1. KC Johnson has not commented on it, nor has he posted the link which I published on the commentary Durham-in-Wonderland; it is either awaiting moderation or effectively 86'ed.
2. After publishing my post (and much to my chagrin) I discovered, on an online forum called Zetaboards, a group calling itself LieStoppers which, as far as I can tell, has represented the interests of white American outrage on the internet since the outset of the Duke Lax case. LieStoppers takes the trashing of Ms. Kubon to a whole 'nother level (which, comparatively, has the effect of softening the blows from Mr. Johnson's sycophants). This thread on Ms. Kubon is extensive (69 posts long), wandering, confusing and most of all: completely insular. It seemed noteworthy that although many of the commentators on this thread harped on the lynch mob mentality following false accusation, they failed to recognize the irony of their own situation: collectively attacking one person from the luxury of a large self righteous group, a group aligned by similar interests of opinion, with no expression of dissent.
My understanding is that most message boards/forums operate this way - rather than elevating discussion on a wide variety of topics through insightful discourse or debate, people prefer to gravitate towards like-minded individuals and conglomerate with them. This generally stands true for everything from cat lovers to porn enthusiasts to followers of Raphael (the Spanish singer popular in latin america) so it should come as no surprise that there exists LieStoppers, or any other expression of watered down populist outrage in America. Yet here I am shocked and revolted by the degree of close minded opinion, agreement, and simplistic logic used to validate largely rhetorical arguments - arguments which can only work because they are preaching to the choir.
My own outrage, is directed at one woman who epitomizes my point perfectly: Joan Foster. Joan is queen of the bully pulpit, a masterful maven of manipulating a captive audience using lots of rhetoric and appeals to emotion to tie together loosely focused screeds. Allow Joan to demonstrate:
BUT WAIT THERE'S MOAR:
Post #9: When I read this sort of righteous dogma rhetoric from "Nicole" ...I'm reminded how similar these types are to the rural far right evangelicals they so ridicule and despise. In both cases, faith trumps fact, and a kind of self righteous superiority is assumed. No amount of information can sway those who have swooned with the headiness of their own virtue and access to Great Truth. Accuracy, evidence, anything detrimental to Dogma is forever denied. To do otherwise, would further underscore their foolishness and the their fluffy self-importance.
This religiosity on the Left ...most of whom so revile religion...is most intriguing. Their Hysterics have just altered the group speak and revamped the sacraments. They are no different in approach..or lack of open thinking.
Nicole fits the pattern of one who is certain she heard The Holy Snake speak the Ten Commandments from the pulpit...and later shown that the snake is a rubber hose and Preacher is a Con Man with a tape record circa 1965....will never yield. Years later, she will regale all with the "truthiness"of what she saw from her Sunday stall.
Nicole saw the Holy Snake talk.
She thinks it makes her morally elevated...instead she looks like she has rigor mortis of the mind.
Best she stay on the Mountain with the others of her ilk. The real deal of the Duke Lacrosse Hoax was their widespread mortification of the Metanarrative. The general public saw their rigidity, their refusal to move off their "religious posture"...their bias...their selective empathy.
Speaking of selective empathy, her hero, Professor Holloway...was proven to have much in common with the racist ole Southern sheriffs whose similar mindset preceded hers. Like Holloway, they made snap decisions on credibility based on Skin Hue. Like Holloway, they were prone to rush to judgement and advocate a Mob response. Holloway's shameful rush to publish the Listening Statement...will stand forever as a mockery of any post racial motives she might claim. It was a verbal lynching...a decision to listen to only those whose skin resembled hers. It displayed her own bigotry and the similar biases of all who signed...in a way that the general public could FINALLY understand.
False accusation and Mob action of the sort that was directed at the Team...is it's own kind of Gang Rape: the victim is never the same...never can trust , relax, move about with out fear. There was most definitely a "Gang" quality to the rape of these boys reputations....the "thank You" to those carrying "Castrate them" signs by Duke professors; the classroom condemnations; the rabble-rousing media; the Black Panthers; the Fire-breathing "feminists"...what a circle they made.. encouraging the violence of those lies to continue!
The fact that Nicole has such selective empathy and ignorance of the lifechanging burdens of False Accusation shows her Bias and "religious" blinders.
She can't care.
She believes The Snake talked.
She can't make her Holy Church look any dumber than it already does.
Facts are not important to today's Holy Rollers like Nicole. It makes her feel righteous, when really, off the Holy Mountain, she looks ridiculous.
I've stopped arguing with people who know they saw Elvis at the local Walmart,,,,who think Snakes can speak with Human Tongues...who think "something happened."
What happened was the Leftist Zealots made an indelible impression on an engaged public...that will never be forgotten...and did irreparable damage to real victims and to their own credibility.
Off the Holy Mountain, of course.
Post # 15: False accusation of the sort we witnessed , accompanied by threats of violence, mob hatred, public defamation and constant vilification is just as damaging as any gang rape IMO.
Who do these kids and families ever trust? What fairness or justice can they believe in? Durham/Duke was possessed of a lynch mob mentality...and it was stoked by those with political self interest. Everybody had something to make for themselves by defiling these kids.
And guess what? At Duke, at least, it was a career enhancer...a vehicle that took one on the faculty fast-track...to be a Liar, and a promoter of Lies, and a destroyer of reputations...and a certified member of the Verbal Lynch Mob.
That's Duke University.
This blogger thinks she's "sensitive" and evolved...to side with the Rapists of Reputations...the Promoters pf Lies.
It's so...sophisticated. Bet she is "green"...hates Israel...loves Obama...wants no ones else religious morals standing in the way of her abortions...wants babies heads crushed if necessary to keep "religion" from her life...but wants HER morality imposed and PAID for...by everyone else. Her green energy...her abortions overseas...her Obamacare...HER religion must be imposed on Americam taxpayers..because...it's what a "moral"nation does.
The New Leftist religion.
Edited by Joan Foster, Feb 4 2011, 02:01 PM.
There is then some lauding of Joan between posts that gets her pumped up for another diatribe:
And then her comments in response to an off topic post 40 mins later:Post #18 (one hour later): The extremes of religion seem to attract certain types of hysterical personalities. I'm thinking here of the the snake handlers, the screamers, the ones who see God in the tea cup leaves. Now that religion is somewhat passe , IMO...many of these hysterics have taken on these Leftist issues. How different are the Doomsday types who espouse the Rapture from Al gore and the approaching Meltdown. "Do as I say or you are doomed!"
The know-it-all prophet.
This blogger has learned her catechism and is repeating it from her cyber-pulpit. It makes her feel that she is so much "better" than the rest of us...she is among The Elect.
There is no way facts and evidence will sway her from her religious dogma.
But this Hoax and Farce...had one redeeming quality. It exposed these Hysterics. It vomited them out onto the public stage. So many had no idea that their children's minds were being entrusted to Fanatics and Liars...like the "Listeners" of Duke University. So many had no idea that these "Evoled" Intellects wrote and spouted gibberish...and had racist views that dominated their reasoning processes.
Crystal was a truth-teller because, because..let's say it...she was BLACK. That was the only quality she needed to trump all else.
The Duke Hoax exposed the Left's selective compassion and seething race, gender, class biases...and their fanatical devotion to the former...against all reason and with extreme malice loosely disguised as "Leftist moraity."
Post #26: Yes, Mason. You have called it what it is..the State Run Religion.Then onto the email she posted (thanks to Steve from Mass. for making me aware of this):
Perfect. Thank you.
We should have a thread describing the Gospel, Commandments, and Holy Scripture of the State Run religion as taught in our Universities, as funded by our taxes, as imposed upon the rest of us.
This could be a great asset in the next election...making people understand how we are all under the yoke of the State Run Religion.
Post #42: She is only posting praise about herself now...but I sent her something to consider:"Does it soothe you to have the other zealots praise your efforts to bring more pain to families that have already suffered much? Does it puff you up to have the support of OTHERS OUT TO PROTECT AND SAVE KITTENS...while you kick and stomp puppies to death? That's essentially the scope of your "feminism" if you are so indoctrinated that you must "save" women by destroying young men.
What kind of "human" espouses wearing blinders when it comes to empathy, truth, fairness? Only the most highly programmed bigot..who can only feel the pain of their own race, creed, or gender.Some comments on her open letter to Nicole Kubon: "I can't touch that. Beautifully written, Joan." and "Joan...Powerfully said, but . . . you’re hunting squirrels with deer slugs." Now back to Joan:
Someday you may have a son...or someone in your shallow life that finally you finally care for more than yourself or your ignorant prattle. can you imagine the fear and frustration of having his very life in jeopardy because of a woman's lies and a prosecutor's need to win an election?
Perhaps someday, Karma might place YOU in an elevator with a Pyscho who will scream YOU assaulted her...or a jealous co-worker set you up as a thief. Try putting a little emotion into imagining how that would feel...how absolutely devastating to have your reputation, your life RAPED by lies.
Then imagine some ignorant bored little Blogger decides to use you to make her point...throw more dirt on your name...stir more hate..
This is what you have done...and then added to it...by your pompous reply to a Mother whose son was there.
You are so ignorant you believe in magic Lacrosse DNA..that disappears..yet leaves behind the dna of many other men in Mangum's every orfice and her crusted filthy underwear.
This was the second "threesome" she accused.
But she is WOMYN...and you must cling to the gospels of your crazy Holy Church...hallejulah!
You are a poor writer because you do not care about truth...and a poor human being because you primp and puff your doctrines...and pimp lies without regard to the harm you do.
Much like the professional athletes you reference...you are about self-gratification...and your "objectification" of the suffering of those kids and their families...is just as loathsome.
Look at the damage YOU do...before you pontificate about others."Edited by Joan Foster, Feb 6 2011, 04:58 AM.
Post #45: It's quite telling to see Kubon has such intellectual timidity that she has only cleared comments from Mom, or a few of the faithful...or perhaps just herself...heaping praise upon herself....and at this point Joan steps down from podium and allows everyone to talk amongst themselves. It is appropriately ironic (again) that Joan and her colleagues (I am using this term liberally) seem focused on the "metanarrative" (a term they misuse) which is in fact what I am writing on right now - the story about the story.
Such insecurity. No doubt she is unused to anyone paying much attention to her...and one can understand why.
Where is the powerful Feminist who knows this case so well and has such convictions and is...as one comment suggests...such a great "writer."
Ahh..these types huff and puff and then dissolve into the oft-repeated prattle.
Such indoctrination.
So predicable.
And, I'll confess, DP...I doubt she read past my first sentence....nor did I expect it. Like Brodhead...she does not want to know anything that contradicts the Metanarrative.
She would be, if born in different circumstances, speaking in tongues to some Holy Serpent. She has just the right mix of hysteria and lack of intellectual curiosity.
And she has no idea, as long as she stays in the Bubble..how silly and tiresome she sounds to those not likewise deluded.
Joan is the archetypal exemplar of the demagogue, and much like Glenn Beck she uses sequential logic to reach improbable conclusions. For instance "It's so...sophisticated. Bet she is "green"...hates Israel...loves Obama...wants no ones else religious morals standing in the way of her abortions...wants babies heads crushed if necessary to keep "religion" from her life...but wants HER morality imposed and PAID for...by everyone else. Her green energy...her abortions overseas...her Obamacare...HER religion must be imposed on Americam taxpayers..because...it's what a "moral"nation does...The New Leftist religion." is a perfect example. She uses hypothetical and accusatory language simultaneously to discredit Ms. Kubon by essentially supplying her own facts, facts here meaning talking points based on her limited knowledge of Ms. Kubon and her general stereotype of what a liberal is like.
This is the constant tone and theme of Joan's rants, constantly using the second person to speak for someone whom she does fundamentally not know, and painting her with same brush as all liberals/opponents. For instance "I doubt she read past my first sentence....nor did I expect it. Like Brodhead...she does not want to know anything that contradicts the Metanarrative." I know as a fact, after a correspondence from Nicole, that yes Nicole did indeed read this.
False assumptions are turned into false accusations "she does not want to know anything that contradicts the Metanarrative" so quickly that they are hard to keep up with. And most of these assumptions/assertions/accusations (which are briefly prefaced with forgettable disclaimers like "I bet" or "I doubt" or "IMO") involve this long running analogy with the church and religion.
It is weird.
Its stranger still that this anti-religious talk (or her always protean metaphor of the liberal left as a religion) dominates her writing. It comprises the lion's share of everything she writes and seems almost, as a writer, to be her panacea whenever she hits a stumbling block in her disjointed train of thought. Its one step removed from Godwin's Law (reductio ad Hitlerum), and is essentially just that: an emotionally inflated argument that overuses an over-simplistic and reductionist comparison. Well what begins as a comparison anyway. The train of thought moves as so: feminism to liberalism to dogmatism to new-leftist religion to State Run Religion and in the end stops being a comparison but an assertion.
Huh.
What is odder still is that Joan does not really use many facts at all, which is ironically (again) what she is decrying on the part of Ms. Kubon. Ms. Kubon's own posts in response to the comments on DecadentDepravity stated that the "my article is not about the Duke Lacrosse case or my opinion about their guilt or innocence. What I was exploring in my article is sexual violence in professional athletics, the Duke Lacrosse case is just one of many examples I used of athletes “accused, convicted or acquitted” of sexual violence." Joan instead prefers to hide behind the thinly veiled the rhetorical argument which is all too ironic (again) when we recall she said "You are a poor writer because you do not care about truth."
Well Joan, I am not a great writer but I do cherish the truth, so allow me to illustrate your own hypocrisy in your words, because unlike you I feel it would be presumptuous to put words in the mouths of others. I'll let you words speak for themselves. Lets look at your own paticular peculiar "metanarrative", if you'll allow me to use this word as you do:
- " Only the most highly programmed bigot..who can only feel the pain of their own race, creed, or gender." VS. "Crystal was a truth-teller because, because..let's say it...she was BLACK. That was the only quality she needed to trump all else."
- "No amount of information can sway those who have swooned with the headiness of their own virtue and access to Great Truth. Accuracy, evidence, anything detrimental to Dogma is forever denied. To do otherwise, would further underscore their foolishness and the their fluffy self-importance. " VS. Every assertion she makes of Ms. Kubon's character, politics and morality, knowing nothing of Ms. Kubon other than what limited and probably inaccurate information is available online
- "Look at the damage YOU do...before you pontificate about others." VS. "she is "green"...hates Israel...loves Obama...wants no ones else religious morals standing in the way of her abortions...wants babies heads crushed if necessary to keep "religion" from her life...but wants HER morality imposed and PAID for...by everyone else. Her green energy...her abortions overseas...her Obamacare...HER religion must be imposed on Americam taxpayers..because...it's what a "moral"nation does...The New Leftist religion." and "She would be, if born in different circumstances, speaking in tongues to some Holy Serpent. She has just the right mix of hysteria and lack of intellectual curiosity."
- "You are a poor writer because you do not care about truth." VS. Every assertion she makes of Ms. Kubon - which is just plain character assassination with no evidence prima facie.
It begs the eternal question. Why?
To answer this question we need to deconstruct the larger metanarrative, we need to realize why the case of Duke Lax is so divisive. The answer can broken down as thus, it pushes all the classic hot buttons: class privilege, racism, athletic entitlement and academic opportunism, political ambition, yellow journalism, wealth and status. There are multiple levels of outrage to be drawn from this situation, at the local government for its blatant pursuit of injustice for personal benefit, at the media for not vetting the material they choose to portray for personal profit, at the professors that comprised the group of 88 that illustrated the classic hatred that exists between sports and academics at institutions of higher learning, at Crystal Magnum for her false accusation that made it harder for women that have been legitimately sexually assaulted to be believed (as well as for the implicate consequences of making real social change between races and classes much more difficult), and at the young men she falsely accused who behaved so poorly they made it beyond easy to believe that they were more than capable of perpetrating such heinous acts. And before any angry mother posts any derogatory comments lets be quite clear that when one talks about killing and skinning women and their sexual excitement at such a prospect and one exhibits cavalier attitudes in writing such statements...well they don't put themselves in a very defensible position.
All this being clarified it is understandable why we all reacted the way we did. Liberals prompted by media exploitation leapt at the opportunity to capitalize off a situation where whites of privilege and money were raping the blacks they imported into this country to be second class citizens. Academia was quick to judge, perhaps from long seated insecurities at being treated as inferior to the svelte young men that got a free ride exemptions from scholastic achievement, especially at Duke where their programs for basketball and lacrosse are perennially among the best in the nation. This was their chance to reassert their authority. But what is more clear in Joan's posts, in the writings of KC Johnson and others is that the counter reaction to all this is much, much more severe. There are numerous books published on all the ins and outs of this case, Until Proven Innocent, Its Not About the Truth, A Rush to Injustice, Race to Injustice, The Duke Lacrosse Case ect. all which serve as a sweeping reinforcement of the status quo. The existing social hierarchy was threatened by what would have been the perfect example of an injustice that social liberals have been rattling their sabres about since the birth of our nation. But that example has since been handily proven false, and now the counter movement of conservative thought has swept in to destroy and discredit any former vestiges of opposition. Clearly there exists a large market for these books, of people who want to be reassured that prosecutorial misconduct and false accusation from a notorious black prostitute are really the ills vexing society not the blatant wealth/class/race disparity that propelled this juicy story through national headlines. The last case as prominent as this in the national consciousness is undoubtedly the OJ Simpson murder trial, as case that pushed all the same hot buttons. It is understandable in this context that Joan Foster's attitudes are as they are, as a reaction to wildfire liberalism that threatens her schemas and ultimately her identity. These things, this case in particular, represent(s) an attack on her conception of how things should be, on her implicit order in the world, on her status quo and, more importantly, Ms. Kubon herself represents an attack on her very 'being' as well. Like KC Johnson, she has taken up the mantle of the vanguard in attacking a little known feminist who harmlessly expresses her views about the world and writes good movie reviews on her blog, and as such ironically (again) given Ms. Kubon a much wider following.
And all for naught.
Because what may be beyond the realm of Joan's limited vision is ultimately she is reinforcing a patriarchal system where her own role, and that of all women, is severely diminished and marginalized. While Nicole has recently been witness and victim to the consequences of biting the hand that feeds, Joan will never see the benefits of serving it, as, within the patriarchy, roles for women in society are limited or token. Why so many women despise feminists is a mystery to me, I mean why would an oppressed minority hate those trying to better their collective situation?
I think ultimately it is because Joan associates her psychological identity to that which exists as part of the patriarchy, and her limitations and space for expression is enough to the point she doesn't feel oppressed, and enough to maybe feel empowered when a bunch of men cheer her for her bigoted posts on a bigoted forum. This is of course conjecture, and I won't goes as far as Joan does in asserting that this is the truth but I think Joan herself alludes to it: "you are so indoctrinated that you must "save" women by destroying young men." and again here "Someday you may have a son... can you imagine the fear and frustration of having his very life in jeopardy because of a woman's lies [?]". What's implicit in these statements is she is taking the side of males (affluent white males in this case) which she identifies more with than the other players in this human drama. Why this is - is more than evident in all the levels of our society, the reason we probably will never have a female president and why the gross commodification of female sexuality is used to market everything in every form of visual semiotics. And this is the greatest irony, that Joan spends an incredible amount of energy haphazardly attacking the opponents of her own conservatism in her dutiful maintenance of the status quo - a status quo that ensures she will always be a second class citizen.
Maybe that is less ironic than it is sad
-DJV
PS: Now I know Godwin's Law hasn't been invoked yet, and I won't go as far as to call Joan Foster a Nazi, but I will say that her actions are representative of a crypto-facism that permeates the American psyche and is just waiting for the day when people like Joan Foster gain power to rear its ugly head.
Dave, I have noticed you are very good at writing long, thorough term-paper types of blog entries. I'm wondering if you'd like to write a school paper for me? I can pay you in American dollars.
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