TLC: "No Scrubs"
This week's TMNS have been brought to you by the Hits of 1999.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
TLC: "No Scrubs"
This week's TMNS have been brought to you by the Hits of 1999.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by purple ink.
Recommended Reading:
Amy: [Content Note: Misogyny; classism] What's the Connection Between Snowfall in Boston and Health and Human Rights?
Helena: [CN: Child sex abuse] Malawi Bans "Child Marriage" But the Work Is Just Beginning
Adrienne: [CN: Racism; appropriation] New York Fashion Week Designer Steals from Northern Cheyenne/Crow Artist Bethany Yellowtail
Hyphen Magazine: [CN: Racism] After Amy Tan: An Asian American Literature Roundtable
Candice: [CN: Misogynoir; bullying] In Support of Bobbi Kristina
Jamilah: The Reid Report Canceled Amid MSNBC Shake-Up
Victoria: Hollywood Plans to Create "The Female MacGyver," and They Want Your Help
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
This might be my favorite picture of Zelly ever. ♥
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Perfect
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
I got an email from friend, who is basically the most amazing email penpal ever and sends me just the greatest observations all the time, and I asked her if I could share her latest here. So, with her permission, enjoy.
I don't know if you've come across the weather blog for the Washington Post. It's fascinating. Every post has like a million comments. Apparently everyone who lives here is obsessed with weather. People get into actual fights over the predictions.
Anyway, one of the writers for it is this guy called Jason Samenow. "Jason is currently the Washington Post's weather editor. A native Washingtonian, Jason has been a weather enthusiast since age 10."
I don't have a problem with him, because unlike hundreds of people in this area, I don't think I'm better at forecasting the weather than, um, the weather forecasters.
I'm just fascinated by this bio. I am trying to imagine a context in which you would ever see something similar for a woman. "A native Hoosier, Melissa has been a writer since she was 7."
Riiiiiight.
No one (no one) would consider that kind of information interesting or relevant if told to them by a woman in a professional context and would think it showed lack of professional judgment, because "weather enthusiast" is not a qualification.
If you were wondering who the deputy is: "Angela Fritz is an atmospheric scientist and The Post's deputy weather editor."
I know, right?
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Extreme weather; death] The cold that's gripping much of the country is setting record lows in many places and causing an enormous number of safety issues, resulting in a number of injuries and deaths: "By Thursday in Tennessee, one of the states hardest hit, 11 people had died because of subzero temperatures. ...According to Tennessee emergency management, five people died of hypothermia-related conditions in the state and six more died in motor vehicle accidents or from an inability to reach medical care, stemming from the continued icy conditions on the southern state's roads." There are parts of the US right now that are having weather for which their infrastructure and road design just aren't built to accommodate.
[CN: War] The United Kingdom and the European union badly misread Russia in the run-up to the fighting in Ukraine: "The UK and the EU have been accused of a "catastrophic misreading" of the mood in the Kremlin in the run-up to the crisis in Ukraine. The House of Lords EU committee claimed Europe 'sleepwalked' into the crisis. The EU had not realised the depth of Russian hostility to its plans for closer relations with Ukraine, it said. ...The committee's report said Britain had not been 'active or visible enough' in dealing with the situation in Ukraine. It blamed Foreign Office cuts, which it said led to fewer Russian experts working there, and less emphasis on analysis. A similar decline in EU foreign ministries had left them ill-equipped to formulate an 'authoritative response' to the crisis, it said."
[CN: Terrorism; death] Boko Haram is terrorizing Chibok again: "Boko Haram militants fleeing a Nigerian army offensive killed 21 people on Friday in attacks near the village of Chibok, close to where the rebels abducted more than 200 schoolgirls last year, a military source said." Fucking hell. I am so angry.
[CN: Homophobia; sexual policing] Not that anyone should need a reminder that marriage equality isn't the magical singular cure for homophobia, but: "Police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana arrested two men last week under a statute prohibiting 'unnatural carnal copulation by a human being with another of the same sex.' Meanwhile, the Supreme Court declared bans on sex between consenting adults [unconstitutional] more than a decade ago." The "crime against nature" charge was eventually thrown out, but the men are still being held for "trespassing."
[CN: Terrorism] Here we go again: "Cue up another conservative tantrum: DHS issues warning about threat from right-wing terrorists."
[CN: Transphobia; bathroom panic] Autumn Sandeen writes a really terrific piece about the restroom pictogram found at San Diego's LGBT Center and at the San Diego Airport, which sends entirely the wrong message.
[CN: Racism] Giuliani says his "Obama doesn't love America" commentary couldn't have been racist, because Barack Obama has a white mother: "Some people thought it was racist—I thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother, a white grandfather, went to white schools, and most of this he learned from white people." Fuck this guy.
[CN: Fat hatred; eliminationism] Here's just a real headline in the world: "Global progress against obesity 'unacceptably slow.'" Another way of saying that: "We are not eliminating fat people quickly enough." Wonder not why I call anti-obesity campaigns eliminationist.
