#six legitimately offended at that implication

[hopeymchope]

Hey. There was a new Raincode interview written a few days ago and in that interview, Halara’s gender was brought up. I made a post about that question on my blog and I am curious your thoughts about it. I also linked the interview in my post.

(This is the post in question, for anyone interested. Which I think you probably should be, but... )

My thoughts are mostly that Kodaka's quote/response feels frustratingly uninformative and devoid of any value, but also sadly unsurprising. I know it's just a machine translation, so maybe this isn't capturing the exact nuance of the statement... but the sentence "I didn't specifically intend a social message" is just exactly the kind of vague, wishy-washy, "I really don't want to be in trouble with or offend anyone on any side of any possible argument" language that I've LONG gotten used to in promotional interviews about movies, TV, books, games, etc. Because god forbid you possibly appear to be either for or against anything that might be considered controversial in any possible market! Having STANCES on THINGS could damage your profit margin with some potential demographic.

I suppose this could be all there is to it. Maybe Kodaka legitimately means what he says here and put no greater thought into Halara's lack of gender identity. But I also think it'd be weird if the implications of leaving their gender unknown didn't at least occur to him at some point, particularly as there's been a growing awareness of so-called "X-gender" people in Japan over the last year and a half.

But ultimately, "Master Detective Archives: Rain Code" is Japanese media, and that leaves this kind of question-dodging not only expected, but arguably maybe even necessary. Take a look at the recent of the recent controversy over The Witch From Mercury, the Gundham anime that is over-the-top mega-gay. Bandai Namco still felt the need to declare that the relationship between Suletta and Miorine is "open to interpretation" despite the fact that the two get FUCKED MARRIED.

In fact, this Kotaku article does a good job digging into not only that anime's particular can of worms, but also how queer-friendly media in Japan continues to be suppressed and censored from the dominant conservatives behind the media companies and government even while those works enjoy massive popularity with younger consumers. Get a load of what they say about Yuri! on Ice:

Look no further than the fate of 2016’s smash hit Yuri! On Ice, which tells the tale of a struggling figure skater, Yuri Katsuki, who is coached back to success by the charismatic and undeniably handsome Victor Nikiforov. Similar to The Witch From Mercury, the pair’s relationship is explicitly laid out in the story, and the characters also exchange rings. It was, and still is, celebrated as a landmark anime for LGBTQ+ representation. It received acclaim in Japan, winning Animation of the Year at the Tokyo Anime Awards as well as a number of fan-voted awards. It has consistently been named as one of the top anime of the 2010s by IGN, Anime News Network, and here at Kotaku. In what seemed like an obvious move to capitalize on the success of the show, a feature-length Yuri! On Ice movie was greenlit almost immediately. But six years later, a statement from Studio MAPPA CEO Manabu Otsuka said that despite the show being a hit, the company didn’t make a lot of money off of Yuri! On Ice, and as such, the movie likely won’t happen. Back when Blu-ray sales mattered to the anime industry, Yuri! On Ice torched the competition, selling nearly double the amount of discs of its nearest competitor, the juggernaut franchise Love Live. The runaway success of Yuri! On Ice led to MAPPA’s heightened profile in the industry, which helped it secure the rights to produce Attack on Titan’s never-ending final season, the massively popular Jujutsu Kaisen, and the second season of Makoto Yukimura’s viking masterpiece, Vinland Saga. For MAPPA to claim that the Yuri! On Ice movie isn’t financially viable is disingenuous and contradicts standard industry metrics for success. MAPPA could release the Yuri! On Ice movie tomorrow, and it would be a guaranteed hit. Which begs the question, what is the hold up? It's a reminder that speaking out against the anime production committees that dole out the work to animation studios is a dangerous game. In most of her press for Yuri! On Ice, creator and director Sayo Yamamoto played nice, answering softball questions that never directly addressed the very obvious love playing out on screen between Yuki and Victor. But, in the Yuri! On Ice fanbook “Go Yuri Go!” from 2017, Yamamoto claimed that the series had been censored outside of her control, and she had to fight to keep a kiss between Yuri and Victor in the final cut of the show. Since then, Yamamoto has not gotten any other projects. To have arguably the biggest hit of 2016, receive critical acclaim from your own industry, and then not be given any work? It doesn’t add up. MAPPA has tied Yamamoto to the Yuri! On Ice movie project and essentially strung her out for six years now, leaving her in a kind of professional purgatory. In an industry where the slightest scandal can lead to blacklisting, the idea that Yamamoto is being punished for wanting to go all-in on a queer narrative is not far-fetched.

So. Yeah. This is all a very long way of me saying "I don't know whether what Kodaka said here really tells us much about his intentions/thoughts, nor do I expect we'll ever hear much more on the topic." A lot of Japanese creators have gone the way of just letting the work speak for itself and vaguely denying anything else in public, because it's just safer that way... even if it leaves the rest of us clueless as to where the legit allies are.

Either way, Halara is a pretty awesome representation regardless. I'll just take that as a positive sign.

[thxnews]

Kent Man Gets 18-Months for Illegal Waste Site

A Lengthy Legal Saga Concludes

The Closure of the Mete Family Case James Mete, a 61-year-old man from Faversham, Kent, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty of running an illegal waste operation. The case, which dates back to 2019, involved Mete along with his daughters, Lucy and Billie Mete. Following his initial prosecution, James Mete absconded before sentencing, leading to a protracted legal pursuit.   Court Proceedings at Maidstone Crown Court The sentencing took place at Maidstone Crown Court, where Mete received a 14-month sentence for allowing the illegal disposal and treatment of waste at Thirwell Farm, and an additional four months for breaching bail terms. This sentencing brings an end to a significant environmental crime case in Kent.   Environmental Agency’s Role and Reaction Matt Higginson, an environment manager for the Environment Agency in Kent, expressed satisfaction with the police's efforts in apprehending Mete. He emphasized the seriousness of the crime, underscoring the need for stringent law enforcement in environmental matters. Higginson's comments reflect the Agency's commitment to tackling environmental crimes and ensuring compliance with legal standards.   Background of the Illegal Waste Operation The case against James Mete began after the Environment Agency gathered evidence of approximately 40,000 tonnes of soil and builders’ waste illegally dumped on his land between 2014 and 2016. The volume of this waste, equivalent to around 3,200 double-decker buses, highlighted the scale of the operation, which lacked the necessary environmental permit.   The Environmental Impact and Enforcement Actions An Environment Agency raid in 2015 uncovered significant piles of waste at Thirwell Farm, along with machinery for processing it. This discovery, along with testimonies from a lorry driver and a building supplies firm owner, implicated James Mete as the primary contact for waste disposal at the farm.   The Court's Verdict and Family Sentencing In a six-day trial in March 2019, James Mete and his daughters were found guilty of contravening the Environmental Permitting Regulations (EPR) 2010. Lucy Mete was previously sentenced to a 26-week custodial sentence, and Billie Mete received a suspended prison sentence, demonstrating the court's commitment to addressing environmental violations.   The Importance of Public Vigilance The Environment Agency encourages the public and legitimate waste operators to report suspicious waste activities. Furthermore, public vigilance plays a crucial role in identifying and stopping environmental crimes, as evidenced in the Mete case.  

In Summary

The sentencing of James Mete for operating an illegal waste site in Kent underscores the serious nature of environmental crimes. Additionally, it highlights the dedication of law enforcement agencies to bringing offenders to justice. This case further emphasizes the importance of compliance with environmental laws and the role of the community in safeguarding the environment. The Mete family's case serves as a reminder of the consequences of flouting environmental regulations. Moreover, it underscores the commitment of the UK's legal system to uphold environmental standards.   Sources: THX News & Environment Agency. Read the full article

[cheatdeathsarchive]

“Now I know they ain’t talkin’ about me.”

[jcmorrigan]

In Defense of Archibald Snatcher

Oh, wow, we’re coming up on almost the sixth anniversary of The Boxtrolls, my favorite film of all time, and though the fandom for it seems to be either dead or in hibernation, I still have the torch lit.

I actually have been of the mindset of the opinion/s I’m about to present here for all those six years, but never really thought it prudent to lay them out until I recently had a friend I was recommending the film to who I warned about some of the elements considered “problematic” and I offhandedly mentioned that I could do a whole essay about why they don’t bother me and said friend replied with a desire to want to hear it because we share infodump for infodump, so here we go, I’m poking the hornet’s nest surrounding a controversial film with a dead fandom.

But if you were on Tumblr back in the heyday, you might’ve seen the reaction to this film when it first debuted. Specifically, what a lot of people honed in on wa that the villain, Archibald Snatcher, employed a dragsona to be able to push his agenda and implement his evil scheme. There was outrage. There were accusations. There was lambasting. And above it all, one question hovers: was this transphobic?

I want to start, before we get into the weeds, by saying that if you are anywhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and you were offended by this film or this character, your experiences are completely valid. I’m about to present the counterargument in language that assumes my take is fact for the purpose of not having to write fifty thousand clunky disclaimers, but analytical as this may be, it IS an opinion, and if you don’t think it’s right, then hey, that’s super valid, and I’m not gonna try and change your mind, because if you’re hurt, then you’re hurt! You just may want to nope out of this post right now because I’m about to lay out my observations and thoughts to the contrary of the accusations of this being homo/transphobic.

First of all, the obvious facet that comes to mind is how strange it is that we only ever saw the word “transphobia” put on this phenomenon rather than “homophobia” when using a female alter ego as a disguise or a performance art is not the same as being a woman assigned male at birth. One only needs to take a look over at RuPaul’s Drag Race to see examples of this culture. Lots of gay men wearing dresses. No women perceived male.

All the same, I will say that on the surface, adding any kind of queercoding to the story’s villain, who the audience is supposed to boo and hiss at, looks really, really bad on paper. However you interpret it, Snatcher is definitely queercoded. He openly flirts with the man he’s trying to trick as a means of getting what he wants, he displays sincere enjoyment of wearing the dress, and he runs the gamut of flamboyant hand gestures. But if you dig a little further, there’s even more to the story: his tale is one of a man who desires to pass as one of the elite class in his society, but is held back by something he can’t change about himself no matter how he denies it.

Let’s look at the rest of his story. Snatcher is in pursuit of the White Hat: the ultimate status symbol. To that end, he’s decided to otherize the Boxtroll population of the town and play upon the culture shock in Cheesebridge to convince the humans of the “upper world” that the Boxtrolls are predatory monsters who must be killed. This sounds like a pretty black-and-white good-and-evil scenario, right? You’ve got your population of innocent sweethearts being attacked and your genocidal racist orchestrating their destruction. But there’s a third layer still: Lord Portley-Rind, the chief White Hat himself. Lord PR is actually the worst of the lot. It’s because he doesn’t accept Snatcher that Snatcher feels he has to resort to this tactic. He demonstrates open hatred of the Boxtrolls and of Snatcher (”I’m not sure who should be more worried: the Boxtrolls or us!”). There are implications in how he treats his daughter that he’s a textbook sexist who believes there are men’s roles and women’s roles in society and nary the twain shall cross. And he’s the rich guy controlling the entire city and letting children’s hospitals and crumbling bridges go to waste by spending the budget on frivolous cheese. In short, Lord PR is basically the ur-example of a nightmarish fictional Republican (and oh, how I WISH he hadn’t been so prophetic).

I’m not saying Snatcher was justified or good. No. He’s in no way redeemable. But over the course of his interactions with Lord PR, you can see just how much society’s elites treat him as inhuman or like a dirty buffoon. He’s looked down upon, he’s insulted even when he’s doing the “service” Lord PR desires, he’s rejected until he’s gone above and beyond his contract and I think it’s even a little bit implied that Lord PR would’ve reneged on the whole deal if the mob hadn’t cheered for Snatcher in the end. So what you have is a prim and proper billionaire who subscribes to gender roles telling a man of the lower class, obviously economically downtrodden, that he doesn’t deserve what Lord PR has.

