Uncivilized male humans, and humans in general, are animals armed with very clever brains.
I want to know, where *were *the men?
Someone asked where the mothers were? Who gives a shit. Those bitches have done quite enough damage to society by shitting these turds out to begin with.
Where were the fucking dads? Where are the older, stronger male influences in these guys lives? There was a 27-year-old present, but he was one of the gang-rapists. Not a good role model.
Where were the good male role models? Do these guys even have dads? What about at school? Do they have male teachers, coaches, counselors, mentors, authority figures?
You let a criminal gang raise human children what you end up with isn’t so human.
The right wing blogosphere/e-mail forward world is convinced the race angle is germane and that the girl is white. I have no reason to think that’s true (or, untrue), but they’re having a field day with the black-culture-is-rotten-to-the-core theme.
That was indeed NOT my intent. I didn’t mean to infer that they were incapable of, or at least having difficulty with, the distinction, rather they CHOSE not to distinguish - which is really more inline with your “just didn’t care”.
“This poor girl had no decent adult looking out for her” doesn’t sound like blaming the victim to me. Blaming the mother - hell yeah, and rightly so.
And the father, who I have no doubt hasn’t been in the picture for years.
I assumed she was black, but I doubt it matters.
I don’t know if it is rotten to the core, but I would be willing to bet that most or all of the rapists (alleged rapists, etc.) grew up in a household with a single female parent.
And, to be clear, quoting townspeople who almost excused the men because the girl wore makeup tells us far more about those people’s morality, than about the girl’s or the reporter’s morality. I think the reporter is to be commended, not condemned, for reporting those remarks, and for doing that in straightforward fashion without adding his own editorial opinion.
The implication that he should have selected facts to fit a “correct” scenario seemed quite wrong-minded to me.
And of course there is some age threshold (well above 11), below which sex is always rape regardless of the girl’s behavior. (Some girls do appear much older than their true age, but in that small town that girl’s age was no secret.)
On today’s New York Times editorial page there is one letter to the editor about the news article. Only one letter is needed on the page because the letter writer pointedly addresses the reporting of the news article. The quotes the letter writer addresses were given by neighbors. The argument, I suppose, is that, while the quotes would have been appropriate on the local news TV channel, they are not appropriate in The New York Times. They were included because they are representative of the views of the residents of Cleveland, Texas, not necessarily the views of the reporters of The New York Times.
Reading for comprehension Dogzilla…try it sometime. :rolleyes:
If what we have read is indeed true, then this little girl was a victim long before this despicable crime took place. I would have no compunction in jailing her abusers (and any ‘onlookers’) for life. They acted like pack animals, and they should be treated as such.
But if she is to get any justice and healing at all, then her family and her community need to take a damned good look at themelves too. Eleven year olds should be climbing trees, making cubby houses and playing with their Barbie dolls, not having sex with an older man. Something went very, very wrong with this little girl, and punishing the men alone is not going to fix it.
Saying stuff like ‘My son said he never touched the girl. He had never been around the girl,” she said. “When it first came out I asked him and he said, ‘No mama, I wouldn’t do something like that.”’
Or, as I prefer to see it, stuff like: ‘MysonsaidhenevertouchedthegirlHehadnever beenaroundthegirl,” she said. “WhenitfirstcameoutIaskedhimandhesaid‘Nomama,Iwouldn’tdosomethinglikethat.’
Mamas tend to believe their sons, maybe not their daughters…
Ah, I think, despite mainstream media’s understandable desire to play down racial elements in crime to promote harmony, a — perhaps small — number of people may have got a slender clue by looking at the photographs to work out which social construct the perps belonged to. On the other hand, if 1% of X are raptists that leaves 99% of X who aren’t, so it’s a bit of a red herring: their actions are more indicative of the culture they as individuals chose to live than of race or poverty.
Looking this up, I did come across one semi-racist site where the scathing comments on these chaps were hilarious.
In UCLA’s Neil Malamuth’s survey of 1986, 30% of men admitted they would commit rape if they knew there was no chance of getting caught.
When the question posed changed the word ‘rape’ to ‘force a woman into hving sex’ the number who answered in the affirmative was over 50%.
A similar survey of Californian teen males found over 50% thought it was acceptable to force a woman to have sex if she “leads him on” or has gotten the man sexually aroused.