[CN: Scatological humor about actual scat] This is a terrific story from Indiana: "Frozen fecal matter closes I-65 exit ramp." Best Indiana poop story since the giant poop bubbles of 2010.
And finally! All the blubs forever at this story about a rescue dog who saved his owner, aided by a police officer who viewed the dog as in need rather than dangerous. A great story all around.
The Falsest of False Equivalencies
[Content Note: Harassment; misogynoir.]
Note: When I originally wrote about Adria Richards two years ago, I said that I wished I'd had her consent to do so, but she was under siege and I didn't want to remain silent. This time, I am writing this piece with Adria's consent and input.
Two years ago, Adria Richards was at PyCon, a tech conference, when a man behind her made sexualized jokes to another man, in violation of the conference guidelines. The jokes persisted for several minutes and at a volume much louder than a whisper, despite how they have since been mischaracterized by others. Adria's building discomfort with the distraction led her to report them to the conference organizers. The first guideline in reporting said that identifying the person was key. Adria, thinking it would be unlikely that men would willingly identify themselves if she asked so, decided to use her smartphone—a strategy applauded for identifying street harassers and one which would later be applauded in Ferguson last year.
Adria took their picture and tweeted it, also notifying the listed contacts in the Code of Conduct via text message and asking the conference organizers to handle it. (As a side note: It was policy for the conference to publicly list Code of Conduct violations, at least three of which were reported that weekend.) The conference organizers reported to Adria that the violation she reported had been addressed, and she agreed.
Everything was seemingly resolved, and there was no public reaction on Twitter. It was only once the man "posted about losing his job on Hacker News" that the pushback started, and then escalated exponentially, with even ostensible allies abetting the abuse by tone and choice policing.
After her employer's website was targeted for a DDoS attack along with a letter demanding her termination, Adria was fired from her job and had to take the drastic measure of moving out of the apartment she shared with two roommates because of the relentless cacophony of threats and harassment.
That was two years ago. Fast forward to this week, when Adria's story and experiences were reduced to an anecdote, propping up one of the main subjects in Jon Ronson's article for the New York Times, "How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justice Sacco's Life."
The 2013 "stupid tweet" in question was a "joke" about how Sacco, who was boarding a plane to Africa at the time of the tweet, could not get AIDS because she is white. In the most generous interpretation of the joke, Sacco is making a commentary on white privilege—but it's still structured in a way that only other people with white privilege can laugh at it. It's a racist joke. A joke that highlights her privilege while reminding people with less privilege of what they don't have.
Ronson goes into great detail to describe the way Sacco was targeted, harassed, stalked, and fired, and then tells the story of another white woman, Lindsey Stone, who came under attack after posting a photograph of herself and a friend at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns, flipping the bird and pretending to scream next to a sign requesting "Silence and Respect." Stone, like Sacco, is a white woman.
Then Ronson abruptly segues into Adria Richards' story—except it's not from Adria's perspective at all.
I met a man who, in early 2013, had been sitting at a conference for tech developers in Santa Clara, Calif., when a stupid joke popped into his head. It was about the attachments for computers and mobile devices that are commonly called dongles. He murmured the joke to his friend sitting next to him, he told me. "It was so bad, I don't remember the exact words," he said. "Something about a fictitious piece of hardware that has a really big dongle, a ridiculous dongle. . . . It wasn’t even conversation-level volume."Only then, are we finally introduced to Adria, and finally learn her name: "The woman who took the photograph, Adria Richards, soon felt the wrath of the crowd herself."
Moments later, he half-noticed when a woman one row in front of them stood up, turned around and took a photograph. He thought she was taking a crowd shot, so he looked straight ahead, trying to avoid ruining her picture. It's a little painful to look at the photograph now, knowing what was coming.
The woman had, in fact, overheard the joke. She considered it to be emblematic of the gender imbalance that plagues the tech industry and the toxic, male-dominated corporate culture that arises from it. She tweeted the picture to her 9,209 followers with the caption: "Not cool. Jokes about . . . 'big' dongles right behind me." Ten minutes later, he and his friend were taken into a quiet room at the conference and asked to explain themselves. Two days later, his boss called him into his office, and he was fired.
[Note from Liss: This timeline does not appear to be accurate. Adria pointed out one of several inaccuracies: "The issue at PyCon happened on Sunday, March 17th, 2013. He posted to Hacker News less than 24 hours later on Monday, March 18th, 2013 saying he had been fired." That contradicts the "two days later" timeline presented in Ronson's article. Please go here for a slideshow of the timeline, provided by Adria.]
"I packed up all my stuff in a box," he told me. (Like Stone and Sacco, he had never before talked on the record about what happened to him. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid further damaging his career.) "I went outside to call my wife. I'm not one to shed tears, but" — he paused — "when I got in the car with my wife I just. . . . I've got three kids. Getting fired was terrifying."