The idea of meritocracy is woven throughout the film. Listening to the speech in the background of Snatcher’s anaphylactic attack, while the visuals are focused on Eggs rescuing Fish, you can hear Snatcher rambling about how his father told him that if you work hard, you will receive a White Hat, but he worked hard all his life and got nothing. One of the White Hats literally says he got his through being rich. It’s not hard to infer that Snatcher has figured out how broken the system is and realized the only way to win the game is to cheat.

But there’s still one more thing holding him back from his victory, something that actually trips him up when he achieves what he wanted. Cheese is presented as another status symbol: the rich eat it and are connoisseurs of its flavor. Snatcher is deathly allergic to it. The goal he’s chasing, he can’t even have without threat to his own life. His reaction is to pretend he isn’t allergic and to expose himself to having allergic reactions on the regular to show how much he’s ready to become part of the elites. I’ll reiterate: Archibald Snatcher wants to join the elites, but is held back because of something about himself he cannot change that only matters because the upper crust said it should.

Okay. So we’ve established the man is gay, or somewhere on the queer spectrum. How is this not really, really horrible?

Because the narrative invites you to feel some sympathy for him. No, not for his actions or any secret soft side or tragic backstory (that’s a job for the fans), but because he is chasing a dream he cannot attain. Perhaps the film’s biggest shortcoming is how little consequence comes to Lord PR in the end, because Lord PR, for all intents and purposes, is the worse villain on the board. Snatcher’s ploy is to take the class below the one he inhabits and paint its members as the bad guys: a nuisance that must be exterminated for the betterment of society. And we’ve seen this. We’ve seen plenty of real-life examples of have-nots turning on have-lessers because the haves benefit from oppressed groups infighting and being distracted from who holds the money and the power. A lot of times, you see that while intersectionality is definitely something we need to pay attention to, racism, sexism, and homophobia are not concepts that are all explicitly linked. If you experience one, that doesn’t mean you don’t project one or two of the others on other people - particularly if you’re trying to make yourself feel better about the discrimination you face.

When you look at the hierarchy, Snatcher is, I reiterate, a very bad person. But he’s also a victim. Not as much of a victim as the poor Boxtrolls, who get the malice trickling down from both the Red Hats and the White Hats, but he is a victim. We see him mocked, laughed at, turned away. And though he’s not redeemable, there are aspects in which he is sympathetic.

But what about Frou Frou? What about that particular disguise?

Well, for one, it’s used to make yet another allegorical statement. Snatcher is able to get attention paid to him if he weaponizes female sexuality - though it is a very shallow attention that largely results in the straight men of the town swallowing his propaganda while also objectifying him. Most of the comments made on Frou Frou are slimy, smarmy “compliments” on her body from the White Hats. Lord PR’s wife harbors a distinct distaste for Frou Frou because her husband most certainly prefers ogling Frou Frou to actually paying attention to their marriage. Frou Frou is a propaganda vehicle to make it look like more than one person is on the same page as Snatcher; Snatcher himself drives the action of his scheme and gets the dirty work done.

It’s also worth noting that if you take away the implications, villains using alter egos to trick their nemeses is a tale as old as time, from sea witch Ursula making herself more supermodel-esque in order to marry the prince to mythological Loki actually crossdressing much in the same vein in order to fool the Frost Giants. There’s a reason disguise masters and shapeshifters are intriguing villain archetypes: because we’re always a little bit afraid that someone isn’t who they say they are, and because - yeah, I’m about to go here - I think we all wish we could shift shape ourselves to take on new forms that suit the goals we’re trying to accomplish, even if that means “fooling” others. So it’s reasonable to think Laika wasn’t aware that there was any queercoding to even be had here - but I do think the crew was aware, and not in a malicious way.

However, watching Snatcher’s scenes as Frou Frou, there’s something that comes across in his character that you don’t see so often when he’s presenting male: he’s legitimately having fun. He dances, he flirts with the crowd, he adds more flourishes to his speech, he gets sassy. Frou Frou is a means for him to express himself, to allow himself to be feminine when he has built his philosophy on needing to do “what a man does” (he repeats this at least twice) in order to achieve greatness. He can be a little more himself when he’s Frou Frou, even though Frou Frou isn’t him. Taking a new identity that’s allowed the other half of the gender roles allowed in Cheesebridge (which runs on a binary because it’s run by the White Hats) lets him act a little less like what he needs to be to be taken seriously and a little more like he has freedom.

Put this back in context of the greater narrative: given all the parallels we’ve seen, it’s safe to assume that Cheesebridge, as a whole, is not accepting of deviations from gender roles, whether it’s being open and proud of your LGBTQ+ identity or simply wearing the clothes that don’t belong to your gender. Snatcher is taking an enormous gamble here by using Frou Frou at all. On one hand, it’s a calculated risk; he knows if he can appeal to Lord PR’s unchecked sexist libido, he can secure another avenue to being heard. On the other, however, it’s not really much of a leap to say this is something he wants to do, someone he wants to be more like, and isn’t allowed to, and since he’s cheating at the game anyway, he might as well go all the way and do what he wants with his life.

I’ve seen a lot of people take issue with the scene where he reveals himself to Lord PR and comparing it to some actual homophobic/transphobic media. And again, if that still stands to you as your primary analysis and emotional reaction, then feel free to turn away, reject my analysis, and know your thoughts and feelings are completely valid. But I think this scene differs from your usual “person with male parts tricked you into thinking they were a woman” scene in a couple ways.

For one, Snatcher decides to out himself on his own. To Lord PR, it’s when he’s got nothing left to lose. Again, when he realizes the game is broken and the odds are against him, he takes control and decides to be himself a little more. Now everyone knows he likes to act a dragsona because he wanted them to. But also, earlier on, when he revealed himself to Eggs, it was again on purpose. Eggs didn’t figure him out. Snatcher needed Eggs to know the level of the threat he was dealing with: that he was the person Eggs has been running from since the start and is no less dangerous in a dress. It’s always been of his own volition. There’s no “I thought you knew” or disrobing to see a body that doesn’t match expectations - Eggs ripping Snatcher’s wig off is maybe a little iffier, but again, in context, that’s him trying to show Snatcher’s identity, not as a man but as Archibald Snatcher, to expose the corruption, and Snatcher actually plays it completely off because he’s that good of an actor.

Which brings me to my second point. There’s only one person who reacts in an “Oh, gross!” manner to this revelation, and it’s Lord Portley-Rind. The one we’ve established is sexist, homophobic, and your textbook Rich White Straight Cis Man. The one at the top of the food chain. The one who’s been objectifying Snatcher and acting like a slobbering pervert about Frou Frou from the beginning. The homophobe realizes he has been a little gay. The sexist realizes his objectifying a particular person he perceived female has consequences. And this is why to me, that scene is actually hilarious. Because I don’t feel like I’m laughing at Snatcher’s expense. I’m laughing because Lord PR just got called OUT, and this is exactly the kind of discomfort that is karmic given how he’s treated his daughter, his wife, and everyone in his city who’s needed him.

Cycling back to when Snatcher outs himself at the ball, Eggs doesn’t really seem to care that there’s a gender-role-play involved here. His concern is not that this is actually a man; his concern is that it’s specifically the person who he knows is trying to ruin everything. Same with Winnie when Eggs passes it on. Eggs trying to reveal Snatcher to the crowd doesn’t even begin with “Frou Frou is fake,” but a line I will never forget: “Archibald Snatcher has lied to you all.” Not even drawing attention yet to the fact that he’s in the room. Starting out by having everyone remember that guy they are all sure ISN’T there and pointing out he’s bad news.

To look at Lord Portley-Rind’s “Oh my God! I regret so much!” as a dig at Snatcher is to say that Lord Portley-Rind is the lens through which we should be viewing this story, which it most certainly isn’t. The lens is Eggs and Winnie. Adjacent lenses are Fish, Shoe, and Jelly. Lord Portley-Rind is an antagonist to every single character in this film save the other White Hats.

Which is why if this film falls flat anywhere, it’s in letting Lord Portley-Rind get away without consequence. I think I can take a guess as to why this primarily happened: it needed to wrap up in a little under two hours, and dismantling systematic oppression and abuse of socioeconomic power can’t be done in a two-hour escapade. I still wish he were at least villainized a little more, as that’s where the narrative was leading up to that point. One of his earliest scenes with Winnie foreshadows that he will have to choose between her and the hat, and it takes him two tries to make the right choice. This story, until the very last act, has not supported him being a character to like or sympathize with, even in such subtle ways as Trout and Pickles stealing his hat and running around with it to taunt Snatcher - showing that a symbol is really only a symbol, and doesn’t indicate your worth. Anyone can put on a hat. Lord PR has just been brought onto an equal footing with them, if only for a moment.

Okay, so why have this whole three-layer narrative anyway? Couldn’t we have made this story more clear-cut between the Boxtrolls and White Hats, with no queercoded villain to get in between?

Yes...but I’m not sure that would have been best for the viewing audience. And there’s plenty of precedent as to why Laika thought it was a move for the better.

Queercoded villains are in every aspect of our fictional and fandom lives. Here’s a bitter pill to swallow: all your favorite Disney villains are queercoded. All of them. “But Frollo’s arc is about - “ Being a man in a religious system afraid of being tainted as sinful for being attracted to the wrong person. “Gaston, though, is - “ Very chummy with LeFou, and I’m talking the animated versions. They’re all colorful, flamboyant, foppish for the men and full of socially-unacceptable strength for the women. These were the cornerstones of our childhood nostalgia and characters we still feel culturally attached to.

It’s not just in Disney. Are you a fan of musical theater? Well, then your favorite villain probably got a big song and dance in which they wore some glitter. Classic lit? Google the name of your favorite literary canon villain and “queer theory” and see what happens.

I don’t think we can really say this is good or bad. On one hand, it’s not great that a marginalized group can only see themselves in the character we’re supposed to hate. On the other, though, we don’t always hate that character. Villains hold a unique place in our culture. They do bad things, horrible things, but the story can’t take place without a conflict, and we like when that conflict has a name and a cool design such as a tall, imposing sorcerer/witch in flowing robes - or perhaps a tall, graceful man in a long red coat and a towering crooked top hat.

I’ve had lots of friends and trusted Internet reviewers talking about how queercoding in villains can actually be really empowering. If you’re a fan of the villain, you get to see a power fantasy in which someone who has something very big in common with you gets to enact karma on others for wronging them! You get to wear the cool robes, sing the fun song, do things that are not really legal or acceptable! I think a great analogy is if you check out the book “Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers” by Sady Doyle. It’s primarily about sexism rather than queer issues (though it does touch upon them!), but examines how women throughout pop culture and storytelling history have always been the witch, the monster, the demon, and how that sucks, but it also means that women have a great pile of fictional power fantasies to pick from to indulge in. It’s the same principle. I myself may not be same-gender-attracted, but I am asexual, and still waiting on my glamorous villain who uproots society as revenge for being forced to do something analogous to having a sexual relationship...*taps wristwatch*

Meanwhile, queercoding is not as prevalent in heroes. And I think that’s where everything’s tripping on its own feet. Because a gay villain among a bunch of straight heroes does look pretty bad. Are some of the heroes queercoded as well, though? Well, that’s just realistic diversity. People are gay, and there happen to be some good ones and some evil ones here. I don’t think Snatcher’s dragsona is entirely unproblematic, but I do think it could have been mitigated a lot with more implications that Eggs and Winnie might be queer in some way (and believe me, I choose to interpret them that way, because the more the merrier).

The thing is that in pop culture as of late, there seems to be a trend to scrub away all villainous queercoding because it’s seen as a black-and-white issue. To go back to the Disney villains, do you feel like the live-action recreations of Jafar, Scar, and Gaston are missing a certain je ne sais quoi? Well, think about it through this lens and it might be that you savez quoi after all. They’ve all been made incredibly straight as of late, with off-the-record actor confirmations about having obsessive crushes on the film heroines. I can’t speak to why this has happened; there’s a lot of history behind any given social movement, and I haven’t managed to really unpack this one. “Blame Tumblr” is too easy; I would want to know who were the loudest voices, why they said what they said, and what was the intended accomplishment, not to mention if this had built on other social-media or real-life platforms over the years and was influenced by any outside source by news or marketing. I can’t say why queercoded villains are being burned; I can only say it’s happening. And it was happening big-time in 2014, when The Boxtrolls was released.

