I have a lot of feelings about what is going on - none of them I'm comfortable with. Firstly, I think this cartoon is really poignant. It is one thing to hear someone describe being pinned down...
I have a lot of feelings about what is going on - none of them I'm comfortable with. Firstly, I think this cartoon is really poignant. It is one thing to hear someone describe being pinned down and smothered and another to viscerally see that in an image - especially happening to our symbol of freedom and justice. Secondly, this situation is not black and white. It's tough because I believe Dr. Ford, 100%, but I also know she has no corroborating evidence and the one witness she does have is unreliable and politically motivated (he works for conservative magazines and has a history of misogynistic behavior) to deny her story. Kavanaugh has presumably lied under oath but we don't really have any way to prove this. That's what really gets me - we can't really go off of anything besides he said she said which is really unfortunate and it does seem vaguely not ok to end somebody's career over he said she said, even if I may think it's justified. I know this isn't criminal court or anything, but it seems like an impossible scenario for the senators who actually have a conscience (aka Collins, murkowski, and az senator flake? is that it?). I honestly feel bad for them and immensely for Dr. Ford for having to go through this for it all to potentially mean nothing. :(
I have a gripe with people who think that being denied a promotion is the same as suffering a career ending setback. Many people would give their left arm to get onto a US court of appeals as a...
I have a gripe with people who think that being denied a promotion is the same as suffering a career ending setback. Many people would give their left arm to get onto a US court of appeals as a judge. It is a huge honor to achieve that level of distinction. It isn't as though if this nomination fails that Judge Kavanaugh suddenly stops being an appeals court judge. His career will not be ruined by this hearing or nomination process.
Yeah - that's true. It's possible I'm falling for the rhetoric a little bit hearing everyone constantly say 'his life will be ruined'. When you put it that way, though, I think you'd have a point...
Yeah - that's true. It's possible I'm falling for the rhetoric a little bit hearing everyone constantly say 'his life will be ruined'. When you put it that way, though, I think you'd have a point that I'm equivocating her burden and his which isnt very cool on my part considering one is a perpetrator and the other not.
The important part about rhetoric is to recognize that we are all susceptible to it (what's the old Sinclar quote? something like "you can't get someone to understand something when their job...
It's possible I'm falling for the rhetoric a little bit hearing everyone constantly say 'his life will be ruined'
The important part about rhetoric is to recognize that we are all susceptible to it (what's the old Sinclar quote? something like "you can't get someone to understand something when their job depends on their not knowing it"?)
I take a bit of an issue with the "his life will be ruined" argument as well. Either he did it, in which case the primary concern is that he fucked up Ford's life not the other way around (which the people parading the concern about his life seemingly never mention, but that may just be my own biases). Or he didn't do it, and he should be screaming for a full independent investigation to prove his innocence (which he notably avoided calling for in his hearing).
My biggest issue with this whole proceeding is the idea of the lack "corroborating evidence" being touted as an argument of why he was innocent. Of course you won't find any corroborating evidence if you don't look for it, and you never wanted to find it in the first place.
If they had called Mark Judge to testify, if they had taken full statements from the witnesses (instead of both sides relying on partial quotes for newspaper articles in their favor), if they knew when Judge worked at the Safeway, if they had performed a basic investigation of Kavanaugh's diary (particularly the July 1 party), the hearing might have been grounded in reality. Instead it was one side (literally) yelling about how unfair it was to Kavanaugh and the other side arguing that they believed Ford and justified a full FBI investigation (that would last who knows how long).
I hope that the one-week investigation will provide at least some clarity to the whole debacle, but at this point I fear that both sides are far too dug in. Can anyone reasonably imagine Lindsey Graham walking back his (I'll just say it) shameful belief of Kavanaugh over Ford? He's not wrong that the timing might have been a partisan hit-job, but his siding with Kavanaugh is implicitly stating that Ford lied, and which of those two is more important in the long run? Can we imagine the Democrats supporting Kavanaugh if the background check comes back inconclusive? Will we even know the results of the FBI investigation?
p.s., this isn't really directed at you... I kinda started off responding to you, and then derailed into general frustration :p
Criminal courts use the high burden of evidential proof "beyond all reasonable doubt" to avoid miscarriages of justice. (All that better 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man is...
That's what really gets me - we can't really go off of anything besides he said she said which is really unfortunate and it does seem vaguely not ok to end somebody's career over he said she said, even if I may think it's justified. I know this isn't criminal court or anything,
Criminal courts use the high burden of evidential proof "beyond all reasonable doubt" to avoid miscarriages of justice. (All that better 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man is imprisoned[1]).
But that doesn't apply anywhere else. Even other forms of courts use different evidential burdens -- civil courts use "balance of probabilities".
If we want to put him in prison we need to prove it beyond all reasonable doubt. If we want to say he did it and give her compensation we only need to say it is more likely than not that he did it.
I don't see why this can't extend to whether we want to give him a job or not.
The way I see it though, a denial of a lifelong career for an innocent person is a miscarriage of Justice. Certainly not on the same level as jail for someone at the supreme Court level, but for...
The way I see it though, a denial of a lifelong career for an innocent person is a miscarriage of Justice. Certainly not on the same level as jail for someone at the supreme Court level, but for someone near the poverty line, a loss of a job could be worse than prison. At least in prison you get food. I believe that it is better to let 10 guilty people have a promotion than to deny it to 1 innocent man
The stakes are far too high here. There are plenty of individuals for which the question "did they rape somebody" is an obvious no. There are plenty of individuals with an extremely high caliber...
The stakes are far too high here. There are plenty of individuals for which the question "did they rape somebody" is an obvious no. There are plenty of individuals with an extremely high caliber of character - the kind of character we want and expect out of someone with so much power. When this person can potentially be interpreting whether the law calls this a rape or not, they do not belong in this position.
I agree, however, when we're talking about loss of any job, that I'd rather have employed rapists than starving innocents. There's an even more elegant solution there, however, and that's providing a safety net so that no one goes hungry.
But why do you care mroe about this injustice ("not getting a job") more than the other injustice ("rape is very common and is under-reported, under recorded, under investigated, under prosecuted,...
But why do you care mroe about this injustice ("not getting a job") more than the other injustice ("rape is very common and is under-reported, under recorded, under investigated, under prosecuted, and under convicted")?
I believe that it is better to let 10 guilty people have a promotion than to deny it to 1 innocent man
I believe it's better to believe women who rarely lie about being raped than allow guilty men to continue with their predatory harrassing behaviours.
Someone who has studied hundreds of false rape accusations said that Dr. Ford's allegations don't fit the profile. In addition, we already know Kavanaugh is willing to lie if it advances his...
In addition, we already know Kavanaugh is willing to lie if it advances his judicial career. This is from his acceptance speech when Trump formally nominated him, before any of the sexual assault allegations came out:
Talking about Trump's respect for the judiciary is...obvious bullshit. And a completely unforced error, he could have easily given that thank-you-for-nominating-me speech without it.
Honestly, I think the most likely explanation is that it happened as Ford claims, and Kavanaugh honestly doesn't remember it. It was a traumatic experience for her, but probably a sadly typical night of drinking for him. It didn't stick in his memory because from his perspective, nothing notable happened.
All of the circumstantial / corroborating evidence points in the direction of Kavanaugh not telling the truth, either. His yearbook entries point to someone who did a lot of drinking in high school, and Mark Judge's book confirms that. When asked about that at the Congressional hearing, he deflected over and over again.
The 1982 calendar entry that's been brought up as a possibility for when the assault happened would have taken place between Kavanaugh's junior and senior year. The story Ford tells seems entirely believable if you ignore the politics of it in 2018, and just picture a high school party, in the summer, in the early 80s, attended by kids from a wealthy private school. The captain of that high school's basketball team sexually assaulting someone while drunk just isn't that big of a stretch.
It's layered, and it speaks volumes without a single word. It's disturbing, it makes me uncomfortable, and that's great. It's incredibly powerful. This coming from a Canadian tells me that this is...
It's layered, and it speaks volumes without a single word.
It's disturbing, it makes me uncomfortable, and that's great. It's incredibly powerful.
This coming from a Canadian tells me that this is an outside perspective. This is what the world is seeing when they look at what is going on in America right now.
Is that how we want to be seen? Of course not. But we have a lot of work to do before we deserve anything else.
Our country is sick. Our culture is sick. Our discourse is sick.
We have a lot of healing to do.
It's incredibly powerful. On the one hand it's not very sensitive to sexual assault survivors who might end up seeing it, but on the other hand it's important imagery that fills in what words...
thoughts on the piece?
It's incredibly powerful. On the one hand it's not very sensitive to sexual assault survivors who might end up seeing it, but on the other hand it's important imagery that fills in what words alone can't.
how does this make you feel?
Uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. But that's the entire point.
what do you take away from it?
The overall message, as I understand it, is that Republicans in the U.S. have been "having their way" with the concept of justice we have in this country. For the Kavanaugh issue specifically, it's one thing to ask that people reserve their condemnations until after an investigation, but congressional Republicans tend not to even support an investigation into the allegations, a problem you typically don't see with e.g. Democrats. In general, they've been skirting the decorum, rules, regulations, and laws that dictate what is acceptable. The visual imagery combines this issue with the issue of the sexual assault allegations in a way that will cause people immediate discomfort and force them to be conscious of the imagery they're seeing and the issues related to it.
is there any significance to a canadian artist making such a striking piece?
Absolutely. If it were an American artist, then the tone is "I'm airing out our dirty laundry and trying to hold us accountable". But since they're Canadian, the tone is "this is what you guys look like to the rest of the world". That's a pretty significant difference.
It's disturbing. It's brutal. My wife is a sexual assault survivor, and something like this feels like a kick to the gut. Bad memories, latent rage, and other emotions immediately surface. And it...
how does this make you feel?
It's disturbing. It's brutal.
My wife is a sexual assault survivor, and something like this feels like a kick to the gut. Bad memories, latent rage, and other emotions immediately surface.
And it feels worse because it doesn't feel like an inappropriate way to show how the story is playing out.
is there any significance to a canadian artist making such a striking piece?
Yes. It's the outside view. When someone within a nation makes a complaint, it's easier to ignore. When it comes from overseas, you understand that this is how the world pictures your nation right now, and it's worse, because people instinctively care about how people view their country. Worse if you're a patriot.
Sure, I've always found this secular democratic pantheon fascinating. Also fun are national personifications like Columbia and Uncle Sam (USA), Brittania (Great Britain), and Marianne (France).
Thank you for posting this, it is really succinct and disturbing. Apart from the image giving me a sick feeling in my stomach, I guess I mainly wonder why there isn't a donkey on one cuff, too,...
Thank you for posting this, it is really succinct and disturbing.
Apart from the image giving me a sick feeling in my stomach, I guess I mainly wonder why there isn't a donkey on one cuff, too, because the Democratic Party has a lot to answer for, too.
Despite the fact that I am sure the Dems are really only using this shameful clown and his brutal antics to turn out their vote, it is still a darkly disturbing truth about our culture and civilization that justice, especially justice that concerns women and the poor, is so wholly perverted and shabby at best.
If I had to guess, I'd say there's no donkey on a cuff because the Democrats aren't the ones currently trying to ram through a shady probable rapist on to the supreme court a month before an...
If I had to guess, I'd say there's no donkey on a cuff because the Democrats aren't the ones currently trying to ram through a shady probable rapist on to the supreme court a month before an election. Like, don't get me wrong, they're not a perfect, or even very good political party by any means, but this is not a both sides issue. They dropped Franken in about two seconds flat when his allegations came to light, and those paled in comparison to what Kavanaugh is accused of.
Oh, yes, I understand that. In this case, they are not attempting to seat a totally unsuitable candidate despite the aspersions. But overall, they definitely earn being the hand keeping Justice...
Oh, yes, I understand that. In this case, they are not attempting to seat a totally unsuitable candidate despite the aspersions. But overall, they definitely earn being the hand keeping Justice from her scales. To the extent that it could be argued as one of the reasons we are here in the first place. I realize it would dilute the direct meaning of the work.
I have a lot of feelings about what is going on - none of them I'm comfortable with. Firstly, I think this cartoon is really poignant. It is one thing to hear someone describe being pinned down and smothered and another to viscerally see that in an image - especially happening to our symbol of freedom and justice. Secondly, this situation is not black and white. It's tough because I believe Dr. Ford, 100%, but I also know she has no corroborating evidence and the one witness she does have is unreliable and politically motivated (he works for conservative magazines and has a history of misogynistic behavior) to deny her story. Kavanaugh has presumably lied under oath but we don't really have any way to prove this. That's what really gets me - we can't really go off of anything besides he said she said which is really unfortunate and it does seem vaguely not ok to end somebody's career over he said she said, even if I may think it's justified. I know this isn't criminal court or anything, but it seems like an impossible scenario for the senators who actually have a conscience (aka Collins, murkowski, and az senator flake? is that it?). I honestly feel bad for them and immensely for Dr. Ford for having to go through this for it all to potentially mean nothing. :(
I have a gripe with people who think that being denied a promotion is the same as suffering a career ending setback. Many people would give their left arm to get onto a US court of appeals as a judge. It is a huge honor to achieve that level of distinction. It isn't as though if this nomination fails that Judge Kavanaugh suddenly stops being an appeals court judge. His career will not be ruined by this hearing or nomination process.