Now, here's some stuff I want you to know about Adria (and, to be abundantly clear, this information is being shared with her explicit permission): Adria grew up in Minneapolis, in a home filled with domestic violence and then in foster care, lacking many of the basics that most of those in the middle- and upper classes take for granted. (In fact, just a few weeks before all this happened, Adria had written a brave post about the obstacles she's faced and overcome to become a successful tech professional.)
The daughter of a Jewish, city-born mother and a Black, Southern-born father, Adria had some early awareness of racism, by way of people who would get angry and yell at her parents. But it was in fifth grade, when she was moved to a new foster home in the suburb of Eden Prairie, where everyone around her was white, that she was called an N-word for the first time on the school bus.
That was not the only notable thing that happened to her that year. She also had her first kiss, and she got glasses for the first time, realizing that other kids had been able to see the chalkboard the whole time. She was introverted, smart, and "weird" (according to the other kids)—a burgeoning nerd.
By age 17, she'd fallen in love with computers. A year later, she was working at Geeksquad, employee #26, and she absorbed everything she could about hardware, operating systems, and networks. That summer, she registered her first domain name for a client for whom she was building a website, and learned about DNS. She buried herself in books and scoured websites, learning new things and trying them out, relying on friends whose parents had more resources to get access to hardware.
She embarked on a career in tech, where in literally every job she had been the only Black person and often one of very few women. She found it easy to work with others in her beloved tech, but sometimes found it hard to build friendships. But, before 2013, despite having worked in tech, often as the only Black woman, for many years and having attended over 200 tech conferences, hackathons, meetups, user groups, mixers, hack nights, and workshops, she had never needed to report sexual harassment.
Which is not to say she'd never experienced something that made her uncomfortable before. In fact, it was the familiar feeling of the hairs on the back of her neck standing up and her back aching, symptoms she'd come to associate with stifling her voice in similar situations, that made her report the "jokes" at PyCon.
So, why would Adria become the target, when she was pushing back on behavior that violated the conference's code of conduct? Because the man whose photograph she took to report his persistent telling of sexualized jokes loud enough for several other people to hear at a tech conference, publicly complained about losing his job on a board where participants were primed to be sympathetic to him. Within hours, hundreds of comments appeared on the forum thread. It should be noted the man did not use his real name or account, but created a fake account on Hacker News to share he had been fired.
Here is Adria in her own words about what happened next:
By Monday night, when I finally checked my social media account (I was still at the conference on Monday doing code sprints with other teams), I was confused and horrified to find gender and racial slurs filling my timeline. I hadn't checked email either for several hours but that began to fill up with nasty communications and, by Wednesday, I was receiving death threats.
Many people get the timeline wrong here. I posted my blog article that evening, Monday, around 9:30pm, well after the teams broke for dinner. Based on the timestamp, the guy who had been fired posted to Hacker News around lunchtime, no later than 2:00pm on Monday. This means I didn't write the blog post to get him fired. I wrote it to express my thoughts on my experience the day before.
It wasn't until someone on social media told me to check a link to Hacker News that I saw he posted he had been fired. I read his posting and a few of the comments, and then I left a comment saying I didn't agree with his company firing him, and that it didn't help him or the company to do so, and that I hoped they would hire him back on. Unfortunately, my comment was quickly downvoted; thus, it didn't appear to new people reading the forum posting, and this concerned me.
Comments began appearing on Hacker News throwing allegations and describing me with very negative descriptions. The word "feminist" was used several times, though I've stated multiple times online I do not identify as a feminist. It became an angry mob, with each description of me even worse than the one before, until I had been drawn as non-human, a creature only capable of hate and harm.
At first, I was unaware of what was happening. Corey Leigh and others tried to leave logic-based comments and reason with the increasingly unreasonable commenters. It spilled out onto the Internet to the forums of 4chan and onto Twitter via a semi-planned semi-chaos attack from 4chan participants. It escalated quickly, based on false information, specifically the cause and effect: I did not get the guy fired; his own behaviour, which his employer considered another strike on his already written-up employee file, caused his employer to make the decision to fire him. Shooting the messenger, me, did not change this.
I didn't write the blog post hoping to get him fired. I wrote the blog post to express my thoughts about what I had experienced the day before. This has been my M.O. for several years, and it's how most people who run blogs operate: You experience something that generates strong feelings; you wrote a blog post. Pretty straightforward.
So far, everything was pretty much normal as far as how tech nerds operate: That includes myself and everyone working in tech, including the guy.
What happened next is what turned it from a local, Bay Area conference issue into an international meltdown, which unfortunately destroyed a lot of goodwill that had been established in the tech community.
Near midnight, I checked my web traffic, as I always did after posting, and saw an unusually high amount of visitors coming from a site called 4chan. I decided it would be best to setup Cloudflare on my site to withstand any potential DDoS attacks. I contacted my hosting company as well to give them a heads up. My site was targeted and attacked but it stayed up. I tweeted my proactive measures the next morning.