I also feel like I would be remiss to mention that The Boxtrolls is based on “Here Be Monsters,” which I believe to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read, bar none. That version of the story has...pretty much everything that’s perceived to be in the film version’s text as problematic. Frou Frou is presented as something to laugh at Snatcher about throughout, largely because everything about Snatcher is presented to make him seem gross or like a buffoon. There’s a whole scene of the hero rifling through his desk to find soiled underwear. Not to mention that the original purpose of Frou Frou in the text was to manipulate the town’s women by dictating the fashion trends they should follow and the beliefs they should hold in order to fit in. This is something that does need commentary on it, but in that text in particular, it seems like the women are silly and easily swayed, and that they’re the town’s weak link because they’re slaves to fashion. The Boxtrolls completely flips this around so that the town’s weak link re: Frou Frou is the rich MEN who objectify women, particularly the men that happen to be in charge of the whole town, and looking at that divide alone tells me how much care was put into this adaptation at every level.

So why’d I do this, besides having a friend who wanted to read it? Because Archibald Snatcher is legitimately one of my favorite fictional characters. Yeah, I know, he’s a horrible person and terribly racist, and no, I don’t think his demonizing an entire people is anything to be emulated. But on one hand, there are places where I not only empathize but identify with him, particularly where it comes to living out the majority of one’s life trying to live up to a meritocracy - I did everything right, so why am I not on top? He’s also just fun and satisfying to me. He’s the exact brand of evil I eat up. He’s quippy, flamboyant, sadistic to a point, and altogether enjoying his job way too much. Even though he isn’t in power all that long, he is a power fantasy for me, too - wishing I had his talent to talk my way into others’ hearts by saying the right thing, and maybe cultivating a little bit of that I didn’t realize I had (but not to use for evil purposes). I loved him from the moment he turned up because of his sheer dynamic presence - his drawn-out vowels, his sinister smile, his silver-tongued manipulations - and to this day I find him an inspiring character when it comes to writing fiction, both in the realms of fanfiction and original villain creation. You could say he’s a comfort character to me. And maybe this has been the delusional rambling of a woman trying to protect a character she likes for surface reasons by spelling out what look like analytical points of discussion.

But I don’t think Laika was trying to be mean-spirited or homo/transphobic in their character creation. I think they were trying to make an engaging villain who had some layers you could pick at to see more about the narrative as a whole and the message of societal corruption and how the way to overcome it is to be true to yourself rather than defined by your status: a lesson Snatcher fails at the finish line when Eggs gives him one last chance to “make you.” And ultimately, if you really and truly did like Archibald Snatcher, you’re not wrong or invalid in the least.

[weirdlandtv]

Because there is no option to appeal some of my incorrectly flagged posts, and because Tumblr needs to be reminded of their idiotic policy now and then, I’m writing this post.

I have yet to come across one sensible explanation of how the censoring of female breasts, and the exclusion of sexuality, could lead to a “better, more positive” Tumblr. I can’t see the causality at all. The implication that the depiction of sexuality (nudity, sexual activity) is negative and harmful, logically leads to the question: To whom? And how? Tumblr’s hastily drawn up, poorly worded guidelines from December 2018 lump sexuality, or specifically “female-presenting nipples” in with say drug and alcohol abuse, (gun) violence, gambling, hate speech, antisemitism, and racism as something dangerous—the difference however is, of these, only “female-presenting nipples” are actively sought out by Tumblr bots and censored.

I really would just like to have someone at Tumblr explain to me, in terms I can understand, how this censorship of “female-presenting nipples” is leading to a “better, more positive” Tumblr. We’re roughly six months further now, some change should be visible apart from a decrease in traffic. And also, I’d like to know if the people at Tumblr genuinely believe in this censorship. Because who in their right mind can defend these almost surrealistically pointless guidelines, which seem cooked up by an ethical scatterbrain: Tumblr now is a 17+ app without 18+ content.

It’s a step backwards, is what it is. The thing though about taking a step backwards is that before you know it, you start walking backwards and you end up in a backward place.

Of course, we could say that Verizon really is the culprit. And that they bought Tumblr because that is simply what such companies do, buying up platforms left and right just so they can sell more crap to you and secretly keep an eye on your browsing history so they can sell THAT crap to advertizers, but that Verizon didn’t realize that with Tumblr, they weren’t just buying another platform but a community with lively, diverse, blossoming subcultures, and that Verizon only really learned what Tumblr was when the new draconian guidelines were announced and everyone started protesting, and that Verizon then wanted to get rid of Tumblr as fast as possible and are now trying hard to sell it, which hopefully they will, because such companies sure as hell shouldn’t go anywhere near art—we could say all that, but we’ll let others say it.

In the fishing industry, there’s something called “bycatch”, where certain marine species are caught unintentionally during the catch of specific targets. Every year, thousands of protected and endangered species are killed because of this process. I understand Tumblr implemented its ban because child pornography had been found on its site—fine, but what it’s doing now, by censoring “female-presenting nipples”, is making bycatch a legitimate, indiscriminate part of it its main target. (Also, anything even remotely associated with sex or even erotica is hidden from searches—try to find my post on adult film logos.) If other social media platforms follow, the Internet will become one big trawl net, leaving a sterile, homogeneous lunar landscape in its wake that’s designed for everybody and enjoyed by nobody. This is all especially harmful to the people who already belong to marginalized, sidelined groups anyway, and who so need social platforms like Tumblr pre-December 2018 to be taken seriously, or heck, even acknowledged at all. They found each other here on Tumblr when they were regarded as weirdos, outcasts, freaks; they expressed themselves through art and writing, and formed communities; and then they became people with voices.

Tumblr’s new policy itself is condemnable, the way it’s being implemented is risible. We’ve all seen the random posts that its ridiculously zealous and misguided bots flag as adult content; the following examples though, all part of my archive, seem to have been flagged by staff and can’t even be appealed, even though similar posts have been OK’ed by other Tumblr employees. Let’s have a look:

Image 4, right? Breasts. The caption though says “Mutterglück”. That’s German for “The Joy of Motherhood”. This should give you a clue about what’s being depicted. BREASTFEEDING. Tumblr however doesn’t want you to see this vile and depraved act.

Two paintings by Richard Tennant Cooper. Well, you’re going to have to find a better way to depict breast cancer, Richard Tennant Cooper, you pervert, because Tumblr isn’t having this. Flagged, and back to art school. Those artist types, eh.

Or this one, French illustrator, Jacques Touchet (1887-1949):

And how about the post below about John Wilson, an excellent animator and artist; he did those opening titles for GREASE, for example, and designs for SHINBONE ALLEY that I shared not too long ago. Spot the offending image:

Number 8 of course, which is a still from a music video from the SONNY & CHER SHOW, aired in the 1970s. That’s more than 40 years ago, but in 2019, those two ink dots on the female character have to be censored, hidden from view, because you know how those 1970s kids turned out. Over-sexed, sick degenerates, all of them.

Et cetera, et cetera. Whatever Tumblr is trying to do, this is the reality of their new guidelines. Also, whenever you receive an email about a flagged post, the link to it never leads to the post within the timeline even though it’s supposed to (on mobile devices anyway): it leads to the Review Flagged Posts section, which never gets updated and is only partly complete.

By making sexuality taboo again, Tumblr feeds the fear of it, which leads to ignorance about it, which leads to misconceptions about it: and misconceptions about sexuality are toxic goods. Remember that censorship, and censorship only, creates pornography... (Also, the liberalization of pornography, some studies argue, could lead to reduced rape and sexual violence rates. Something to think about.)

So again I ask: what for? How is flagging these posts leading to a better, more positive Tumblr? I’d like someone with a degree in such things to tell me that.

[fastworldnews1]

British court issues orders to unfreeze Shahbaz Sharif, son's bank accounts

In a major relief for PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif, a British court has ordered the unfreezing of the Opposition leader's bank accounts and those belonging to his son, Suleman Sharif Monday.

The decision was taken by the court after the UK's top anti-corruption body, the National Crime Agency (NCA) concluded there was no evidence of money laundering, fraud and criminal conduct against the two, according to evidence seen by The News exclusively.

The Westminster Magistrates Court’s Judge Nicholas Rimmer set aside the two accounts freezing orders (AFO) against Shahbaz Sharif and his son related to a December 2019 case filed by the NCA at the Pakistani government's request.

The UK's top anti-corruption agency filed a unilateral application before Judge Rimmer to declare that its two-year high-profile investigation in the jurisdictions of Pakistan, UK and Dubai found no evidence of money laundering and criminal conduct on part of the two Sharifs who were investigated.

Documents obtained by The News reveal that the bank accounts of Suleman Sharif were frozen and Shahbaz Sharif’s accounts were probed through a December 17, 2019 court order and both were subjected to high-profile criminal forensic investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA), conducted by the NCA’s Investigations Command at the International Corruption Unit.

Their accounts were frozen after the Pakistan government asked the UK to “assist in the recovery of criminal assets to the state of Pakistan”, triggering a wide-ranging investigation.

NCA probes Shahbaz. Suleman's accounts After the Westminster Magistrates Court allowed the accounts to be freezed and issued a probe consent to the NCA on December 19, 2019, Suleman Sharif’s declared Barclays account, Shahbaz Sharif’s HBL UK and Barclays account were immediately probed, seized and monies frozen.

This correspondent has seen court evidence which shows that the NCA’s investigators sought consent from Shahbaz Sharif to have access to his closed Barclays account as well or else the account will be accessed through a production order. Shahbaz Sharif agreed to the consent on the advice of his lawyers.

Usually, anti-money laundering investigations go back only six years, but in this case, the NCA used its excessive powers and investigated Shahbaz Sharif and his son's transactions dating back to around 20 years. NCA's investigators started the probe from the first flat that Shahbaz Sharif bought in 2004 on Edgware Road when he was in exile and asked him to produce evidence of the clean origin of the money, including mortgage payments, sources of proceeds in his accounts, salaries and dividends, and full proceeds of the property purchase in the UK, bought during exile.

The NCA investigated Suleman Sharif’s Barclays account declared in Pakistan with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and looked into all transfers which were made from Pakistan after the State Bank of Pakistan’s approval. The NCA went through each receipt of transfers from the official money exchangers.

The court documents obtained by this correspondent from credible sources show that the NCA received a letter from the ARU on December 11, 2019, in which it levelled allegations of criminal conduct against Shahbaz Sharif and Suleman Sharif.

The government of Pakistan had requested the UK government to seize all assets and funds of Shahbaz Sharif and his family, and asked them to return the same to Pakistan and extradite Suleman Shehbaz with his family.

The Home Office was in the loop and a separate letter was sent to the Home Office requesting Suleman's extradition, as well as asking Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) ministry to probe Suleman.

Court papers show that two AFOs were issued by the Westminster Magistrates Court on December 17 for 12 months in case numbers 011902628734 and 011902628947.

A year later, on December 8, 2020, the NCA went to the court again, applying to extend both AFOs for six months, arguing that investigations were continuing in the UK, Dubai and Pakistan. According to court papers, Suleman Shehbaz agreed to the extension of the AFOs by the court on three applications filed by the NCA.

No evidence of money laundering or fraud On September 10, 2021, the NCA submitted a unilateral application to the court informing that its investigations had been completed and the NCA crime investigators had found no evidence of money-laundering, fraud or wrongdoings in any of the transactions made either from Pakistan to the UK or from the UK to Pakistan in Suleman and Shahbaz Sharif's accounts.

District Judge Nicholas Rimmer signed the final order setting aside the AFOs, releasing and returning the accounts and monies to Suleman Shehbaz and his father.

