It doesn't take much to raise the outrage I felt over Jerry Sandusky's abuse of young boys while the Penn State football gang looked the other way, but at least there's comfort in justice. Unfortunately, too many victims become victims twice when the crimes committed against them go ignored and silenced.

Notre Dame: Justice Ignored

In The Nation, Dave Zirin writes about the differences and similarities between Penn State and Notre Dame's football program, and the silence surrounding what appears to be a rape culture inside a cone of silence:

At Penn State, revered assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was raping young boys while being shielded by a conspiracy of silence of those in power at the football powerhouse. At Notre Dame, it’s not young boys being raped by an assistant coach. It’s women being threatened, assaulted, and raped by players on the school’s unbeaten football team. Yet sports media that are overwhelmingly male and ineffably giddy about Fighting Irish football’s return to prominence have enacted their own conspiracy of silence.

As unbeaten Notre Dame prepares to play in tonight’s national championship game against Alabama, the sports media have chosen not to discuss the fact that this football team has two players on its roster suspected of sexual assault and rape; two players whose crimes have been ignored; two players whose accusers felt harassed and intimidated; two players whose presence on the field Monday night should be seen as a national disgrace.

In 2010, Lizzy Seeberg was a freshman at Notre Dame. Lizzy was, among other things, a brand-spanking new member of the College Republicans and a good conservative girl. She also suffered from anxiety attacks.

Only a month after her freshman year began, she was sexually assaulted by a Notre Dame football player. She reported the assault, and submitted to evidence collection. Then she waited. And waited.

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Instead of discrediting Andrew Brietbart for being a lying liar that hurts people, CNN's Kyra Phillips thinks the Shirley Sherrod story means we need to attack anonymous bloggers for their indiscretions. WTF? If a liberal blogger had released a phony video that targeted a Republican in the same way as Breitbart did, the outrage that would have followed from the media would have been cataclysmic. But when it's done by a conservative hitman ... crickets.

Phillips calls anonymous bloggers cowards, but what does that make Andrew Breitbart? I wonder if MSMers are really that naive? Breitbart smeared ACORN and essentially destroyed the one organization in this country dedicated to enrolling minority voters with doctored videos -- and yet he was positively celebrated for his efforts, and never faced any accountability when the entire smear was proven a fraud. Then he led the video smear of Sherrod. Who has been anonymous in any of these stories? We know all too exactly who smeared Sherrod. Why is CNN focusing on a nonexistent issue?

Anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed the “mixed blessing of the Internet,” and agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others on the internet. “There are so many great things that the internet does and has to offer, but at the same time, Kyra, as you know, there is this dark side,” Roberts said. “Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t taken a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod and plumbed the depths further and found out that what had been posted on the internet was not in fact reflective of what she said.” But Phillips replied that the mainstream media “can’t always do that.” “There’s going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable,” Phillips said. “How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they’re actually given credibility, which is crazy. They’re a bunch of cowards, they’re just people seeking attention.”

Matt Yglesias writes:

The whole reason you might think anonymous bloggers would be a problem is that they could make stuff up and nobody would know who they were in order to sanction them. In this case, though, there’s nothing anonymous about Andrew Breitbart so this problem shouldn’t exist. Except instead of sanctioning Andrew Breitbart, a specific individual with a specific name, and the other specific institutions (who employ specific individuals with names) CNN’s team is lashing out vaguely at “the internet” and “anonymous bloggers.” The issue here, however, is primarily Andrew Breitbart. To a secondary extent, it’s Fox News and conservative talk radio. And to a broader extent it’s a conservative movement that continues to celebrate Breitbart and Fox News despite their legacy of inaccuracy and race-baiting. Anonymous bloggers have nothing to do with anything.

The rage used to be focused on people leaving anonymous comments on websites, but CNN uses a false equivalency to turn it into bloggers. Why doesn't CNN denounce Breitbart and lead the way to discredit any such political operatives who act in a dishonest way?

Paul Krugman catches Mort Zuckerman engaging in the Mini-Breitbart.

I think this is telling. This is the only actual example of Obama’s alleged demonization of business that Zuckerman offers — and it’s essentially a mini-Breitbart, a quote taken out of context to make it seem as if Obama was saying something he wasn’t. That’s typical of the whole argument.

Oh, and one more thing: are there no copy editors at the FT? When I quote someone in my column, I supply the source material, and my copy editor checks, not just to be sure that the quote is accurate, but that it’s not taken out of context. But I guess such rules don’t apply if you’re a conservative.

And now we have the Perpetually Wrong Megan McArdle applying the mini-Breitbart in her own fashion.