When I visited 4chan for the first time in my life that week, I was horrified and speechless by what I saw. There were hundreds of threads on 4chan focused on hate, sexism, and racism. I went to a section called /b/, which is where Google Analytics said the traffic was coming from, and saw discussions that made my skin crawl. The people on this site were discussing ways to harm, harass, and humiliate me and the other women they were targeting. I began taking screenshots because the things being said were incredibly violent, dangerous, and potentially illegal (not sure if it's against the law to order and send pizzas to a police precinct, but it's probably not a good idea).
Just a day later, I would be doxx'd: My personal information about where I lived, my contact information, and more were publicly released onto sites like 4chan with active encouragement to contact, threaten, and harass me. The messaging began to change from simply being angry at me and calling me names to discussions about getting me fired. The obsessive and relentless nature of the people participating in these discussions was again, unsettling.
I could go on but I think we all know what happened next: I was publicly fired online.
But Jon doesn't talk about that in the article at all. I question, and we should all question, why a man losing his job due to his own life choices is a more important story to tell than a woman who, within 72 hours, became the target of a massive, organized harassment campaign that ended in her public firing. We need to ask why the man continues to enjoy anonymity yet a woman is threatened with physical, psychological, and economic violence for refusing to be silent about harassment that is illegal in all 50 states.
Most importantly, we need to ask why Jon Ronson decided, after benefiting for months on my free labor as he asked me time and time again to provide all sorts of information (including the name of the guy who is portrayed as the main subject of the article), to not tell my story.
Ronson reports that Adria told him: "I cried a lot during this time, journaled, and escaped by watching movies. SendGrid [her employer] threw me under the bus. I felt betrayed. I felt abandoned. I felt ashamed. I felt rejected. I felt alone."
Adria told him a lot of things, on the record, for a story that she did not expect would turn out this way. Why did she go on record? Adria again:
It turns out Ronson, like many journalists and media people, manipulated the truth to get information. Ronson positioned himself as a supporter that understood why I had reported the guy at the conference. Ronson talked about his frustration with sexism, yet in the NYTimes article, that topic is just lightly grazed, thus no real discussion occurs, robbing the reader of having better insight as to why sexism is pervasive and problematic in tech culture.
Ronson had been recommended by a woman which made it easier to trust him. Initially Ronson was quite persistent, contacting me several times by multiple methods. I wonder now if he had already signed a book deal at that time. He told me how important the subject was and that he had empathy for what I went through and he wanted to tell my story. Ronson talked about his success as an author and that his films had been screened at Sundance. This all seemed reasonable and believable.
When Ronson first contacted me, I felt pretty frustrated and afraid. Frustrated because I had not felt safe to continue talking about what had happened once the cyber mobs had targeted me. I saw rumors repeated and spread across social media yet I felt powerless to do anything as my goal was to diffuse the situation. At that time, I was receiving hundreds of messages a day across all social channels from harassers: email, phone, Twitter. I had changed my Facebook page to "private" and restricted all her Flickr images to "All Rights Reserved" to stop the harassers from taking images of me and attaching them to women in pornographic poses. Ronson doesn't mention this at all in the NYTimes excerpt as most of the article is focused on Justine Sacco.
So, here we have a woman who simply wants the truth known about what she has lived through, and a writer looking to snag a story so he can sell books. A perfect storm.
Early in 2014, I went to the SFO airport to meet Jon Ronson. I felt that would be a safe place to meet. We talked at a table in the food court, and I laid out details and timelines that hadn't made it into the public. Any questions Jon asked, I offered to provide proof to back it up and did so later with emails. Jon seemed supportive and encouraging. I left feeling better and certainly relieved in knowing someone now could help tell my story. Much of the media had relied on the Internet rumor mill, since I had declined all media interviews as I attempted to not add fuel to the fire and diffuse the situation.
What could be worse than someone taking what you've told them and portraying you as the aggressor? It was a sucker-punch to the gut. This is what Jon Roson's article in the NYTimes did. I simply become an agitator affecting the man's life, no more, no less.
Adria trusted Ronson to tell her story, to do it justice, only to have Ronson draw a false equivalence between her, a woman challenging inappropriate sexual jokes at a tech conference (at which everyone had signed a photo disclosure form), and the man who was making those inappropriate sexual jokes. And to draw a false equivalency between her, a woman challenging sexism in a professional space for technology workers, and Justine Sacco, a woman casually making racist jokes under her real name while employed as a senior director of corporate communications for tech company IAC.
All without mentioning that Adria Richards is a Black woman.
There is zero discussion of the power imbalance between being a white man who is exposed for making sexual jokes in a professional space, and being a Black woman who is exposed for refusing to tolerate sexual jokes in a professional space.
There is zero discussion of the differential between making a racist joke (punching down), and challenging sexist comments (punching up).
There is zero discussion of what the anonymous joke-telling man's life is like now, presumably because he is not still suffering routine harassment. One day last week, just talking to Adria on Twitter, I had to report three different account for abuse, because of racist and misogynist slurs used against her by people inserting themselves into our conversation, just to harass her.
Two years later.
