Celebrity Sex Allegations - The New 'Moral Panic'

A moral panic is defined in Wikipedia as a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society. A Dictionary of Sociology defines a moral panic as "the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of Moral Entrepreneurs and the mass media".

Some past examples of moral panics that have swept the nation are:
The Salem Witch Trials
McCarthyism
The Daycare Sex Abuse Hysteria of the 1980's & 90's
HIV/AIDS Panic
Muslim Terrorism Suspicion

Moral panics are usually spread by mainstream media in order to confuse or distract from larger or more tangible issues.  The tell-tale signs of a moral panic are the lack of solid evidence to back up claims and allegations that arise out of seemingly nowhere yet are highly publicized as a trend. Most moral panics are also political by nature and politicians quickly seek to capitalize on the two-sided morality coin.

Some of the accused in 2017 (clockwise): Al Franken,
George Takei, Mariah Carey, Kevin Spacey

The problem with a moral panic (aside from the fact that the claims made at the height of it are generally false) is that it has a tendency to spread like wildfire to the point where all citizens of the affected nation become retaliatory against & suspicious of each other.

Although there might be some truth to the accusations at first, those same allegations can become warped over time due to our human tendency toward exaggeration, hyperbole and our inability to remember things exactly as they happened. Before long, both the accuser & the accused are caught in a vicious cycle of mutual blame with the general public not trusting either. The aggrieved parties rarely call a truce... especially when the allegations involve sexual misconduct.

As a blogger/journalist, I can't tell you that I know for certain what sex crimes have been perpetrated by the elite celebrity class which includes everyone from Donald Trump to George Takei (political opposites).  But what I can do is share the warning that we could be in the midst of a moral panic.  It seems they happen every 20-40 years like clockwork.

Clockwise: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein
& Bill Cosby have all been accused sex crimes. The crimes
that Mrs. Clinton was accused of were proven false, namely
that she supposedly operated a child sex ring out of a pizza
parlor. See also: PizzaGate

Some things to keep in mind during a potential moral panic:

• Are you making accusations based on rational proof?
• Are you contributing to events that have nothing to do with you?
• Are you making assumptions based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or politics?
• How devastating would it be if you were proven wrong?
• Is there another issue going on that you should be paying attention to?

Republicans: Cookin' Up a Whole New Batch of Crazy!

Democrats shouldn't get too comfy between now and November because the Republicans are cookin' up all kinds of crazy and that always has its consequences for everyone... especially when there's a lot of money behind it.

Here's a brief rundown of the madness:

To refresh yourself on some of the GOP insanity from 2010, click here.

We'll kick off crazy-fest 2012 with our reigning queen of drunken bigotry, Jan Brewer.  Since her mostly failed attempts at Birtherism, immigration deform and hating on gay people, Jan Brewer has taken it upon herself to join her Tea Party fan-base in defining "personhood".  She says that the idea that women can secretly prevent pregnancy from rape is only "a little bit outrageous" and that it's totally up to legislators and voters whether or not they agree.  Brewer has outlawed abortions in Arizona after 20 weeks... making NO EXCEPTIONS for the life/safety of the mother if the doctor doesn't feel like it. It's an outrageous law that is not seeing nearly enough media attention considering that a woman could conceivably die from this in Arizona before the election.

Of course, we can't really discuss fetal personhood without an honorary mention of the grandfather of all screwy looney-toons soundbytes, Todd Akin. By now, you should know all about the idiotic belief system he holds and the statement that stirred the pot. But if you don't watch Rachel Maddow, then you wouldn't know all of THIS.  Akin's coo-coo for cocoa puffs lunacy stems from other pro-lifers with these crazy ideas before him... including a man by the name of John C. Willke. Willke, if you’re curious, endorsed Romney’s 2008 presidential run—a fact Romney freely boasted about at the time. “I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country,” Romney said in a 2007 release, according to the New York Daily News. Even some Florida Republicans have seriously twisted ideas about rape.

Todd akin did not act alone in this insanity, though. Which brings us to your Republican Vice Presidential hopeful, Paul Ryan. “Nobody is proposing to deny birth control to anybody,” said Paul Ryan in a CBS interview where he backed away from every single point in the pro-life agenda. This is a very DRASTIC flip-flop for the congressman. Akins and Ryan had conspired immediately upon Ryan's entrance to the House of Representatives to draft a fetal personhood bill called H.R. 3 which, if it had become law, would have legislatively overturned the Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court decision and made NO EXCEPTIONS for a woman who is raped or the victim of incest. The Paul Ryan lie that "nobody is proposing to deny birth control" is a BIG LIE indeed, however.  You can read all about these attempts (by Catholic Republicans like Ryan, no less) right here, here and here.