Not only that, but he also is probably making a sizable six figure salary.
He's an associate justice on the DC Circuit, so it's $255,300/year. And he'll be allowed to retire with full salary.
Yeah - that's true. It's possible I'm falling for the rhetoric a little bit hearing everyone constantly say 'his life will be ruined'. When you put it that way, though, I think you'd have a point that I'm equivocating her burden and his which isnt very cool on my part considering one is a perpetrator and the other not.
The important part about rhetoric is to recognize that we are all susceptible to it (what's the old Sinclar quote? something like "you can't get someone to understand something when their job depends on their not knowing it"?)
I take a bit of an issue with the "his life will be ruined" argument as well. Either he did it, in which case the primary concern is that he fucked up Ford's life not the other way around (which the people parading the concern about his life seemingly never mention, but that may just be my own biases). Or he didn't do it, and he should be screaming for a full independent investigation to prove his innocence (which he notably avoided calling for in his hearing).
My biggest issue with this whole proceeding is the idea of the lack "corroborating evidence" being touted as an argument of why he was innocent. Of course you won't find any corroborating evidence if you don't look for it, and you never wanted to find it in the first place.
If they had called Mark Judge to testify, if they had taken full statements from the witnesses (instead of both sides relying on partial quotes for newspaper articles in their favor), if they knew when Judge worked at the Safeway, if they had performed a basic investigation of Kavanaugh's diary (particularly the July 1 party), the hearing might have been grounded in reality. Instead it was one side (literally) yelling about how unfair it was to Kavanaugh and the other side arguing that they believed Ford and justified a full FBI investigation (that would last who knows how long).
I hope that the one-week investigation will provide at least some clarity to the whole debacle, but at this point I fear that both sides are far too dug in. Can anyone reasonably imagine Lindsey Graham walking back his (I'll just say it) shameful belief of Kavanaugh over Ford? He's not wrong that the timing might have been a partisan hit-job, but his siding with Kavanaugh is implicitly stating that Ford lied, and which of those two is more important in the long run? Can we imagine the Democrats supporting Kavanaugh if the background check comes back inconclusive? Will we even know the results of the FBI investigation?
p.s., this isn't really directed at you... I kinda started off responding to you, and then derailed into general frustration :p
Criminal courts use the high burden of evidential proof "beyond all reasonable doubt" to avoid miscarriages of justice. (All that better 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man is imprisoned[1]).
But that doesn't apply anywhere else. Even other forms of courts use different evidential burdens -- civil courts use "balance of probabilities".
If we want to put him in prison we need to prove it beyond all reasonable doubt. If we want to say he did it and give her compensation we only need to say it is more likely than not that he did it.
I don't see why this can't extend to whether we want to give him a job or not.
The way I see it though, a denial of a lifelong career for an innocent person is a miscarriage of Justice. Certainly not on the same level as jail for someone at the supreme Court level, but for someone near the poverty line, a loss of a job could be worse than prison. At least in prison you get food. I believe that it is better to let 10 guilty people have a promotion than to deny it to 1 innocent man
The stakes are far too high here. There are plenty of individuals for which the question "did they rape somebody" is an obvious no. There are plenty of individuals with an extremely high caliber of character - the kind of character we want and expect out of someone with so much power. When this person can potentially be interpreting whether the law calls this a rape or not, they do not belong in this position.
I agree, however, when we're talking about loss of any job, that I'd rather have employed rapists than starving innocents. There's an even more elegant solution there, however, and that's providing a safety net so that no one goes hungry.
But why do you care mroe about this injustice ("not getting a job") more than the other injustice ("rape is very common and is under-reported, under recorded, under investigated, under prosecuted, and under convicted")?
I believe it's better to believe women who rarely lie about being raped than allow guilty men to continue with their predatory harrassing behaviours.
I'm curious, why exactly do you believe her?
Someone who has studied hundreds of false rape accusations said that Dr. Ford's allegations don't fit the profile.
In addition, we already know Kavanaugh is willing to lie if it advances his judicial career. This is from his acceptance speech when Trump formally nominated him, before any of the sexual assault allegations came out:
Talking about Trump's respect for the judiciary is...obvious bullshit. And a completely unforced error, he could have easily given that thank-you-for-nominating-me speech without it.
Honestly, I think the most likely explanation is that it happened as Ford claims, and Kavanaugh honestly doesn't remember it. It was a traumatic experience for her, but probably a sadly typical night of drinking for him. It didn't stick in his memory because from his perspective, nothing notable happened.
All of the circumstantial / corroborating evidence points in the direction of Kavanaugh not telling the truth, either. His yearbook entries point to someone who did a lot of drinking in high school, and Mark Judge's book confirms that. When asked about that at the Congressional hearing, he deflected over and over again.
The 1982 calendar entry that's been brought up as a possibility for when the assault happened would have taken place between Kavanaugh's junior and senior year. The story Ford tells seems entirely believable if you ignore the politics of it in 2018, and just picture a high school party, in the summer, in the early 80s, attended by kids from a wealthy private school. The captain of that high school's basketball team sexually assaulting someone while drunk just isn't that big of a stretch.
It's layered, and it speaks volumes without a single word.
It's disturbing, it makes me uncomfortable, and that's great. It's incredibly powerful.
This coming from a Canadian tells me that this is an outside perspective. This is what the world is seeing when they look at what is going on in America right now.
Is that how we want to be seen? Of course not. But we have a lot of work to do before we deserve anything else.
Our country is sick. Our culture is sick. Our discourse is sick.
We have a lot of healing to do.
It's incredibly powerful. On the one hand it's not very sensitive to sexual assault survivors who might end up seeing it, but on the other hand it's important imagery that fills in what words alone can't.
Uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. But that's the entire point.
The overall message, as I understand it, is that Republicans in the U.S. have been "having their way" with the concept of justice we have in this country. For the Kavanaugh issue specifically, it's one thing to ask that people reserve their condemnations until after an investigation, but congressional Republicans tend not to even support an investigation into the allegations, a problem you typically don't see with e.g. Democrats. In general, they've been skirting the decorum, rules, regulations, and laws that dictate what is acceptable. The visual imagery combines this issue with the issue of the sexual assault allegations in a way that will cause people immediate discomfort and force them to be conscious of the imagery they're seeing and the issues related to it.
Absolutely. If it were an American artist, then the tone is "I'm airing out our dirty laundry and trying to hold us accountable". But since they're Canadian, the tone is "this is what you guys look like to the rest of the world". That's a pretty significant difference.
It's disturbing. It's brutal.
My wife is a sexual assault survivor, and something like this feels like a kick to the gut. Bad memories, latent rage, and other emotions immediately surface.
And it feels worse because it doesn't feel like an inappropriate way to show how the story is playing out.
Yes. It's the outside view. When someone within a nation makes a complaint, it's easier to ignore. When it comes from overseas, you understand that this is how the world pictures your nation right now, and it's worse, because people instinctively care about how people view their country. Worse if you're a patriot.
Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go throw up.
Minor correction, the blindfold and scales indicate that this is Lady Justice pictured, not Lady Liberty.
Sure, I've always found this secular democratic pantheon fascinating. Also fun are national personifications like Columbia and Uncle Sam (USA), Brittania (Great Britain), and Marianne (France).
Thank you for posting this, it is really succinct and disturbing.
Apart from the image giving me a sick feeling in my stomach, I guess I mainly wonder why there isn't a donkey on one cuff, too, because the Democratic Party has a lot to answer for, too.
Despite the fact that I am sure the Dems are really only using this shameful clown and his brutal antics to turn out their vote, it is still a darkly disturbing truth about our culture and civilization that justice, especially justice that concerns women and the poor, is so wholly perverted and shabby at best.
If I had to guess, I'd say there's no donkey on a cuff because the Democrats aren't the ones currently trying to ram through a shady probable rapist on to the supreme court a month before an election. Like, don't get me wrong, they're not a perfect, or even very good political party by any means, but this is not a both sides issue. They dropped Franken in about two seconds flat when his allegations came to light, and those paled in comparison to what Kavanaugh is accused of.
Oh, yes, I understand that. In this case, they are not attempting to seat a totally unsuitable candidate despite the aspersions. But overall, they definitely earn being the hand keeping Justice from her scales. To the extent that it could be argued as one of the reasons we are here in the first place. I realize it would dilute the direct meaning of the work.