In fact, the man who first called attention to Justine Sacco's tweet is quoted in Ronson's article saying he imagines she's fine now. But, years later, her life is still upended. (In fact, the story ends with Sacco's request for no further exposure, which Ronson merely reports and ignores.)
And so is Adria Richards' life. But this, too, goes unmentioned. A man was fired for violating the conduct rules in a professional space. That might feel unfair to him—because, after all, what dude ever gets fired for telling sexist jokes?—but it is actually an eminently fair consequence.
The man was re-hired by another company in a matter of weeks. The woman who reported him, though? Adria was not so lucky. After her employer Sendgrid publicly fired her, the volume of threats sharply increased. She fled her home, was forced to sell many of her belongings, and couch-surfed with friends for nearly a year—all the time, looking over her shoulder.
Adria also notes: "Before this happened to me, I had worked in tech for 15 years, had lived in San Francisco the last 3 years, and my Google search results were pretty awesome, highlighting not only my technical knowledge but my consistent contributions to the tech community through mentoring, teaching, talks, and volunteering my time to organizations building diversity." They don't look like that anymore.
And she is still being attacked. Daily. And add to that: Exploited by reporters who purport to want to tell her story, but instead tell a story where she is cast as the cause of a hapless man's downfall, and thus deserving of continued harm.
I still stand with Adria Richards.
This post was updated with minor edits I'd missed to Adria's account.
Open Thread
Hosted by yellow plum tomatoes.
This week's Open Threads have been brought to you by yellow foods.
Question of the Day
If you could travel back in time to relive one moment, not because you want to change it, but because it's such a fond memory you'd love to experience it again, what moment would you choose?
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There is a strobe-light effect in this video.]
Backstreet Boys: "I Want It That Way"
Welp
[Content Note: Violence; white supremacy. Video may autoplay at link.]
NBC News: "Two Texas Teens Accused of Using Blowgun on Wal-Mart Shoppers."
A pair of Texas teenagers are facing aggravated assault charges after hitting an elderly woman and a young boy with blowgun darts in the parking lot of a Houston-area Wal-Mart, authorities said. Harris County authorities reviewed surveillance footage from the Jan. 16 incident in Tomball, and were able to track down the suspects, reported NBC affiliate KPRC. Cameron James Perry, 18, who police say blew the darts from the backseat of a white Nissan, was arrested Tuesday and jailed on a $30,000 bond, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. The driver, Clay Vittrup, 18, was also apprehended and posted the same bond amount.In post-racial America, Perry and Vittrup, two white men, are both alive and in custody after shooting people with darts from a blowgun in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and John Crawford, a black man who was standing and minding his own business inside a Wal-Mart while holding a pellet rifle sold at the store, is dead.
The teens are accused of hitting a 10-year-old boy on his right arm as he walked into the store with his mother, KPRC reported. They then allegedly struck Eva Cook, 72, who was riding a motorized scooter. She told the station that she was caught off guard by the dart hitting her. "I turned around and saw this thing out of my shoulder," Cook said. "I shop there all the time, and was just minding my own business and was just in shock," she added. Both teens are due back in court over the next month.
Daily Dose of Cute
Sophie meerkating behind my laptop, to look out my office window at the sparrows.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
"A Trail of Coerced Confessions"
[Content Note: Police brutality; racism; torture.]
Above: A perfect, incisive response from Prison Culture (shared with her permission) to a line from this important and must-read story by Spencer Ackerman for the Guardian on Richard Zuley, a former detective with the Chicago Police Department, and his individual role in the systemic railroading of poor, black suspects by Chicago law enforcement.
Allegations stemming from interviews and court documents suggest a kind of beta test in the ugly history of Chicago police abuse – which has robbed black and poor Americans of their health and freedom and still costs taxpayers millions in civil-rights payouts – for both the worst excesses of torture in the war on terrorism and a trail of convictions based on dubious confessions born of brutality.Please read the whole thing.
It is unclear how many cases Zuley investigated. Rob Warden, who founded Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, said he had never heard of Zuley. But based on patterns from other Chicago police investigators, he said, the number of people Zuley put in prison likely "runs well into the double digits, perhaps the triple digits."
...But Chicago has a longstanding history of police abuse, much of it racialized.
"There have been a number of really bad apples in the Chicago police department who unquestionably have railroaded unknown numbers of innocent people into prison," Warden said.
Police tactics of the sort Zuley used stretch back decades. They have left generations of scars across Chicago's black residents.
"Having fought against police torture and abuse in the courts here in Chicago for more than 45 years," said local civil-rights lawyer Flint Taylor, "I have reached the inescapable conclusion that Chicago police violence is systemic, fundamentally racist, and disproportionately impacts the poor and communities of color."
And, if you are interested in finding out more about the work being done in Chicago seeking justice and accountability for the communities targeted and terrorized by Chicago law enforcement, I highly recommend following We Charge Genocide and Prison Culture.
Culture of Lies
[Content Note: References to violence.]
