Cheat To Win

No snarling criticism or thinly veiled jokes about UNC here.  I have a lot of respect for the editorial board of DTH for publishing this editorial.

If it was still 2005 and Harry Potter was relevant, I would be really tempted to print this flier off for our campus.

That, however, is not what the Steubenville story is ultimately about. It’s not about a rust-belt community suffering the woes of an enfeebled steel industry, and it’s not about how important it is for Steubenville to simply “get over” its ignominious moment in the national spotlight. It’s about a 16-year-old girl who was raped by two young men who thought that being good at throwing and catching an inflated ovoid meant that they had cultural carte blanche to behave however they wanted. Being good at a sport doesn’t entitle anyone to automatic public sympathy, and delving into our cultural sympathy reservoirs to bemoan the tragedy of a football player’s young career cut cruelly short does not make news coverage sensitive.

Maybe Richmond and Mays cried at their sentencing, fine. They should have cried. They should feel very fucking sorry for what they did, because it’s awful. We, however, should not feel sorry for them because a university will most likely not give them a scholarship to play a game. The sooner this country comes to terms with that fact, the more civilized and empathetic a place it will be.

I can’t seem to wrap my head around this coverage regarding Richmond and Mays’ guilty verdicts yesterday.  I realize that teenagers/people make mistakes and that many people are disheartened when an athlete turns out to be flesh-and-bone mortal.  I even understand our modern society’s rejection of black and white views on morality, and the paradoxical need for criminals who are absolute monsters.

All of this aside, Doug Barry makes a great point in his piece from Jezebel: the important fact to take away from this trial is that these men are not somehow better people because they throw a football around for a few months a year.  These athletes not only sexually assaulted an unconscious and noncompliant girl, they mocked her.  They (and their friends) went out of their way to document her state and ridicule her.  If you ever find yourself sympathizing with these boys, please watch this one more time and steel yourself against the bullshit narrative our media has taken to these past several weeks.

I don’t want to live in a world in which a mainstream media outlet reporting on the verdict barely mentions the victim in their rush to lament the fact that the “promising lives” of the defendants have been ruined and that this “will haunt them for the rest of their lives.” I want to live in a world in which negative consequences are considered the logical effect of committing a terrible crime, and a sentence for rape that is shorter than those regularly doled out for drug possession or downloading academic papers is viewed as pretty damn lenient.

I have to admit, it was incredibly disappointing to see so many journalists (Especially Candy Crowley) upset over the effect on the rapists’ lives.  Feministing does a great job of discussing how rape culture permeates our society and the reporting of this verdict.

This is so fucking important right now.

Compliment away, friends. Let’s compliment the shit out of each other. But let’s be really cognizant of what we compliment each other on, and what that says about what we expect from each other, and what we consider valuable and worth mentioning. It doesn’t matter what Salma Hayek says, because she’s so pretty!

Things like this make so proud to work at Harvard.

Seen near Quincy House at Harvard on 11/28/2012.

All of the applause.

This would be a terrible answer regardless of his handle name.  Then you notice his handle name.

People have wounds, and those wounds are painful. That doesn’t have shit to do with the weak concept of “taking offense.” If someone talks about Texas being a shitty state, I might “take offense” at that. Fine, whatever. All of us who like comedy are generally in agreement with the idea that “taking offense” is lame, and a comedian should be willing to “offend” whenever he or she wants to.

But causing pain is quite a different fucking matter. Your job as a comedian is to take us through pain, transcend pain, transform pain. And if you don’t get that, you are a fucking bully, and I’ve got zero time for bullies.

This is, hands down, the best response I have seen on the internet to Daniel Tosh and his reprehensible behavior the other night.  Jezebel also pointed out that people with significant talent CAN do this successfully…unfortunately Tosh is a pretty lackluster comedian.  Whatever talent he may have is highly questionable.

But seriously though, I feel like Marc and I should do a tag team post on date rape and rape culture.  There are far too many stupid people out there.

Well, this is upsetting. According to a new study, people can’t tell the difference between quotes from British “lad mags” and interviews with convicted rapists. And given the choice, men are actually more likely to agree with the rapists.

According to a study published by the University of Surrey, magazines like FHM and Maxim are indiscernible from the interviews of convicted rapists.

Who else wants to create a media literacy curriculum with me?

Source: Jezebel

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board recently released a new ad campaign, Control Tonight, that attempts to curb teen drinking. Their case? Don’t drink too much, or else you’ll get raped, but hey–that’s your fault, because we warned you!

One ad features a young girl’s legs, underwear around the ankles, as she lays on what appears to be a bathroom floor. The text reads, “She didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t say no.”

The ONLY good thing to come of this campaign is that it’s already been pulled due to outraged constituents.  You should be ashamed of yourselves, PA Liquor Control Board.