From Paul Ryan on the subject of fetuses, we come to the big guy - Mitt Romney. The "fetal skeletons" in Romney's closet were LITERALLY swept away by his corporation called Stericycle. It was an awful blow to the pro-life movement when they discovered that Mitt Romney had inked the deal for his Bain Capital corporation to purchase Stericycle. It is a company that they had been protesting all the while because it facilitates abortions by removing the "medical waste" and disposing of it properly. I don't need to tell you why pro-lifers have a problem with the term "medical waste". This is just the tip of the iceberg with Romney and Bain though.  The time at which Mitt Romney saw over the acquisition of Stericycle was a time that he said he was NOT in the employ of Bain Capital. Obviously, since the signatures are there, and it was Romney himself conducting this business, he lied.  This is also, conveniently, one of the many years for which Mitt Romney never released his tax returns. But it gets EVEN WORSE for the Presidential hopeful... It turns out that Romney lied yet even once more before all of this about his taxes... and the consequences of this other lie are insurmountable for him in his bid for the Presidency.  Mitt Romney never paid any taxes from an address in Massachusetts.  Why is that important?  Because his eligibility to run for Governor of the State of Massachusetts was entirely predicated on the idea that he had.  Romney had not been a Massachusetts resident for the required seven years. He brushed that concern aside by LYING. He told the people of Masshachsetts that he had paid TAXES in Massachusetts for seven years.  It turns out that everyone just assumed nobody would tell a lie that big... They had apparently never met someone like Mitt Romney before... because he did in fact, lie.

Somebody who's very concerned about how all of this will pan out for Republicans is a man by the name of Bryan Fischer. Fischer is one of those guys that Paul Ryan now claims doesn't exist.  He is totally in agreement with the Akins fantasy about "legitimate rape" not causing pregnancies. He also doesn't want women to have access to contraceptives.  Fischer heads up the American Family Association.  Immediately, you recognize that name because they are the secondary source of all things "anti-gay" in the United States.  The first and foremost source being the hate group known as the Family Research Council. While party leaders were immediately frightened by the onslaught of adverse reactions to Akins' crazy "magic vaginas" story, Fischer was upset with them for reacting to it.  His Twitter account relays: "Akin staying in. GOP elites, by gangtackling Akin instead of having his back, have put this seat in play. Loss is on them."  This is basically like saying that a legislator should not be held accountable for being wrong about something... That even if something is a total fabrication - we'll all be fine as long as we stick with it.

Bryan Fischer draws from the same fanbase as 700 Club Televangelist, Pat Robertson.  Of course, Pat Robertson has the heavy burden of explaining to Christian America what should be done with all the "persons" who will not be aborted when Republican policies take effect... You can apparently do whatever you want with unwanted kids after they're born... as long as you DON'T dare adopt them, says Robertson. No man is going to want to be tied down to the "whole United Nations" which includes "weird" kids of other races "who may have been molested" he says.
Pat Robertson seems to be on a rampage against our nation's young people lately. The religious school that he owns is called Regent University. Of course, it's not a real university because it's a private religious school. The word "regent" means "governing in absense of a higher authority". School boards and county-area branches at all levels of government are often called "regents" or regencies. It has been this way for over 100 years, actually. But you guessed it... Robertson has assembled a crack-team of lawyers to restrict the government from being able to use the term. He is suing local community colleges and non-religious public schools to try to take ownership of the word that he's only been using since 1979.

Speaking of "other races" whose children one should supposedly not adopt, lest they find themselves hosting a United Nations convention in their living room - we would be remiss in not reminding you that the Tea Party Express still has plans to plow over every last brown-skinned American until there are none left.  No man is better suited for this task than white America's favorite skinhead - Joe The Plumber.  Joe has given up the glamorous job of plunging toilets so that he can enjoy Government funded healthcare at taxpayer expense as a United States Congressman. His plan is apparently to shrink the size of Government by adding himself to it.  He is running in Ohio on a platform of "don't spread my wealth" and "let's start shooting at the Mexican Border".  Yes, you read that correctly.  Apparently, Joe is very sensitive about being called a racist by "liberal Obama supporters"... he routinely complains about that on his facebook page, but he just leaves that statement dangling there without apology.  Apparently, if Marco Rubio's parents happened to be anywhere near the border between Mexico and the United States, Congressman Plumber would suggest that border police should shoot at them.  No joke.