A new study conducted by the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, after former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel raised concerns about military ethics, has found that "U.S. Army officers often resort to 'evasion and deception,' and everyone at the Pentagon knows it. ...In other words, in the routine performance of their duties as leaders and commanders, U.S. Army officers lie."
The 33-page report, compiled following interviews with officers across the Army, concluded that the Army's culture is rife with "dishonesty and deception" at all levels of the institution -- from the most junior members to senior Army officials.Lying to sidestep the requirements of "a burdensome bureaucracy" is a polite way of describing all manner of ills, especially when that bureaucracy includes "forms outlining how a mission was carried out." That can be much more serious than taking some shortcuts to grease the wheels; lying about how a mission was carried out can mean the first step in a cover-up of war crimes.
The study's results come after Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel -- who officially left his post Tuesday -- had raised concerns over ethics in the military. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon's press secretary, said two weeks ago that Hagel was "deeply troubled" over a spate of ethics investigations in the military.
"I think he's generally concerned that there could be at least at some level a breakdown in ethical behavior and in the demonstration of moral courage," Kirby said of Hagel.
...The study describes a "culture where deceptive information is both accepted and commonplace" and where senior officials don't trust the information and data receive -- such as compliance with certain Army training requirements or forms outlining how a mission was carried out.
But Army officers are faced with an increasing number of requirements and bureaucratic hoops, according to the study, and rather than work with a rigid military brass to reform a burdensome bureaucracy, officers will simply sidestep those requirements, lying on forms and often rationalizing their answers.
The result? "Officers become ethically numb," explains the study... "Eventually, their signature and word become tools to maneuver through the Army bureaucracy rather than symbols of integrity and honesty," the researchers wrote. "This desensitization dilutes the seriousness of an officer's word and allows what should be an ethical decision to fade into just another way the Army does business."
And, clearly, a culture of lying is a massive problem for an institution in which sexual assault, sexual harassment, domestic violence, hate crimes, and torture have been prominent problems for at least a decade. Dishonesty is wholly incompatible with meaningful accountability.
Especially when that dishonesty is known and accepted. Leaders who fear no consequences have little incentive to address endemic harm, instead of merely concealing it.
Before he left office last week, Hagel wrote a memo to the US military's senior leadership—people who are complicit in this culture of lies—"emphasizing the need for increased accountability and a higher standard for ethical behavior."
"The vast majority of our senior leaders are men and women who have earned the special trust and confidence afforded them by the American people. However, when senior leaders forfeit this trust through unprofessional, unethical, or morally questionable behavior, their actions have an enormously negative effect on the profession," Hagel wrote.A profession which is continually shielded from scrutiny and criticism by narratives about "the troops" as heroes—and anyone who dares suggest otherwise is traitorous scum.
Maybe, following a scandal that can't be contained, you are allowed to say there are "a few bad apples" in the US military, but never is one allowed to say that there are a lot of problems caused by a number of unethical people among its ranks.
To address this reality is "dishonoring the troops," while dehumanizing them as a monolith of perfect heroes is somehow honoring them. Which, of course, gets it precisely backwards.
Just like the jingoistic nonsense about what constitutes "loving America."
I'm sure Chuck Hagel will catch all kinds of grief in response to this report, as will its authors. But Hagel's concern about a culture of lies, and his fervent desire for the military to do better, his willingness to expect more, is indicative of a profound love of the military and his belief that it can do better.
And that it must.
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In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: War on agency] Maryland is the latest state to introduce a 20-week abortion ban: "HB 492, introduced last week, would make abortion illegal after 20 weeks due to the stated belief that a fetus can feel pain starting at that time. The 'Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,' which has been the ban of choice this legislative session, shares its name with similar bills introduced this year across the country, including in South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Oregon. A 'fetal pain' 20-week ban is also expected to be introduced in Ohio, where a prominent anti-choice organization has identified it as a priority this legislative session. Bills of the same name passed last week in the GOP-controlled South Carolina and West Virginia houses." No word on any Democrats introducing "Pain of Forced Pregnancy and Birth" bills.
[CN: War on agency] Relatedly: Tara Culp-Ressler on "Why States Keep Trying to Ban Abortion Procedures That Don't Exist."
[CN: War on agency; terrorism] And because anti-choicers just weren't odious enough: "A Republican South Dakota lawmaker on Monday compared Planned Parenthood to the Islamic State in a blog post about his bill banning a surgical abortion procedure. In a blog post titled "Planned Parenthood worse than ISIS and lying about it," state Rep. Isaac Latterell (R) wrote about the beheadings of prisoners by ISIL, likening the executions to abortion. 'Planned Parenthood abortionists in Sioux Falls are similarly beheading unborn children during dismemberment abortions,' Latterell wrote. 'Most people are unaware that this is happening, because Planned Parenthood of Sioux Falls denies that they behead or otherwise dismember unborn children.'" That's because they don't: Planned Parenthood "only performs first trimester abortions in South Dakota."
