Blame the Rapist Not the Victim

Funny (not ha ha) how within a week of my stories on sexual assault, which focused in part on how the media (mis)handles such horrors, the New York Times fell on its face by reporting on the gang rape of an 11-year old from the perspective of the (18!) rapists as the real victims.  


Florida's freshman Rep. Kathleen Passidomo followed suit by citing a quote from the article, that the victim could have prevented the multiple sexual assaults from 18 males aged preteen to 27 if only she hadn't been dressed like "a woman in her 20s."


Let's examine that statement. Do women in their 20's deserve to be raped? Just the slutty ones? 


What about nudists? Are they asking for it? And if that's true, someone please explain to me why Muslim women, especially in nations that require them to wear the head-to-toe burqa, are sexually assaulted as much if not more than women in the U.S.? 


Thank goodness the public editor had the heart AND sense to call the NYT's mistake because no one else at the paper stood up. When our media "gatekeepers" are uneducated and insensitive about an issue, how can we expect the public to be any better?


Let's demand a smarter media. And a smarter U.S. 

Wasted Time

Time will go by no matter what we do with our lives, so we might as well do what we like, right? Easier said than done. Yesterday was a Sunday and my first wedding anniversary but I was stuck working for most of the day. Granted I was working from home so it wasn't so terrible, and the task at hand, though tedious, was easy enough that I enjoyed hours and hours of the House marathon - which was pretty ironic since my work was nothing more than counting the amount of positive urinalysis (pee tests) of prescription drug abusers.

Ever since I was a young latchkey kid/couch potato, I've been aware of the power of the media. I knew it made me want things we couldn't afford (or really didn't even want), and encouraged me to look a certain way that was supposedly more physically attractive. The media is so powerful because it's so huge - a few corporations own the hundreds of TV channels we watch, and nearly all of the radio stations (including satellite) and record companies that produce the music we listen to. The same goes for books, magazines, food, and news. One can't feed their body or their mind without being tempted by something not only unhealthy but toxic - it's becoming increasingly difficult to even have access to healthy options.

Take House as an example. It exists to entertain its viewers, not to educate on the travails of recovering from RX drug addiction. That the storyline presents many of the issues an addict faces is a byproduct; the show is not a useful PR tool for those who work in the field of addiction any more than it would be a way to prep med students to be doctors. But it reaches millions more viewers than, say a documentary on addiction. But it's just a tv show, you say. Well, the news functions in a similar way.

This morning as I finished up counting pee tests, I was listening to Counterspin on my local community radio station. It's one of my favorite shows because it asks (and answers) the question: Why is this lame issue taking up time on the news (Tiger Woods' affair) instead of another issue (like those wars the U.S. has going on around the world). One of the issues addressed in today's show was the height of Dennis Kucinich, as if his less-than-the-ideal-male-American stature of 5'7, epitomizes his power as a shrimp of a political figure. When it comes to standing for human rights, Kucinich certainly stands taller than most of the jerks in D.C., but you'd be hard pressed to find anything in the mainstream media that doesn't present him as a hippie loon.

Didn't we learn the danger of stereotypes in junior high? Yet the media relies on them and other short cuts to bring the public "information." Happily, I am not spending my time working for corporate media. I'd rather type away from my home computer, passing along these bits of truth to those lucky enough to be among the handful of my dear readers.