STOP. READ THIS. IT IS ABOUT THE COVERED-UP RAPE IN THE RUNAWAYS. LET ME SHARE YOUR HATE. THIS MONSTER:
It was also short-lived. Soon after Jackie arrived at the motel, a grown man she thinks was a roadie approached her with a Quaalude in his hand. He told her she needed to take it, no questions asked. And she did. Another partygoer, Brent Williams, a friend of Krome’s, says he heard people (not members of the band) talking about the number of Quaaludes Jackie was being given that night—four, five, even six pills. “It was a date rape-type situation,” he says. Jackie has never before publicly discussed what happened next, once the drugs took hold, but it has changed the course of her life.
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I am just…still mad about that last link. So mad! I don’t want anything else to appear before the jump because of how mad I am. SENDING LOVE TO JACKIE. And she is so supportive of the others and free of blame towards them, because they were all little babies (though I’m really disappointed in grown-up Joan.) And ADULT SUPERVISION, for heaven’s sake! Protect children! (Trails off in sadness.)
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Super great piece on Lin-Manuel Miranda and “Hamilton” NOW WITH MORE COMMENTS FROM SONDHEIM.
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THIS JUDGE? I mean, things are complicated, I’m sure, but WHAT?
June 24 court transcripts showed how upset the judge was. She ordered the Tsimhoni kids ages 14,10 and 9 to have a “healthy relationship” with their father.
She criticized them for avoiding him and even compared them to Charles Manson and his cult. Gorcyca then ordered the children to apologize and have a nice lunch with their dad.
When they refused, Gorcyca held them in contempt and had each child hauled off to Children’s Village’s juvenile hall – until they are 18 years old.
“No matter how bad the divorce gets, I think the court should not punish the kids for that,” Tsimhoni said.
Tsimhoni admits the last five years have not been easy in and out of court through a messy divorce and allegations of parental kidnapping and alienation.
Her son at one point even tried to explain to the judge why he didn’t want to spend time with his dad.
“Because he is violent and I saw him hit my mom,” he said in court documents.
But Judge Gorcyca claimed he had been brainwashed.
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Mallory and I owe our WHOLE FRIENDSHIP and our CAREER to these dumb guys (also, I ask Choire for advice CONSTANTLY, and he is so unfailingly generous about it, and genuinely happy for our success, or at least does an A+++ job faking it):
Founded in 2009 by Choire Sicha and Alex Balk, The Awl stands counter to the prevailing trends in the media industry, commenting skeptically on the conventions of the wider web while running a mix of stories that are both wide-ranging and unabashedly specific: writerly reviews of the previous day’s weather, deconstructions of minion memes, tirades against negronis and the Moon, personal essays, deadpan lists, poetry. The site’s tone, knowingly smart and aloof from the news cycle, is especially popular among people who work in media, and it has become a farm team for larger publications. Lately, under the editorship of Herrman and Matt Buchanan, it also publishes some of the most incisive criticism about the ongoing collision of media and technology.
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My dad’s wonderful girlfriend has breast cancer, and is about to finish her second round of chemo, and has a bitchin’ wig, and she took it off to scratch her head and I was DO NOT MENTION THE WITCHES DO NOT MENTION THE WITCHES and then I said AMANDA, ARE YOU ALSO JAMMING YOUR SQUARE FEET INTO POINTY SHOES? bc I am a monster but she loves me anyway and is my family, and I love The Witches and the movie is pretty decent too, except for the cop-out ending.
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if you enjoyed me yelling about tom cruise, you might enjoy me yelling about thomas jefferson, also on twitter, also for two hours
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Oh, I’ll be reading this book:
He learned the boss’s tics. Sanford liked to have three points in a speech, never two. Never. “I’m not getting out there to talk about two stupid points,” the governor said when presented with a pair of rebuttals to a bill. “I need three points, first, second, third. Got that?” He loved referring to an amorphous “larger notion” in his remarks. Larger than what? It didn’t matter. “When we drafted a release or a press statement and weren’t sure if he would approve it, someone would say, ‘Stick a “larger notion” in there and it should be fine.’ ” The governor would often deploy an “indeed” when trying to rescue a trite phrase, as in “we’re indeed mortgaging our children’s future.” Also, Sanford always looked for chances to mention Rosa Parks in a speech. He just really wanted to do that.
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Deleted comment of the week:
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Can’t believe Taylor came down here into our glorious internet hole to correct song lyrics. Really a dedicated artist.
This week has been a week of having men be irresponsible at work, having me push back so their sloppiness doesn’t become my workload, and then having the same group of men praise me for pushing back. I like praise, especially from managers, but like dudes, you’re managers how about you manage your employees so I don’t have to? Ughhh I’m gonna be late for open thread today but I’m really happy that there’s an open thread today.
Getting praised for pushing back is so annoying! Like dudes, don’t praise my “backbone” or “spunk” or whatever, just don’t suck in the first place. I don’t actually want to have to push back against anything!
So grateful for those deleted comments, and not only because I’d somehow missed that post and I looked it up and it is fantastic.
I was surprised that I could possibly have missed that post, and then I realized it was before I had started reading The Toast. And then I was even more shocked to remember that there was ever a time when I didn’t read The Toast every day. What was I doing with my life?