Let's not forget that Joe The Plumber was brought to us by the same public relations department in the GOP that delivered Sister Sarah Palin to us.  Palin, if you recall, put shooting targets over a map of Democrats in the United States, including one over the name and location of congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot, almost fatally, yet still luckier than a number of other innocent people at her event.  The mainstream media has failed to mention that Jared Laughner (the shooter in Arizona) listed "Mein Kampf" as his favorite book on his YouTube profile.  He also had a very creepy video he took of himself burning the American Flag in the Arizona Desert.  The media mostly in concert with CNN and Fox News, decided apparently that since Laughner was "crazy", that it somehow ruled out the possibility that he was ALSO an antisemitic white supremacist and gun-nut. Shockingly, violent racists who are connected in any way to Sarah Palin are never held up to scrutiny for their political alliances.

Since Palin has gone national with a lot of support from Fox News and the Oil and Coal lobby - a new Republican has emerged in Wasilla, Alaska.  His name is Mark Ewing... Palin would be so proud of Ewing.  Some of his latest stump speech talking points have included "I love coal. I love the smell of burning coal in the morning." and "We need to educate our children, but there are certain individuals that are just not going to benefit from an education... like kids who have a hard time making their wheelchair move."

Really?  The latest Republican attack will be... against kids in wheelchairs!  That's just made of win, isn't it?

6 Ways That the Republican War on Women Is a Real War

There are Six Significant Ways That the Republican War on Women (RWoW) is a Real and Dangerous War:

1. Women are dying.
2. Soldiers are on the front lines.
3. Congress declared the war.
4. Propaganda is used to gain public sympathy.
5. Additional funding is sought from the public.
6. Women are questioned as to their allegiances.

Women are dying.

Let it be known far and wide that war kills people. In this case, the casualties are primarily but not limited to women. The first to die in the Republican War on Women (RWOW) are in the lower economic class. Take for instance, 29 year-old Anna Brown, who died in a St. Louis jail cell after being refused treatment at a local hospital and having the police called on her for trespassing. Her story is one of the private sector in healthcare refusing to do for a woman what it is required by law to do. The police of St. Louis made it a crime for Anna to seek medical help. One can only assume that this might happen to men too.

Women around the world (including the United States) die every year due to botched do-it-yourself abortion procedures where medical expertise is not sought. But the shocking truth is that these deaths are not only acknowledged legislatively, but even encouraged. Under the Bush administration and with a Republican-ruled Congress, the Food & Drug Administration considered the effects of a medication that poor women were using to induce abortion at home. Though more than 10 years of research has overwhelmingly shown that Cytotec is a safe way to induce abortion when administered correctly during normal pregnancies, the Food and Drug Administration has never approved this particular use. What the FDA did, in fact, recognize was the drug's use by obstetricians to induce contractions in routine deliveries – a method which they know causes extreme hemorrhaging and risk to both the baby and the mother's lives.

One of the most awe-inspiring discoveries made about the Republican Presidential candidates in the 2012 election so far has been the far reaching grasp they have on the mental health industry under the guise of religion under George W. Bush's “Faith Based Initiatives” program. Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry were all discovered to sit on boards, take ownership of or otherwise run pseudo-healthcare rehabilitation facilities that focus on teenagers and children. A majority of these supposedly “troubled” youths are female and “at risk” for lesbianism or abortion according to their religious “therapists”. At least two of these girls are known to have died under rather ominous circumstances.

Related News: Recent Fire-bombings of Abortion Clinics on Rise Again In Florida and Wisconsin.

A Christian Fundamentalist Holding a Sign
Celebrating the  Murders  of Women at a
Democratic Event in  Arizona.

Soldiers are on the front lines.

On July 28, 2005 a female 'soldier' named Jamie Leigh Jones was stationed in Baghdad by a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (called “KBR” in short) as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. On this day, Jamie Leigh Jones was, according to her and many witnesses (to varying degrees at various stages of the saga that was yet to come), gang-raped and then subsequently locked in a shipping container without access to a phone by her colleagues at KBR.

Three years after her rape (I refuse to use the word “alleged” on principal here), Jones lost her case against KBR and was counter-sued by the military-industrial contractor to the tune of $2million for what they claimed was a “frivolous” lawsuit. (A federal judge did at least dismiss those counter-claims). While the case was lost quietly, in comparison to the swell of outrage that finally led up to it, it is worth noting that none of the defendants were deemed innocent of having sex with Jones. Her case was lost primarily due to insufficient evidence that the sex was not consensual. Photos of the trauma to her vagina, anus, ruptured breast implants and torn pectoral muscles were not-so-mysteriously missing from the evidence collected by her colleagues themselves (the very defendants in the case).

Congress (30 white, male Republican Senators) Declared This War.

Jones' case against KBR (and thereby against the United States, considering the nature of their business), although certainly the most high-profile is not the only rape nor sexual discrimination case against a military-industrial contractor. What came to light in her 3-year struggle to face her attackers in a court of law was the audaciously horrible “mandatory arbitration clause” in her contract with KBR. KBR argued successfully that they had the right to deny Jones the ability to sue them for any reason at all. This contract, which was commonly administered to most contractors at the time, defied the very nature of justice and demanded that all legal disputes, no matter how severe or how outrageous the offense, would be handled “in-house” by the company itself – effectively giving persons wronged by the company NO RECOURSE to defend themselves legally.

One Senator, Democrat Al Franken, from Minnesota, had a serious problem with this injustice and drafted legislation which proposed that the United States stop doing business with companies that required such an egregious erosion of civil liability. When it came time for a vote on the Senate floor, the bill passed with bipartisan support. All were in favor of protecting women from becoming the Jamie Leigh Jones' of the future... Everyone except for the 30 White Male Republican Senators who voted against the measure. One such Senator, shockingly, was John Sidney McCain, whose daughter Meghan is exactly Jones' age.

The outcry and backlash from the public was widespread but short-lived. 30 White Male Republican Senators had essentially voted (albeit unsuccessfully) to legalize rape... Let the War Begin.

Pro-War Propaganda is Issued By Governmental Pundits and The Media

In any war, the real nucleus of the battle is known to be over “the hearts and minds of the people”, as George W. Bush famously noted. For that purpose, political propaganda is employed. There are currently no better propagandists in the world than our Republican party here in the USA. To illustrate this, there are far too many examples to simply list without format. The blogosphere is riddled with senseless arguments ranging from biblical scripture to ad hominem attacks against democratic female legislators and liberals. To provide this point with some citation at least, I've randomly selected a few of the most obvious attempts to culturally re-frame the RWOW as an acceptable and justified movement.

1. A female Republican legislator in Florida blames child rape-victims for dressing “like prostitutes”.
2. Due to pressure from Tea Party astroturfers, Republican legislators in Michigan spend weeks on end and countless public dollars on a law forbidding a kind of abortion that they admit is not even practiced in the state to anyone's knowledge. The procedure that they have incorrectly termed “partial birth abortion” is really called dilation and extraction and is only used by abortion doctors in 1/5 of one percent of all procedures and only when medically necessary.
3. An anti-abortion activist group called LiveAction sets up fake “sting operations” in which they target female employees of Planned Parenthood. Many professional women have their careers ruined by “Brietbart-style” video editing in which the public is falsely led to believe that Planned Parenthood is in cahoots with the perpetrators of human trafficking and sex-slavery.
4. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), and Connie Mack (R-FL) all vote against their own best interests and against the interests of their female constituents by voting against the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2009. Fortunately, thanks to a Democratic Majority and the vote of only ONE Republican woman (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen), the bill passed anyway and now women must be paid equally for doing the exact same job as a man.
5. Florida Representative and amateur pundit Allen West launches a full-scale attack (in writing no less!) against Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz after she dared to call his judgment into question regarding detrimental cuts to Medicare. West sent out public emails that termed his female colleague “the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the US House of Representatives”, “not a lady” and “a coward” who “wants a personal fight” and needs to “shut the heck up”.
6. Georgia's Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss is also a legislator-pundit hybrid who advocates the most extreme measures to deal with the most insignificant of problems. When his office isn't busy sending death threats to gay bloggers, they are advocating legislation which would make it illegal to use your car for the purpose of driving a woman to a clinic known to have performed abortions.
7. Republican blogger and ALEC propagandist Michelle Malkin has given birth to what she calls “the war on conservative women” (her feeble yet not-too-timid attempt at counter-spin) and in a nutshell, this is just a steady stream of tweets (every 5 minutes, depending on the day) on her Twitter account which attack Hilary Rosen, the Democratic pundit who dared to question Ann Romney's fitness as her husband's appointed expert on “Women and the Economy”.

