I’ve made it through a lovely few days with no news or television. Tons of conversation and good cheer only, a calming experience which even the obligation to work didn’t dampen.
Preferring to learn even on my time off from official academia I was able to fulfill my off-time learning quota while sipping Pinot Grigio and eating cheeses full of more fat than I dare calculate. I learned it’s not wise to enter into a conversation with a linguist while drinking, and never to tell a linguist “nouns decline and verbs conjugate” because you’ll end up in an interminable discussion on the lack of declension in the English language. If you happen to speak French and Spanish you might suffer castigation. Chastisement is at it’s most tedious when the chastiser is semi-inebriated and related to you by blood.
Tonight I turned on the computer and flicked to WAPO, a habit I’ve yet to find a cure for. I find this little piece “Ending Impunity For Rape” by Marianne Mollman, the Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch’s Women’s Rights Division. She suggests “a project for Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton”, “ending impunity for rape”, “as rape convictions are low across the globe and not just in those failed states or third world countries with non existent justice systems”.
The comments on this op-ed are disheartening (actually they made my head want to explode), but they are a reflection of why we have so little success helping people in countries with less structured justice systems succeed in prosecuting and actually punishing rapists. In this country, a country many rely upon and hope to pattern themselves after, on WAPO op-ed we have idiots writing comments full of psycho misogynistic rage, working on some misguided rules like. “If you don’t want a man to rape you, then don’t tantalize him and don’t leave with him“.
If you want to fully realize how little hope there is for a world looking toward us to save them read the pathetic comments on that otherwise well intentioned op-ed — in one of this countries premiere newspapers. Read it and weep.
peace
The title says it all cooper. This country can’t hide it’s shame with idiots like that screaming our ignorance.
Hope you holiday is going well.
I try not to talk to linguists any more than I have to. ;)
jacob’s last blog post..The End of the Year Player of the Year
Thanks Jacob, carry on. Have a happy new year.
It is humiliating.
johnm’s last blog post..Isn’t This Special
More like frustrating.Where do we go from here. UH – looks like nowhere.
I find pinot grigio good with cheese . I think it would pretty much suck to be drinking it while talking to a linguist.
There are more stupid people reading the news papers now that news papers are online. At least in our parents day no one had to tolerate the stupidity, no one had to face up to the fact it was there either. Now, the truth revealed.
g’s last blog post..Home For The Holiday
you of all people, I would think would, be able to sit and talk to one for …years.
From your comments, I suspect the linquist was not very cunning.
I decline your invitation to read yet another “don’t wear what you want unless you want to be raped” piece. There’s been far too many of them in my lifetime and as my I contemplate a daughter going into high school, I fully realize that reading one more is bound to make my head explode. It’s a dangerous world out there; unfortunately, not just in other countries.
sauerkraut’s last blog post..The strange case of Michael L. Johnson
Actually the piece wasn’t about that at all which is why the comments were all the more head exploding.
You’re right about the comments having no relevance to the post. Rape is rape is rape. There are no excuses
There used to be newspapers for people who “aren’t educatedm” “people with some education” and so on. If you have the academic and work credentials on a subject such as aging say you have to be prepared for everybody who watches Oprah “knowing” more than you–but never tell them they can’t get a true education from daytime TV and a paper. they might just verbally murder you
pia’s last blog post..Been sideways so long