According to a chronological order of the sensitive investigation - kept under tight wraps by the Sharifs, the NCA and the Pakistan government - a senior director of the NCA’s International Corruption Unit met Shehzad Saleem, Director General of NAB Lahore, in London on December 9, 2019 to discuss the formal investigation against Shahbaz and Suleman Sharif.

According to court papers, Shehzad Saleem explained to the NCA that Shehbaz Sharif’s wealth began to accumulate when he and his brother Nawaz Sharif gained prominence in the 1980s. The implication being that they were receiving bribes and other kickbacks because of their influential position.

The NAB Lahore official told the NCA official during their Central London meeting that Sharifs’ used the hawala system to transfer monies to make them clean and to legalise such transactions. He told the NCA that NAB’s investigation had identified a large number of remittances to bank accounts of the family, allegedly from Pakistanis living abroad.

It is therefore the NAB’s case, he told the NCA, and that the remittances are the laundering of illicit funds by, or on behalf of, Shahbaz Sharif and family, according to court papers.

The ARU's letter This correspondent has reviewed the letter of December 11, 2019 from the ARU to the NCA explaining why Shahbaz and Suleman Sharif should be investigated and what action should be taken. The ARU told the NCA that Shehbaz was wanted in Pakistan, under investigation, on bail, and a person of interest for misuse of authority during his tenure as chief minister Punjab, namely in his involvement in the Ashiana Housing scheme case and Hamza Sugar Mills case.

The Assets Recovery Unit (ARU) said in the same letter that Suleman was the “principal accused and beneficiary of the fake international remittances and money laundering through front and paper companies”. The Pakistani government's letter to the UK’s anti-corruption agency alleged that its investigation revealed that Shahbaz Sharif and Suleman “patronised a local network of front companies in the name of their low paid employees to launder their proceeds of corruption to show as legitimate money” and that both had “used informal money transfers (hawala) to shift and conceal their money abroad”.

The Pakistan government further told the NCA that the Panamagate investigations had “already culminated in sentences to Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz Sharif and others from the accountability court and these cases are presently pending with the Islamabad High Court in the appellate's jurisdiction.

It mentioned that investigations by NAB are presently underway for “corruption and organised money laundering” in relation to various members of the Sharif family, including Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz, Hamza Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, Ishaq Dar, Nusrat Shahbaz, Suleman Sharif and mainly family members of Shahbaz Sharif for “money laundering “through companies owned by Shahbaz’s family members.

This correspondent has seen the full file which the NCA placed before the Westminster Magistrates Court in order to get the freezing orders (AFOs) issued against Shahbaz Sharif and Suleman. The NCA bundle went into detail to describe Shahbaz and his son as being allegedly involved in criminal conduct through misuse of authority and associated money laundering.

t relied on several newspaper clippings which carried allegations of money laundering, quoting Pakistan government ministers and their press conferences.

Attached in the bundle was also an article by David Rose for the Daily Mail which had been published on July 13, 2019 in which the paper alleged that Shahbaz had stolen the UK government funds.

The article carried the same allegations of money laundering that the ARU later on submitted before the NCA, asking the UK to rely on the article for its investigations.

The NCA gained AFOs and probe consent order for violations contrary to sections 327, 328 and 329 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, involving criminal offending contrary to conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and conspiracy to cheat the public revenue; concealing criminal property; acquisition of criminal property; use and possessions of criminal property; and fraud by false representation and fraud by abuse of position.

No case for 'recoverable property', says NCA The NCA lawyers, requesting freezing orders for 12 months, added: "This will ultimately allow us to prove or disprove if these funds in whole or part, constitute recoverable property in that they are derived from criminal conduct or intended for use in unlawful conduct."

The NCA application, quoting the allegations made by the ARU, said that it needed 12 months because it will conduct enquiries internationally.

Credible legal sources here shared that the grounds of suspicion on which the NCA filed its application in the Westminster Magistrates Court to secure freezing orders were not proven as the investigations in multiple jurisdictions couldn’t establish evidence to prove money-laundering and criminal conduct.

That is the sole reason, according to sources, why the NCA gave it in writing to the Westminster Magistrates Court that its investigations had established that there was no case for the “recoverable property”, hence the unfreezing of assets and closure of the case file.

Reports of Shahbaz being acquirred incorrect, says Shahzad Akbar Meanwhile, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Accountability Shahzad Akbar said that reports of Shahbaz Sharif being acquitted by the British court were incorrect, clarifying that neither had the ARU nor NAB requested the UK government to initiate a probe against the PML-N leader.

He said the inquiry had been initiated over a "suspicious transaction" that a bank had reported to the NCA, adding that these consisted of certain funds transferred by Suleman Shahbaz from Pakistan to the UK in 2019.

"[These transactions] were declared as a suspicious transaction by the UK authorities and the NCA secured an asset freezing order(AFO) from the court against these funds," he tweeted. "However, recently the NCA decided to stop investigating these funds and therefore agreed for the release of these funds through the court.

"It is clarified that such a release order is not an acknowledgement that funds are from a legitimate source," he added. The prime minister'a aide said that Shahbaz and Suleman have not been acquitted since they had not been tried to begin with.

"The funds were frozen by the NCA and the NCA has decided to not investigate these funds anymore," he added. "Suleman Shahbaz remains a fugitive in a money laundering case against him and his father before the AC Lahore," he added.

PMLN Secretary Information Marriyum Aurangzeb said the UK court decision has unequivocally exonerated Shehbaz Sharif and his family of all malicious and vexatious claims of corruption and money laundering.

Responding to Shahzad Akbar’s tweet, she said the NCA UK conducted a 21-month global investigation spanning 20 years whilst overcoming unprecedented jurisdictional challenges. 

She said never in the history of Pakistan has a public office holder ever been subjected to global scrutiny and multi-jurisdictional probing as Shahbaz Sharif had been. 

Marriyum said the government's false corruption narrative was exposed, adding that it was telling a hundred more lies to cover up thousands that it had already told. 

She said the government will fall on the weight of its own deceit and lies.

https://ift.tt/3m4G2Ek

[dresupi]

practise makes perfect

Pairing:  George Weasley/Hermione Granger For:  @tinymerlady Prompt:   Maybe we should practice kiss a little? So we look legit at midnight. Rating:  T Word Count:  1288 [Ao3 Link]

Hermione was greeted at the door to Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes by a rather spastic George Weasley.  And given that George wasn't exactly the most subdued individual, it really was rather spastic.  He motioned for her to head back to the office, so she did just that, setting her purse down on the edge of the desk since there weren't any chairs that she could see.

"So… you're on board with kissing me at midnight for the new year, then?"  George asked, practically jumping up and down as he entered the room and closed the door behind him..  

They'd been owling each other off and on for the entire morning, basically since receiving their invitations to Seamus and Dean's New Year's Eve party.  

He'd answered her last owl, requesting her presence at the shop at her earliest convenience, so she came by on her lunch hour.      

"Yes.  As I already replied, I think it's a brilliant idea.  I'm not seeing anyone, and you're not either… it'll keep the gossip at bay at least until mid-January.  I dunno why we didn't think to do this for Christmas as well…"  

"Well, I was thinking…" he began, crossing his arms in front of him.

"A dangerous pastime, I'm told," said Hermione with a grin.

"Oh quite, it's downright perilous for me, I'd wager," George continued without missing a single beat.  "But regardless, I was thinking. That we should practise.  So our kiss will look… realistic.  Legitimate…" He nodded once to punctuate, as if he'd had the most wonderful idea in the world.

Hermione felt her cheeks heat up in what she was certain was a blush..  "I think it'll be fine, George.  It's just a peck on the lips, after all."  

"To you, maybe.  But it's in front of all of our friends.  We might need to work on the logistics. I wouldn't want either of us to look like we're fumbling..." He trailed off slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching in a way that made her think he was having her on.  

"Oh, it's your first kiss, is it?" she simpered, knowing full well that at twenty-five years old, George had done plenty of kissing.  

As had she, but that was neither here nor there.

He shot her a look.  "It's my first kiss with you. Do you tilt to the left or the right? Hands on your waist, or no?"  

She shrugged.  "I'm certain it's just like kissing anyone else, George."  

"First of all, my kisses are like snowflakes, Hermione.  None of them are the same.  And secondly… " he sputtered for a moment.  "It's you."

"And it's you," she replied, slowly.  "I think we'll be fine without practising, George."  

He sighed heavily.  "Mione… I feel like I'm being very… obvious.  But then I look at you and I think maybe I'm not?"

Her face reddened considerably at the implication in his words.  She'd honestly never thought in her life that George would have feelings for her, but here he was, admitting to them.  She'd have to approach this delicately...  "George…"  

"Hermione?"  

"I thought this was just… just a sort of… something to trick our friends into thinking we weren't lonely singletons for the New Year…"  

"It is!  But this isn't just anyone.  It's you.  And it's me. And I dunno about you, but I'm like catnip.  To the ladies, you see. I wouldn't want to give you any ideas as to my intentions..."

Realization dawned on her and she reached out to swat George's arm.  "George Weasley. You're ridiculous."  

"I'm sure you're correct, but why this time, specifically?"  

"You think I'm just going to fall in love with you after fake-kissing you once at midnight for the New Year?"  

"Or I suppose I could always fall for you, stranger things have happened."  

She rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm, pulling him closer.  "You're impossible."  

"Easy, woman!" He said, smirking.  "You'll rip my shirt from my chest if you don't watch out!"  

"You're the one who wanted to practise!"  

"I'll come willingly, Granger, no need to yank!"

Her eyes searched his before she slid her hand firmly behind his head, tugging him down, and closer.  He went with no resistance whatsoever.  He grunted slightly when their lips met, but slowly melted into the kiss.  

Hermione too, was feeling a touch of weakness in the general area of her knees as he tilted his head to the left, parting his lips and really kissing her. This was so much more than a peck on the lips.

Merlin's beard, he was a good kisser.  Maybe there was something to his warning after all.  

The soft sound she made in the back of her throat made his fingers hitch slightly where they were grasping her hip.  He pulled her closer and she went, melding herself to the front of him, her hand tangling in the lapels of his shirt.        

She ran her fingers through his hair and George broke off the kiss abruptly by stepping out of the embrace. His lips were parted, eyes dark, as he ran his hand directly over where hers just had been.  

"Bloody hell, Hermione…"  

She was still clutching his lapel, so she tugged lightly.  "George…"  

"Hmm?"  He was still trying to compose himself and Hermione thought that perhaps she liked the way he looked sans composing..  

"Why'd you stop?  I think you were right.  I think we need more practise."  

His eyebrows raised.  "Don't tempt me.  I think that was plenty."  

"Tempt you?" She hopped up on his desk, crossing one leg over the other.  "Oh, I'm too bookish to tempt anyone, George Weasley."  

"Too bookish?  You're a right lush bird, Hermione.  Don't sit there and smirk at me like you don't know it.  Too bookish?" he scoffed. "You could literally and figuratively charm the pants off me any day of the week.  Except right now, because this is a shared office.  And if we continue to 'practise', I'm going to offend my brother."

"I thought you were worried about me falling for you," she said.  "Stranger things have happened than you falling for me, after all…"    

"Come off it. I've already fallen for you, years ago.  Never got back up either.  Figured you hadn't a clue about that. Turns out I was right." He jammed his hands in his pockets and shrugged, but he wasn't exactly the picture of nonchalance.    

She gripped the edge of his desk and leaned forward.  "Pull the other one."  

"Can't really say you're too bookish, then can you?" he asked, a twinkle in his eye. "If you didn't see the rather large torch I've been carrying for you."

"Didn't read about a torch  in any of my books, I can tell you that…"  

"Obviously, you never looked in the margins of my sixth year potions book…"    

She chuckled and uncrossed her legs, hopping down off his desk.  "I didn't fancy a nooner anyway, George… I still have half a day of work to finish."  

"A nooner?  Wishful thinking…" he teased.  