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Wal-Mart says it's giving its employees a raise: "The move by one of the country's largest employers ensures hourly associates earn at least $1.75 above today's federal minimum wage, or $9 per hour, in April. By Feb. 1, 2016, current associates will earn at least $10 per hour. Some states already have a minimum wage at or above $9 per hour, including California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Rhode Island." A raise to still not a livable wage. Give them all the cookies. So they can munch on them while figuring out how to cut employees' hours to avoid giving them full-time benefits.
[CN: Disease] Oh shit: "The Food and Drug Administration warned hospitals and medical providers Thursday morning that a commonly used medical scope may have facilitated the deadly outbreak of a superbug at UCLA. The warning, posted by the federal agency through its safety communications systems, comes after a Los Angeles Times report that two people who died at UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center were among seven patients there infected by a drug-resistant superbug. Hundreds of patients at medical centers around the country, including Seattle's Virginia Mason Medical Center, may have been exposed to the bacteria after physicians used the scopes in their treatment. The FDA cautioned that the design of the scopes may make them more difficult to effectively clean. And the agency called on medical providers to meticulously wash the devices. But even washing the scopes may not be adequate, the FDA warned. 'Meticulously cleaning duodenoscopes prior to high-level disinfection should reduce the risk of transmitting infection, but may not entirely eliminate it,' the warning noted." Swell.
[CN: Police brutality; racism] Though the Justice Department almost certainly won't bring federal charges against Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, they may sue the Ferguson Police Department over a demonstrated pattern of racial bias: "The Justice Department did find a pattern of racial discrimination in the department's tactics, and is prepared to sue if the force does not implement changes."
[CN: War; displacement; video may autoplay at link] This is so heartbreaking: "Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees who fled fighting in the east gather at the train station of the Russian southern city of Rostov-on-Don from where migration authorities send them to other regions."
[CN: Body policing; misogyny] Breaking News: Beyoncé is a human being. (Seriously, I don't know how famous women function with this kind of dehumanizing shit. Fucking hell.)
[CN: Animal cruelty] I can't say this often or more forcefully enough: End greyhound racing worldwide NOW.
Absolutely beautiful: "A spiral galaxy gets twisted out of shape after coming too close to a cosmic neighbor in a gorgeous photo captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope."
Wow! "An alien star passed through our Solar System just 70,000 years ago, astronomers have discovered. No other star is known to have approached this close to us. An international team of researchers says it came five times closer than our current nearest neighbour—Proxima Centauri. The object, a red dwarf known as Scholz's star, cruised through the outer reaches of the Solar System—a region known as the Oort Cloud."
And finally! A newly discovered Dr. Seuss book will be published later this year, and it's about getting a pet! "A never-before-seen Dr. Seuss story titled What Pet Should I Get? is being published on July 28th, more than 20 year's after the author's death. The manuscript and illustrations for the book were found in a box in Dr. Seuss's home (real named Theodor Geisel) in 2013 by his widow Audrey Geisel. ...'While undeniably special, it is not surprising to me that we found this,' said Audrey Geisel in a statement. 'Ted always worked on multiple projects and started new things all the time—he was constantly writing and drawing and coming up with ideas for new stories. It is especially heartwarming for me as this year also marks twenty-five years since the publication of the last book of Ted's career, Oh, the Places You'll Go!'" ♥
Giuliani Is the Worst
[Content Note: Racism.]
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is terrible, has always been terrible, and will always be terrible:
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) on Wednesday reportedly told an audience of conservatives that President Barack Obama doesn't "love America."First of all: This is so goddamn juvenile. I don't need my President to "love" me. I need hir to respect me.
Politico reported that Giuliani made the comment at a private dinner in Manhattan attended by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) and a slew of business executives.
"I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America," Giuliani said, as quoted by Politico. "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country."
Secondly: This is a familiar racist dog whistle that has been used repeatedly against our black President. (And our black First Lady.) He doesn't love his country and wasn't raised that way. Wasn't raised "right."
His loyalty to and love for the United States has been questioned by Republicans at literally every step of his life. Where was he really born? How was he really raised? What is his real religion? Is he a citizen? Is he a patriot? Is he a traitor? Does he love this country?
The President's love of country is questioned on the basis that he doesn't believe it is perfect. This is a constant refrain conservatives shout at progressives—that we "hate America," because there are certain things about the United States that we despise: Its entrenched bigotry; its garbage disaster of a foreign policy; its promotion of avarice above social conscience; its fascination with wealth; its disdain of compassion for people in need; its delight in ignorance; its xenophobic nationalism; the immutable beliefs among so many of its citizens that the markets solve everything; that this country is the Almighty's gift to the world, especially when it's a still a really shitty place to live for lots of struggling people; that those people are always, only, to blame for their troubles; that there's something wrong with the rest of us who don't wrap our hands around the throat of American Dream and wring every last bit of life out of it to our own benefit; its deeply entrenched hostility to the idea that some of us could do with a little less so that others could have a little more; that "Justice for All" has become a punchline.
