Happy Birthday Mr. President, From Your Favorite Radical

August 4, 2009, 12:35 pm

Barack won’t get a party as nice as this one (I hear the Senate Democrats are coming over for ice cream, cake and donkey rides) , but Happy Birthday anyway, Mr. President!

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RobertSelf

I had actually never watched this until just now. It is jaw-dropping. No parody over the years even comes close to capturing its gut-wrenching, train-wreck combination of sexual exploitation, fatuous celebrity worship, and all-around Sixties masculine New Frontierism. It gives me the willies.

And notice how he says the "late" Marilyn Monroe? Wow.
whatwas

Happy birthday!
The age of 48 was good to American presidents:
http://www.whatwasdone.com/Age.php?&Age=48
kenn45

Yes!
Guest

Lesboprof,

I feel your outrage. I feel it’s necessary to pose some tough additional questions — what if the boy wasn’t 10? What if he was 19? What if he was a private first class in infantry, and the abuser was his NCO and “openly gay” and serving in the military with pride?

What if the victim had no way out of the situation because he couldn’t prove that the act wasn’t consensual and the witnesses were scared of saying anything? What if he got it twisted in his head and thought, ‘I can’t be weak, I am not a victim — I am gay and I wanted this’? And then what if the military bounced him around until he went downrange and died under strange circumstances and the whole thing got covered up while the gay community held parades and parties celebrating the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?

Would you care then?

Would you feel it important to draw attention, cultivate awareness, and demand a national discussion?

Those things happened. And the gay community didn’t care. They had their parades, their parties, their cheers of progress. It wasn’t as though it was impossible to know that such things happened — I wrote letters to gay news outlets and senators to caution them about the conditions for enlisted servicemen after the repeal. Gay activists wanted their victory. People like us were expendable.

Don’t preach to the people who didn’t stop it or intervene earlier. Change a few of the elements in this story and you might very well be capable of sacrificing young people for a higher cause.

joud3084

If your point is that requiring soldiers to stay in the closet reduces the risk of sexual assault, I think you have it wrong, and even potentially backwards.

If your point is that sexual assault is a crime whenever it happens and should be prosecuted regardless of the sexual orientation involved, then I think we would all agree.

If your point is that the efforts by gay Americans to secure their civil rights somehow sanction rape or institutional cover-up, then I think that’s an unjustified slur.

And regardless of the point, if the aim is to try to make this columnist look like a hypocrite in her opposition to sexual crimes, then I think evidence would be more persuasive than innuendo.
http://twitter.com/poopinchute Lulzmobile

What in tarnation are you on about? Does this have something to do with Obama being a secret gay Muslim (you wrote: http://criticalnewsscan.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-take-on-herman-cain-sex-scandal.html )?
lesboprof

ROP Lopez, your argument holds no water. I would ask you what you would say about the many women who have been raped in the military. Perhaps we should just let gay men and lesbians into the military, eh?

Just FYI, rape is never okay, and I do not think equating the end of don’t ask Don’t tell with rape is acceptable or even rational. Get over your fear of gay men and lesbians.
tenured_radical

Bobby, this just isn’t a “gay issue”: if there is a gay community, it doesn’t have police, and to the best of my knowledge nobody gay saw this happen. This is an issue that revolves around the many forms of violence big time athletics perpetuates. Child rape may be the epicanter, but violence against women, medical mistreatment and the failure to educate or compensate athletes.

I realize that violence against men is an important theme of your responses, but it isn’t the “gay community” that erases/perpetuates that. It is a sex-gender system more generally that markets and constructs ideals of masculinity that, honestly, depend on violence for their social, institutional and economic power. It wasn’t the “gay community” who had the opportunity to monitor and stop Sandusky: it was a male hierarchy at Penn State that thought its football team was more important, and it was a multi-million dollar charity (Second Mile) who depends on high profile jocks and what they can bring to the table to bring in donations that, in turn, pay the executives.

You have been very open about how lodged your concerns are in difficult life experiences, but those experiences — and you analysis of why they occurred – are not universally replicable. Turn your fine mind to expanding your critique and weaving it into your conservative worldview in the creative ways you have indicated.

henr1055

1. People do not want to get INVOLVED – and supervisors discourage employees from getting INVOLVED. Next you do not know who (quoting Clear and President Danger) has a CHIP IN THE BIG GAME. You mess with someone who has a CHIP IN THE BIG GAME AND YOUR TOAST TENURE OR NOT. If I reported something and a university administration did not do anything I would be suspicious and probably would not risk my job to go over the head of the negligent supervisor. CHIPS IN THE BIG GAME. If there is an investigative reporter out there who wants to dig find out who it was that had the CHIP.
laur2582

In answer to R.O.P. Lopez: rape is rape, and is not a sexual crime, but is a crime of violence and power. As such, the sexuality of the perpetrator, gay or straight, is really not relevant. DADT’s repeal will not facilitate more incidents of the sort that, I assume, happened to you. The point is that rape is a violent crime, assertion of power and effecting humiliation on the victim. The rage and humiliation that you express is that of all rape victims, and when we as a society allow it to go on, do not report, do not pursue the rapists, it is a failure to pursue justice. It is NOT a matter of homosexuality or heterosexuality, but violence. Violence against children IS more heinous, because children ARE more powerless, but it doesn’t change the nature of the crime, only the degree.
drj50

It is not necessary “to assume that they tried to minimize what happened, even to themselves.” Some apparently believed that they did the right thing by notifying superiors. I would have assumed that, especially if I had notified a chief administrative officer who oversaw campus police and also had access to the university’s legal counsel. I would have assumed that others knew more about how to handle this than I.

Or could we not “assume” that incompetence rather than butt covering was involved?
22223206

And so the
patriarchy beat goes on: the male, white, rich, empowered patriarchy can take their
pleasure (or any other treasure desired) from any woman, child or less-than-equal-man
they want, with impunity. No surprise – it’s been revealed in most other
patriarchies: the church, Wall Street, politics, etc…..

Thanks,
Lesboprof, for speaking out on the issues – most people have been brainwashed
into submission and inaction by 10,000 + years of patriarchal domination and
exploitation. It’s time for the other 99%
of the people to stand up for their own human rights, and for those who are
powerless to defend themselves.

And as for Henr1055
and R.O.P. Lopez – use your enlightenment to enlighten others, not to disparage
them. It’s time for ALL of us to grow a pair, and stand up for the right thing.
bfrank1

I don’t disagree that all the individuals involved had a responsibility to call the police, or that they should all lose their jobs, especially those in positions of authority who covered up or obfuscated the problem. Certainly I can understand the fear of reprisal that a graduate student or a janitor might have experienced that prevented them from calling the cops at that moment, but if they felt strongly enough to come forward to a supervisor, that person had an obligation to follow through for them. This includes Coach Paterno. But there is another aspect to this. JoPa is an elderly Roman Catholic man who has witnessed almost a century of such behavior sanctioned and abetted by the spiritual leaders of his church. JoPa is not a ’60′s free love radical, not someone subverted by free thinking, as the vatican contends in its own defense; JoPa has been well schooled in the morals of his church, and this is the result. NOW can we put some bishops and cardinals in jail?
csoehl

I have been a court-appointed guardian ad litem for over 15 years and have become pretty jaded about the responsiveness of adults who are mandated reporters to pretty clear evidence of abuse of children. I tell everyone I speak to about this issue that the first call to make is to the police and then, and only then, to any other persons who should be notified. Many elementary schools have a process they want teachers to follow when abuse is suspected, and this leads to miniminzation and failure to report. Anyone who is a mandated reporter, and this includes almost anyone working in an educational environment, must take personal responsibility to report, even if abuse is only suspected. Most states have a legal requirement which devolves onto the person who suspects abuse, not the institution. Personal liability requires personal responsibility.

Of course, if I witnessed a child being raped, my first response would be to confront the rapist, rescue the child and worry about reporting afterward. We are the grown ups who must do whatever is required to prevent this happening. Where are everyone’s values and human instincts? This makes me want to weep!!!

butteredtoastcat

You have two grown men, a GA and a janitor, so stunned that they can’t react. The first calls his dad distraught; the second goes to his supervisor shaking and crying. Clearly these were shock reactions going on. To claim that “if I witnessed a child being raped, my first response would be to confront the rapist, rescue the child and worry about reporting afterward” is lovely wishful thinking, but pardon me if I have some serious doubts.

We all think we would react in certain ways, but we really don’t know until we are put face to face with a horrendous situation. And just a note about PA: the state’s law about reporting suspected abuse permits an educator to report to either a police agency or to a work supervisor. A Philadelphia Democrat is now trying to change this law to make it mandatory to contact the police, specifically.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/content/tncms/live/phillyburbs.com/news/state/pa/pa-lawmaker-calls-for-law-change-over-psu-arrests/article_338b494f-d7e8-58a3-b286-3f2d5b07df04.html

Sadly, perhaps, McQueary (the GA) and the janitor were both following the current PA law by alerting their supervisors. Neither went to the police, but the law did not compel them to do so. As someone who actually read the entire sickening grand jury report, I am hoping that Democrat gets his way. But when one judges McQueary and the janitor, one needs to keep both shock reactions and the PA state law in mind.

tenured_radical

Which means these kids and their parents should sue the a$$ off Penn State.

butteredtoastcat

Oh, there will be lawsuits. They will be settled out of court. Victims and their families will be bullied into taking what is offered. My guess is that there is more rot in this than 8 victims and one disgusting pedophile. Penn State will do what organizations always do, protect their own. PSU threw to the wolves an unpopular president and an aging coach that they’ve been trying to fire for years. Both were expendable. What they won’t allow, under any circumstances, is a wide scale housecleaning, a ferreting out of all the guilty. Second Mile and PSU will protect each others’ guilty secrets and high powered state officials connected to the board members of both institutions will do their best to make this go away quickly.

tenured_radical

Right on.
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