American Crime through 2.6: Brilliant and Unflinching

American Crime in its second season continues to be what it was in its first season - a brilliant, unflinching examination of American life, with all its warts.  As of episode 2.6, it's easily still one of the best series ever on television.

It's ugly and uncompromising, but that's the way truth often is.   The revelation that Taylor is gay could have been the end of his rape story - it certainly was a stunner - but it actually is only the beginning of a much deeper, and more needed narrative.  Rape aka unconsensual sex is wrong - not only morally, it's a brutal crime - regardless of whether the victim is gay or heterosexual, and regardless of the sexual orientation of the perpetrator.

Of course, many of the characters in this story don't see it that way.   They assume, out of prejudice, that if a boy or man claims he was raped by a man, and the victim turns out to be gay, that this fact somehow negates the rape, or makes the act automatically consensual.   If that absurd argument were true, then that would negate the myriad of heterosexual women who have been raped by heterosexual men over the millennia.

The acting, as it was in the first season, is just exceptional.   Not only Connor Jessup as Taylor and Joey Pollari as his accused rapist Eric, but everyone around them and in this story gives edge-of-your-seat performances.

The default mode in American Crime is powder keg, either already lit or about to be.  There are no doubt some shockers and shake-ups ahead, and I'm both looking forward to and bracing for the ride.

See also: American Crime 2.1-3: So Real, It Hurts

And see also: American Crime, American Fine ... American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love ... American Crime 1.10: The Exquisite Hazards of Timing ... American Crime Season 1 Finale: The Banality of So-Called Justice

a different kind of crime

#SFWApro

The Newsroom 3.5: Penultimate Prescient

A mind-blowing, heart wrenching Newsroom 3.5 tonight.

It was, first of all, prescient, in its treatment of rape on college campuses. The news doesn't change as much we think in a year and a half.   Most of the major stories in our news today - Middle East turmoil, killer diseases, police killing of unarmed African-American men and boys - were sadly happening in June 2013, too.   And so was rape on campus.  But the parallel of the UVA story in our news and what ACN was investigating at Princeton - including the role of the media, social and traditional - was uncanny.  I just put up a blog post about this on Friday.

There was some good news, long desired, in tonight's episode, too.   Maggie and Jim are finally together, and that was a relief to see.   It took way too long.  The course of true love never did run smooth, especially when it involved two idiosyncratic people - but mainly a guy too shy - working in a newsroom no less.

The Will story was a piece of cinematic art all in itself.  He's in jail, supposedly in solitary confinement, except he has having a conversation with a wife beater (played, by the way, by the guy who plays the priest in Gracepoint).  I was suspicious of this all along, because, why would Will be locked up with a violent criminal - in a Fed prison for being held in contempt of court, a white collar crime if ever there was one.  Still, the coda to this little tale, when Will takes down the pix on the wall, and we see what his abusive father looked like, was a rich touch indeed.

The ACNGage story was also very much ripped from today's headlines, in which the tracking of celebrities has taken on a new and disturbing ubiquity in our age of citizen journalism, apps, and smart phones and tablets.  At least one student in the class on "Digital Media and Public Responsibility" I'm just finishing up teaching this term at Fordham did a report on this problem just last week.

And then there's Charlie.   There was no way he could have continued under Pruitt.  And what happened to him tonight was certainly more satisfying to the narrative requirement that he leave than his just quitting.  Even so, it was a sad, traumatic, kick-in-the-gut moment.

