Day: January 27, 2004

The Rittenhouse Review’s Taking Its Football and Going Home

This sort of thing always gets me laughing out loud. Some blogger incensed at the postings of another swears publicly that anyone who dare so much as link to the offending blogger will find his or her site removed from the incensed bloggers’ links.

I’ve only done this once before, but I’m going to do it again. If you link to “Wonkette” through your blogroll you cannot and will not enjoy, for what that might be worth, a link from The Rittenhouse Review.

Somebody please tell me again why I should care?

I was, however, genuinely amused to see that if you search on “Rittenhouse Review” in Google, that 2 of the top 10 results are links to articles on this site about RR’s habit of poor fact checking.

Personally I’m going to start removing links from any site that refuses to acknowledge the genius of the first season of Gilligan’s Island (out soon on DVD — yesss!)

Source:

WHO IS “WONKETTE”?
And Why is She Saying Such Nasty, Untruthful Things
About “Media Whores”?. Rittenhouse Review, January 27, 2004.

Al Franken: McCarthy-ite Enforcer?

Back in June 2002, George W. Bush spoke at the commencement ceremony at The Ohio State University. An announcement made at that time warned potential protesters in the crowd that they would be removed and arrested if they disrupted the proceedings. The Progressive was outraged citing this sort of warning as an example “of the New McCarthyism that is sweeping the country.”

So, of course, I’m certain you’ll soon see The Progressive decrying Al Franken’s violent, McCarthyite assault on an anti-Dean protester,

Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean.
. . .

“I got down low and took his legs out,” said Franken afterwards.

Franken said he’s not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely. “I would have done it if he was a Dean supporter at a Kerry rally,” he said.

“I’m neutral in this race but I’m for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down.”

The trouble started when several supporters of fringe presidential candidate Lyndon Larouche began shouting accusations at Dean.

Franken emerged from the crowd and charged one male protester, grabbing him with a bear hug from behind and slamming him onto the floor.

“I was a wrestler so I used a wrestling move,” Franken said.

Yeah, I bet you’ll see a lot of angry coverage about Franken’s suppression of dissent in The Progressive, The Nation and other magazines keen on upholding freedom of speech.

Sources:

McCarthyism Watch. Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, July 1, 2002.

Al Franken Knocks Down Dean Heckler. Vincent Morris, New York Post, January 27, 2004.

Transsexuals and Sports

The British Parliament of late has been considering the Gender Recognition Bill whose primary purpose is to allow transsexual individuals to formally re-register their gender to their newly reassigned gender, replacing for most legal purpose the gender of their birth. And, of course, this immediately created a debate about the most important related topic — the issue of transsexuals competing in sports competitions.

As originally drafted, the Gender Recognition Bill appeared to require both domestic and international sporting events to allow transsexuals to compete in their re-assigned genders. So a person born male who later decided to register his gender as female would have been allowed to compete in sporting events as a woman.

This caused great furor, in large part because reactions to this possibility cut to the very core of whether or not gender can genuinely be reassigned. As Kevin Myers wrote in an op-ed for The Telegraph,

We can pretend that we are able to turn men into women and vice versa, but that is not true. We merely give the appearance of doing so to help those unfortunates who feel that they have been born into the wrong sex; and maybe they genuinely have been. Or maybe they have got other psychological problems which become manifest in a gender-identity crisis. Either way, rightly or wrongly, medical science has taken the surgical and endocrinal route of rough-hewing a reasonable facsimile of the desired sex out of the raw material of the undesired sex. The result is usually unconvincing, but it nonetheless brings some peace to troubled people’s minds.

Neither law nor science can transform the physical substance of a woman into a man, or vice versa. And we are doing no justice to ourselves or trans-sexuals by pretending that an authentic bodily consecration can [sic] occurred, and that one sex can be transubstantiated into the other. This cannot happen.

Following the debate, the sponsors of the bill largely acquiesced to Myers’ view, announcing that there would, of course, be special exemptions to the bill where sports are concerned. According to The Guardian,

Under the government’s new gender recognition bill, which comes into force next year, transsexuals will legally be recognized as members of their new gender. However, sport is to be a given special exemption from certain elements of the bill because it is felt that some transsexual athletes might have an unfair advantage in some sports, particularly physical ones.

The medical panels will examine areas such as testosterone levels, physique and an athlete’s mental state before making their decision. If it is felt that a transsexual athlete has an unfair advantage then the panel will be allowed to prevent them from competing.

So which is it, then? Is a male-born female really a woman, or simply a man with slight cosmetic changes to the outward physical appearance? And if the answer is no when it comes to sports, why should it be yes for other areas?

Sources:

What next? Martin Johnson to be Martina? Kevin Meyers, Telegraph (UK), December 21, 2003.

Sport panel to rule on transsexuals. Vivek Chaudhary, The Guardian, December 20, 2003.

Great Britain Opens First Shelter for Male Victims of Domestic Violence

The Observer reported in December that the first shelter for male victims of domestic violence in Great Britain would open in early 2004, with another shelter planned for later in the year.

The Observer noted that the most recent British Crime Survey found that about 4 percent of both men and women said they had been victims of violence by intimates, and that in those incidents 50 percent of women and 31 percent of men said they sustained an injury.

Those sort of findings lead men’s groups to question the lack of resources for male victim’s of domestic violence. The Observer quoted David Hughes, editor of Male View magazine, as saying,

At the last count there were 426 shelters for women in Britain. That means there should be at least 70 refuges for men [assuming 1 in 6 acts of domestic violence are committed by women against men based on another survey]. Yet up until now there was none.

Ian Hancock, a National Health System director of psychological services, told The Observer that along with the lack of facilities, men also face social pressure not to report acts of domestic violence. According to Hancock,

It’s difficult for anybody if they’re being battered but with men their problem is compounded by the fact that they feel they shouldn’t allow themselves to be battered by a woman. The idea that it makes you some kind of weakling means it’s a double whammy for men. It affects their self esteem. . . . People have this image of muscular women and weedy men but size has got nothing to do with it. A man can be twice the size of his female partner and still be battered by her.

Source:

Battered men get their own refuge. Jamie Doward, The Observer, December 21, 2003.

Saskatchewan Government Says It’s Not Sorry for Malicious Prosecution

A judge recently ruled that a family accused of ritual abuse had been the victim of “malicious prosecution” but that hasn’t stopped representatives of the Saskatchewan government from saying it did nothing wrong and has nothing to apologize for.

The case against 12 members of the Klassen family began in 1987 when three foster children — a boy and his twin sisters — made accusations of incredibly bizarre ritual sexual abuse against their foster parents which soon led to allegations against twelve family members.

The children’s accusations were filled with bizarre ritual abuse, including claims that they were forced to eat eye balls, drink blood, participate in orgies, and watch while infants were skinned alive.

Police in Saskatoon called it the “scandal of the century” but few charges were actually lodged against anyone and by 1993 all charges in the cases were stayed. The children later came forward to repudiate the stories. The boy had been removed shortly before making the allegations after he had been found abusing his sisters. He maintained he made up the stories in order to be reunited with his sisters whom he then convinced to go along with the fiction.

On December 30 a judge ruled that Crown Prosecutor Matthew Miazga, Saskatoon Police Superintendent Brian Dueck, and child therapist Carol Bunko-Ruys were guilty of malicious prosecution. Shortly afterward, Saskatoon police chief Russell Sabo publicly apologized to the Klassen’s and promised an investigation into what went wrong in the investigation of the case.

Sabo said,

The judgment in this case vindicates the plaintiffs for the criminal charges they faced. Based on the information contained in the judgment, as the chief of police of the Saskatoon police service, my sympathy goes to each and every person that was wrongfully charged and I extend my apologies to them for any part that the Saskatoon police service played in this case.

But Saskatchewan Justice Minister Frank Quennell was having none of it, telling Canoe.Com,

It is our position that Crown prosecutors did not commit a wrong and there is no reason they would be required to apologize in that circumstance.

Quennell is probably afraid of the millions of dollars that Saskatchewan is going to have to pay out to the Klassen’s and perhaps even the twin sisters. They are also suing Saskatchewan, arguing that police social workers and others did nothing to protect them from the abuse they were subjected to by their brother.

Sources:

Twins hail malicious prosecution victory. CBC News, December 31, 2003.

NDP Must Take Responsibility for Klassen Family Tragedy and Negotiate Payment Immediately. Press Release, SKCaucus.Com, January 8, 2004.

Sask. government won’t apologize in abuse case. Canoe.CaTim Cook, January 8, 2004

Saskatchewan offers Klassen no apology. Darren Yourk, Globe and Mail, January 8, 2004.