First off, thanks to everyone who came from Instapundit last night and this morning. Welcome, pull up a seat and look around. I do my best to blog M-F and at least once on the weekends. You might not always agree with me but that’s okay — as long as you’re up for a discussion.
Which brings me to this morning’s post. Yesterday, I blogged about taking a step back and thinking about what you’ve just written (or are about to say) before hitting the “enter” button. I knew, when I chose the examples I did that I might rub some folks the wrong way. I’ll even admit to possible poor word choice when I said Ailes was “probably” guilty of sexual harassment instead of using the word “possibly”. That’s on me and I’ll own it.
So far, I’ve had a handful of comments hit the moderation queue. I am about to let one of them through. One and only one and that is not my usual practice. I can’t recall a time when I’ve not allowed a person’s first comment through. Yes, “first” comment. That qualifier is there because there’s a rather inventive troll who keeps changing his handle and IP address. The only thing he, he’s predictable in what he calls himself. So, he gets blocked automatically.
As for the ones I’m not putting through today. I don’t mind anyone not agreeing with me. What I do mind is someone who comes here and simply makes personal attacks and doesn’t even try to have a discussion. That, my friends, pretty much falls under the sphere of what I wrote yesterday. You have to think about what you are about to say and what the consequences are. The consequences in this instance happen to be that the comments won’t go public.
As for the one I’m letting through, it raises a valid point and one I will do my best to answer. Yes, I misspoke (mistyped?) when I said Ailes was “probably” guilty, especially after saying I wasn’t going to comment on his guilt or innocence. That’s what happens when I do these posts before the coffee sinks in. I honestly meant to say he was “possibly” guilty.
Why say “possibly” and not “probably”? And why make the clarification?
First, as for the clarification, it is a consequence of my not using the right word, the word I meant. So, I will own the mistake and do my best to correct it. Unlike all too many, or so it seems, I’ve never claimed to be infallible or to have a crystal ball. So, when I screw up, I do my best to own it.
As I am now.
Second, I still believe in the key building block of our judicial system. You are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. That proof does not take place in the court of MSM. It doesn’t take place in the court of social media. It takes place in a courtroom where the accused has the right to confront his accusers — or to plead guilty. Yes, in some ways, it can also take place in the civil courts. Has that happened where Ailes is concerned? To the best of my knowledge no. So, it is possible he is guilty of doing everything alleged but it has not yet been proven.
Look, let’s make it even more fundamental. There is a group of people out there who claim that we must believe a woman if she claims to be raped. There should be no presumption of innocence for the man because of all the years men have held women down socially, professionally and every other way possible. If the accused is male, he is automatically presumed guilty.
That’s pretty much what we saw with the allegations against Ailes. His accusers were female. He was male and white and rich and that meant, to those condemning him, that the burden should be on him to prove his innocence.
Bullshit!
Anyway, back to yesterday’s post. I will own misspeaking. I will not, however, allow folks to come onto my blog and call me names without at least trying to debate the issue. My sandbox, my rules. Don’t like it, there’s the door and don’t let it hit you on the ass on your way out.
Oh, and for those of you poor guys who were so incensed that I didn’t declare Ailes a victim and condemn his accusers and could only call me “bitch”, “cunt” and even less imaginative names, grow up. Or at least go do some reading and expand your vocabulary. Let me give you a little hint. It’s guys like you that are giving the real men of this country a bad name. You perpetuate the myth of men, mainly gamers, who live in their mothers’ basements, eating Cheetos and drinking Red Bull and never seeing the light of day. In other words, you are not only continuing the stereotype but expanding it until there are too many folks who believe it to be real.
So grow the fuck up.
Now, to answer the questions I think you guys raised. Do I think Ailes was guilty of harassment? I don’t know. We’ve only seen basically one side of the story. I won’t make my mind up based on the biased reports out of the msm. However, he did himself no favors by resigning from Fox and not publicly fighting the allegations against him, especially once more of them began to surface. Hence the stance that it is possible he was guilty.
The consequence of my using the wrong word is this post and having to deal with a-holes like the ones I’m not letting through the moderation queue. Overall, minor complications in what is going to be busy day today.
Until later with a more upbeat post.
Did you by any chance mean to write ” You perpetuate the myth of men,” instead of ” You propitiate the myth of men,”?
See, I said I needed to stop blogging before coffee starts working. Sigh.
