Monday, February 25, 2008

Disgusting 'Journalism', Part Two

Curvature (which I only recently recently discovered and highly recommend) has an excellent analysis of a horrifying op-ed piece published in yesterday's LA Times (for the whole disgusting article, go here). As Cara at Curvature writes, the article merits a trigger warning, "not because there are graphic descriptions of sexual assault, but because the comments about women who are raped and the women who want to end rape really are just that unbelievably offensive".

It is an incredibly infuriating piece and the only reason I'm spreading the word about such negativity is to ask you all to join me in writing a letter to the LA Times to let everyone know just how WRONG it is for such an established paper to print something so deluded, misogynistic and insulting to survivors and their allies. You can send your angry letters describing in detail everything that is wrong with this article to letters@latimes.com and I encourage you to pass this information on to everyone who is sick of seeing myths about rape perpetuated in print.

4 comments:

KelseyP said...

Okay. Whoa.

I've been mad at things in the media before, but I have to say it has been a LONG TIME since I've been this fuming.

I'm going to pass this along to everyone and write the editor. I can't believe how infuriating this is.

Rebecca said...

Wow -- I think my heart just broke a little bit. That editorial is so hateful, it's hard to stomach.

I just wrote a letter too. Your turn!

Andrew C. said...

Mine will be on the way soon. That was an atrocious article. I appreciated the Curvature criticism. Hi all!

Anonymous said...

my heart about jumped through my throat and out of my mouth when I read the article. I can't believe this trash got published and SYNDICATED and that the author is somehow a "contributing editor" to any publication.

I am surprised because it is quite obvious from the confusing rash of illogic and false conclusions that she lacks any basic reasoning or critical thinking skills.

The one thing that stuck in my mind was her statement along the lines of, "If someone says that the y weren't raped, then they weren't raped." Ya, right. Let's take that logic and apply it to another scenario, Ms. Mac Donald: Let's say you were just murdered. Because you, for whatever reason, don't admit that you were just murdered...you must not have been murdered. Ok, now let's back up and apply it to more realistic and grim scenario: a woman gets a black eye from her husband. When asked about it, she says, "No, my husband didn't hit me -- my eye ran into his fist." So obviously, the husband isn't guilty of assault. This is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe he can't be CONVICTED of assault without her testimony(?), but he sure as hell is still the guilty perp.

She says she's a lawyer...I wonder if she's tried that line of argument in defense of a client?

If it wasn't so damned pernicious (including the frustrating fact that she's linked in to that oppressive manhattan institute network and considered a "scholar") then it'd be funny.

I can't believe we have so many powerful idiots in this country!!!