"Was it, though?"  

He shook his head.  "Maybe on my part as well…"  He kept his hands in his pockets and dipped down to kiss her once more.  "What time are you finished?"  

"Half past six."  

He groaned about that, but nodded.  "Alright.  I'll meet you outside Gringotts at half past six."  

"I was right, then, was I?" she asked, haughtily staring up at him.  "We need more practise?"  

"'Need' being the operative word, Granger.  'Need' is very… apropos."  

"That's a five-sickle word, Weasley," she said, nodding in approval.  

"Learned from the best," he countered.  "See you after work, Mione."  

She leaned up and kissed his lips once more, delighting in the hitch in his breath.  "See you then."

Check out the rest of my New Year’s Kiss Fics on my [Master List]!

[tego-nie-ma]

The Persecution of Daniel Lee

 An Internet smear campaign nearly destroyed the South Korean star, but he fought back with the only weapon he had: the truth.

July/August 2011

Photo: Timothy Archibald; Hair and makeup: Veronica Sjoen/Artist Untied            

By Joshua Davis

On August 19, 2010, Dan Lee stood on the steps of Meyer Library and pointed to a nearby patch of grass.

"The Rodin statue," he said nervously. "It was here."

The Korean television crew following him noted that there was nothing there, just a well-mowed lawn. Students on bikes zipped past, paying no attention to the cameras or the skinny, dark-haired 30-year-old they were filming. In Seoul, it was hard for Lee to walk down the street without being mobbed. To Koreans, he was known as Tablo, a chart-topping rapper who was also married to one of the country's most prominent movie stars. Until recently, he had been one of Korea's biggest celebrities. Now his career was in tatters, he'd parted ways with his record label, and his family was receiving death threats.

The reason? Hundreds of thousands of Koreans refused to believe that Lee, '02, MA '02, graduated from Stanford.

The cameraman for the television crew closed in on Lee as he looked at the empty lawn. They were here to document for Korean national TV whether or not Lee was a liar.

"It's not here anymore," Lee said, staring at the spot where he knew The Thinker had been. He rubbed his face and wondered if maybe he was going crazy.

When the program aired two months later in Korea, this was the opening moment.

In 2001, when Lee told his parents that he was going to be a hip-hop musician, they were horrified. They were thinking doctor or lawyer, not rapper. In Korea at the time, hip-hop was not a popular genre. The music scene was dominated by attractive young people assembled into groups by record labels. They belted out sugary sweet songs—dubbed K-Pop—and strived to sound upbeat and happy. Critics saw no room for a guy who produced his own lyrically complex music, particularly when it dealt with issues like discrimination and class warfare.

Lee formed a band with two other musicians. They called themselves Epik High and released their first album—Map of the Human Soul—in 2003. It begins with a swirl of harps and what sounds like a 1950s-era ballroom dance class: "We're now going to progress to some steps which are a bit more difficult," an instructor says in English. Then there's an explosion of lyrics, beats and a dense overlay of sounds.                              

It was infectious and Epik High went on to release seven albums during the next seven years—an astounding burst of productivity. Five of those albums reached No. 1 on the Korean charts and they scored six No. 1 singles. As if that weren't enough, Lee published a collection of short stories in both English and Korean in 2008. It sold 50,000 copies in its first week and became a bestseller in Korea.

Lee's music had such broad appeal that he began to attract fans outside of Korea. He launched a series of U.S. tours starting in 2006, playing Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. In March 2010, Epik High became the first Korean group to reach No. 1 on the iTunes U.S. hip-hop sales charts, topping Jay-Z, Kayne West and the Black Eyed Peas. Korean hip-hop had broken through.

It seemed like a modern fairy tale, complete with a match made in celebrity heaven. In 2009, Lee married Kang Hye Jung, a beautiful actress with a string of hit movies. Celebrity blogs in Korea breathlessly reported news of the wedding in October 2009 and hundreds posted comments of support.

"OMG!!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!" one fan wrote deliriously. "OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG."

"Way to break a girl's heart," wrote another more ominously.

In the summer of 2010, Korea was reeling from a streak of fake diploma scandals. It began in 2007, when the chief curator of a modern art museum in Seoul was found to have fabricated her Yale PhD. (It didn't help that Yale initially confirmed the degree.) She was jailed for 18 months on forgery charges, and a nationwide hunt for other offenders ensued. Prosecutors investigated at least 120 cases of diploma fraud, ensnaring celebrities, politicians and even a monk.

"There are definitely more people out there," one of the prosecutors told the Bloomberg news service in 2007. "We just can't spot them."

While this was happening, Lee regularly appeared on Korean television shows and was asked about his credentials. He said that he had not only graduated from Stanford in 3 ½ years, but that he also had received a master's degree in that time. He said he had written his book, Pieces of You, while he was an undergrad and that he had received a creative writing award for one of the stories from author and Stanford professor Tobias Wolff, MA '78.

In May 2010, a group of Internet users created an online forum titled "We Request the Truth from Tablo," better known by its Korean acronym TaJinYo. The group didn't buy Lee's story. They started referring to him as "God-blo" because only God could have accomplished as much as Lee. The members of the group participated anonymously and attacked Lee from behind user names such as Whatbecomes and Spongebobo.

To many in Korea, TaJinYo's questions were legitimate. For instance, it usually takes four years to complete a bachelor's degree. A master's normally takes another two. Students typically also write a thesis to attain a master's and yet Lee said that he never wrote one.

Lee hesitated to respond. The whole thing was absurd to him. He was a musician. What did his degree matter?

To his detractors, it mattered a lot. "What is it good for in rapping? Nothing," says Hyungjin Ahn, a vocal critic. "But Koreans still said, 'Wow, he is great. If we listen to his rap, we could get in touch with something genius and holy.' Mothers in Korea worshipped him. He was a role model for every child in Korea at that time."

Entertainment gossip sites reported the existence of the anti-Tablo site and membership swelled to nearly 200,000, many of whom launched their own investigations into Lee's past. Tobias Wolff and Stanford registrar Thomas Black were barraged by emails from Koreans who questioned Lee's educational background. Black alone received 133 emails on the subject. Everybody wanted to know one thing: Was Lee lying?

When online hecklers started to criticize his wife for marrying him, Lee realized something had to be done to protect his family's reputation. On June 11, he released his transcript to the JoonAng Daily, a newspaper in Seoul. That same week, Black issued an official letter.

"Daniel Seon Woong Lee entered Stanford University in the Autumn Quarter of 1998-99 and graduated with a BA in English and an MA in English in 2002. Any suggestions, speculations or innuendos to the contrary are patently false. Daniel Seon Woong Lee is an alumnus in good standing of Stanford University."

That should have been the end of it. Instead, it was just the beginning.

As the members of TaJinYo began to dissect Lee's public statements and dig further into his past, an elaborate conspiracy theory took hold. Forum members were willing to accept that a man named Dan Lee graduated from Stanford, but they weren't willing to accept that the rapper they knew as Tablo was the same person. They argued that Tablo had taken over Dan Lee's identity in order to parlay a Stanford credential into fame and fortune.

"He just paid a lot of money to do this, lied about it and still became famous," one forum member told a Korean TV crew, who blurred her face. "It represents a total loss of hope for people who work hard."

The conspiracy theorists did not just accuse Lee, they implicated his entire family. An anonymous researcher uncovered a newspaper clipping from 1995 that stated that Lee's mother had won a gold medal at an international hairstyling competition in 1968. The researcher posted it online and pointed out that Lee's mother did not actually win the medal, implying that Lee's family had been lying about their achievements for decades.

"Can anybody give me the phone number of Tablo's mom's hair salon?" wrote one Internet user. "I would like to ask her how it feels to be a criminal."

Lee's mother began to receive threatening phone calls. At a family dinner, she answered her cell phone and heard a man's voice. "You're a whore," he said. "You and your family should leave Korea."

The attacks spread. Posts appeared that questioned Lee's brother David, who had begun a master's at Columbia but never finished. A researcher found a web page that indicated that David had completed the master's and calls flooded into the public broadcasting channel in Seoul where he worked. He was fired.

David's home address and phone numbers were published and he also started to receive worrisome calls. One caller threatened to stab him to death for his alleged transgressions. The tenor of the anonymous mob was turning decidedly more violent.

"If #blobyblo doesn't leave Korea, something bad might happen to him," one heckler warned on Twitter, referring to Lee by his Twitter handle.

Lee felt that his recording label, Woolim Entertainment, was doing little to counter the accusations against him and his family. "We have nothing to say about allegations against Tablo that he had fake education qualifications," the agency stated on June 7. Two days later, it publicly pledged to help, but Lee felt that his representatives never followed through. He left the label later that month.

"It broke my heart," he says. "They abandoned me."

In the midst of the controversy, Lee's wife gave birth to their first child. It was a moment of joy, but as Lee walked the corridors of the hospital, he saw people looking at him coldly and he panicked.

"Since my attackers were all anonymous, there was no way for me to know who was after me," Lee says. "I didn't know if the doctor, who's putting needles in my baby, is one of those people. It was terrifying."

On the streets, strangers would shout at him, calling him a liar and a cheat. "It was like I had stepped into the middle of a modern-day witch hunt," he says.

Lee stopped going out—the environment had become too hostile. Still, he did his best to respond to the attacks. Fifteen years prior, Lee's mother had contacted the author of the newspaper article that incorrectly stated that she had won the medal. She had told him that it was an error and he apologized. Now the reporter issued a statement confirming the mistake and Lee forwarded it to the press.

He also tried to explain that his brother did not maintain the web page that indicated he had completed a master's. Whoever had typed the information made the error. Lee pointed to other online résumés that correctly stated David's credentials.

The conspiracy theorists online dismissed all this as simply part of the conspiracy. They argued that the reporter had been paid to defend Lee and didn't believe that the error in David's résumé was accidental. Lee's efforts to answer their questions were turned into evidence of how far he was willing to go to defend his false identity.

Part of their suspicion stemmed from the fact that Lee is not actually a Korean citizen. When he was 8, his family had moved to Canada; he became a Canadian citizen when he was 12. That meant he was exempt from compulsory military service, even while his two Epik High bandmates were drafted. Many forum commenters interpreted this as yet another example of how Lee had gamed the system.

The doubters scored what they believed was a major victory when they discovered a man on Facebook named Daniel Lee who got a degree from Stanford in 2002. This Daniel Lee lived in Wisconsin and worked as a mechanical engineer. Tablo, they claimed, had stolen his identity.

In the registrar's office, Black fielded a series of emails about this allegation. The truth: Two Daniel Lees received Stanford degrees in 2002. One got a BA and master's in English and became a rapper in Korea; the other got a master's in mechanical engineering and works at a product design firm in Wisconsin.

"One day I started getting random emails from people in Korea who were violently angry at me for allowing some rapper to steal my identity," says the other Daniel Lee, laughing at the recollection. "I had no idea what they were talking about."

Black repeatedly confirmed that Daniel Lee the English major was a graduate in good standing but that only seemed to create more agitation. Some emailed to question Black's integrity, suggesting that he was colluding with Lee. Black got angry. "These people don't want the truth," he says. "They dismiss everything that doesn't align with what they already believe."

Lee continued to fight back. On August 5, 2010, he released his Canadian citizenship certificate to the press. To his astonishment, he was promptly sued by four anonymous Koreans who charged him with forgery.

"I was doing everything they asked and it was never good enough," Lee says. "That's when I realized that they weren't looking for answers, they just wanted to destroy me."

Korean media widely reported the suit, which only served to further sow doubt about Lee's identity among the general population. Gossip-oriented celebrity sites pored over every detail of the charges; the mainstream press even covered the case. The fact that Stanford had officially confirmed Lee's diploma did not seem to check the flow of articles. By midsummer, Lee's travails had become one of the biggest news stories in the country.

Sean Lim, '01, MA '02, had a front-row seat to the drama. He was a morning news anchor for Arirang, an English-language network in Korea, and watched with horror as the story dominated the summer news. It was a surreal experience because he knew Lee wasn't lying: The two were friends from Stanford.

In fact, Lim could count himself as one of Lee's oldest fans. He lived with Lee in Okada, and was an enthusiastic member of the audience at the small dorm events Lee's first hip-hop group, 4n Objectz, played. So when people started to question Lee's background, Lim told everyone he could that Lee was a Stanford graduate.

"The problem was that it was just me and the people I ran into against the millions online," Lim says.

One man's word wasn't going to turn the tide so Lim contacted Kevin Woo, MS '92, the secretary of the Stanford Club of Korea. Lim asked the group to issue a statement in Korean vouching for Lee. He felt that part of the problem was that all of the evidence in support of Lee was in English and was coming from Stanford, an overseas source. Maybe if a trusted Korean organization such as the local alumni association took action, it would come in a form that ordinary Koreans could appreciate.

The president of the association, Joon Chung, MS '88, PhD '93, decided not to issue a statement. "It was an unusual situation," he says. "Some people believe it's not good to respond to irrationality."

According to Woo, Chung wanted to do something publicly to support Lee but alums in Korea warned him not to. These alums had never met Lee—he'd never attended an association meeting—so many felt that they couldn't be sure that he was who he said he was. They were afraid that their reputation as Stanford alumni in Korea would be tarnished if they erroneously vouched for the rapper.

Instead Chung sent an email to members urging them to take individual action on Lee's behalf. It would be up to each member to decide whether or not to do anything.

Lim was furious. "They left Dan hanging out to dry," he says. "They could have ended this but nobody wanted to get close to the fire."

It was an understandable fear. The online mob wanted blood, and anybody who stood up against them could incur their wrath. Lim himself admits he struggled with the decision to help. He had a job in broadcasting and relied on public goodwill. He could endanger his career if he spoke out. "I'm ashamed to say that I thought twice about helping Dan," he says. "I saw what they were doing to him and I was scared."

Lim met with his old friend at an out-of-the-way coffee shop in July. Lee looked exhausted and said he hadn't been sleeping. He was depressed and his emotions were getting the better of him. Only months earlier, he had played sold-out concerts and was besieged by requests for autographs on the street. Now, he had to sneak around just to meet a friend. "I was contemplating whether my life was actually worth living," Lee says.

Lim realized there was no choice: He had to do something. He started emailing friends from Lee's days at Stanford and, collectively, 22 of them formed a Facebook page in support of Lee.

"I don't want the memories Dan, I, and others shared to be erased by people seeking to prove that he never went to Stanford," wrote Eddy (Chi) Qi, '01. "Memories including him taking my drunk and occasionally vomiting self (once on his shoe) back to my dorm after a party."

"I remember suffering through some rough early performances at the AASA [Asian American Students' Association] talent shows and am glad to know his talent eventually caught up to his enthusiasm," wrote Tipatat Chennavasin, '00.

Although the Korean press reported that Lee's Stanford friends were rallying around him, TaJinYo members refused to believe it was real. Kang Han, '02, a friend from Lee's freshman year and the first to post on the Facebook site, received threats even though he lived in Los Angeles. "Watch your back," one person messaged him. Another peppered him with emailed insults and called him a liar.

In Korea, Lim received a call from the prosecutor investigating the charges against Lee. He was asked to come to the division headquarters in Seoul and bring his Stanford diploma. When he arrived, an investigator took the diploma and held it up to the light to determine if it was a forgery.

"You've got to be kidding me," Lim said. "You want to test the paper too?"

The investigator looked at him without smiling and told him he was going to send the document over to the forensics department to test the paper.

"I started to understand how Dan felt," Lim says.

When the attacks on Tablo began in the spring of 2010, Ki Yeon Sung received more than 200 emails requesting that she investigate Lee. She was a seasoned producer with a show called PD Note, something akin to 60 Minutes in Korea, and explored topics such as politics, organized crime and corruption. Celebrity gossip wasn't her beat so she ignored the requests.

"We have more important things to worry about in Korea," she thought at the time.

The situation changed when the attacks grew to include anybody who offered evidence that supported Lee. Reporters and their managers who published stories disputing TaiJinYo claims about Lee were flooded with outraged emails, calls and demands for the reporter's resignation. Nobody wanted to be threatened so, according to Sung, reporters stopped adequately questioning the validity of the claims. As the story became one of the top news items in the country that summer, she saw that the mob was have a chilling effect on the coverage. That's when it became something worth worrying about.

Not that Sung necessarily believed Lee. It did seem unusual to her that Lee had accomplished so much, so fast, and she could understand how people might have doubts. Many students studied extraordinarily hard to get into a top school and then worked even harder to do well once they were there. Lee appeared to have breezed through Stanford in a short amount of time and come away with a master's on top of it. His story had the power to make people feel stupid.

The dominant conspiracy theory suggested that Lee had appropriated someone's identity, so Sung decided to challenge him directly on this point. If Lee was who he said he was, then he should be able to travel to California and request a transcript in person. If he got it, the mystery would be solved.

Lee accepted the challenge.

It was the first time Lee had been back to campus since graduation and a lot had changed. For one, the damn Rodin sculpture had been moved, and that had the potential to make him look like a liar on Korean national TV. (When not on loan to other institutions, The Thinker now resides in the Cantor Arts Center.)

Luckily, when he walked into the English department, student services manager Judy Candell recognized him and gave him a hug. She'd heard about his troubles. "I hope all this goes away," she said. "Because we believe in you."

The camera crew followed him to the registrar's office where Thomas Black was waiting. Lee pulled his diploma and transcript out of his backpack and laid them down on a table for Black to inspect. He also handed Black his passport. Black printed Lee's transcript off his own server, compared the two and checked Lee's name against the name listed in the passport.

"It's exactly the same," Black concluded, holding up the two transcripts. "Line for line, word for word."

The footage would air as part of a two-part special on MBC, one of Korea's four national networks. Lee was vindicated, but all he could feel was numbness.

"The people who are doing this to me will never stop," he said. "They just won't believe me no matter what I do."

Lee filed suit against 20 of his most virulent attackers. By October, the prosecutor investigating both his claims and the allegations against him determined that Lee was who he said he was. The prosecutor demanded that a Korean Internet site divulge the true identities of the 20 attackers. Whatbecomes, the leading agitator, was revealed as Eung Kim, a 57-year-old Korean-American businessman living in Chicago. Korean police asked him to report for questioning.

"I posted in a fair manner, so I will not answer the summons," he told them.

The police then issued an international warrant for his arrest, which he has defied now for months. On the TaJinYo forum, Kim questioned whether defamation was an international crime and vented his frustration at being unjustly targeted. "I am so angry they are treating me like a suspect when they have not confirmed I am a criminal," he wrote.

To outside observers, the case was closed. At a cabinet meeting, Korean President Lee Myung-bak stated that what happened to Lee was a "witch hunt that should never happen again." Ashton Kutcher, who follows Lee on Twitter, chimed in. "Time to kill the evil eye on this guy," he tweeted.

Lee, however, hasn't recovered. He's still afraid to go out in public and doesn't know if he'll ever be able to perform for an audience again. This May, he returned to Stanford to give a speech to the Asian American Students' Association. It was his first public appearance since the controversy erupted and even though it was a friendly crowd, Lee was paralyzed by stage fright, something he'd never experienced before. He felt nauseated throughout the talk and periodically had to pause to catch his breath. It reinforced his fear that he'd never be able to dominate a stage as he once did.

"Honestly, I'm damaged," he says. "And I don't know if I'll ever be better."

The crowd didn't seem to mind. After the speech, Lee was surprised to see a long line of people waiting for his autograph. He posed for pictures and seemed to relax. He smiled and, for a moment, there was a glimmer of hope.

source: Stanford Magazine

[sogivemecoffeeandtvhistory]

Menendez Mania

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. – Leo Tolstoy

Who knows what really goes on within a family? – Beverly Hills Police Chief Marvin Iannone

One of television’s great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs. – Alfred Hitchcock

Ever since Sophocles wrote about the ancient Greek tragedy of Oedipus, who fulfilled the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, there has been a history of morbid fascination with the disturbing and unusual act of parricide.

According to a Justice Department report on homicide patterns and trends in the U.S. from 1980 to 2008, parricide is the fastest growing category of family homicide, increasing 9.7% in 1980 to 13% in 2008. A study on the characteristics of offenders and victims that was published in Aggressive and Violent Behavior found, “Most parricides involve single-victim, single-offender situations, with firearms more likely to be used against fathers than mothers.” The study also observed that patricidal offenders are “processed differently by the criminal justice system” because youths are presented as “prosocial individuals who feared for their lives” while adults “have typically been presented as suffering from a severe mental disorder.”

The case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who gunned down their parents as they watched television in the den of their multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills home on a quiet Sunday evening in August 1989, is an anomaly in every sense. Lyle and Erik were 21 and 18, respectively, when they murdered their father Jose, 45, a Cuban émigré and self-made corporate executive in the entertainment industry, and Mary Louise “Kitty”, 47, with a total of 15 shots. While the brothers’ subsequent profligate and indiscriminate spending of their parents’ estate on ill-advised business ventures and apartments and luxury items raised eyebrows, they were not arrested until nearly seven months after the murders due to what was diplomatically reported at the time as new evidence “involving conversations with a psychologist in Beverly Hills”. The legal debate over the admissibility of the evidence meant the brothers would not be indicted on the murder charges until December 1992. The evidence was a taped confession from the brothers’ sessions with Dr. L. Jerome Oziel, to whom they were originally referred to for counseling by a therapist Kitty was seeing after Erik was implicated in a pair of burglaries in the area and to whom Erik confessed. While Oziel’s tapes and notes pointed to threats from Lyle and Erik that violated doctor-patient confidentiality, it was not Oziel who went to the police but a woman named Judalon Smyth, his mistress, who met with Beverly Hills detectives on March 5, which was the day after Oziel broke up with her, and revealed she was asked to eavesdrop on and record the brothers’ confession and even knew that the guns had been purchased in San Diego. The information gave police enough information for a search warrant of Oziel’s home. 

The five-month trial began in July 1993 and received extensive coverage across the tabloid and mainstream media, not least of all from the relatively new cable channel Court TV. It was only the month before the trial that the defense made the bombshell disclosure that it would not contest the murder charge but instead argue that it was an act of self-defense after a lifetime of abuse. In a Los Angeles Times article on the defense published just before opening statements at the first trial, Leslie Abramson claimed for the first and last time there were 300 separate incidents of sexual abuse over 12 years. Erik ultimately testified for 10 days and Lyle for 9 nine days. When the Menendez brothers were first arraigned on the murder charges they wore suits and smirked throughout the proceeding but things had changed by the time the trial began, their healthy tans replaced with a prison pallor. They were now dressed in colorful sweaters in an attempt to make them look boyish. They burst into tears on multiple occasions as they spoke of a lifetime of abuse. The enmity between Oziel and Smyth, who were involved in separate litigation, became an all-consuming mini-drama early in the trial. Oziel, who did not choose to volunteer the information he had, ended up testifying for the prosecution, with a total of six days of testimony, which included a brutal cross-examination. Ironically, Judalon Smyth, who gave the case its’ big break, testified for the defense. She recanted and instead claimed that Oziel brainwashed her, among other bizarre allegations about the nature of their relationship. 

The separate juries empaneled for each brother reached deadlocked verdicts in January 1994 and mistrials had to be declared.

As the logistics of the second trial were figured out, the Menendez case was eclipsed by the other double homicide that defined the ‘90s – the trial of O.J. Simpson for the stabbing deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman outside her Brentwood condominium on a relatively quiet Sunday evening in June 1994. The second Menendez trial would not begin until October 11, 1995, a little over a week after Simpson’s acquittal, and proceeded in relative obscurity until its April 1996 conclusion, when the jury reached a sentence of life without the possibility for parole. The week of the Simpson verdict, it was ruled that TV cameras would not be allowed in the courtroom for the retrial. The Simpson trial was not mentioned as a factor, but it didn’t have to be. TV cameras were originally banned from the first trial due to concerns they would be unduly intrusive, until Court TV demonstrated otherwise. The first trial had turned Court TV, as well correspondents like Terry Moran and Cynthia McFadden, into household names. It was only the second trial it carried gavel-to-gavel, following the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in 1991. But even before the ruling on the cameras, Court TV creator and then-chief Steven Brill announced the channel would instead be broadcasting The Hague’s International War Crimes Tribunal case involving charges arising from the Bosnian War. 

It took two trials, three different prosecution teams, three juries, and nearly seven years to convict Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were neither in immediate danger nor afflicted with severe mental disorders when they gunned down their parents. The unusual processing of the Menendez by the criminal justice system is not a function of their anomalous crime as much as it was a function of their relative status. The fact of the matter is, justice for the wealthy is qualitatively different in a criminal situation, and the murders of both of their parents left Lyle and Erik as the sole beneficiaries of the $14 million estate. (The estate was virtually depleted by the end of the first trial.)

Does anyone really think it would have taken nearly as many resources or as much time to prosecute a shooting murder this gruesome if it had occurred in a less affluent neighborhood? Amazingly, while Lyle and Erik were questioned by the police the night of the murders, and were even asked to produce the ticket stubs after they said they were at the movies, they were not asked to submit to a routine paraffin exam to determine whether either of them had fired a gun that night.

At the heart of the Menendez case is, admittedly, a legitimate question: How much can the circumstances of one’s life justify individual responsibility and culpability in a court of law? At the time of the trials, California, a state in which a death penalty sentence is still at least a nominal possibility for a case involving multiple homicides and special circumstances, had recently amended its evidence code to allow expert testimony regarding “intimate partner battering and its effects” to be admitted in criminal cases. The Menendez case proved to be an early test of that law, which did not necessarily apply to cases of parricide. With Erik Menendez’s flamboyant and already notorious lead attorney, Leslie Abramson, at the forefront, the case became a national obsession, a sideshow filled with bizarre and surreal details of a history of sexual and physical violence and intimidation and fear and a referendum on Jose and Kitty’s parenting rather than the specifics of their murders. Former neighbors and family friends and even a few relatives were paraded before the jury to disparage Jose as demanding and cruel and Kitty as downright desperate and pathetic. One of Lyle’s former girlfriends even testified about a dinner in which she implied the family seemed afraid Kitty was poisoning the food. 

It is a fact that after the arrests, Lyle and Erik read When a Child Kills, by Paul Mones, who also served as a consultant on the defense team. In the book, Mones wrote, “The heart of the parricide defense is the child abuse prosecution of the dead parent. The parent must be held accountable in death for the abuse.”

This obfuscation was a necessity, because as legitimate as it to ask how much the circumstances of one’s life can justify a criminal act, the brutality of the Menendez murders is premeditated and inexplicable. 

The fact that Kitty Menendez was found on the floor by the kitchen suggests she was crawling away from Lyle and Erik, which means they had entered the house from behind, through the French doors behind the sofa. With 12-gauge Mossberg shotguns, which were obtained illegally two days before using the I.D. of one of Lyle’s former friends, the brothers murdered their parents with a total of fifteen shots, which meant they had to stop long enough to reload the guns. Jose was shot five times, including a point-blank shot in the back of the head, and Kitty was shot ten times, including four shots to the head. They were both shot in the kneecaps. The shell casings were individually removed. The brothers’ bloody clothes, and the guns and shell casings, which were never recovered, had to have been disposed of in the time between the murders and the 11:47 p.m. phone call from Lyle to the Beverly Hills Police Department reporting the carnage of the scene in between sobs.

Why the brothers murdered their parents the way they did is an ultimately unknowable question but a haunting one. Erik testified at trial, “As soon as I burst through the doors, as soon as I saw them, I just immediately started firing. I didn't stop and look around. I just started firing.” Is that really true? Were there really no words exchanged after Lyle and Erik opened the doors and their parents turned around? It’s well known that, with his friend Craig Cignarelli, Erik wrote a 66-page screenplay called Friends, about a character named Hamilton Cromwell who murders his parents after learning he stands to inherit their $157 million fortune, and that Kitty even helped type it. After the arrests, The Los Angeles Times Magazine reported there was a second screenplay, which one source said contained details that “bear a striking resemblance to the way the murders of Jose and Kitty were actually carried out.” 

There is something particularly dark and fraught about Lyle, who wore his father’s shoes to his memorial service. According to reports in Vanity Fair and Playboy, just four days before the murders, Lyle called Kitty in the main house from the guest house after midnight and initiated a long, rambling and occasionally verbally abusive conversation in which he said at one point that he did not feel like a Menendez anymore. Vanity Fair also reported that Jose once intervened to pay off Lyle’s pregnant girlfriend to abort the child. According to court documents submitted during the legal proceedings over the admissibility of Oziel’s tapes, Lyle once asked Oziel if he was afraid and when Oziel responded that he did not choose to live in fear, Lyle coldly responded, “Neither did my father.” When one of his family members questioned the molestation and child abuse defense and expressed disbelief, Lyle was said to have coolly replied, “Well, that’s the way it’s going to be.”

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office frequently pointed to greed as a motive but, notably, the grand jury did not include the charge of committing murder for financial gain in its indictment. Certainly greed was a factor, as was hatred and resentment. Several family members would recall Jose talking about his will in the summer before the murders. One of the few public developments prior to the arrest was a December 1989 report Los Angeles Times that revealed a reference to Jose’s will was deleted from the family’s home computer after the murders.

But there had to have been other factors that led them to lie in wait, secrets that will forever stay between Lyle and Erik, along with what happened to the murder weapons and the real nature of the relationship with their parents and how that contrasted with the narrative they tried to perpetuate once they could no longer hide from the charges.

Dick Wolf is now looking for meaning in the case through the newest iteration of the Law & Order franchise, Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, which will inevitably be judged against the high bar set by Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. Yet while American Crime Story provided fresh insight into the politics and implications of the sensational murder trial without an explicit opinion on Simpson’s guilt, Wolf has said outright there is “a collective agenda” to the Menendez series because he believes the brothers should have been convicted on manslaughter charges. One of the show’s main writers has said it will highlight and emphasize the brothers’ tearful testimonies in the first trial. In his testimony, Erik claimed the urgency to commit the murders that night came from the fact that “I thought he [Jose] was going to kill me that night, and I thought he was going to have sex with me first.” Along with Lyle’s testimony, which included a dramatic moment in which he claimed to have sexually abused Erik when they were children, it was considered to be a compelling performance.

It should be noted that serving as a consultant for the series is Robert Rand, a freelance journalist who covered the case extensively for the Miami Herald, The Guardian, and Playboy. He interviewed the brothers prior to their arrests and on multiple occasions in prison, along with their family and closest circles of friends. His reporting on the case is essential, along with the late Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair and Ron Soble and John H. Johnson of the Los Angeles Times. However, Rand is unabashedly sympathetic to the Menendez brothers and their defense and during the first trial regularly squared off in Court TV segments against Dunne, who was famously pro-prosecution. 

Another component of the show’s agenda, according to Wolf, is “the degree of implicit political collusion between the judge and the district attorney’s office in the second trial to ensure a conviction.” It is true that a number of rulings and decisions in the second trial favored the prosecution: One jury was empaneled rather than two, limiting the chances for reasonable doubt. Expert testimony on the “abuse excuse” defense was severely cut back, as the prosecution contested its admissibility much more vigorously. The judge rejected the defense’s claim that the death penalty should not be considered at retrial because the district attorney’s office did not seek it in the Simpson case. 

The most consequential decision by Judge Stanley Weisberg, however, was to bar the “imperfect self-defense” argument for voluntary manslaughter that was permitted at the first trial, and which allowed the defense to argue that the defendants held an actual and honest but unreasonable belief that there was an imminent threat of death or deadly force was necessary. Weisberg concluded the argument did not apply because the brothers initiated the confrontation. Additionally, Weisberg limited the heat-of-passion defense to Jose. The life sentence penalties that were reached have been upheld on appeal. (Menendez: Blood Brothers, a Lifetime movie about the case released this summer that was generally forgettable, save for passable performances by Benito Martinez and Courtney Love as Jose and Kitty, also sought to depict the decisions at the second trial as being impartially unfair.)

The series will undoubtedly seek to humanize Leslie Abramson, with Edie Falco likely to earn acclaim on the scale of Sarah Paulson’s performance as Marcia Clark last year, if not quite as rapturous. Abramson, who at the time of the murders was a well-respected defense attorney who specialized in death penalty cases and who had just been elected president of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, certainly played an influential role in setting the agenda of the trials, from referring to the adult Menendez brothers as “the boys” to commanding the courtroom in numerous flippant exchanges with the judge. She became a celebrity in her own right. She was playing to both the courtroom and Court TV during the first trial, but her performance was clearly polarizing. A Playboy profile published in between the two trials pointed out that even though the juries for both brothers deadlocked, Erik’s jury split along gender lines, with women supporting manslaughter and men supporting first-degree murder charges, while the jury empaneled for Lyle, whose defense was led by Jill Lansing and whose testimony revealed he made most of the decisions leading up to the murders, did not. And besides, as Abramson bluntly herself put in the closing argument at the first trial, “The evidence in this case does not prove that Erik killed anybody.” Lansing, who will be played by Julianne Nicholson, received a fraction of the fifteen minutes of fame, although surely she shares credit for the mistrials, to the extent that can be considered a victory for the defense. (Lansing withdrew from the case after the first trial for personal reasons and Lyle had to be represented by public defenders at his second trial, while Abramson continued on as Erik’s attorney after working out an arrangement to be paid at the same annual rate of a public defender.)

Abramson became a larger than life figure over the course of the two trials, in between which she also served as a commentator on the Simpson trial for ABC News and secured a book deal. Abramson would ultimately fall to earth, and in a particularly undignified manner. What happened was: A few months after the arrests, Abramson arranged to have Dr. William Vicary, a forensic psychiatrist, meet and assess the brothers, and he treated Erik during the first trial. Vicary would later claim that the molestation charges were not rebutted during the first trial because the forensic psychiatrists employed by the prosecution had doubts after hearing the brothers’ testimony, a charge that was contested by at least one of the experts, Dr. Saul Faerstein. (Coincidentally, Faerstein was called to examine O.J. Simpson at Robert Kardashian’s house the day of the Bronco chase, one of many curious overlaps between the two double-homicide cases.) In his testimony during the penalty phase, Vicary was led to admit that he altered and deleted portions of the notes of his sessions with Erik at Abramson’s request after the prosecution incidentally noted a discrepancy. The affected passages all pointed to premeditation, including one instance in which Erik said that in the week before the murders he felt he hated his parents and “couldn’t wait. I wanted to kill them.” They also included a passage in which Erik discussed homosexual acts with other men at a young age. Abramson, who clearly had not anticipated the development, was forced to invoke the Fifth Amendment when she was asked about possible evidence tampering. Abramson eventually thought to waive her Fifth Amendment right and instead invoke attorney-client privilege, and a gag order was briefly imposed. Abramson was eventually cleared of misconduct due to “insufficient evidence” of a violation but the damage to her reputation in legal circles was done. Abramson’s memoir, for which Simon & Schuster paid $500,000 in 1994 and which was published in 1997, was originally to be titled My Life in Crime but was released with the more restrained title The Defense Is Ready: Life in the Trenches of Criminal Law. Abramson’s career as a TV legal pundit never took off and, aside from a brief stint replacing Robert Shapiro as Phil Spector’s lawyer in the Lana Clarkson murder case, her celebrity lasted little longer than fifteen minutes. Until now, perhaps, although Abramson has said she will not watch the show and has “nothing to say. Absolutely nothing.” (So don’t expect her to accompany Edie Falco to next year’s Emmys, basically.)

Dick Wolf claims, “Your mind is going to receive information that I think will change a lot of people’s attitudes.”