I know everyone and their mother on the Internet has said this, but: I don’t care how bad those kids’ mom is or what is going on between her and the dad, HOW DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO PUNISH THE KIDS omg.
I’m on my phone and don’t have the link, but there was a very depressing softball interview with the dad that did not make him seem particularly concerned with the children’s welfare. Jesus.
Yeah, isn’t this exactly a King Solomon question here?
“I know, send the kids to juvie if they don’t agree. Whichever parent gives up to prevent it is the one we should be trusting.”
Those kids are so young!!! How does she sleep at night, having sent a nine year old to juvie for NO REASON.
Even if, worst case, it is a case of parental alienation, how is that a way to deal with it???
What have her other judgements been like that she thinks this is okay?
Yes, that!! I mean – if the mom is genuinely ruining their lives with some cultish thing, these are problems with the mom. It’s insane to punish the kids – to talk to kids who are already in a bad place – the way she did. I mean, SHE was abusive!
She very well might have done them permanent damage just by threatening them with separation. These kids will do anything to avoid being separated, obviously – they could develop PTSD, abandonment issues – this is practically grooming them for future abusers. “Do as I say or it’s back to the system.”
The father went to Israel IMMEDIATELY AFTER the kids were sent to detention, so even if they had changed their minds the next day they would have been stuck there for two weeks. I mean maybe the mother is a monster but the father is no prize either.
I don’t entirely understand why she just didn’t give him physical custody.
Yeah, this is the dad whom the judge somehow feels is owed not only quality time with the kids, but an apology from them:
The father is the only one that has the power to change it. If he feels the kids learned their lesson, he could have them released. But the day after the hearing, he left for Israel for work and is not expected back for two weeks.
Yep, dad of the year material right there.
Right?! Here’s the interview. Whatever the background of the divorce, I’m seeing a whole lot of “well it’s HER fault” from him and not a lot of “Oh my god my kids are in juvie because their parent(s) is/are horrible, what can I do to fix this?”
If a 15-year-old told me that his dad had hit his mom and that’s why he wasn’t talking to him, I would not be putting the kid in juvie. And when you read in the comments that the whole community thinks the dad’s great, my first thought was “yeah, that sounds like a lot of abusers”.
I don’t know a lot about the background of the case, but I don’t really understand what the judge’s issue is or what orders the kids are supposed to have violated.
I’M SO UPSET ABOUT THIS. MAINLY BECAUSE I THINK THIS JUDGE HAS THE SAME SOUL AS THE JUDGE THAT ORDERED MY LIFE CONTINUE TO BE HELL UNTIL THE DAY I TURNED EIGHTEEN.
How can you fucking justify this part:
Judge Gorcyca said the siblings would be kept separate while in the facility, according to the court transcript.“You’re not even going to be with your brother,” she said to the 15 year old. “You won’t be in the same cell. I’ll put in there, ‘stay away from your brother.’”
WHY ARE WE LETTING THIS HAPPEN? WON’T SOMEONE OVERRULE HER OR SPRING THESE KIDS OUT?
P.S. My dad’s favorite story was “parental alienation,” specifically “parental alienation syndrome.” Yes, there are cases of actual brainwashing, but those happen in very controlled environments. For the majority of the cases, you should trust the damn kids and TAKE THEM AT THEIR WORD when they say they don’t want to spend time with any adult, even if it’s a parent. ESPECIALLY when you’re threatening them like this and they still don’t back down. MAYBE THAT’S A SIGN THERE’S A LEGITIMATE COMPLAINT.
And even if it is a case of brainwashing, WHEN HAS JUVENILE DETENTION EVER HELPED WITH THAT? She could have ordered court-mandated therapy, for fuck’s sake. I mean, that still wouldn’t have been great (trust me on that), could have even been harmful, but it wouldn’t have upended their lives and been as fucking cruel as THIS.
Reading the interview, which presents “another side:”
He moved to take a position in Israel and initially, Ms. Tsimhoni, who like Mr. Tsimhoni is originally from Israel, did not want to move back with him, even though both sets of grandparents lived in Israel.
“She decided not to come. Then she filed for divorce and stopped letting me see the kids or speak to the kids. After some months there was a reconciliation. She moved to Israel, we moved all of our belongings here and then one day she suddenly disappeared and took the kids. Next I heard from her she was in Michigan – not where we had lived, in Ann Arbor, but in Oakland County. That’s when the divorce proceedings began.”
Well, if you add in the son’s testimony that HE SAW HIS DAD HIT HIS MOM, that pattern of behavior makes a lot more fucking sense.
<i.“The one incident that happened was five years ago I had a five-hour unsupervised visit. We were in a park and Maya was circling around the park the whole time, trying to sabotage the visit. Two hours into the visit, the children ended up in her car and she was trying to leave. I tried to prevent her from leaving because it was my time with the children. I was very careful not to do anything but she claimed that I pushed her. She screamed at the children, ‘Call 911! Call 911!’ The police showed up and Maya was screaming and the police confirmed that nothing happened. But in the children’s mind, that’s what happened.”
Children are not fucking dumb nor that easily misled. Especially not at 15.