BP admitted on July 15th that it had lobbied the British government in 2007, prior to the to release of Lockerbie bomber, for an agreement to turn over a number of prisoners to Libya, as negotiations between the two countries over the issue were impeding a contract allowing BP to drill in Libyan offshore deep waters.

Shortly after, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, convicted for the 1988 bombing of an airline jet over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people, mostly Americans, was released in August of 2009 on compassionate grounds after a medical diagnosis that he was unlikely to survive more than three months from cancer. Nearly a year later, he’s not only still alive, but his doctor has now declared he could live another decade.

President Obama expressed the outrage felt by Americans not only over the decision to release Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, but over the evidence the British owned petroleum company BP played an active role in obtaining the terrorist bomber’s release.

‘I think all of us here in the United States were surprised, disappointed and angry about the release of the Lockerbie bomber,’ he said, and added the diplomatic hope that ‘the key thing to understand here is that we’ve got a British prime minister who shares our anger over the decision. And so I’m fully supportive of Prime Minister Cameron’s efforts to gain a better understanding of it.’

Except David Cameron has made it as pristine clear as the water in the Gulf of Mexico used to be that he has no intention whatsoever of doing any such thing. He announced on Tuesday that while he’d consider releasing information from an earlier investigation, he would not order a fresh investigation into either the bomber’s release, or – more importantly – BP’s role in obtaining it. Further, he managed to shift any blame from the British government onto the Scottish Executive (although, last time I looked I was pretty sure Scotland is still part of the United Kingdom), and further added insult to injury by castigating the decision to – in effect – trade terrorists for oil as ‘wholly wrong and misguided decision, a bad decision, but their decision, nonetheless.’ As for BP’s role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Cameron has already made up his mind, insisting he has seen nothing to suggest that the Scottish government was influenced by lobbying from BP.

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Conservative pundit Terry Savage went on MSNBC to try and justify her idiotic column called There is no 'free' in which she accosted a few young girls because they dared to show compassion and give away lemonade instead of selling it for profit on a fourth of July day. Tamrin Hall of MSNBC gives her a soft ball platform to perform on. Even with the hands off treatment, Terry comes off like so many conservative pundits do. She makes about as much sense as Rand Paul. You just scratch your head and say, huh? Did I actually see and hear what I just saw?

Hall: So many people people are talking about this...OK, you drove up on these kids with your brother, you get out and the lemonade is free. What's the big deal that it was free?

Savage: I love the furor this is causing as if there was some incompatibility between being an entrepreneur and being generous. These little girls just never had a lesson on what a lemonade stand is supposed to be...

Savage has no idea who these kids are, what these children have been learning from their families and what motivated them in their being so generous in the first place. I guess it's a crime that they wanted to be engage in the act of caring and giving and not selfishness on a national holiday and for Terry, it was up to her to set them all straight about how things are done. I mean, what a conceited and arrogant conservative fool. What Terry is actually doing is trying to indoctrinate these kids into being conservatives, who bow down to the almighty free market GOD, so they can become as heartless as she is.

I'm glad my post about Terry's column caused such an outrage. Here's what the conservative buffoon wrote in her column:

The three young girls -- under the watchful eye of a nanny, sitting on the grass with them -- explained that they had regular lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and small chocolate candy bars. Then my brother asked how much each item cost.

"Oh, no," they replied in unison, "they're all free!" I sat in the back seat in shock. Free? My brother questioned them again: "But you have to charge something? What should I pay for a lemonade? I'm really thirsty!"

His fiancee smiled and commented, "Isn't that cute. They have the spirit of giving." That really set me off, as my regular readers can imagine. "No!" I exclaimed from the back seat. "That's not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They're giving away their parents' things -- the lemonade, cups, candy. It's not theirs to give."

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

"You must charge something for the lemonade," I explained. "That's the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs -- how much the lemonade costs, and the cups -- and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money." I was confident I had explained it clearly. Until my brother, breaking the tension, ordered a raspberry lemonade. As they handed it to him, he again asked: "So how much is it?"

And the girls once again replied: "It's free!" And the nanny looked on contentedly. No wonder America is getting it all wrong when it comes to government, and taxes, and policy. We all act as if the "lemonade" or benefits we're "giving away" is free.

Her behavior to these young girls was truly outrageous.
(h/t Heather)

Howie and I have been on the phones asking musicians to cancel any gig they have in Arizona. Some are contractually stuck, but some aren't, and this revenue will sorely be missed. (We didn't have anything to do with this cancellation) The outrage is slowly building, and in the end, money talks for these xenophobes.

BIG h/t to Cypress Hill for stepping up to the plate.

Rap veterans Cypress Hill have cancelled an upcoming concert in Arizona in protest of a new state immigration law.

Arizona lawmakers recently passed the SB1070 immigration bill, allowing officials to detain anyone they suspect to be an illegal alien.

The new ruling has infuriated a string of stars including Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, and Cypress Hill have pledged their support to immigrants by scrapping their planned gig in Tucson on May 21st.

Explaining the move in a statement, the California-based Latin group says, "This decision was made in an effort to show support and solidarity with those, undocumented and otherwise, being directly affected by this unconstitutional law. Cypress Hill recognizes those living in the struggle for their basic civil rights."

Please support Cypress Hill, dog.

I'm a twittering fool too: JohnAmato

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Look, it's not any big news that Glenn Beck is a paranoid nutcase. That's been his schtick, after all -- dredging up every far-right conspiracy theory on the books, warning that those evil progressives are the enemy within, that the liberal Democrats are out intentionally to destroy America. It wasn't just a coincidence that the ADL identified him as the nation's Fearmonger in Chief.

But I don't his recent week off did him a lot of good. Returning yesterday, he was more paranoid than usual. Of course, there was also the usual obfuscation and prevarication, such as when he claimed that he argued for giving antiwar protesters during the Bush administration full respect for their views (apparently this didn't extend to Nancy Pelosi).

But throughout there was a drumbeat of fear that the Obama administration is trying to destroy Fox News generally and Beck's show specifically -- culminating in a warning that the administration is trying to "silence" him, which is what those boycott efforts have been about.

Beck: I have to tell you, there is something -- there is something that is amazing that you need to understand, because it's a very specific plan of attack against this program since it came on the air. But it's really not about us. It's about you -- the viewer of this program. The goal is to get you to shut up, not me, but you.

Last year, there was a fake outrage -- twisted words, a political attack disguised as grassroots protest. Eventually, it led to the big reveal that in fact, the organization that started the protest, the boycott, was cofounded by Van Jones.

Yeah, the Color of Change boycott was all about twisted words, all right -- the unadulterated words that came out of Glenn Beck's mouth, all in their full context. Specifically, these words:

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No extra twisting necessary there -- they just came out that way.

Anyway, Beck wants to pretend that the boycott effort -- which is doing rather well, actually -- wasn't about anything he said being outrageous and profoundly irresponsible. Nuh-uh. Anything but that.

Hmmmm. Isn't paranoia one of the traits of psycopathic narcissists? Just wondering.

The great Fred Clark at Slacktivist responds to Glenn Beck's "Principles and Values" portion of his 912 Project with the following handy tool:

Print out copies of the Glenn Beck Bingo card above and play along at home.

The rules are simple: Every time Beck violates any of his "values" by displaying its opposite, the first player to call him on it puts an "X" in the appropriate square.

When Beck is dishonest, misleading or mendacious, put an X in the square labeled "honesty."

When Beck is irreverent, mocking or demeaning that which is sacred, put an X in the square for "reverence."

When Beck savors and promotes despair, gleefully luxuriating in the ways in which he believes the world is going to Hell in a handbasket, put an X in the square for "hope."

When Beck tries to sell viewers something they don't need -- something neither useful nor beautiful -- put an X in the square for "thrift."

When Beck swaggers, is prideful or vain, or makes claims beyond his capacity to know or understand, put an X in the square for "humility."

When Beck is dismissive of those in need or offers reasons viewers shouldn't bother to assist them, put an X in the square for "charity."

When Beck is disingenuous, when his indignation is feigned or his outrage or tears are manufactured and rehearsed, put an X in the square for "sincerity."

When Beck is excessive or extreme or employs unqualified superlatives inappropriately, put an X in the square for "moderation."

When Beck is cowardly, backing down when confronted or lobbing pot-shots from the distance instead of face-to-face, or picking fights with those who don't have the media or financial resources to compete, put an X in the square for "courage."

When Beck refuses to accept personal responsibility or when he offers excuses for viewers so they don't have to -- when he blames Them for every woe facing Us, demonizing the Other and pointing the finger at the scapegoats whom he says are solely responsible for the ills of the world -- put an X in the square for "personal responsibility."

When Beck displays ingratitude, when he displays a sense of entitlement, insisting that his abundance and privilege are exclusively the result of merit, put an X in the square for "gratitude."

I've left "hard work" for last because, to his credit, Glenn Beck is not a lazy man. He does, however, habitually belittle the hard work of others, attributing their misfortune to a presumed laziness and disrespecting the calloused hands and broken backs of the poor. Whenever he does that, put an X in the square for "hard work."

The first player to get five X's in a row, vertically, horizontally or diagonally, wins.

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