Much as fans of The Newsroom, including me, will feel when the show itself ends for good - or, in this case, for no good reason - next week.


analysis of the first two seasons

See also The Newsroom 3.1: Media on Media ... The Newsroom 3.2: Ethics in High Relief ... The Newsroom 3.3: Journalism at the Barricades ... The Newsroom 3.4: McLuhanesque "Books Are Like the New Art"

And see also The Newsroom Season 2 Debuts on Occupy Wall Street and More ... and (about Trayvon Martin) If Only There Was a Video Recording ... The Newsroom 2.2: The Power of Video ... The Newsroom 2.7: Autopsy of a Bad Decision ... The Newsroom 2.8: The Course of True Love ... The Newsroom Season 2 Finale: Love, Triumph, and Wikipedia

And see also The Newsroom and McLuhan ... The Newsroom and The Hour ...The Newsroom Season 1 Finale: The Lost Voice Mail

 
a little civil disobedience in this story too

#SFWApro

Bill Keller and the New York Times: Heal Thyself

I saw Bill Keller, former editor of The New York Times (now one of its writers), on MSNBC a little while ago, roundly criticizing Rolling Stone for not checking out its sources more carefully before publication of its enormously important rape on college campus story, which has finally gotten America to pay some attention to this endemic and awful part of frat culture.

Rolling Stone no doubt should have checked its sources more throughly before going to press, and it could have handled its apology issued today a little better, and not blamed the source by saying Rolling Stone's "trust in her was misplaced".   When issuing an apology, it's best to just stay with what you didn't do right.

But Bill Keller of all people attacks Rolling Stone about this?  He was at The New York Times during the years of probably the worst journalistic travesty in history, when Jayson Blair regularly faked stories, plagiarized, made up sources, and in general made The New York Times a laughing stock, a sad position for the once "newspaper of record".

Further, where have The New York Times and Bill Keller been all these years in which rapes have taking place on campuses such as the University of Virginia?   Rather than getting on his high horse, Keller should encourage his own newspaper to do more reporting on this grievous problem.

And Rolling Stone, let us not forget, deserves eminent credit for breaking this story wide open, and bringing it to public scrutiny.   They erred, but on behalf of a noble and critically important goal, and deserve every decent person's thanks not attack for this.

The Real Motive for Todd Akin's Comment

I just heard Hogan Gidley tell Thomas Roberts on MSNBC that Rep. Akin's comment about women not getting pregnant from "legitimate" or forcible rape has no connection to the view that life begins at conception and abortion should therefore be prohibited at any time after conception and regardless of the circumstances of conception (such as rape).  Gidley says "leftist Democrats" are seeking to "tether" Akin's comment to the GOP position prohibiting all abortion when in fact there is no connection between Akin's comment and the GOP position.

Other Republicans have said similar things in the past day.

And they're all untrue.

Why did Akin make his comment in the first place?   Clearly, because he was trying to justify the prohibition of abortion in cases of rape by saying in real or forcible or "legitimate" cases of rape, there would be no pregnancy (because, according to the junk, pseudo science that Akin alluded to, the woman's body would somehow prevent conception from taking place in cases of forcible rape).  Whether Akin - and others who quietly support his position - feel guilty about prohibiting abortion in cases of rape, or, more cynically, find such a position politically untenable, their motive in accepting this non-scientific nonsense is to hold that all cases of pregnancy are in some sense wanted by the woman or not resisted by the woman in "non-forcible" rape.  This shifts the burden of responsibility in such non-forcible cases to the woman, which in turns makes it less repugnant to anyone with any decency to insist that victims of rape be obliged to bring any resulting pregnancy to term.  The Republican implication is that, if woman would just practice more self-control, there would no unwanted pregnancy in the first place.

But the fact is that as even Akin now has been pressured to admit, all rape is, by definition, against the victim's will.    So does that mean rape victims should not be prohibited from having abortions?  Romney and Ryan, in the wake of Akin's statement, have said rape should be an exception from any no abortion policy - but this contradicts their earlier positions and the platform of the Republican Party.   Gidley's implication - in saying Akin's statement has no connection to the GOP policy of total prohibition of abortion - is that Republicans could condemn Akin's statement but still support a total no abortion policy. 

But if Republicans agree that Akin's statement is absurd, they'll have to come up with another justification for prohibiting abortion even in cases of rape.  The view that human life begins at conception - also nonscientific, because although the embryo has a full set of DNA, the DNA has not yet created a complete human being - is not only questionable, but not enough to warrant government regulation of women's bodies.