Stay Tuned Tomorrow for 6 Ways That RWOW is a Real War Part II – Funding and Allegiance

Florida Republican Calls 11-year Old Rape Victim 'Prostitute'

Just when you thought the Republican women of Florida couldn't be anymore vile and off-base than Anita Bryant was with her "Save Our Children (from the homosexuals)" Campaign... Along comes Kathleen Passidomo (R-FL), a member of the Florida House of Representatives from Naples, Florida.

Passimodo was arguing on the House Floor about how students should wear pants that fit them properly. Evidently, her focus is not on jobs, but on how to dress your children. Her train of thought derailed at some point and she went off on a tangent about a little girl in rural Texas who had been gang-raped by some young men.

Here's what she said:

"There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gangraped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed up like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it's incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn't happen to our students."

Ms. Passidomo couldn't be further off the chain with this one. First of all, she has exhibited absolutely NO COMPASSION for the young child who she is referring to. Secondly, she is just making stuff up.

What the New York Times report REALLY said about the child who was raped by at least 16 young men in rural Texas was:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

But even the above quote from the NYT is disturbing in the sense that it does not quote a real person with a name. Therefore, the writer (James C. McKinley Jr.) should be ashamed of his lapse in journalistic integrity. Blaming a rape victim for his or her attire is NEVER appropriate and it's especially unforgiveable when it comes to young children.

We have enough problems scouting out those who rape children and putting them behind bars without Florida Republicans and the New York Times ganging up on the victim all over again.

Lastly, the hypocrisy must be noted... Kathleen Passidomo was elected to the Florida House with money and support from the Republican/Tea Party resurgance of 2010. One of the issues that she campaigned on was "Reducing Government Interference With Our Daily Lives and Business".

One of the ways she reduces this interference is to cut off unemployment benefits for those who are unable to find extra time to do volunteer work to earn the benefits they already paid into. The other way she reduces interference from the government, evidently, is to tell you how to dress your children lest they be dragged into a trailer in the middle of nowhere and gang-raped.

Stay Classy Kathleen!

Here is a photo of Kathleen Passidomo with former Florida Governor Claude Kirk at the "Women & Money Convention" at the University of Central Florida. Passidomo was just finished moderating a discussion called "Florida Women Mean Business!"

Claude Kirk is another horribly insensitive Republican who once joked and smiled at deathrow inmates while on the campaign trail about maybe having to sign some of their death warrants and who looked at a photo of weeping and murdered students at Kent State and called them simply "communist dissidents".

Who is it that looks like a prostitute now, Kathleen?

Where Not To Work

Can I just take a moment to say that no matter how broke I am, I will NEVER work for Wal-Mart?

Here's a few of the reasons that I will never shop at or apply for a job at Wal-Mart:

1. Wal-mart security beat a woman to death in China for allegedly stealing merchandise. After ignoring pleas to stop from the woman's family (for 2 hours!) the woman was dead and the reciept for her purchase was found in her pocket. No trial or arrests have been made in connection with the murder.

2. A Wal-mart in Michigan, being too cheap to pay for employees to scan merchandise has taken to making customers scan their own merchandise. Recently, a gay couple who were using a faulty scanner, were accused of stealing a package of Bic lighters. Once the matter was proven to be a fault of the self-scanner and not theft, the couple was still arrested and their adopted special-needs children were locked in a back room at Wal-mart with abusive employees.

3. Despite Wal-Mart security's ability to kill women and abuse gay men's children, they still can't prevent their customers from being raped in the parking lot at their stores in Florida or keep teenagers from shooting people in front of their families in Texas.

4. Wal-Mart does everything just short of waterboarding their employees who try to organize a union. They take their employees into management-run interrogation rooms where they are not allowed to have witnesses from their own employment level and threaten their lives, jobs and families.

5. Former Wal-Mart Spies say that the company has the ability to read the private emails of their employees who are on Gmail or Hotmail. They routinely dress their spies as local "liberal types" and infiltrate unions, city council meetings and anti-walmart activist groups.

6. Wal-Mart customers are internationally known as the most obese, mentally handicapped and classless people in the world.
7. Her affiliation with Wal-Mart is, to this day, a big gaping scar on Sec. Hillary Clinton's resume: