READING, WRITING & RAPE: A Cautionary Tale

The first time many of us became aware of college-age males abusing college age females was back in 1986, when Robert Emmet Chambers, Jr. strangled Jennifer Levin in Central Park, just behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Chambers, who would later be dubbed by the press “The Preppy Murderer” eventually admitted that Levin died while the two were engaging in rough sex in the park. Accident, said he. Not so, said the prosecution. Chambers, after pleading the charges down to manslaughter, served 15 years in prison. Some (many) say he got away with murder by not being sentenced to life in prison. (Full disclosure: He’s back in prison right now, serving a sentence for illegal drug possession and use).

Fast forward to 2010. University of Virginia student Yeardley Love was found dead in her apartment. Long story short: Her on again/off again boyfriend George Huguely was found guilty of murdering her by bashing her head against the wall of her apartment repeatedly. Both in their early 20s, and both accomplished lacrosse players, their short relationship had reportedly been volatile and possibly violent before the night Love died. Huguely, for his part, had a trouble past, some skirmishes with the law and a history of alcohol abuse. Huguely is serving a 23-year sentence.

NFL Vet John Elway and his son, John, Jr.

Now, pull yourself all the way up to 2014, when former Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway’s son pulled his girlfriend from a car by her hair after an argument. He then shoved her to the ground when she tried to get back inside, causing scrapes to her knees. After that he ran from the scene and went straight to his father’s house. Elway, Jr. was charged with assault, a charge that was inexplicably later reduced to disturbing the peace. His ultimate sentence? Probation, with a year of mandatory domestic violence counseling. No jail time. No compensation for his victim. No record if he successfully completes his counseling. No accountability. I guess because the girl didn’t die like Jennifer Levin and Yeardley Love? Or maybe because his dad is universally worshipped at the altar of NFL greats. Either way, John, Jr. beat the rap, bigtime.

How much of this brand of domestic abuse is happening on and off of college campuses coast to coast is unknown. That is largely because of two things: First, many young girls do not report rape or beatings simply because they are afraid or ashamed; and, unfortunately, many academic institutions sweep these cases under the campus rug simply to safeguard their reputation and attract future students. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) reveals that 60 percent of rape victims do not report their attacks to police, and 40 percent of victims are under the age of 18.

Most disturbing is the reluctance on the part of the schools, coast to coast, to turn over their findings about these attacks to police. Even when a school’s internal investigation determines that a victim’s story is credible, the schools often bury the information or do not turn it over the police until years later. Consider the case of Sasha Menu, who was a student at the University of Missouri. In 2011, Menu checked herself into the university’s hospital. On her admittance forms, under a category that asked about sexual assault, Menu reportedly wrote “Rape/Football player.”

Sasha Menu

She also revealed she had discussed her attack with her academic advisor. The advisor denies this. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and her parents moved her to a hospital closer to home. It was not until April of this year that the University revealed results of an independent investigation into Menu’s claims of assault, and vowed to change its policies regarding such attacks. Unfortunately, it was too little too late for Menu, who had committed suicide three years ago.

Why did it take four years for the University of Missouri to own up to its negligence?  Why is it only now that the Columbia, MO police department is investigating the attack on Menu? Could it be for the same reason that students at Columbia University filed a federal complaint earlier this year that claimed rape perpetrators and their victims are treated unequally by the school? The claim is that victims are discouraged from reporting their attacks to police, and that perpetrators are allowed to remain on campus and in school.

Demonstration at DePaul University, Chicago

Also this year, in Chicago, DePaul University students publicly accused administrators of covering up sexual assaults on campus.  Similar complaints have been lodged by students at Vanderbilt, University of North Carolina, Notre Dame, Eastern Michigan University, Dartmouth, University of California at Berkeley, John Hopkins University, University of Oregon, Yale, Columbia University, Amherst University, Florida State University, – need I go on? Campus domestic violence and rape knows no geographic or economic boundaries.

Way back in 1972, Title IX, a part of Education Amendments, made it clear that any school that is awarded federal money is to be held legally liable if administrators are aware of and ignore campus sexual harassment or assault. Several current complaints lodged by student groups refer to Title IX in their statements. Further, the Clery Act of 1990 has specific requirements for universities and colleges regarding sexually violent incidents. The Clery Act also requires schools to disclose annual crime statistics.

In April of this year, the White House released new guidelines for institutions of higher education to fight the national rash of campus sexual assaults. The guidelines came from a presidential-appointed task force that revealed a startling statistic: One in five college age women are attacked on campus. One in five. If you are reading this and you have a daughter away at school, wake up please. If you have a son that you’re sending away to school, wouldn’t it make sense to pounds some good sense into him about respect for other human beings, before he has an opportunity to succumb to peer pressure? Further, the panel found that only 12 percent of these incidents are reported. If you are a victim of such an attack, speak up.

From the outside looking in, aren’t there some obvious fixes to this epidemic of campus violence? First, in many of campus rape cases, there are observers or multiple participants. Let’s train students to intervene when necessary and protect victims or potential victims. Second, the government needs

to get serious about cutting funding to Title IX entitled schools every single time a case of campus rape is proven and not acted upon by the administration. Third, campuses need to crack down on frequent incidences of binge drinking, an activity that often precedes sexual or other domestic violence. And finally, campus administrations need to quit resisting student protest groups and setting them up as adversaries. Instead, they need to listen and act upon the students’ complaints.

And once we get things straight on college campuses, some of the same steps need to be taken in the U.S. military, the American corporate system, hospitals and anywhere else gender inequality rears its head in a way that potentially foretells incidents of violence, domestic or otherwise.

NOW PLAYING! THE VIDEO THAT KILLED A CAREER

Owen P. Honors, Jr. has caused quite a national stir, in case you haven’t heard. He is the recently dismissed commander of the USS Enterprise. Honors, who has served in the U.S. Navy since 1983, was relieved of his command because of videos like this one:

The videos in question were made a few years ago and broadcast on closed circuit television on the Enterprise. At the time, none of the people serving on the ship complained to authorities about the content, and supposedly no one in the Navy outside of the Enterprise knew about the videos. Honors was second in command, and a big question now is how it is even possible that his commanding officer, Admiral Lawrence S. Rice could not have known about this. It is also unclear how the videos surfaced years later. With scenes showing simulated masturbation, simulated eating of feces, a simulated rectal exam, anti-gay slurs and a pair of men and a pair of women showering together, it is surprising none of the 6,000 who served aboard the ship at the time came forward to complain when the videos were shown on board.

More surprising, however, is how polarizing this incident has been, nationwide. On Facebook, almost 25,000 people have joined the page titled, “Support Captain Owen Honors – USS Enterprise, (left) and most of them are outraged at his dismissal. Here is a typical comment from the page:
“Until we can remove far left loons from positions of power and send political correctness, which is nothing more than an assault on free speech in America, to the bottom of the ocean where it belongs--others will be unfairly subjected to a similar fate.
We need men like Captain Owen Honors in our military period end of ...story!”
And there are a lot of postings like this:
“To all the trolls... We don't care about you and your disgust for a situation you know NOTHING about. You've seen one side of the story. I bet if you saw all the footage, about 10% of it would be offensive... Because that's all we saw. We don't have access to the entire archive and I'm pretty sure that overall, it's very entertaining for those on board.”

The Virginian-Pilot newspaper first reported this story and has received comments like this one:
“Capt. Honors [right, in a scene from one of the videos]
was not an officer and a gentlemen in his behavior. It's one thing what you say and do in private with your peers. It's another when you are charged to be the leader and set the example for our forces. His college fraternity pranks days were over a long time ago and totally out of order for a man of his stature and position. Very poor judgment and demeaning for someone of his rank. Sad to lose the talents of this high ranking officer but it was a self inflicted wound.”

Most comments on the Facebook page from Navy personnel or even from those who served on the Enterprise under Honors are highly complimentary of him as a Naval officer. It is generally agreed he did a good job.

So, why all the fuss then? The fuss has to do with the sophomoric way Honors chose to “entertain” his crew. Yesterday, a friend of mine on Facebook who is in the military posted this:
“I don't think the rest of America can have a say in the Navy USS Enterprise videos. Let the Navy sort it out. Stop making it news. I've watched the video; it is an amazing representation of lewd military humor.”

I wrote back to him:
“The rest of the U.S. is making efforts to eliminate things like sexism and homophobia....is the Navy immune from these efforts somehow? When "humor" is used to denigrate entire segments of the Navy's population, the rest of the U.S. needs to speak up. Military organizations are not separate societies. They are part of American society.”

That is really the issue here. Do we continue to consider the military a highly separate microcosm of the larger society, or do we get real and hold military personnel accountable to the same standards as the rest of us? If Honors worked for IBM or Shell Oil and produced these videos, he would be fired so fast he would not know what hit him. If Honors worked for a university and produced these videos he would be gone so fast his head would spin. So, why is it that in the military, where discipline and order are supposed to reign supreme, it is somehow okay for a commanding officer to produce videos that are not just lewd, but insulting to entire population segments? It is not okay. It just is not.

This is not about “political correctness” or the “far left” or the “liberal media” or how tough conditions are on a ship that is out to sea for eight months at a time. This is not about whether Honors humor appealed to a lot of people on board. This is about social change. Our society is suffering the raw growing pains that accompany the climb to a more civil, humane culture. As a society, we have decided not to call each other fags and niggers. We have decided to incorporate minority populations into the mainstream majority. We are working toward respecting people for who and what they naturally are. If young men and women enter the military and see just the opposite of this, how will they possibly assimilate themselves into the larger society once they are discharged?

Honors is probably the good man that many have come forward to say he is in the past week or so. He probably did an admirable job in the service. He just did a really stupid thing, and every stupid thing has consequences. I support the Navy’s decision to relieve Honors of his command, even if they did it simply as PR move to save face with the American public. It is not business as usual in America. We are shifting, radically, and for the betterment of us all. The protracted growing pains required for the shift will be worth it in the future. We will be bigger and better. I, for one, can’t wait for that day to come.

TRACKING THE TEARS OF A MEDIA CLOWN

Have we had just about enough of Glenn Beck yet? Really. I have forced myself to watch this guy on FOX several times now. I did that because I am a journalist, and a cultural commentator [read: ‘blogger’], and I need to be up on who’s saying what to whom about what. Glenn Beck is saying not much to a lot of people about nothing.

Interestingly, Beck is not the first of his kind. He is just the latest. Does the name Joe Pyne ring a bell? No, I didn’t imagine it would. Pyne had a television talk show in 1960s in which he was known for insulting not only his guests, but individual audience members who could step up to the mic and comment on the topic at hand. I remember as a kid watching Pyne conduct his TV circus and being strangely drawn to the confrontational moments so common in each episode. Here’s a clip that shows a typical Pyne exchange. This time he was interviewing radical student activist Jerry Rubin:


Pyne died in 1970, but it would only be a historical nanosecond before one Morton Downey, Jr., emerged, also confrontational, and more often than not, offensive. With his ever-present cigarette burning between his fingers, Downey was loud, crass and sometimes uninformed. Like Glenn Beck. One could safely assert that Downey was Rush Limbaugh’s predecessor. Like Limbaugh, Downey was not a journalist, not really terribly well informed about the issues of the day and not prone to civil discourse. To give you an idea of Downey’s politics, one of his favorite and oft-used phrases on his television show as “pablum-puking liberal.” Here’s part of an episode of Downey’s show with guest Pat Buchannan:

What these media clowns had in common was a decidedly right-wing ideology, a lack of decorum and no filter between their brain cells and their speaking voice. What Beck adds to this mix is extreme narcissism. While his predecessors filled their shows with raucous audience participation and guests they could humiliate on air, Beck likes the camera all to himself.

Advertisers left in droves after Beck declared President Obama a racist. No matter. FOX chose to keep him on, because the ratings are through the roof. The ratings excel because the public at large is generally not as aggressive in its communication about major issues. There is some sort of twisted vicarious thrill a lot of people experience through a Glenn Beck. But are his chosen issues major? The other day Beck delivered a 10-minute rant about Obama’s plea for citizens to volunteer their time for worthy causes. Somehow Beck found something bad in that presidential request.

When words do not seem to have the emotional largesse that Beck desires, he resorts to tears. Evidently he can cry on demand. When he cannot cry on demand, such as in a recent publicity photo shoot, the makeup people carefully oil the skin under his eyes to make him appear tearful. When words and tears do not carry the necessary emphasis, Beck interviews someone remotely with their image appearing on a large screen behind him. When the interviewee says something disagreeable to Beck, he looks into Camera 1 and mocks the person by making sarcastic faces.

I envision Glenn Beck going home after work, sitting around in sweat pants and a t-shirt, eating potato chips and onion dip and watching “The Bachelor” or something equally innocuous. In the morning, I suppose he gets up and puts on his “Glenn Beck” disguise and goes back out into the world to simply piss people off for money. Reportedly lots and lots of money. I like what Jon Stewart said of Beck: “Finally a guy who says what people who don’t think are thinking.” That’s Glenn Beck.

So here we have a reformed drug addict and recovering alcoholic, the son of a drug addict/alcoholic divorced mother who killed herself, a college dropout who converted to Mormonism simply because his second wife-to-be said she wouldn’t marry him unless he had a religion. Beck simply knows how to yell a little louder than the rest of us and how to feign passion about issues that he seems rather unclear about. And if you just can’t get home in time for the late afternoon Glenn Beck show, and you don’t have three hours every single day to listen to Beck on the radio, maybe you can catch him on his standup comedy tour. That’s not a joke. He goes on tour and tells funny liberal people jokes. He packs them in, and they love it when he constantly repeats “us conservatives.”

Beck found a schtick that works in a time that was fully ready for a mediocre right-wing stand-up comedian to appear on a news network and belittle people who do not agree with him. Nothing about him is distinctive or original – not his tendency to yell over his guests’ comments, not his lack of solid research on the issues he attacks and certainly not his narcissism. At a time when the average American citizen feels his or her voice is not heard, Beck offers them a voice, even if he says things that in their hearts they know do not live up to their own moral code.
Pyne was a novelty late night guilty pleasure. Downey was a loud mouth, educated lawyer who pretended to be one with the working middle class. But Beck? Beck is a full-blown media superstar right now. So, what makes a tearful, semi-informed extremist into a bonafide superstar these days? See for yourself: