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Jokes and Complicity In Prison Rape: A Confession
As I start seeing my hyper-evangelicalism moving further and further away in the rear view mirror, I see more and more mistakes. Many of them are my own, some are on other people. A specific one that I want to talk about is how I, in a small way, am complicit in prison rape.
Because I was so certain of the safety of the world for me, a white Christian Republican, I would not only turn away when I heard prison rape stories, telling myself “Well I’d never end up there”, I would even make jokes about it. The “don’t pick up the soap” joke is old, but I made many, many more than that.
It’s not a comfort, but I will say that I was hardly alone. You could make prison rape jokes in front of your friends’ parents. Some parents would join in. Looking back, it’s astounding how differently the conservative Christian class would treat the same act in two different circumstances: if a Christian man is raped by some pillaging non-Christian army- make a movie, slap a phrase on t-shirts and wristbands, and let’s all have a good cry in the auditorium at weekly chapel or youth group. American man raped in prison-make a joke!
So when I read this:
THE recent report on rape in juvenile facilities from the Bureau of Justice Statistics makes for horrific reading: 12% of juvenile prisoners report being sexually abused, more than 10% of them by staff (the surprising nugget within this subgroup is that 95%—95%!—of that 10% report having been victimised by female staff). Non-heterosexual inmates report a higher rate of abuse by another youth (12.5%) than their heterosexual counterparts (1.3%). Abuse is also not distributed evenly among facilities: at three of them—one each in Indiana, Pennsylvania and New Jersey—at least 33% of inmates report being abused, while 18% of facilities surveyed had no reported incidents of sexual abuse.
I become infuriated, but I feel more guilt and shame than anger. If more of us were to refuse to accept rape in prison as inevitable, perhaps something would change. I don’t really know, but I do know that making jokes about it is only encouraging these sick prison staff members to continually abuse children.
If you want to try to fix your past sins (like I do), take a look at prison reform groups. Just Detention International and Amnesty International come to mind.
Too Many Calls of “Calls of Victimhood”, and The Fading Religious Right
I don’t know when the line was crossed, but at some point, the white conservative evangelicals claiming victimhood status became outnumbered by their mockers.
I grew up in Texas and Colorado Springs, I worked at the national headquarters for Bush-Cheney 04, I worked with Campus Crusade for Christ: Religious Right bona fides: I got ’em. More importantly, I have relatives and family friends who still reside within that camp. So when I say that I rarely hear sentiments like “we’re under attack from atheistic socialists”, I don’t think it’s because I lack exposure to the movement. They’re just not saying it very much. Now, why they’re not saying it, that’s an interesting question.
By my lights, many on the Right did not pull out of their despair dive, but rather broke on through to the other side: acceptance. I know several men and women who think America has lost its bloom, that it’s been fully compromised by a godless majority. Gone is the “City On The Hill” (which many evangelicals love to cite as the founding creed of this country over the Declaration of Independence), now we are a Pauline-era Rome: decadent and anti-Christian. It’s anecdotal, but the topics of sermons in churches in Colorado Springs has slowly changed over the last decade. Moving from the more bellicose to the more prescriptive, the change reflects the opinions and needs of the parishioners. In the late 90’s many Christians thought they had finally developed the political tools to re-work the world into their desired form. When they fizzled this decade (and trust me: many evangelicals think the GWB administration was, in retrospect, a flop), resignation set it.
Here’s another way to think of it: people who claim they are victims are those that think there’s a chance to fix the problem. Because of our liberal culture, women who are raped and abused in the West are encouraged to come forth so the criminal is punished. In the retrogressive cultures of fundamentalist Islam, how many women come forth as victims? Nearly none, and we can be sure that even fewer did so before Western attention was on them.
Yes, it’s drastic, and no, I do not share their beliefs, but the change in sermons is akin to a rebel group transitioning into best survival tips from an older slave to a younger slave. Some Christians I know think things have gotten so bad in the US that they now have turned inward trying their best to be a stranger in a strange land.
The rest of our culture has always been about two steps behind in its appraisal of the Christian Right. There has been more breathless rhetoric and heightened panic at the machinations of evangelical Christians in the past 5 years than I recall in the previous 10, missing the fact that the height of Religious Right-ism, in my estimation, was probably the years surrounding 2000. Good grief, I’m sure there are people out there in Blue States terrified of the hordes of Christianist youth who aren’t even aware of the growing post-evangelical Christian movement.
Spend any amount of time perusing the Barna Group‘s teen/next generation stuff and you’ll see: the James Dobson crowd had near zero carryover to the next generation. They’ll soon be more outnumbered and more irrelevant. And more to the point, many Dobsonites are aware of this future, and that’s why they’ve stopped crowing “victim”.
Haiti: Some Thoughts
Reihan Salam’s thoughts on Haiti jibe very well with my own.
Blurbed:
I don’t have much to say about the disaster that has struck Haiti. But it does serve as a vivid reminder that Haitians have been suffering through a far deeper and more profound slow-motion disaster for decades (emphasis added). Every earthquake or tsunami or flood in the developing world yields tragic images…
Yet the number of people who die in these calamities pales in significance to the number who die because of broken institutions and the resulting absence of the kind of dynamic capitalist economy that we take for granted. In 2008, economists Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett published “Income per Natural: Measuring Development as if People Mattered More Than Places,” a brilliant illustration of the damage broken institutions can do.
It is easy to learn the average income of a resident of El Salvador or Albania. But there is no systematic source of information on the average income of a Salvadoran or Albanian. In this new working paper, research fellow Michael Clemens and non-resident fellow Lant Pritchett create a new statistic: income per natural — the mean annual income of persons born in a given country, regardless of where that person now resides. If income per capita has any interpretation as a welfare measure, exclusive focus on the nationally resident population can lead to substantial errors of the income of the natural population for countries where emigration is an important path to greater welfare. The estimates differ substantially from traditional measures of GDP or GNI per resident, and not just for a handful of tiny countries. Almost 43 million people live in a group of countries whose income per natural collectively is 50 percent higher than GDP per resident. For 1.1 billion people the difference exceeds 10 percent. The authors also show that poverty estimates are different for national residents and naturals; for example, 26 percent of Haitian naturals who are not poor by the two-dollar-a-day standard live in the United States (emphasis added).
The desperation on the part of would-be Haitain refugees is easy to understand. One approach, which Clemens and Pritchett strongly endorse, is to liberalize international migration flows. Communities in affluent countries resist this idea, for obvious and understandable reasons. But blanket opposition to mutually beneficial offshoring strikes me as really tough to justify, particularly when it helps strengthen market
My experience isn’t in Haiti, but Rwanda. I taught in a rural school in Rwamagana and lived in Kacyiru, a neighborhood of Kigali. And what Clemens and Pritchett have found meshes with my experience: the gap between income-per-national and GDP/capita shows the chasm between Third Worlders who stay and those who emigrate. Things are often economically worse in poor countries than some of the data suggests.
Something Salam doesn’t point out, but is worth mentioning, is that many people in the Black American community have been talking about the plight of Haiti for many, many, years. And, in my limited history and knowledge, I seem to remember that many on the Right pushed it aside as a bit of Black nationalism/identity groaning. Also, the last public figure I remember talking about Haiti, pre-earthquake was, wait for it, Dr. Jeremiah Wright. Gasp! I’m not certain that Reihan has been negligent on Haiti or disregarded former discussions about it, but I know co-workers of his at National Review have ignored Haiti’s failed institutions in the past.
A bit off topic, but worth saying about that last paragraph quoted above: I do not have an answer to all of this (anyone who does is an idiot or a liar) poverty and failed institutions. But I do think that restrictions on migration, whether of people or products, are either xenophobic, selfish, or ignorant (or a mix of all 3). I challenge anyone to go to Africa, see the poverty amidst very fertile lands capable supplying the First World with plenty of food, and say with a straight face that “the American farmer is under attack”. So for the billionth time: Lou Dobbs is a jerk.
Please, There’s Better People To Criticize Than Him
Yeah, last night this happened:
And people are rightly horrified and angered. My thoughts:
1. Even in his demented (and I mean that as medically as possible) mind, I don’t think Pat Robertson would’ve said these things today. Last night, there were only early reports of casualties, not the reported possibility of 100,000 dead. He’s a sick old man, but he’s too PR-savvy (read: greedy about his money) to say something so strong. I might be wrong on this one, or I might be putting more cynicism into Robertson’s entire media presence than is deserving, but I just think this was from-the-hip Standard Natural Disaster Assessment, not Jerry Falwell b.s.. I also bet Robertson has to backpedal like Falwell did.
2. I think we’d all be more effectively angry if we just ignored this fool: giving him attention only pads his pockets and gives him the illusion of importance. I think we’re much better off taking this now well-known video (“Pat Robertson” is the #1 Trending Topic on Twitter at this moment) and showing it to the fundamentalist and evangelical Christians in our lives. Ask “do you believe this to be true, that God allowed 100,000 people to die because their ancestors asked Satan to get them out of slavery? Do you believe that real world events are directly tied to spiritual pacts?”
Knowing many fundies and evangelicals, they’ll roll their eyes and say “naaah. Besides, I don’t even know anyone who listens to Pat Robertson any more.” But press on: ask “well do you believe any form of spiritual act, be it prayer or curse, can have an effect on this world?” Many will respond that yes, they do.
Ask them to define where the effectiveness kicks in– no solid answer.
3. The reason I ask us to ignore idiots of the like of Pat Robertson is this: he really is inconsequential to the majority of the Religious Right. People like Rick Warren, Max Lucado, and Joyce Meyer wield far greater influence, and when “outsiders” crash on Robertson, the RR thinks “they still don’t understand what we stand for”, and everything else we say is moot.
Criticism of the community (and there’s quite a bit to make) will only work if it rings true to a large swath of the Religious Right. That’s why crushing an Ignorant Old Ass like Pat Robertson is not effective.
Thoughts and Predictions: Conan O’Brien on his Jan. 12th “The Tonight Show”
I’m writing this at roughly 5 pm Mountain Time, so roughly 6ish hours before Conan takes to the airwaves for The Tonight Show of January 12. It’s just a rough predictions post, but I want to get these words out into cyberspace before anything happens.
I’m a Child of Conan.
Growing up in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, Leno was always establishment (to a significantly larger degree than Letterman), Conan always The Outsider. Leno would do blah parodies and Crazy Ads segments and Jaywalking, Conan was employing a masturbating bear. Even though I never saw Carson, any time I saw old tapes of The Tonight Show, it was obvious that Conan had obsessed over the man and was doing his best to emulate Johnny and add to the show’s considerable legacy. Leno didn’t have the walk out like Johnny did, he didn’t have the charming rough edges that Johnny did, he had forgettable interviews with celebrities that Johnny did not have. But ultimately, the worst thing I could say about Leno was that he was unworthy of memory- I’ll never have a single Jay Leno Memory in my history of watching TV. Until now.
Look, I don’t imagine that most of this uproar, culminating earlier today with Conan’s pitch-perfect letter to the public, is Leno’s fault. Anyone with any vague awareness of the history of Jeff Zucker’s tenure as President, then CEO, of NBC and NBCU has been a clusterzuck. Google “Ben Silverman” for a taste. But there is some small part that Leno has played: he continually and cravenly grovelled before NBC execs to continue to have a spot in the evening lineup. It shows an amazing lack of perspective on Leno’s part- does anyone really believe that he would have had the success he enjoyed if Johnny Carson had continued to hang around the NBC lots like Leno has?
In any case, Conan’s supposed to come out tonight with another new episode, and the world is curious as to what O’Brien will do. Will he dramatically quit on the air? Will he publicly excoriate Leno and NBC execs? Or will he act as if his statement today was a behind-the-scenes non-factor for his show? The possibilities are legion. Last night’s monologue had plenty of zingers directed at his bosses and predecessor, so where does he go from there?
My guess: he places a few more barbs in at his employers, but does nothing too drastic. He knows he’s in the power position, and all he has to do is continue to place steady pressure on NBC and remain the classy-but-insistent gentleman he’s been so far. A brief perusal of the internet shows that public opinion has roaringly backed Conan in this dispute, and he’d be a fool to waste it. And I know this: after all the thousands of hours I’ve spent watching the man, I know he’s no fool.
Incomplete Disgust
So, Brian Williams is pissed at Mark McGwire for taking steroids, which pisses off the guys at Eschaton.
Lying is something that can be proclaimed only for what a “baseball player” like Mark McGwire ever did or said. Certainly it cannot be uttered against a mere President, like George Bush.
Agreed, but tentatively so. I agree that it is infuriating that a lowly baseball player’s rhetoric is scrutinized and labeled with absolute terms that are withheld from the language of political leaders. The craven and suck-up nature of the media is pathetic. The reason Brian Williams can crack down on McGwire with such vigor is because he is not dependent on McGwire for access. If Williams were to call Michael Steele a buffoon (rightly so) or the Obama administration disappointingly obscurantist (also deserved), he would be frozen out of any news cycle for years. Thus the laughable outrage at someone who’s primary contribution to society was hitting a ball with a stick.
I’m loathe to give a full co-sign to a post, however, when it just links to one party’s leaders. Both parties have liars in them (although hardly equal amounts of liars), and the media/Beltway establishment enables them both.
The sooner a pox is declared against the entirety of the governmental culture, the sooner we can effectively use our outrage.
Certainly Effervescent 