**
I for one have no problem with that, Cranky.
But does your analysis consist of ticking off all the bad things the abused/murdered women have done in the past, to make the homicidal, jealous ex angry? Does it consist of a list of things the women can try to improve about themselves, so as to not incur the wrath of future slashers?
Of course it doesn’t. Don’t bullshit me*. You wouldn’t think of doing that.
(*Not that you have.)
That approach is sometimes necessary to prove that failure is a bastard child.
Milo: do you think in its attempts to respond to this attack by recruiting assistance from various parties the US should take the risk of “blowback” into account or should it ignore it? Does the mere asking of this question make me a quiet apologist for atrocities?
Of course not. Never bullshit a bullshitter, as they say.
thumbs her nose at him and runs like hell
There are four siblings Amy, Jill, Johnny, and Tony. They all live in the same house and share all their finances and all decisions are voted on. Amy,Jill and Tony have regular law-abiding jobs but Johnny is a member of the mafia. Amy, Jill and Tony know Johnny is doing some bad things, and they also know if they asked him to stop, he would have to. Instead, they adopt a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, because they don’t want to have the confrontation besides, the money Johnny brings in is pretty good. One day, there is a bad drug deal and Johnny pisses off Knuckles, the wrong dude to piss off. To exact revenge, Knuckles kills Tony.
It is a great tragedy because Tony was a good guy and had nothing to do with the drug deal. Knuckles is assuredly evil and should be punished. What is even a greater tragedy is that instead of thinking that their allowing Johnny to stay in the mafia business was and is a problem, Amy and Jill say “Hey Tony is innocent, don’t blame the victim.” They decide the best way to deal with this is to let Johnny kill Knuckles buddies and then let life get back to the way it was.
No more ropey fucking analogies, for fucks sake.
**
Of course it should be evaluated. That is decidedly not what has been discussed on these boards by a lot of people post Sept. 11, however. It’s been a laundry list of bad things the U.S.A. has done in the past regarding the Middle East.
The O.J. analogy can be made even more accurate. Try this:
*John and Mary start dating. John is a hothead, jealous, with violent tendencies. And though she feels naughty for doing so, Mary loves it. Creepy guys no longer leer at her, because John kicks their ass.
After a while, Mary decides she’s had enough of John, and breaks things off with him. Maybe it’s her “fault,” maybe it isn’t, but the bottom line is, they become estranged.
True to form, John is pissed. He becomes further enraged as Mary begins to see other men, and do things that used to really piss John off, like doing cocaine (or whatever).
John starts harassing Mary, and threatening her. At one point, he tells her he hates her, and wants to kill her and her whole family.
One day, Mary’s parents are found butchered, and her sister and her husband, and their two little children. All evidence points to John, but he’s nowhere to be found.
The police increase security around Mary and her surviving brothers and sisters and their families, but Mary knows that John could strike again at any time, given the police’s limited surveillance ability.*
Now, what’s your priority in the above scenario? Determining if John did it; and, if he did, excising the butcher like a wart from the planet earth. Right?
Perhaps understanding John’s mindset and his rage will help in future evaluations of similar men. But do you think it is useful or in good taste to say things like, “Well, Mary … you did used to be less than discouraging when John was violent and jealous. And you did kind of dress and act like a slut after you left him. And you did do things that you know pissed him off, and go places you knew he didn’t want you to go.”
Who fucking cares?! It is so much not an excuse, it is basically irrelevant. It is offensive, given the crime that was just committed.
Milo: was Mary living in the house that John was paying for, driving, and letting other guys drive, that car that John bought/was paying for? Was Mary living luxuriously off the insanely large alimony John was paying?
[Chris Rock]
I’m not saying it’s okay, but I understand.
[/CR]
thinksnow: If she was, does that give John a fair justification for butchering Mary’s family?
Or should he have taken some other approach to address the situation that aggrieved him?
Does John not lose all sympathy once he acts the way he acted? Then he just becomes a freak that we need to be rid of.
Right?
There will be people lined up to examine John and learn about his motivations long after Mary’s family are burried and forgotten by all but Mary.
It’s a backwards bunch, but they’ll never change. They’ll still be examining John when he decides that all the examinations have made him even more crazed and outraged than before, and he’ll turn his rage to the examiners, eliminating them one by one. Then those very same examiners, fearing for their own lives, will beg for the “Justice” that Mary damanded in the first place.
Aw, shit. Don’t listen to me, it’s not like it’s ever happened before.
There are a couple of things that are missing in the analogy. Before John dated Mary, he was dating Ivanova. It was a long and stormy romance that ended badly. The only way he was able to get over it was from the kindness of Mary. She put him back on his feet and introduced him to Svenson who lent him some money to get back on his feet, which he did. It wasn’t to last however, for John soon started running with Ahab, who introduced him to heroin.
Mary didn’t like Ahab because of John’s heroin problem but Svenson didn’t mind because John’s dealing brought him money. This allowed Svenson to pay for his brother Olaf to move to Calagary where he became a walk-on for the Calgary Flames. Mary’s brother was named Tony and played forward for the Red-Wings. They were playing the Flames the night Tony and Mary’s parents were killed and Tony became so enraged he checked Olaf so hard that it ended his career, much to the dismay of Svenson who then no longer received money from John because Ahab had distanced himself from John because of the murder of Mary’s parents.
Without Svenson to pay his bills, Olaf got a job as the running back coach for the Buffalo Bills. There he met a beautiful woman named Nicole who was in love with an actor from the Naked Gun movies. Olaf saved all his money to woo Nicole, but she never returned his love. After her death at the hands of Osama Bin Simpson, Olaf became despondent and gave his money to Ahab in exchage for heroin. Ahab told Olaf that he would have to talk to Chan instead, so Olaf stole Svenson’s jet to see Chan to get the heroin that Ahab said he had in order to get over the loss of Nicole and his career at the hands of Tony, Mary’s brother, both of whose parents were murdered by John.
Olaf meets John in an opium den and the two proceeded to get in an argument over a 13 year old prostitute named Trixie, whereupon Olaf beat John to death with a rice bowl. It is in this way that Mary’s parents were avenged.
Say, where is OJ now? Florida?
I say we make a demand on Jeb Bush to turn over OJ. And if Jeb refuses, or “can’t find him,” I say we bomb the living shit out of the state of Florida. Level the place. I’m sick and tired of states like Florida harboring wife-beaters and murderers. So what if a few million innocents are killed in the process? As far as I’m concerned, those were just more wife-beaters waiting to happen, and we probably saved the world a lot of grief in the long run. Besides, the important thing will be that OJ has been punished. And if we have to leave Florida in ruins to get him, well, our motives were pure, so who can quibble with the results?
[As long as we’re making distorted analogies…]
For the record (because I’m confident my position will be distorted by someone)I oppose the Taliban regime, and I favor a military attempt to bring bin Laden to justice. The above was a satirical replication of the sort of bad analogy contained in the OP. Hope that helps.
Milo wrote:
“She did all kinds of despicable things, like move on with her life after O.J. There are indications that she slept with other men, and maybe even did coke.”
Milo, right here is the central problem with your analogy. Nicole hadn’t committed any crimes against OJ. Her murder was totally unprovoked. If, say, Nicole had stolen money from OJ, set fire to his house, and shot his dog, then the situation might be a bit more analogous to the WTC.
No, I’m not saying that any of the victims “deserved” to die, (and thanks to all the assholes on both sides of this debate who made that qualifier necessary) but I don’t think we can ignore the culpability of our own government in the murder of more than 5000 of our fellow citizens.
I thought this was gonna be a thread about Chris Roc. He has a bit where he explains how he can relate to the rage OJ might have felt after the actions of Nicole Simpson. It’s from his first HBO comedy hour (not the regular show that came later), and it is evily funny. I can’t even do it justice here, so you’ll just have to check it out. Most video stores have it.
He lists all of the things that she did that were fucked up and then says, after each one, “I’m not sayin he should of killed her, but I understand”. Very similar to the Thread title. Intentional?
He later says he would never hit a woman, but “I’ll shake the shit out of one”. He’s one sick fuck, but it’s allowed cause he’s funny. Like Eddie Murphy before the whole Vampire in Brooklyn, Dr. Doolittle, banging transvestites phase of his life.
DaLovin’ Dj
That’s where thinksnow’s post was going.
Chris Rock is the only person on the planet who could actually get a laugh out of me with such a routine.
Okay. Bad analogy, no two ways about it.
We can spend all the time we want getting in touch with the thought processes of people like “John.” However, we live in a free country, where women are allowed to do things that “piss [insert name] off.” Especially if they are estranged.
Domestic violence is a pet cause of mine too. Maybe that’s why this isn’t working for me. When I read the above analogy, what I see is a woman doing what she wants to do, as most men do without a second thought. Yet somehow she is supposed to change her lifestyle to accomodate the unrealistic wishes of a homocidal maniac?
Hmmm. I was stalked once. I guess I should have just kept my phone number, stayed in the house, not gone out with men or my friends, and not bought a gun. You know, so that my homocidal stalker wouldn’t get his feelings hurt.
Geez. Sorry. This is just waaaay beyond my comprehension, obviously. What on earth is wrong with just saying, “Here is my opinion, without any inflammatory analogies that are sure to piss of women everywhere, especially those who have been victims of violence?”
~karol
We shouldn’t allow women to have blonde hair, because after all, OJ says he’s attracted to blondes, so in order for women to be safe, they need to have a hair color other than blonde.
Also, we shouldn’t allow women OJ’s attracted to (blondes or not) gather in large groups. They’d prove to be too tempting a target for a sociopath like OJ to resist and he’d kill all of them, or more of them if they were spread out and not in a single group.
Okay, excuse me if I’m out to lunch here, but there seems to be a running confusion among several readers here about Milo’s stance and intentions.
He is NOT suggesting anything at all about Nicole, OJ, or Ron, what happened between them, the way we should handle domestic violence in this country, or the proposed behaviors of persons who have been the victim(s) thereof. As a human being, I would personally extend an apology to anyone who got that impression from a fellow human being. All these are considered blameless for the purposes of this thread.
What’s being presented here is a sort of reduction ad absurdium. The points and arguments being made in other threads (this Susan Sontag thing, I suppose, altho I haven’t read it) are applied in the framework of the OJ analogy. If we accept the validity of the analogy - and for my money, it’s close enough - and we disagree with the “points” Milo makes with it, then the falseness of the other threads’ arguments is shown:
Was Nicole (or “Mary”) at fault? No. Ergo, the US and its victims are not at fault. Was OJ (Or “John”) justified, assuming their guilt? No. Ergo, Bin Laden or whomever is equally unjustified. That’s all. Admittedly, it’s emotion-charged subject matter. In a way, it had to be, to serve as a framework for the immensity of the recent events.
Now, proceed to flame the fuck out of me.
I continue to be quite dumbfounded at all the blame the victim (and the U.S. is the victim in this matter) arguments presented on this board. No grievance, no matter how legitimate, can excuse or justify what the terrorists did. My opinion: Saying that the U.S. is culpable, in any way, for what happened is outrageous.