by the further pronunciamentos that such “behavior” on my part (i.e. the questioning) is “not normal” (the Wig of Psychiatry) and “not just” (the Wig of Philosophy and Morality). No explication to accompany this mimicry of professional assessment masking what is merely more plop-tossy epithet.
Thus the Pronouncer brings it home with a wrap-up: I am “abnormal and unjust” and “not exactly adhearing to the rules of Jesus” (sic). And from that already whacky bit he will riff on to my being “an apostate” … apropos of no material here; it is most likely that JR doesn’t really know the meaning of the term “apostate” but it sounds impressive (spackling up his on-going mimicry of competence here) and makes a nice epithet. On the lower levels of the internet the mere use of so imposing a term would mark one as impressive, among the easily-impressed denizens of those regions.
With all that being said then, his final question fails since it is built on the rickety structure of hastily-constructed presumptions that I have just examined.
Perhaps he needs to dial-up a new muse.
Then on the 18th at 126PM we get an effort to avoid the ramifications of Abuseniks recoiling from facts and issues: he will try, using his signature I’m Not/They Are gambit, to imply that the priests are the vampires (which is a mental gymnastic a bit above the level of any material we have seen from him). But – of course – we have been trying to establish all along to just what extent priests have been vampiric (if you will) but – of course – we precisely can’t ask the questions that would establish whether the priests have or have not been vampiric … thus the circular logic of the Abusenik game again.
And so, to use JR’s own gambit here: what if the allegants have vampirically glommed onto the Church?
And on the 18th at 130PM JR points out that he only claims the one Pope (Gregory X) and not several. He is correct. Whether that bolsters his claim that he doesn’t “lie” much – if at all – is for readers to decide.
But it serves as a hook on which to hang another lecture in “morality” – delivered with the appropriate Wig (and papal tiara, and probably the archiepiscopal miters as well).
Then, on the 18th at 241PM we get a riff on current events, and readers are welcome to make of it what they will. But it provides (in his mind, anyway) a hook for – waittttt for ittttttttttttt! – the trotting-out of yet another familiar and traditional Abusenik card: I and TMR are ‘blaming the victims’. Of course, the entire problem here has revolved around trying to determine just how many genuine victims there are and just how much genuine and actual “horror” was “perpetrated upon them”. So the Abusenik circular-logic mechanism is evident yet again.
And that also provides the platform for more epithetical tosses about “you” (whoever that is) being “the killers; the rapists; the liars and the thieves”.
And then, having laid that grossly dubious foundation, JR proceeds to swing yet again into pronunciamento mode about “the very worst of tactics” and “the most immoral”. But these characterizations are based on that dubious foundation so the whole thing is – yet again – a rickety construction of convenient snippets that haven’t been established at all.
Then the signature Abusenik hyperbole to the effect that “killing us” (meaning JR-and-the-victims; no distinction made between genuine and otherwise) “would be better”. Really?
And “would be better than telling us what has happened didn’t happen” – but the factuality of what has and hasn’t happened is precisely what is at issue here. And so we see the Abusenik circular logic in action once again.
And it is buttressed by the utterly untrue assertion that “you know full well it did”, i.e. that I or readers here “know full well” that what he claims to have happened did happen, which – to repeat – is precisely what we don’t know and precisely what I or we are being taken-to-task for questioning at all in the first place.
That’s how the Abusenik game is played.
As for his suggestion that ‘victims’ be asked into churches to tell their stories and claims and allegations, we are left completely and precisely with the same problem as to the genuineness of the performances. But again, we see here how the Stampede is basically ‘theater’ as Victimism has developed it: somebody claims to be a victim, tells a story, and then everybody is supposed to emote on cue and – not to put too fine a point on it – stampede. (Somebody could ask and question, of course, but then a) they don’t have the information that the story-teller allegedly has and b) they haven’t been victimized so they have no business asking such insensitive questions and c) it is immoral to ask questions of these stories.)
This has been the template in so many of these stories, going back to the McMartin pre-school satanic day-care ritual abuse stories in the early ‘80s and the Brawley show in the late ‘80s, and on and on into the present day.
As for how ‘victims posting here” have “been treated”, clearly and the record shows this: it is the very act of questioning their stuff that enrages the Abuseniks.
Nor do I “howl” when “treated in kind”. And what we see here in this bit is the Abuseniks trying to cover up their inherent unripeness and nastiness (evident in the record here) as being simply a reply to originally being treated so awfully in the first place. And how were they treated so awfully in the first place? (Waitttt for itttttttttt!) By being questioned.
And the self-serving circular logic demonstrates its fundamental presence yet again.
Then – slyly – a Goody-Two-Shoes plaint (delivered with the Wig of Plaintive and Victimized Integrity) as to whether this site is “a place for dialog; connection and healing” (sic).
In the first place: No, it’s primarily a site of inquiring in order to get a fuller and better grasp on a significant phenomenon. And that is precisely what Abuseniks don’t want and exert every effort to avoid and prevent.
And in the second place: in the Victimist (and Abusenik) Playbook, “dialog” means listening to the stories and then simply agreeing with them and stampeding emotionally on cue; “connection” means simply mewing and bawling the appropriate sympathetic oohs and ahs and clucks on cue; and “healing” means telling story-tellers that they are truthy and brave and utterly right. And nothing else.
And the whole performance concludes with another old familiar: “denial”. Which in the Playbook means that questioning a story constitutes proof-positive that one is ‘in denial’.
That’s how the Abusenik game is played.
I know Jesus's only commandment towards us, regarding our fellow humans, was to "Love your neighbor as yourself"
Since you do not choose to follow that commandment; yet feign to be a devotee of christ and his church. I say you are an apostate.
I've never said you have to agree with the facts of our rapes.
I've never said you shouldn't question the facts of our rapes
. What I do say is you don't know the facts of our rapes because; untill recently, if we settled with your church; your/our church demanded silence about what happened to us. And that only a fool or a very evil person would use our settlements, for crimes commited against us, as an excuse to claim fraud with no proof of any such fraud to back your argument.
Well is this a place for dialog; connection; and healing; or is it a place for their opposite: Monologes; disconnection and injury?
(Maybe it's only a place for those who spell well?)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/19/cultural-marxism-a-uniting-theory-for-rightwingers-who-love-to-play-the-victim?CMP=ema_1364
And now for something completely different.
On the 20th at 1241 an entirely different tone, and style, and approach from what we have seen from JR before.
First, the pious recollection of Jesus’s commandment (and will it be keyed to the epithetical? – stay tuned). Having turned to Scripture, JR will choose the most narrowly literal import of the word “love” (which in the Abusenik scriptural dictionary means Agreeing with everything Abuseniks claim and providing the appropriate sympathetic clucks).
This narrow literal translation conveniently precludes other possibilities: such as: it is hardly ‘love’ to say what isn’t known to be true.
This narrow literal translation also opens the path to the Love me/Love my story conflation that will lead anybody down the garden path.
This narrow literal translation also opens the path to JR’s carefully selective epithetical conclusion: clearly (if we assume his narrow literal translation) I “do not choose to follow that commandment”. Neato.
But there’s more: in language and style and tone very unlike his usual material, he pronounces that I “feign to be a devotee of christ and his church” (sic). When have I ever declaimed upon my conception of my following of Christ? But if JR (or his source here) is going to keep this thing going, then I have to be constructed as a straw-man in order to do so.
Then an almost antiphonal style: but it is deployed merely to convey the same circular reasoning we have seen in the carefully constructed Abusenik universe of discourse: while JR has never said I had to agree with “the fact of our rapes”, and while JR has never said that I “shouldn’t question the facts of our rapes”, yet (moving into the next paragraph of the comment here) I don’t really know enough to disagree or to question. Once again, we see the circular reasoning coupled with what can only amount to the assertion of spectral evidence (i.e. evidence that can be seen only by the claimant and by nobody else, although everybody has to believe it or the claimant will feel re-victimized).
But then we are given a sly curve we have seen before: it is only “recently” that – we are to believe – the Church has released settlement-payees from secrecy. When was that? And that would require further court approval, since the secrecy was a part of the settlement agreement (and as Federal judge Schiltz had said, it is more likely that the secrecy was demanded by the torties). Could we get any identifying information for the court document that approved this change in the settlement agreement?
Then – but of course – the Teeth of Epithet start chattering and chomping: “only a fool or a very evil person” would assess the payees’ settlements. And – but of course – there is no proof of any such thing. But – again – the probability, taking the Federal judge’s observation and all of the other elements I have discussed here over time, is very high. And nothing we have seen from the Abuseniks does anything to reduce that probability; indeed, it’s somewhat the opposite, I would say.
But the whole performance enables JR to don the Wig of Victimization while also indulging in epithet.
Neat.
Then – the 20th at 1247PM – JR asks the same question I had just answered in my immediately previous comment of the 18th at 849PM: this is not a site for “dialog” (as it is defined in the Abusenik dictionary) or “healing” (ditto). Nor is it a place for “the opposite” – whatever that might be.
It is a place for “inquiring in order to get a fuller and better grasp on a significant phenomenon. And that is precisely what Abuseniks don’t want and exert every effort to avoid and prevent”, as I said at the end of my immediately previous comment.
Then the epithetical stab with “Monologes” (sic; nicely misspelled for the tie-in to the gambit that’s coming up in a moment), “disconnection and injury” – which again seeks to reach for the Victim-y high-ground. Although I can’t make out the sense of “disconnection”, and “injury” in the Abusenik dictionary means ‘attacking’ Abuseniks by the mere fact of questioning various bits in their material.
Concluding with a further stab at the victim-y position with the mewling insinuation that this is only a site “for those who spell well” … although I have noted at length the questionable nature of JR’s spelling issues in prior comments (conveniently ignored here).
As I said, there appears here a style different from JR’s usual language and tone (although the basic tactics are familiar, of course). In fact, I am reminded of another former commenter here, especially in light of JR’s recent wishing I were dead (‘called home by Jesus’), which belies an inherent layer of molten violence cloaked in smarm that is not JR’s style and tone but was often seen in material submitted by that former commenter.
Which is a point I make here simply to elucidate the fact that when it comes to Abuseniks you can never be sure.
Oh you don't deserve violence? I'll make a note of that. I've been so violent all my life. I'll have to stop doing that.
Wishing you'd go on to your eternal (infernal?) reward should be no biggy for you.I just want you to get closer to your imaginary friends. Either one.
Your religion's all about life after death and oppresion; control and gathering money in this life.
You attack non stop. People can read what you write, you know.
Your church and their insurors have seen my claims and paid me not to go to court. You have read my claims and still you pretend what I've claimed isn't true and even if it is true. You don't think I was all that hurt by being forced to do sexual acts with my teachers. Fine! Your's is just another moron's opinion. The mere fact that you never believe anything any victim's posted here. Makes you what? Reasonable? Accurate? Fair minded? Or just a stooge for Mama Roma.
The question I have is: Which stooge are you? I see you as Moe slapping down anyone who you disagree with.
I reiterate: you don't treat people respectfully. The planet has had too much of that. That's why I wish you'd leave it naturally by dropping dead as soon as possible.
You want to play jungle? Don't be surprised when you are treated jungle.i.e. kill or be killed.
You see us at war with your church? Swell! People die in wars.
I'd just love you to be the first to go. Go in peace my brother and make it snappy. :^)
Continuing here in order to demonstrate how to analyze material, we turn to JR’s of the 21st at 107PM:
It opens with the presumption of something I never said: that I didn’t “deserve violence”. I have never discussed or raised the point of whether I or anybody here doth “deserve violence”. Once again, we see the Playbook gambit of creating a fictional bit in order to have something more convenient for the plop-tossing.
Further, readers will note how this gambit slyly avoids the actual point I made in my prior comment: it was not about “violence” as such, but about the different styles and tones of expressing it among the various Abusenik commenters.
JR may reveal more than he wishes with his admission that he has “been violent all [his] life”; I have no doubt that is only one of several characteristics that have remained steady over the decades. But it is not a matter suitable for further consideration here.
Then an effort to minimize his assertions as to my death in a joke-y mode. Hah-hah and that sort of thing.
Then an effort to tie in the afterlife to my “religion” … and it goes on from there.
Then we are back to square-one: I “attack non-stop” (because – doncha see? – I question and assess non-stop); but I question and assess non-stop because the material being proffered continues non-stop without improvement.
Then – as if de novo – we are back to the point that “your church and their insurers have seen my claims and paid me not to go to court”. Precisely not: JR did indeed “go to court” because he joined a (massive) Anderson Strategies multi-plaintiff lawsuit (on the basis of a sworn affidavit of Complaint) and with all of the other 500-plus allegants, the case was settled in order to avoid massive individual-allegation litigation (precisely as the Anderson Strategies would predict). And the settlement was then approved by a Court and effected on the authoritative approval of that Court – without, I add, any actual trial-process of the allegations.
Further – again – readers are welcome to imagine JR, on the basis of his record here, handling sustained and aggressive adversarial questioning on the stand. And whether any tortie in his or her right mind would dare to take the acute risk of letting him be put on the stand to face such adversarial questioning.
As to the rest of that “Your church and their insurers” paragraph, we see nothing more than the repetition of the Playbook gambit of presuming as factual what has yet to be proven to be factual.
Then further distractive efforts with a riff on The Three Stooges.
Then in a pitch-perfect juvenile cafeteria tone: do I “want to play jungle?”. I am not ‘playing’ at all; I am seriously assessing proffered material. (Although JR may give away more than he intended here: it does seem that when you get into the Stampede you do encounter a jungle and you do encounter a pandemonium of various beasties who are denizens therein.)
Then the mere repetition (or ‘reiteration’, which is surely a vocabulary bit from a level not at all often seen from him) that I “don’t treat people respectfully”. Readers may consider the Playbook and Victimist-dictionary definition of “respect” (i.e. believe everything they say and then either be sympathetic or shut up and go away).
Nor do I see in Abusenik material much actual respect for the Scientific Method or for objective truth generally.
Then an effort to make an excuse for himself while also grabbing for the Victim-y high-ground with the Wig of High and Deep Concern: he does “wish [I would] leave the planet” by “naturally dropping dead as soon as possible”. There you have it.
But there’s more: notice the odd (and self-contradictory) bit about ‘naturally dropping dead’: how does one do that? Does one have control over ‘nature’ to that extent? Rather, what we see here is JR (perhaps under the inspiration of some other muse) trying to avoid any colorable connection to thoughts of murder while still getting in his (already violent enough) death-wish stuff. Charming. And pitch-perfect.
Then, in a further effort to try to normalize or rationalize (or – as the Playbook likes to put it – ‘minimize’) all of these violent bits he’s put forward, JR creates yet another bit I never said to the effect that the Abuseniks are “at war with your church”. Why do this? In order to provide a lead-in for the truism that “people die in wars”. This is how the Abusenik mind works (so to speak).
And the conclusion to his comment is as repellently smarmy and faux-pious as it clearly appears.
Is he dead yet?
Respect is a tone. Not an acceptance of anything; other than people are decent human beings untill proven not to be. Where's your proof, your opposition here aren't decent people?.
Just the manner in which you address people once you've defined them as "enemy" is extraodinary. Which you do rather rapidly.
For your tone alone you are deemable as an apostate. Why are you defending a church you don't believe in? You must not believe in it. You fail to follow it's basic tenent. i.e. treating people respectfully as they are.
In regard to the 22nd at 1118PM: where have I ever claimed or asserted that people commenting here "aren't decent people". Once again we see JR conveniently and self-servingly creating statements that were never made (except by himself) in order to have something to toss plop at.
Respect is more than a tone and one's material has to earn respect. I have very little respect for much Abusenik material here because – as I have gone to great lengths to explicate – it is incoherent, irrational, illogical, un-grounded, and not demonstrably factual or all of the foregoing.
Once again, we see the Abusenik effort to presume Love me/Love my assertions and stories. And that's not how the Scientific Method works.
Ditto with the "enemy" bit.
And how does my "tone" somehow make me "deemable as an apostate"? Does JR even know what that term means? Even if I were – for the purposes of discussion here – "defending a church [I] don't believe in", that would not qualify for the definition of "apostate".
And finally and yet again: pointing out the problems in material is not disrespecting people. Although when people have also allowed themselves to descend so queasily and repellently and consistently into the epithetical, and that gambit also ties into the Playbook, then readers are probably going to make some (hardly unsupported) connections.