Don’t discount the changes made by automatic spell and grammar programs. I’m often astonished by what comes up after I’ve edited my work.
After seeing some of the ways my phone keeps trying to “correct” my spelling when I text, I agree. And, yes, there have been some spectacularly “interesting” changes in my writing I’ve had to change after the fact.
I’m not convinced you’ve got this guilt and innocence thing quite right. The presumption of innocence is, as you say, a legal concept. The law presumes you innocent, until proven guilty, so that you can’t be punished without proof. Consequently if you go to court and the court finds you not guilty, that does not prove you innocent in fact. Merely innocent in law, just as you were before the trial started.The necessary consequence of the legal presumption of innocence is that a not guilty verdict cannot be exoneration – the court does not attempt any proof of innocence. Your innocence is presumed not proved. A not guilty verdict is merely the absence of proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Thus whether Roger Ailes was taken to court and found not guilty, or whether he was never taken to court at all, makes no difference to whether you can say he was possibly guilty in fact. Even if you believe the courts always get things 100% right, a judgement of not guilty still leaves you possibly guilty in fact.
True, however, until I see facts and not just innuendo, I am not going to pass judgment on the man.
“The law presumes you innocent, until proven guilty…”
Even if found “guilty”, unless you confess or there’s unedited video showing you shooting the vic, on less than rare occasions that means your lawyer wasn’t as good as your opponent’s, or the jury injected its own racial, cultural or political biases into its verdict, or their witnesses put on a more believable show than yours, or even that the evidence against you was tainted.
Simply recalling a slightly different story in one LE interview than a much later second one about something only peripheral to an investigation in which the actual perp was known but not charged can ruin a career permanently – see Libby, Scooter.
Massachusetts just dismissed 20,000 drug convictions when a single forensic investigator admitted falsifying evidence.
And the left has been using a tactic called “lawfare” for decades to ruin the lives of many of their opponents. Unless you’re rich like Ailes, or a well-connected Marxist nee, Democrat, even when you’re totally innocent, your life can be torn up, your reputation and family destroyed, and be impoverished by ridiculous, spurious or inane charges, sometimes for violating laws or ethics that didn’t exist at the time and for which you prevailed in court- see, Palin, Sarah, and De Lay, Thomas.
A crime or ethics violation doesn’t even have to be involved anymore. Sometimes an off-hand attempt at humor, or wearing a culturally-inappropriate shirt is enough.
Innocent or guilty, the left has made the process itself the punishment and this will continue to escalate until they win, or we eradicate them.
Yep, everything you’ve said is spot on. However, the gist was that I refuse to fall to that level and want to see both sides. Apparently, there are some who think that’s wrong. Shrug.
Yes, there are huge flaws and biases and competence and what not issues in the courts-and-jury system, but it still beats any other broadly-applicable system than anyone has been able so far to invent.
Ailes may not have left Fox of his own volition. He may have been told, “resign or be fired”.
Possible but I think the fact he got a very heft settlement for leaving shows it wasn’t quite that simple.
Bear in mind that under current law, if you are accused of sexual harassment in the “hostile work environment” category, your management has to kick you to the curb in order to avoid being named as co-respondents because they “enabled” or “facilitated” your behavior…
Yet something else I dislike about the current atmosphere.
Regardless of the individual case in question, it seems like any claims of harassment that are eventually proven to be factual virtually always involve immediate and specific details, while those that are inevitably prove false virtually always involve ambiguous claims that aren’t specified until long after the damage is done (see Herman Cain for instance).
In the now popular vernacular, “details or it didn’t happen”
Has anybody heard any details behind the Ailes accusation?
We live in a modern-day equivalent of the Salem witch trials.
I couldn’t agree with you more and, frankly, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the media forgetting that it is supposed to report the news and not make it. I’m tired of folks like antifa trying to shut down free speech simply because they don’t agree with something someone might say.
It’s always alarming to get a hate mob turn up to give one a stoning; but just block them as fast as they appear.
Thanks, Roger. I am learning that lesson.
There is a difference between the court of public opinion and the court of law. We aren’t held to the same standards because we don’t have access to the same punishments. There’s nothing wrong with saying in a blog post that Ailes was probably guilty of at least some of these accusations. And it has the benefit of being true.
I always post under my real name to keep me from saying anything I wouldn’t be willing to stand by if we met on the street.
Yep. Except, in this instance, I really had meant to say “possibly”. So I will own up to making that mistake. I, too, post under my own name and for pretty much that same reason.
“access to the same punishments?”……remember brendan eich?……remember “memories pizza?”……the public forum should be held to even higher standards than the courts, because the public rarely has access to the facts, yet frequently meets out punishment far worse than the law would allow…..mr eich, for instance, did nothing illegal or even mildly illicit…..caving to mob rule is not a good way to practice democracy
But even now you aren’t “owning up to it”. You didn’t say he was “probably” guilty of sexual harassment. You said explicitly he was “probably” guilty of being a SEXUAL PREDATOR! Again, words mean things!
There are real live f’ing predators out there as there are real live f’ing rapists out there and to throw Roger Ailes, RIP, onto that pit of human scum is simply wrong. And for a wordsmith to do this boggles the mind.
Now, I give two shits what you do on your blog but this virtue signaling crap needs to be called out. Obviously, you control whether or not this gets post. I don’t care. If I can help one person at least, in this case you, see the horror of accusing a man of a crime you have no clue if he committed, than hey, win for everyone.
Let me ask you Amanda? You ever been accused of anything you were not guilty of? Let me tell you, it ain’t fun. And in this day and age women get a free reign to throw words around that have actual consequences to the men they accuse, WITHOUT recourse even if they’re full of crap. But this is not a new phenomenon. It’s been going on for decades.
I add my own variation to the saying “a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.” A libertarian is a conservative who’s been falsely accused.” As you’ve done here with Mr. Ailes.
Angry a bit? Or maybe just projecting? I made a mistake and owned up to it. I doubt there is a single person, “wordsmith” or not, who hasn’t from time to time made a mistake and used a word they hadn’t meant to use. And don’t come back and throw the “you should have edited your post before hitting enter”. I did and still missed it. Why? Because, as most of us who have ever spent time writing more than three words at a time can tell you, your brain will often see what it thinks is there and not necessarily what is. It is why there are editors for newspapers and books and even television scripts. So get the fuck off your high horse and go back and read without the anger clouding your judgment.
And yeah, I’ve been accused before. No, it isn’t fun. Which is why I took time to not only respond in the comments to the post but to do a follow-up post. I didn’t have to but I took ownership of a mistake I made. How often do you do so, sir?
As for virtue signalling, grow the fuck up. It isn’t virtue signaling to say you screwed up. It’s called being responsible. You seem so convinced Mr. Ailes did nothing wrong — and I’m not saying you are wrong. However, I will ask you this? Do you have proof the allegations against him were spurious or are you just knee-jerking your response because of the way he’s been pilloried in the press? If you cannot come back and say you have proof then you, sir, are as guilty of passing judgment as you claim I was.
Just added you to my list of places to check on regularly.
Thanks!
Two great posts. Loved the part about Panera.
The focus on probably/possibly missed your entire point.
An Aspbergery trees over forest approach.
Both sides are out to purge heretics, so discussion fades into posturing and ritual hate.
Thanks, KC. You’re too right about heretics. Sigh.
It seems that some of your commenters can’t handle ambiguity, or worse, they can’t handle the idea that others can.
Dammit! You have a presumption of innocence only when you get to trial. It is a presumption that puts the onus on the prosecution at trial to put forth a prima facie case of guilt. Period.
Technically, you are right. However, I prefer not to pass judgment on anyone without seeing what both sides have to say and certainly not on just “I said he did something, so you must believe me.” I’m bit weird that way. Shrug.
Regarding your point”why didn’t he defend himself” I would say, at 68 myself, my reaction would be” I’m in my 70s, have a beautiful wife, millions in the bank I can’t spend before I die, “Why do I need to put up with this crap?”
I can see that. Still, it’s a question a lot of folks ask. Also, it is human nature to deny accusations and it’s hard to adapt to the mindset of settlements because those are easier and, in the long run, less expensive than fighting even spurious law suits.
Was it Mark Twain he said the difference between the right word and nearly the right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug? You owned up to it… sheesh, people, let it go.
Thanks, Drew.
“That’s on me and I’ll own it.” How about avoiding the grating neospeak while you’re at it? “My fault, I admit it” still works just fine.
Awww, poor David. I guess he can’t accept an apology unless it’s done with only the words he deems worthy. Don’t like the phrase, too bad. Is it confusing to you? Then look at the context. Not everyone in this world is going to say things just the way you want them to.