And the judge’s reasoning for why his dad’s a great guy is SO fucking flawed, it gives me chills, though it’s not news to me that judges think this way: “ther doesn’t have a personal protection order against him. Your father is well-liked and loved by the community, his co-workers, his family (and) his colleagues. ”
BECAUSE NO ASSHOLES HAVE EVER MANAGED TO SUCCESSFULLY MANAGE AN OUTSIDE PERSONA THAT’S DIFFERENT AT HOME WITH HIS FAMILY.
Also, that Observer article went into full detail withe everything except the son’s testimony. How convenient.
Lundy Bancroft talks about this sort of judge in his book Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. Authoritarian, misogynistic public officials frequently side with abusers in family court and end up revictimizing the children and abused parent. Similar but less extreme iterations of this case happen everyday, unfortunately.
That’s really true. Though it feels like a worse betrayal when the authoritarian, misogynistic public official is a woman.
Remember that story a few years ago about the judge caught on video beating his disabled daughter (in Texas, of course), and the wife who enabled him and told the daughter she deserved it? Yeah.
That case was horrific. The wellspring of these people’s toxicity seems to be the belief that children are private property rather than human beings.
Reading the transcript made me sick, the judge’s hatefulness to the children.
Not that this is the most significant and appalling part of the judge’s decision, but it doesn’t work to order someone to have a healthy relationship with a parent. Health can’t be established by judicial order.
Good news! The internet outrage machine seems to have actually effected some good in this case: http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oa…
ohhh The Witches, that was a genuinely terrifying book when I was a kid*, like, I reread it many times but never without going “ok, self, you sure you want to put yourself through this again? Here come THE WILLIES.”
*but also when rereading it as a grownup
YUP
I actually didn’t finish it the first time because it was too scary. That and Return to Oz.
I’ve never reread it s a grownup, it traumatised me too much.
At what age is it acceptable for me to buy this for my nephews?
I think I read it at 8 or 9? It’s not a difficult read, but I wouldn’t hand it to a kid young enough to start thinking there are actual witches coming after him.
AAAAAH there is a new Emily Carroll horror comic and one of the characters is reading The Witches, for added horror: http://emcarroll.com/comics/groom/
I always thought the scariest part was the story near the beginning about the children who got put into a painting, and over the years they aged in the painting and eventually they disappeared… I’m getting goosebumps now just typing this!
Hey Toasts, where do lesbian vikings go after dying in a glorious battle?
…
…
…
Galpalla
I laughed
AMAZING
I just texted this to a friend, ellipses and all. Best way to start a friday, imo.
I have always had such mixed feelings about the Runaways; their music is objectively pretty fun but even as a wee preteen punk I could sense the deep exploitation and the way that people are so blase about it made me feel how fundamentally unsafe it often is for girls in that scene.
(Reinforced by the fact that the people running the show are still pretty much just old dudes who, as “alternative” as they say they are, have very fixed notions of what women and girls get to do when it comes to punk music. Like this bullshit with the Warped Tour allowing an artist charged with sexual assault back onto the lineup. These dudes just make zero effort to affect any kind of change other than some occasional patronizing bullshit.)
(I did not know I had so many feelings about this? I’m gonna go listen to the Slits for a while until I feel better.)
It’s such bullshit. I and numerous others asked a local festival organiser multiple times to reconsider letting the Casualties play (it was around this time last year when multiple people corroborated a blogger’s story about being assaulted by the singer) and no one in the organisation ever even engaged with any of us. Wow it’s so cool and punk to keep putting up with people known for preying on teens.
Word, I went on a bit of a twitter rant about this when Warped launched last week–it’s so sick that something like punk, which for so many people is about radical inclusivity, about belonging to something when you’ve never belonged before, has been engendering a community that takes twisted pleasure in violently excluding young women (and other marginalized groups). And after reading the Runaways piece… nothing has changed for punk men since the 70s. The only thing that’s changed is that the young women now realize they can speak out and have platforms on which to speak out– forward movement, but not nearly enough, and it would be moot if the men just didn’t rape in the goddamn first place.
A good friend of mine was a hardcore feminist punk in Amsterdam (I think) back in the 90s. There was a rape within the local punk community and of course the usual sexist BS happened. She designed the most glorious thing in response: a playboy bunny skull flanked with the words “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” There were T-shirts and buttons and I have some that she saved and they are GLORIOUS.
The last time she was in Amsterdam (which was a a few years ago, admittedly) she said some stores were still selling bootleg shirts with that design and it warmed my heart thoroughly.
Holy christ. That’s amazing.
It’s the same thing that happens in so many subcultures. Predatory men use the rebellious, inclusive coolness as a cover for all sorts of abuse, and then turn it around on their victims to convince them that they need to stay quiet to protect the community, to be cool, to really be part of the group. It’s so fucked up, and it happens constantly.
(I’m thinking particularly of dudes in the polyamory/BDSM scene who are clearly twisted fucks, but who are really good at talking the talk, so they get away with all kinds of sketchy and abusive shit.)
See also: the 60s.
Also: American Apparel.
Also all the male vloggers on YouTube.
Basically, men are the worst.
And see, at first I thought you were talking about an activist in bicycling circles in my city.
It’s just…..so revoltingly common.
Petition for people with more video skill than me to make a parody of that Amy Schumer Friday Night Lights parody but for punk.
Also, please note Kari Krome’s cryptic tweet from yesterday: https://twitter.com/karilkrome
That Hamilton article has what is maybe my new favorite correction to a piece of writing.
(The show is so good, you guys. SO FUCKING GOOD. Go see it if you are in New York or can get to New York. I am planning to go back, I just don’t know when.)
I love corrections like that.
And yeah, I am KICKING MYSELF for not seeing it while it was still at the Public, because now it’s going to be a whole thing and tickets will be a zillion dollars and way harder to get.
Go look! Do it now! There are still a few of the not a zillion dollar seats available if you go late enough, but they are dwindling. Dooooo iiiiiiiiit.
I JUST BOUGHT TICKETS FOR A SUNDAY SHOW IN SEPTEMBER BECAUSE THAT WAS THE EARLIEST THE CHEAPEST UPPER MEZZANINE SEATS WERE AVAILABLE AND I AM SO FREAKING EXCITED.
SO GOOD, SO GOOD, SO FUCKING GOOD
I need that cast album to be out ASAP. I do have a shady way of listening to the show, but I feel guilty every time I do and I want to give them my moneys!
I had to take a break in the middle of reading that Runaways article. Thank you for linking to it.
I’m forever grateful for The Awl, wherefrom I found The Hairpin and therefrom I found The Toast [the Mother bless her]. But, I can’t imagine going back there. The numbers! By every comment! It always felt like where the cool, funny folks hung out, and I was allowed to watch, but also always reminded that I was a latecomer. Should I get over this and actually, um, read the content?
That was my biggest problem with the Awl. I could not shake the feeling that the comments section always felt like a popularity slash longevity contest.
I LOVED THAT, it was an amazing game that challenged me to EXCEL, RANK ME TEACHER I’M EVER SO SMART
And you did excel! I’m not sure I remember you from The Awl, but at The Hairpin — gah! It was a solace, evenings after work, curling up on the couch and laughing my ass off at evil melis (and the many others who commented) while my boyfriend gave me strange looks.
That time when a post at the Awl called out my commenter number / username in an alt-text? Yeah, that was one of the most validating moments of my life.
Well these days there are barely any comments at all. So.
Back when they had a healthy commenting section I actually really enjoyed reading the comments but knew that I wasn’t funny enough to contribute. Now they don’t really get comments at all.
Comments really fell off when the the Awl changed how the system worked. They removed links to commenter profiles, so you couldn’t see all the comments a particular person had made, and also changed around the way that comments nest so you couldn’t really reply to anyone anymore.
I suspect this was a deliberate move to put the focus back on the articles rather than on the comments section. As a longtime Awl commenter (mid-2000s for life, son), it made me stop commenting, and then stop reading, and I expect that it was the same for many others. This makes me sad.
I associate the Awl so much with that early commenting community, and have (lazily) assumed that the quality of their content matched the (lack of) quality of their more recent comment sections. I was surprised to see an article praising them for an influential recent piece. And apparently I’m indebted to Choire for my ! usage.
This this this. I was mostly there to lurk and read the awesome comments. I stopped reading the Awl when they all disappeared.
I never commented at all. Just read a bit of content and then would occasionally read comments.
Two of my faves passed on from The Hairpin.
Hilarious: http://thehairpin.com/2012/02/text-messages-from-…
Be careful this one is very very sad: http://thehairpin.com/2012/04/the-return-of-ghost…
GHOST!!
Many are the judges who are fair and full of justice
and I’ve heard that there are judges who are less than honest men
But then you’ll run across a judge who’s brain has become busted
and you’ll never see our “justice system” quite the same again
Justice Lisa Gorcyca thinks she knows what’s best for children
who refuse to join their father for a luncheon tete-a-tete
they need to realize that he is not a violent villain
despite the fact that they have seen him at home making threats
“Delusional!” the judge decries their statements that are sworn
“These kids will benefit from a few years in kiddie-jail
And when they’re old enough they will remember and be warned
that refusing lunch with daddy is an epic kiddie-fail!”
So Daddy’s in Jerusalem, and mommy has no recourse
the kids are stuck in juvie and the judge is mad as hatters
somehow I don’t think of this as proper use of courts
Just convince yourself despite the news that Detroit justice matters
I swear sometimes that Nicole creates link-roundups just to make poetry difficult.
it’s the “Chopped” of internet link roundups.
That Runaways article … they were so young! What a vile man, what a VILE man
That first link is horrifying. What is wrong with people?
There’s no worse thing to call somebody than “rapist,” but there damn well should be, because “pedophiliac gaslighting destroyer of children’s lives” is such a mouthful.
I would like to share this delightful tidbit I found recently in Wikipedia:
Certainly “Do Your Balls Hang Low?” is known to have been sung by British soldiers on the Western Front during the First World War. … on one occasion in 1916, General Douglas Haig heard the song being sung by a column of soldiers as they marched past on their way to the Somme. He immediately called for his horse and rode to the head of the column to remonstrate with the battalion commander, only to find the Colonel singing as heartily as his men. Haig congratulated him on his fine voice, but added: “I like the tune, but you must know that that in any circumstances those words are inexcusable!”
Omg! I never knew about the original version of this song. My grandma taught me “Do your ears hang low?” I am laughing now, wondering if she knew.
She knew. Wherever does the idea come from that old women are sweet and innocent, as if once you’ve passed seventy you revert to seven? The dirtiest-minded people I know are old women. Imagine yourself with all the knowledge you have now, plus everything you’ll learn in the next however-many years.
I grew up with the “ears” version too, although as an adult one day something just clicked and I thought to myself, “This song was probably originally about balls.” I mean, why would it not be?
It never occurred to me. This morning I had the following conversation with Mr Cleo:
Me: you’ll never guess what I learned on the Internet! I learned the original lyrics to “do your ears hang low?”!!!
MC: is it “Do your balls hang low?”
Me: (crestfallen) Did you already know that? How’d you know that?!
MC: Um, no I just guessed – what else could it be?
And there you have it – yet another thing that’s obvious to many but that I’m completely oblivious to.
That is delightful!
I had never heard that version of the song — it makes “Do your ears hang low?” make so much more sense now.
You know what I love? Very specific anecdotes about olden times (tymes?) where people are quoted. It’s my favorite thing. It rings extraordinarily true. Could not be true, maybe isn’t, but it rings true. I guess if I were fabricating a lie about the past, I’d put interesting words in peoples’ mouths, is what I’m saying.
Going back to the article to check the references led me to the wiki article about the book where that Haig anecdote is from, which contains this gem:
MacDonald has collected testimonies of soldiers involved in the battle of the Somme. Their stories are horrible. In the beginning, their stories show chauvinism, nationalism and patriotism, but later, with soldiers seeing the stalemate, despair of war. Afterwards everybody again agrees war is terrible.
The letters in Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam follow that exact same trajectory, which I know to some degree is curation, but it makes a very believable arch to read letters that are enthusiastic and jingoistic followed closely by letters that are disillusioned and embittered. I can only imagine how disheartening the battle of the Somme must have been. There aren’t words for it, really.
You will love this one, then, which is one of my favorites. It is from “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope” by Jonathan Alter.
When Guiseppe Zangara shot Chicago mayor Anton Cermak in 1933 (his target may have been FDR, it was at an FDR speech), the Secret Service drove Cermak to the hospital with the President cradling him and talking to him in the back the whole way. When they arrived at the hospital, sole night resident was sitting with his feet up, reading a girlie magazine, and was unaware of the assassination attempt. The Secret Service banged on the door and said “Open the door for the President of the United States!”
The young doctor, assuming this was a prank, shouted back “Tell him to piss on the floor and swim in under it!”
Hah. That makes SO much more sense – as does “Do your boobs hang low?”
“Can you throw ’em o’er your shoulder/Like a continental soldier” makes sense now.
I don’t have a Twitter account, but was reading Nicole’s Jefferson rants, and when that one dude said that freeing slaves was “something almost no one did,” I almost created an account then and there to shout THE MAN WAS LITERALLY A REVOLUTIONARY, “MOST PEOPLE DON’T DO THIS” IS NO KIND OF DEFENSE.
But I didn’t.
Also, lots of people did it. Jefferson’s friend Tadeusz Kościuszko even gave him a whole bunch of money to make up for the loss of his slaves, and Jefferson wouldn’t do it!
Just coming down here to give a shout out to Kosiuszko because as a Person of Polish Heritage I am practically required to acknowledge his awesomeness.
Although Hamilton will always be my favorite, both for his economic brilliance and his forward-thinking views on slavery (by forward-thinking I mean “he was an abolitionist”).
We got a statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko here in Philadelphia, and I am always disappointed that more people don’t talk about how rad he was.
Also Kosciuszko mustard is the best, just sayin’
Noted.
Yes! Someone else brought up that story too. I feel like Jefferson’s defenders are making the same arguments he must have made to himself, like the present just keeps re-rationalizing the past rather than admit that someone did the wrong thing (or, uh, a sequence of wrong things that lasted his entire lifetime).
Didn’t Washington free his slaves on his death? He died well before Jefferson, too.
Although if I remember correctly from the Drunk History marathon on the fourth, Martha Washington didn’t let the slaves go after George died, even though he freed them in his will.
Yes, but the majority of slaves on the estate were Martha’s, and they stayed enslaved well after Washington kicked the bucket. Keep in mind the dude also tried to have dentures made with teeth pulled from his slaves; he’s no type of anti-slavery role model.
Oney Judge would agree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oney_Judge
Yeah, he did, more or less. (There were some complicating factors involving Martha’s slaves–you can Google that and find a better summary than I can type here.) Again, people argue about what kinds of manumission Virginia law allowed, but these dudes were not only lawmakers, they were CRUCIAL AND DEFINITIVE lawmakers, not randos whose hands were tied.
Feel like it’s pretty weak to grant someone their freedom only when it’s of utterly no consequence to you, though. “Well I certainly wouldn’t want to live without them but I’m sure my widow can figure it out.”
I am reading the court transcript and trying really hard not to cry right now because the kid says “How come– I thought there was like rules when– rules for not, you know, not hitting someone, why am I going to the–” and the judge cuts him off and it must be so scary. Who the hell is this judge? Who are they to do that to children?
What an awful, awful way to learn about the worst parts of reality. I am so, so sad too. What kind of future are these kids going to have? How can they possibly navigate their own future relationships and any abuse they encounter?
The emotions I had reading that transcript. Just, horror. Just so much horror. And anger. And sadness. I just cannot believe it. At all.
Negroni season is possibly one of my favorite Awl articles of all time and perhaps I shall go read it again right now.
I posted an instagram picture on Easter of 2014 with #negroniseason, and I got a like on it a couple of weeks ago, which means someone scrolled through a years’ worth of #negroniseason, WHICH ONE OF YOU WAS IT???
Your twitter-yelling on Thomas Jefferson is very satisfying! I recently did a research paper on Jefferson and Adams, and when finding secondary source material on Jefferson, I looked at how the author treated Sally Hemings as a sort of litmus test. If the author glossed over it or denied it (especially in a post-DNA test work), or somehow insinuated that because Sally was beautiful she was inviting the attention and Jefferson couldn’t help himself, I discarded the source.
She was a TEENAGER – just about the same age as his oldest daughter – and he was a man in his 40s, and he OWNED her. I mean I don’t want to strip Sally of agency entirely, as she did go back to America with Jefferson instead of claiming her freedom in France as she was legally allowed to (but she may have been pregnant at the time, and her family was back in America, so leaving her situation would have been very difficult); in any case, no informed, equal consent was ever going to happen in that kind of situation. People need to own up to the fact that Jefferson was not a good person. And as to the whole “oh it was just the times he lived in” hand-wave excusing his hypocritical owning of slaves, people at the time DID know better. The Adamses, for one, are proof of that.
Jefferson himself obviously knew better! He wrote a great deal about how horrible slavery was, and how ruinous to both enslaved and enslaver. The dumbwaiters he installed in his house are clearly designed to make it easier to pretend there aren’t actually human beings in the wine cellar, sending up his fancy French wine for his fancy dinner parties. Thomas Jefferson knew that slavery was wrong, that it was an incredibly evil institution, but he made the choice to maintain his status as a landowner who invented lots of things and wrote stirring letters, because he could only do that if he had lots of free time and didn’t have to spend his money paying the people who kept his household functioning. He KNEW what he was doing, people.
Exactly! Ohhh, the dumbwaiter thing! That really shows his hypocrisy. It’s like, “hmm, I like having free labour providing me food, but seeing slaves makes me uncomfortable, so let’s just pretend this isn’t happening even though it totally is.”
The man did know what he was doing. He knew slavery was wrong, but didn’t let it bother him to the point where he actually took measures against it. Meanwhile he waxed lyrical on freedom and equality, and how glorious and necessary frequent revolution was… but if any of his slaves ran away or showed signs of resistance, it was off to the Caribbean with them. Not to mention how he salivated over what the French Revolution stood for long after the other founding fathers had jumped ship in their support, yet was terrified of the Haitian Revolution and refused to recognize Haiti as an independent country. Classic Jefferson…
Excellent points. I didn’t know that Sally Hennings once had the opportunity to claim her freedom in France. But did she even speak French? Did she have any tools or resources to survive independently? I can’t imagine it felt like a real possibility to her.
I’m not sure if she knew French or not. If she didn’t, it was yet another reason why she couldn’t easily leave Jefferson and claim her freedom in France.
Her brother came on that visit too, and even though he had trained as a chef and learned French while abroad and thus had the skills to live as a free man in France, he still chose to return to the States. It would be difficult to strike out on your own in a foreign country, especially knowing that your family is still in slavery back home…
error IntenseDebate won’t let me upvote this 9000x as it deserves
So much stuff in that runaways article is familiar, although thankfully not from a voilet rape.
When you’re the victim of a predator you sometimes need other people to confirm that what is happening is wrong. When people refuse to give that validation is when people go crazy and blame themselves
“When you’re….blame themselves.”
THIS. THIS. THIS. (I think I’m strongly identifying with your perfectly summarized statement, don’t mind me, carry on…!)
Whoa, that Runaways piece is devastating. Fowley always came off as a likely rapist but the other bandmates’ behaviour was truly surprising and disturbing.
I can’t really speak to it from a music industry standpoint, but from my personal experience in a similar environment it sounded pretty familiar. When you’re that young, and have spent the majority of your life that dedicated to what you’re doing, and know that there are only a very few elite who “make it,” it’s amazing what you can justify to yourself. You’re in a bubble where this kind of behavior is tolerated, if not explicitly endorsed, and there’s a twisted sort of pride in being “tough enough” to handle it. If someone else quits for their own physical or mental well-being, it reinforces the notion that they were just weak, or didn’t want it badly enough to make the “necessary” sacrifices.
Not only that, but you shield the truth from people who might see how messed up it is and try to stop it, like your parents, because you’re afraid they would make you quit. It’s awful, but I can absolutely see how it happened like that.
Yeah, it isn’t surprising that teen girls trying to achieve success in a toxic environment would compromise themselves like that. I don’t expect to see Jett make a public apology but I really hope she has guts to meet with Fuchs in person to talk about it.
I’m also frankly disgusted by a lot of the commentary I’m reading elsewhere that is effectively blaming Jett. She isn’t the rapist! It would be really fabulous of her to come forward and corroborate the story (I dislike that she washes her hands of it by saying it’s Jackie’s business) but she was *also* a teenage girl caught up in the same mess and doing so will probably require some serious restructuring of emotions and thoughts surrounding that entire era and the bargains she struck (with other people, with culture, with herself) to become the legend she currently is and pave the way for other women and girls to have to make less terrible bargains for success.
It all makes me feel icky all over.
Of course Joan Jett isn’t the rapist; I think what’s more troubling than the fact that she (and the rest of the crowd) didn’t intervene is the idea that she and the other bandmates mocked Fuchs afterward and made her feel crazy for her reaction. Sometimes the silence of people who should be allies is as hurtful as the actions of an aggressor himself.
It’s awful but not unexpected – if you downplay the horrible thing that makes it less horrible, right? If you roll with it you’re “cool”, and you’re safe. I’m saddened that as an adult she won’t confront her actions as a teenager but I’m not down with condemning her immediately.
Right?! I can’t get over that. JOAN JETT what the fuuuuuck.
When my grandma was going through chemo she bought this really cheap wig that couldn’t be exposed to heat. I have fond memories of standing in the kitchen holding her wig for her while she opened the oven, so it wouldn’t melt.
People interested in all those recent articles hand-wringing about the way folks talk!
I would like to direct your attention to an excellent rebuttal by Sameer ud Dowla Kahn, in reaction to a Terry Gross interview with the guy who did the documentary about “Do I Sound Gay?”. It points out that the complaints about “vocal fry” are baseless and complaining that people don’t talk “normal” is just about ever -ism ever. And there’s a couple links in the comments to other similar responses.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19934
Yes! Delurking to emphatically agree!
The Witches!!!! One of my favorite books as a kid (I loved all things Roald Dahl, because I was That Kind Of Kid). The movie does screw up the ending hard core, but I will always remember it with horror/fondness, because: I saw it in the theater, and when Angelica Huston started pulling her face off, I FREAKED out and turned around in my seat so I wouldn’t have to see it. EXCEPT it was perfectly reflected in the glass of the projectionist booth, so I saw it ANYWAY only more dark and terrifying and INESCAPABLE.
No idea why tiny me didn’t just, like, close my eyes, but yknow. Kids is dumb.
How can someone get to be a family court judge without having even a rudimentary understanding of abuse dynamics? I’m not asking how other people can let someone like that slip past them into the position, I’m asking how someone can graduate from law school, encounter presumably hundreds of complicated family situations while clerking and practicing, live in the world, and still think that a man being an “upstanding citizen” means that his kids’ claims of his abuse is proof that they’ve been BRAINWASHED?
I had two kids in therapy, one attempted suicide at 9, evidence my h threw me down the stairs when I tried to take my son to the ER for stitches to a head wound, and the judge AND legally appointed children’s guardian awarded my ex 50/50 custody.
God, I just want to hug you. I’m so, so sorry. I wish I were surprised by that kind of awfulness. I hope things are better for you all now.
It’s horrible, isn’t it? If anything wants to make you want to escape reality, it’s the realization that so many judges have these kinds of awful, ignorant biases. Because it’s just like any other bullshit circulated among the elite class, like the trash they used to exchange to justify slavery and segregation — they do regularly re-enforce their own shitty beliefs about good people and bad people, and make such completely awful judgments that destroy people’s lives, and noooooo this is too much for a Friday.
I have not read the article and I am sure everyone is completely right in their assessment of this terrible judge.
<mounts soapbox> But, it’s incredibly hard to be a busy trial court judge. You are required to come into people’s lives and make very important decisions for them, often based on not very much evidence. It’s not unusual that both of them are lying about the actions of the other, and it’s not as easy to assess credibility as everyone makes it sound. It’s a very, very hard job.</dismounts soapbox>
I absolutely believe this is true. So maybe if you’ve cracked and have decided the appropriate response for “children not having lunch with their father” is “send them to juvie until they turn 18” (which would be literally half the child’s life, for one of them)…you need to step down.
I said “half” to my 14 year old when I told him yesterday. He argued that it’s even worse…right now, she’s 9. So sentencing her to another 9 years IS her ENTIRE LIFE SO FAR.
I believe it! One of my oldest friends clerks for a family law judge and she has become terribly demoralized just doing that. It sounds like an incredibly difficult and emotionally draining job.
But no matter how tough the case, sending children to jail for refusing to have a relationship with their father – and the article that has the interview with him tries to argue that it’s more complicated than that, but never suggests that there’s anything else the kids have actually done – is nonsense. I do recommend reading one of the articles to see the way the judge talks to them; it’s astounding.
lol I don’t care how hard your job is, telling a nine-year-old child she’s going to be in juvie and have to “pee in front of other people” is a bad way to do it
Seriously, what was with those peeing-in-public comments? Good to know humiliation is a legit and totally reasonable judicial tactic.
Like I said, you guys are totally right about this particular judge. I guess I was just speaking more broadly in response to other things I’ve read about “oh this judge did this and that and how did they not realize this person was totally crazy/lying/whatever.” But perhaps this wasn’t the correct placement for my soapbox speech.
You are all correct, that judge should be fired for sure!
i read the runaways piece yesterday and i still feel nauseous over it. what a disgusting excuse for a human.
Speaking of The Awl family, has anyone been over to The Hairpin recently? They’ve changed layout and have wiped the comment slate clean! The article archive is still there, thankfully, but how will the children of the internet ever know the ‘Pintariat origins of the Jizzcliner? The many calls to arms to set men on fire? Ah well, times, they are a-changin’.
I remember someone affiliated with the site saying – though it may have been on the The Billfold, but same network/commenting system – that the plan was to eventually merge old and new comments to so the old ones were “saved”…somewhere…and would someday return? I dunno, I am no computer expert, but I am dubious that this would ever happen.
I was wondering about this- I did a search using ‘Jizzcliner’ (as one does) and it popped up in Google, linking to the original Clean Person article, but when I a word search on the page, nothing came up. So, maybe they do have them locked up somewhere in an alternative ghostworld of old Hairpin comments? It’d be sad if they are gone for good, but the unmitigated spam and the clear decline in comments might be a reason for the group to not bring them back (oooh, points for the best conspiracy theory about the motives for making the comments disappear!).
I hate the new layout SO MUCH
I’ve stumbled across a few regional news sites that use the same thing (Orlando Sentinal, I think?) and it’s seriously TERRIBLE. Just… can I institute an internet-wide BLOCK of anything even remotely related to Infinite Scroll, please?????
Ugggh the LA Times (which has a paywall!!!) uses infinite scroll and it’s THE WORST.
OMG…the Jizzcliner! I had mercifully forgotten about that one, ewwwwww….I still miss Ye Olde Hairpin, but I kinda like their new layout.
Recently, Choire has been writing a lot of posts for the Hairpin! I like that he’s doing this.
Wow, something tells me that Judge was HELLA projecting some of her own shit on those kids, and she should 100% have recused herself. Is it even legal to sentence a kid to juvie if they haven’t even broken a law?
It really, really shouldn’t be.
Contempt of Court is a judge’s Swiss-army knife. They can just declare it and then they can do with you as they like.
I was reading the first link over about the course of a couple hours yesterday. I had to keep taking breaks because I was so disgusted. I have to say my heart plummeted when I kept reading Joan’s non-response. You’re right, the runaways were babies at the time, but her modern-day response to it..wow. Just wow. I had to keep reminding myself that the one who set the tone, the one who was wrong, is dead, and should be getting the blame.
I said "half" to my 14 year old when I told him yesterday. He argued that it's even worse…right now, she's 9. So sentencing her to another 9 years IS her ENTIRE LIFE SO FAR.
"Can you throw 'em o'er your shoulder/Like a continental soldier" makes sense now.
dear friends,
i am de-lurking just to say that Lin-Manuel announced on twitter that there will be a lottery for $10 first-row tickets.
<3
fellow fanilton
Recently, Choire has been writing a lot of posts for the Hairpin! I like that he's doing this.
It never occurred to me. This morning I had the following conversation with Mr Cleo:
Me: you'll never guess what I learned on the Internet! I learned the original lyrics to "do your ears hang low?"!!!
MC: is it "Do your balls hang low?"
Me: (crestfallen) Did you already know that? How'd you know that?!
MC: Um, no I just guessed – what else could it be?
And there you have it – yet another thing that's obvious to many but that I'm completely oblivious to.
Oh man I just read this and the twitter rant and everyone moved on days ago but I want to talk about it some more. Look, I get all of my revolutionary war history from the movie musical 1776 (new extended cut with original songs put back in!). But maybe historians should watch that thing because has no one heard of John Dickinson?
He is the ‘villain’ of the peace because he won’t vote for independence because all he hoped for was peaceful reconciliation with England because I think he was a Quaker. In the end, since the vote had to be unanimous, Dickinson quits the Congress and joins the Pennsylvania militia rather than hold up independence. And then in 1777 he freed all 37 of his slaves. Yes he was in ‘northern’ Pennsylvania and yes he didn’t have nearly as many slaves as the main founding fathers from Virginia. But he and TJ totally knew each other because they have arguments and sing songs at each other. So people totally fucking freed their slaves before 1820, including people Jefferson personally knew. I just really think Dickinson doesn’t get enough credit because some people in that musical wrote pretty things about liberty and freedom and some people actually fucking lived those principles and we don’t really venerate the right people in this instance.
Have you seen the HBO John Adams miniseries? They have a very different Dickinson who I believe is more true to life (less reverential of British authority and wealth, more concerned about starting a war he didn’t think America could win). Outside of Adams-centered media I have only a Wikipedia level of familiarity with Dickinson, but you’re right, he’s someone worth knowing about!
There are a lot of angles of attack to go after Jefferson’s slaveholding. Dickinson & the other abolitionists he knew are one. His own writings are another huge one–he wrote at length about the evils of slavery, and how he felt slaveowners were debased by it. The story about Tadeusz Kościuszko, as noted above, is another one–he actually willed his own estate to pay for Jefferson to free his slaves, but TJ still didn’t do it. The “most people didn’t free their slaves” argument that whoever was making on Twitter particularly sticks in my craw, because it’s so complacent and fatalistic, when the whole point of revering any of the American founders is that they took dramatic political action and did things with relatively little precedent.