You can not stop your self.
You are a pizzmire. It's a word from an old movie. Cedric Hardwicke's Death and Lionel Barrymore wishes him up a tree. Barrymore calls a prudish hypocritical Aunt, a pizzmire. MGM showed the aunt to be all church and judgement and all about money. A pizzmire..
I thought apostate meant being outside and in opposition to the faith. Well Jesu said Love your etc.. You don't. Therefore you are an apostate. You have, in fact, renounced your faith. It is required in catholicism; in christianity to love your neighbor. Not judge your neighbor nor tell him/her what to do. Just love them, period.
Changing the subject.
I don't care if you believe me or any other victim. Get it? You've cut yourself out of a peaceful curious herd/ flock of catholics and started yelling: Stampede! Treachery and Stampede! Where? Did I sleep through it when they passed? If anyone's trying to start a stampede it's you. A stampede of manufactured outrage against people who were raped as children.
Don't you know influencing the right wing in the church doesn't require intelligence, even your sad brand, just mysticisim.; and hope of better things to come. Hope the ultimate betrayer.
Who asked you to critique what I say? What anyone says here? You placed yourself in that position and you've demanded the dialog return to your version of the truth. I do the samething so we are at an impasse.
Your over views of this scandal aren't. Your here to protect that which is unworthy of protection.
Jesus wouldn't protect these bastards. He could love them but protect their jobs; their privilage; never Remember J.C. was the boy with the millstone..
For those keeping a clinical notebook on the Playbook, JR once again comes through with some noteworthy examples on the 26th at 1159PM.
A fine example of projection with his pronunciamento to me that “you can not stop your self” (sic).
Then name-calling (I’m thinking ‘epithetical’ doesn’t quite capture the queasy unripeness of the gambit), with a distracting bit about the old movie it’s from (as if JR’s ignorance and/or inability to deal with relevant material is somehow compensated-for by various bits of stuff he drags in from other subjects).
Then, returning to his “apostate” problem – but , of course, making an excuse for himself – he tells us that he “thought” that “apostate meant being outside and in opposition to the faith”. An “apostate” is one who completely rejects the faith rather than simply denying this or that element of doctrine. Does JR wish to then suggest (and can he provide accurate quotes) that I have completely and utterly denied the tenets of the Faith? And if so, how would that square with his sustained habit of referring to me as a Catholic conservative and an example of what traditional Catholics believe and his sustained habit of referring to me as being (with all other Catholics who don’t agree with his stuff) as being part of the Catholic faithful?
But here’s how he solves his problem for himself (and, for whatever it’s worth, to his own satisfaction): I am an apostate because – waittt for ittttttt! – I “have, in fact, renounced your faith”; which now raises the question as to whether he knows what the meaning of “renounce” is.
And how have I “renounced [my] faith”? The Wig of Faith doth proclaim: “Well, Jesu said Love your etc.” Thus, since Jesus said “Love thy neighbor” and since by the very act of questioning JR’s material I clearly do not love his stuff (and thus – in his mind – him) then I have renounced my faith because “It is required in catholicism [small ‘c’; my word-processor software flags the small-‘c’ as a spelling error]; in christianity [ditto] to love your neighbor”. Thus, by refusing to ‘love’ JR’s material, then – through his signature Love Me/Love My Story foolishness – I have (in his mind, anyway) conveniently renounced the Faith and am an “apostate”.
Because he then conflates “love” (in the New Testament sense) with “not judge your neighbor nor tell him/her what to do” – doncha see? But a) ‘love’ and ‘judge’ are words that clearly don’t mean the same thing and are not actually synonymous; and b) I am judging JR’s material (again, if JR’s theory is correct teachers could not correct test papers and compositions and commentators could not disagree, without becoming “apostates” to the Faith). And Jesus certainly didn’t say that Christians couldn’t assess ideas.
Thus we see – yet again – how Abuseniks seek consistently to turn themselves into victims and thus seek to justify whatever they choose to do: they are ‘judged’ – doncha see? – and that ‘attack’ justifies whatever queasy responses they then choose to make.
He will then inform us outright that he will now be “changing the subject”. That’s a surprise.
He informs me and the readership that he doesn’t “care if you believe me or any other victim”. Which has not been a major concern for me but he’s welcome to say it.
But then – in another demonstration of how Abuseniks snip and cut to stitch together their little bits – JR (the Wig of Denunciation) doth declaim that I have “cut [my-]self out of a peaceful curious herd/flock of catholics” (sic). So then, we see that the Abuseniks and the Stampede indeed expect Catholics to be “a peaceful curious herd/flock”, thus placidly standing still and ruminating while the Abuseniks, like wealthy hunters going on a hunting expedition where the targets are set up for the shooting, take their potshots.
And when we question the Abusenik narrative and propose an alternative narrative (such as my characterization of The Stampede) then that’s not fair because we Catholics were supposed to just stand around there in the woods while the Abuseniks took their potshots.
And then – in yet another marvelous example of projection and of JR’s signature I’m Not/You Are comeback – he accuses me of “trying to start a stampede … out of manufactured outrage against people who were raped as children”. Which last bit is precisely what hasn’t been proven and which, in its nicely vivid phrase “manufactured outrage” precisely describes the Abuseniks’ strategy for starting their Stampede.
Marvelous. I couldn’t have done a better job myself.
Then we get a variation on JR’s cartoonish bit that the “right wing in the church … doesn’t require intelligence” (instead, only the left-wing, apparently, works on the level of intelligence). Which bit is then buttressed by the assertion that to deal with the “right wing in the church” one only needs “mysticism” (leading one to realize that JR doesn’t know the meaning of that word either).
Ditto the word “hope”, upon which JR delivers an uncharacteristically poetic pronunciamento that “Hope [is] the ultimate betrayer”. It is also one of the three Theological Virtues in the Catholic system; perhaps JR’s ongoing “shock” at finding himself (so we are told) to be a descendant of Pope Gregory X has driven that grade-school Catholic knowledge from his mind. Or perhaps even in grade school he wasn’t really paying attention in catechetical instruction (or any other class).
Then – again reaching for the Victim Wig – he plaints “Who asked you to critique what I say?”. He is thus apparently unfamiliar with the role of internet commentary. Or do we see here a classic example of the Abusenik rage at being questioned? Or both?
And it is JR who “placed” himself “in that position” by putting up his material on a site with a commenting function. What did he expect was going to happen? (Short-answer: he didn’t expect his stuff would be questioned.)
But then – neatly – we see him then twist and turn to bring things to yet another old Abusenik bit: since he ‘demands’ “the dialog return to your version of the truth … [then] … we are at an impasse”. To which I respond (yet again): No we are not at an impasse. My objective has been to examine assertions and ideas that are put forth and that’s what I have done and will continue to do. My objective is fulfilled and there is no impasse.
But JR – projecting so nicely here again – does indeed seek to get his version of the truth accepted by hook or by crook and it is his objective that has failed here (largely due to the poor quality of his material).
Readers familiar with this site are welcome to consider whether any exchange with JR can be considered a “dialog” and whether he knows the meaning of that word either.
Then he heads toward the curtains with a parting epithet that seeks to assume what has yet to be proven and also to assume that I am “here to protect” it (and can he provide a relevant and accurate quote of mine?).
And finally, already starting to wrap himself in the side-curtains he dons yet again the Wig of Scriptural Pronouncement to declaim to me about “Jesus”, and how “Jesus wouldn’t protect” what has yet to be demonstrated (“these bastards”, with a pitch-perfect adolescent reversion to scatology), which also again presumes that I am “here to protect” anybody at all.
I am here to get a deeper and more complete grasp of a phenomenon. I follow the material that is put up and point out the issues and the problems. If this were a “dialog” (as in Scientific Method) then the author of the material in question would respond informatively to my questions and the back-and-forth exchange would continue.
But instead, and in best Playbook fashion, we get not informative-responses but rather a pandemonium of distractions and juvenile, unripe gambits designed to avoid the problems and the questions and simply toss-plop at the questioner(s).
If any reader ever finds him/herself facing an Abusenik, this is the type of game you can expect to be faced-with. Don’t expect the Scientific Method to govern the exchange.