Alex Cockburn's Despicable CP Piece on 'Sex Crimes Mania'

[Jeff]

Understood, Jeff. I guess too often I've been one of the lone voices on this forum pointing out the reality of false RA panics and the damage they have caused (and are still causing -- the West Memphis 3 can explain as well as anyone the continuing consequences of fearful, misled, irrational, and vengeful people). And I don't think writers like Cockburn, who believe RA is entirely hysteria, are necessarily malign. Uninformed? Yes. Misled? Very probably. Intentionally trying to cover up something? Maybe, maybe not. But as someone who has paid attention to this subject for a couple of decades, I can understand how people can make up their minds that it's all just another witch hunt.

And understood, Pan. It takes considerable effort to find - and form for oneself - informed, nuanced opinion on the subject. I think a lot of babies have been thrown out with Ted Gunderson's bathwater.

[barracuda]

(Dude was, in fact, a drunken perv by the sound of things. Thus making all of this "fractally wrong.")

I don't believe there's been any resolution to the Eric Williamson case yet. The State will have to prove obscene intent. And I tend to suspect that Cockburn is an over-zealous advocate of the Blackstone Ratio rather than an advocate of pedophilia.

[Cosmic Cowbell]

I've always appreciated your balanced approach to the subject PP. Still do..

Zealotry and the overdoing of it can be found equally on both sides.

Does this make one, or their written thoughts and opinions despicable?

Does intent matter?

~C

[Project Willow]

I don't think Cockburn fully gets this and I'm not sure why. I'd imagine that ego and misogyny are involved, not to mention being a bit crystallized in his view of the world.

It's obvious to me he doesn't have a grasp of how consent is impacted in relationships where there is a power imbalance, as evidenced by the quip about the female teachers. If he can't wrap his head around that very basic idea, even in order to argue against it in that scenario, then how can his analysis be trusted on more complicated relationships? The title of his piece on McMartin was, "Indict the Children, Jail the Parents." It makes me shiver.

I'd thank Pan to stop using the universal "we" when describing what he thinks is known and accepted about ra cases. I will nod again to the effectiveness of the backlash forces, as they did indeed do a marvelous job creating their panic formula. It remains perfect cover for continued ra crimes.

I'm going to re-post my comment on the Fuster case here from the other thread:

Fuster and his arguably controlled wife were running their daycare while Fuster was still on parole for his 1982 conviction of lewd and lascivious behavior with a 9 year old. He'd also spent time in prison for killing a man.

Here's a tidbit from a review of Countrywalk:

One expert, a pediatrician, tested Fuster's own son Noel for gonorrhea, and the throat culture tested positive for the presence of gonorrhea.
Magistrate's report, p. 8

A good debunking of PBS Frontline program lies about the case by Ross Chiet here:

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Taubman_Center/PBS/

Despite all of that, the case still gets thrown onto the satanic panic pile. If you repeat a lie often enough...

[professorpan]

PW, thanks for bringing up the particulars of the Fuster case, which furthers the point I have been trying to make -- that blanket statements and zealotry always muddy the issue and obscure the truth. In this case, Ross Chiet makes a very good argument for a skeptical evaluation of the way the Fuster case is portrayed in the Frontline documentary. He does so with facts and a reasoned argument. He doesn't slam the filmmakers as complicit pedophiles and satanists -- he just suggests they are wrong and possibly biased.

I can imagine the filmmakers are like most of us -- we tend to "believe" something and willingly (thought not always consciously) filter out the data that contradicts our beliefs. That happens to all of us, no matter what the issue. It's why I've always appreciated Robert Anton Wilson's approach to being skeptical of our own belief systems (BS) and actually seeking out contradictory opinions and weighing them as objectively as possible.

And PW, while we have disagreed on some cases and on the pervasiveness of RA, I've always respected your opinions and your reasoned and sourced arguments.

The extremists on this issue make it difficult -- those who claim that RA is a massive epidemic at all levels of society and who don't acknowledge the false claims on one hand, and the denialists who claim there's no such thing as RA despite the clearly documented evidence on the other. Even on this forum, quality discussions often descend into name-calling and insults. But reason and facts will, I hope, eventually make the truth known. I hope so.

[blanc]

Its difficult for me to accept the idea of many false prosecutions for ra, because the cases usually cited are from the US, and I know little or nothing about them. On the other hand a small number of UK cases which did not result in prosecutions and convictions but were very mediatised are often paraded as sra panic. That there are not prosecutions or convictions in a case does not mean that there was no crime committed, or that we have the facts in our newspapers, or that the facts which have been made public justify the editorial position taken.

Were anyone to wish to make a malicious accusation with a view of obtaining a conviction of an innocent person, I'd hazard a guess that ra was the last type of crime they should hit on .

[lightningBugout]

There are many people falsely imprisoned. Only with respect to RA is that considered an argument to construe the crime as imaginary.

This should be etched in stone. If you walk away from this place made aware of only one thing, make sure its the problem of RA exceptionalism.

the West Memphis 3 can explain as well as anyone the continuing consequences of fearful, misled, irrational, and vengeful people.

Nope, that characterization really should not fly anymore. For starters, the WM3 can explain a corrupt face-saving law enforcement and court system, not the problems of vengeance or persecution. Most locals believe in their innocence. Most of the parents of their alleged victims do too, except the one who did it. And hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world do as well.

They are not the victims of a fundie witchhunt. They remain in jail for the same reason that all sorts of the wrongly convicted do - the people who put them there are saving face, probably, at least in part, for political reasons.

There is a very particular kind of classism involved in that characterization, btw. All sorts of good urban liberal folks decrying rural hysteria. Constantly obscuring that the reason the WM3 are in jail is really not so different than the reason your average black man who was wrongly convicted of rape or murder sits on death row.

ps. As a provocative experiment, try this: re-read the article and put "child" in front of "pornography" and "adult-child" in front of sex. Cockburn's an arrogant prick, not a pedophile, I assume, but these categories of sex and porn are blurred with their non-abusive counterparts in his piece and calling them out in this fashion brings the point home:

The control of adult-child sex and child pornography is a major part of promulgating a prudish, puritanical political culture without ever imposing an overt political censorship regime.