That's not a complete list. These are but a few things that could stand some changing in this country. That, frankly, were they to change, would make this country more "lovable" to a whole lot of people, inside and outside its borders.
And the things I find, many of us find, detestable about this country are the very things the Republican Party upholds and defends, patently refusing to own up to any problems, instead calling anyone who dares criticize the country America-haters, wrapping themselves in the flag, and declaring themselves the True Patriots, so it's all but impossible for someone like me, no less the President, to express our abhorrence of them without seemingly attacking the United States itself—which makes it all the easier for Republicans turn the US into a place any progressive really, genuinely would hate, by ridding it of everything that we love.
One can't cast one's eyes toward Iraq, or read of another state gerrymandering its districts or finding a way to disenfranchise voters, or hear about a family who lost their home because of the toxic mix of a recession and predatory lending, or a woman who can't access an abortion she desperately wants, or a crumbling infrastructure, or US students falling behind their global peers, or US scientists falling behind theirs, or any one of dozens of issues that have Republicans' grubby fingerprints and crummy signature all over them, and fail to think about the ways in which modern conservative policy has changed our country and our lives, not for the better by almost any estimation.
And then the people behind it all have the temerity to suggest that President Barack Obama doesn't love his country—the proof of his insufficient affection being, evidently, that he hasn't endeavored for the past four decades to destroy it.
The last thing we need is any more of Rudy Giuliani's brand of "love." We can't take another ounce of it.
Today in Can't Fu@#ing Win
[Content Note: Misogynoir.]
Actress Mo'Nique, who in 2010 won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as an abusive mother in Precious, has not been seen in prominent roles since. And she says that's because she's been blackballed for being difficult:
In an essay to be published in the 27 February issue of the Hollywood Reporter, seen by E! News, the 47-year-old actor said she only found out a few months ago that she had been deemed persona non grata by studios.I mean, that sounds like Daniels is the one who blackballed her, by telling everyone how "difficult" she was, but okay, sure: Let's talk about her character.
"I got a phone call from [Precious director] Lee Daniels," said the actor. "And he said to me, 'Mo'Nique, you've been blackballed.' I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'Because you didn't play the game.'"
...Mo'Nique goes on to suggest that her absence from the screen—the actor has just a handful of relatively minor film and television credits between 2009 and last year's Blackbird—is because she is "difficult," "tactless," or "tacky."
...Daniels issued a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, which reads: "Mo'Nique is a creative force to be reckoned with. Her demands through Precious were not always in line with the campaign. This soured her relationship with the Hollywood community. I consider her a friend. I have and will always think of her for parts that we can collaborate on, however the consensus among the creative teams and powers thus far were to go another way with these roles."
Actually, let's don't. Let's instead talk about how being "demanding" gets a black woman blackballed in the film industry, but Christian Bale can still have a massive career after screaming abuse at people on set, and Charlie Sheen can still have a lucrative career after multiple acts of violence against women, and Mike Tyson can launch a film career after being convicted of rape, and Mel Gibson can still make bank after an epic series of events revealing he is awful, and Woody Allen and Roman Polanski are still making films with A-list actors, and and and.
But Mo'Nique was "difficult" on set.
Especially in the same week as Jessica Williams was being told to "lean in" so she can get a job for which she doesn't even feel ready, I find it interesting (by which I mean: FUCKING TERRIBLE) that Mo'Nique is basically being told she should have "leaned out." Demand what you want! But don't be difficult about it!
So, if you are a black woman who is perceived as failing to do everything you can to further your career (in the way a white supremacist power structure has deemed the "correct way"), then you are a victim of "imposter syndrome." And if you are a black woman who is perceived as failing to be sufficiently diplomatic while doing everything you can to further your career (in the way a white supremacist power structure has deemed the "correct way"), then you are difficult and tactless and tacky.
If you are a black woman who fails to inhabit the magical goldilocks perfect middle balance of assertive and deferential while trying to professionally protect yourself, then you don't win. And please pay no attention to the fact that the game is rigged, because that magical goldilocks perfect middle balance doesn't fucking exist.
All of which is a really long way of saying: Fuck this bullshit. Like Mo'Nique is demanding and Pacino ain't. Please.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker BigDots: "What's in your pockets (or purse, handbag, etc.) right now?"
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Islamophobia; violence.]
"It's important that law enforcement prosecute hate crimes against Muslims …It's important that we at least admit that what happened in Chapel Hill probably was not only about a parking space. This defies our sense of logic and common sense. This actually helps to support the false narrative of violent extremism; they want to make the case that America hates you, is against you, join us."—Democratic Representative from Minnesota Keith Ellison, "expressing concern at the relatively slow response and limited public reaction to the shooting of three Muslim students."
This defies our sense of logic and common sense. Yes.
Ellison, who is Muslim, is further making the valid point that the very public failure to care about Muslim victims of hate crimes becomes a useful tool to those extremists who want to make the case that the US is at war with Islam.
The best way to render illegitimate the case of Us vs. Them is to not practice Us vs. Them.