Is there really anything left to disclose about this case? Possibly. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office during Gil Garcetti’s reign was an intensely relentlessly political operation. Consider the fate of David Conn, who received widespread acclaim for his handling of the prosecution of the second trial (known around the D.A.’s office as “Menendez II: The Wrath of Conn”) but went so far as to tell the Los Angeles Times in a profile that he “wouldn’t mind” being the D.A. someday and said, “Menendez wasn’t my last big trial. It’s my first.” After the profile was published, Conn was passed over for a promotion and removed as acting head of the major crimes unit. In turn, Conn backed Garcetti’s opponent in the 1996 election and became a vocal critic and shortly after Garcetti was reelected, Conn was transferred to a “routine” assignment in suburban Norwalk, which he left for private practice. (Conn died in 2006.) The pressure the D.A.’s office was facing in the second trial was significant, especially after the circus of the Simpson trial. Who knows what “implicit political collusion” that could have led to?

Is there anything that should convince people the brothers deserve a more merciful sentence? I doubt it and I am deeply skeptical of the decision to tell the baroque tale of the Menendez murders with the perpetrators as victims deserving of sympathy. 

[go-redgirl]

Why Jerry Nadler’s ‘Constitutional Crisis’ Talk Is Utter Bull By David Harsanyi May 8, 2019 |

From the moment the central claim of the Russiagate conspiracy was decimated by the Mueller report, Democrats have generated a series of manufactured outrages to keep the conspiracy dream alive.

Why the theatrics? Well, the scope of the Trump “collusion” theory has radically contracted from its heyday.

What was once “Donald Trump personally colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election for the Kremlin!” is now “Why won’t the attorney general release the entire unredacted version of a report that exonerates the president of collusion!” It doesn’t have quite the same bite.

So Democrats have moved from conspiracies about Russia to conspiracies about the report debunking the conspiracy.

After a week of histrionics about Attorney General Bill Barr, who had offended Democrats and their media allies by writing a letter that accurately laid out the findingsof the special counsel’s two-year investigation before releasing it, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler began demanding the release of the unredacted report. The White House, as expected, ­asserted executive privilege.

Though the law clearly places discretion over the redaction with the attorney general, Nadler claimed assertion had triggered a “constitutional crisis.”

And committee Democrats quickly moved ahead with a contempt vote. Actually, some Democrats aren’t even content with simply holding Barr in contempt — they want to arrest the attorney general. “Its day in the sun is coming,” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said this week.

We have some precedent here. In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder was the first US attorney general in history to be held in both criminal and civil contempt. The Obama administration had refused to hand over specific documents that pertained to a specific law enforcement endeavor.

Operation Fast and Furious had cost lives, yet the Obama ­administration wouldn’t hand over memos that likely contradicted Holder’s sworn testimony on the matter. Instead, they asserted executive privilege.

I don’t remember Holder being led away in handcuffs.

It’s all an act, of course, meant to create the perception that Barr, in cahoots with Trump, is hiding the findings of Mueller’s unimpeded and open-ended investigation. For Democrats, instigating a contempt vote over a lightly redacted report is the best way to pretend we are living through another Watergate.

In the real world, the notion that a Trump antagonist like Mueller has buried vital evidence implicating the president in conspiracy or obstruction deep within the now-redacted sections of his report is dizzyingly silly. From the looks of it, Mueller spent more time describing Trumpian outbursts than looking for Russian interference.

SEE ALSO

Huckabee Sanders: Nadler is 'incapable' of questioning Barr

Democrats know full well that Mueller didn’t leave any of his impeachment fodder in the margins. Democrats, in fact, were so exceptionally uninterested in specifics of the redactions that when Barr offered a dozen members of Congress, six Democrats and six Republicans, the option of reviewing the minimally redacted report, not a single Democrat — not Chuck Schumer, not Nancy Pelosi and not Jerry Nadler — showed up to take a look. They didn’t even feign interest for appearance’s sake.

If they had, Democrats would have found they had access to more than 98 percent of the report, including 99.9 percent of the politically charged Volume II, according to Department of Justice. Nadler knows well that the sliver of redacted material shouldn’t be made public — most of it legally required.

Some of the redactions consist of grand jury material, some of it classified information, some of it evidence related to ongoing investigations (and perhaps this will matter later) and some of it material that would be damaging to reputations of individuals who haven’t been charged with any crimes.

There is a legitimate need for congressional oversight of the executive branch. For far too long, partisans have abdicated their constitutional duty. And when people like Nadler use that power as a political cudgel, they corrode the public’s trust.

Twitter: @DavidHarsanyi

[oldguardaudio]

PowerLine -> Statues of Limitation –

A monument falls in Durham

Democrats and the KU KLUX KLAN

Hey Libertards spend you time doing what you talk about, Feed some homeless or something. at HoaxAndCahnge.com

Daily Digest

About Trump’s “re-election” ad

Statues of Limitation

Rouhani: Iran Can Resume Nuclear Program In Hours

Logic. . .

A monument falls in Durham

About Trump’s “re-election” ad

Posted: 16 Aug 2017 10:38 AM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

John wrote about and posted what he calls Trump’s first re-election ad. The ad touts the record level stock market and the unusually low unemployment numbers. It doesn’t cite any legislative victories or foreign policy accomplishments. Nor could it.

As a re-election pitch, current stock market prices and employment numbers couldn’t be less relevant. The relevant numbers will be the ones in 2020, when Trump faces the voters. At that time, no one will remember or care about what the numbers were in mid-2017.

The ad is really intended, as John said, to remind voters of Trump’s record so far. And given unrelenting media hostility, it’s wise of Trump to tout his accomplishments. The level of his job approval is relevant to his ability to govern.

But are stock market prices and unemployment numbers really Trump accomplishments? Not to an appreciable degree, in my view.

Both continue trends from the Obama administration. The stock market’s ascent has accelerated, to be sure, and I think Trump’s victory — or at least Hillary Clinton’s defeat — played a role. But that part of the bounce predates Trump’s actual presidency.

As for employment, Ramesh Ponnuru points out that job growth has been weaker under Trump than it was during Obama’s last year in office. From February to July 2017, employment rose by 1.074 million jobs. From February to July 2016, it rose by 1.246 million. Thus, job growth in the Obama months was 16 percent higher.

As Ponnuru says, conservatives tend to be skeptical (at best) of claims that the president “creates jobs” — an assertion Trump applied to himself at his impromptu press conference yesterday. I don’t deny that a president’s polices have an impact on employment, but rarely is that impact experienced in the first six months of his presidency.

I agree with Ponnuru, however, that in the case of Trump his reduction in regulations and the prospect of future positive changes in economic policy might have (I would say probably have) strengthened the economy’s “animal spirits.” Thus, it may well be that Trump can, in Ponnuru’s words, “legitimately take credit for a small fraction of those 1.074 million jobs.”

Let’s hope those “animal spirits” will sustain the economy. We are now, what, eight years into an economic recovery? It’s very rare for a recovery to last for eleven years. Perhaps this one will because it was tepid (or for some other reason), but I wouldn’t count on it.

Thus, some significant legislative and foreign policy accomplishments would be especially welcome.

   Statues of Limitation

Posted: 16 Aug 2017 10:31 AM PDT

(Steven Hayward)

So we seem to be on our way to tearing down every statue related to the Democratic Party’s largest achievement in American history—the Confederate States of America. Funny how the Confederate battle flag, and now statues, didn’t start to come down until Republicans became ascendant in southern states. Democrats who had a monopoly grip on the South for decades had lots of time to take these steps, but didn’t. You’d almost think they were opportunists.

Rich Lowry pointed out that there is a statue in Baltimore of Roger Taney, and lo and behold it was taken down last night. Taney did more than perhaps any other figure to propel the nation into civil war with his reckless decision in Dred Scott that “the negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect,” which by implication legalized slavery throughout the entire U.S. and prohibited Congress henceforth from stopping its spread in the territories. All that was needed, as Lincoln pointed out, was one more case extending the principle Taney laid out to make slavery legal throughout the North. Had not the war intervened, maybe we would have had Ubergefell as the sequel to Dred Scott.

There may be a larger parallel between that time and today. I often like to share with students in class the summation of the defense lawyer in the case of Jacob Gruber, a Methodist minister who was put on trial in Frederick, Maryland, in 1818 on the charge of inciting a slave revolt. Gruber had spoken at a large outdoor meeting in Hagerstown about “the nation sin” of slavery, and as the large audience included several hundred slaves, Gruber was promptly arrested. Gruber’s was exactly the kind of abolitionist speech that Democrats in the 1850s like James Buchanan denounced as causing sectional rifts.

Here is the climax of the closing argument to the jury that Gruber’s defense attorney offered:

Any man has a right to publish his opinions on that subject [slavery] whenever he pleases. It is a subject of national concern, and may at all times be freely discussed. Mr. Gruber did quote the language of our great act of national independence, and insisted on the principles contained in that venerated instrument. He did rebuke those masters, who, in the exercise of power, are deaf to the calls of humanity; and he warned them of the evils they might bring upon themselves. He did speak with abhorrence of those reptiles, who live by trading in human flesh, and enrich themselves by tearing the husband from the wife—the infant from the bosom of the mother: and this I am instructed was the head and front of his offending. Shall I content myself with saying he had a right to say this? That there is no law to punish him? So far is he from being the object of punishment in any form of proceeding, that we are prepared to maintain the same principles, and to use, if necessary, the same language here in the temple of justice, and in the presence of those who are the ministers of the law. A hard necessity, indeed, compels us to endure the evil of slavery for a time. It was imposed upon us by another nation, while we were yet in a state of colonial vassalage. It cannot be easily, or suddenly removed. Yet while it continues it is a blot on our national character, and every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away; and earnestly looks for the means, by which this necessary object may be best attained. And until it shall be accomplished: until the time shall come when we can point without a blush, to the language held in the Declaration of Independence, every friend of humanity will seek to lighten the galling chain of slavery, and better, to the utmost of his power, the wretched condition of the slave.

Such was Mr. Gruber’s object in that part of his sermon, of which I am now speaking. Those who have complained of him, and reproached him, will not find it easy to answer him: unless complaints, reproaches and persecution shall be considered an answer.

Students often assume that Gruber’s lawyer must have been Abraham Lincoln, as his argument sounds so much like Lincoln’s line of argument in the 1850s. Lincoln was precocious, to be sure, but since he was born in 1809, he would have been just nine years old at the time of the Gruber trial.

No; instead, Gruber’s lawyer was. . . Roger Taney.

Which leads to the next question: what the hell happened to Taney? That’s a long story, but can be summarized briefly by the proposition that Democrats ceased to believe that slavery was a national sin—indeed they came to believe it was a positive good. (See Calhoun, Alexander Stephens, George Fitzhugh, etc.), and the first version of identity politics was born. In other words, Democrats aren’t that much different today than they were in the 1850s. To put it still one more way, when thinking about what the hell happened to Taney, you can begin to make out parallels to what the hell has happened to Democrats more recently.

P.S. Gruber was acquitted.

   Rouhani: Iran Can Resume Nuclear Program In Hours

Posted: 16 Aug 2017 08:22 AM PDT

(John Hinderaker)

When the Iran nuclear deal was being debated, much attention was paid to the question whether Iran would cheat on the agreement. My position was that they likely would, but they certainly didn’t have to. Iran got what it wanted up front–relief from sanctions and something like $1 billion. Having gotten what they wanted, Iran’s rulers could simply walk away from the agreement at whatever time they chose.

Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, made this point bluntly yesterday, while addressing Parliament:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned that if the US discards the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Tehran and the world powers, Iran will be able to revive all the nuclear capabilities that had developed before the start of the nuclear talks in November 2013.

“The new US statesmen should know that the failed experience of sanctions and force brought their previous administrations to the negotiating table and if they are inclined to get back to those experiences, Iran would certainly return in a short time — not a week or a month but within hours — to a situation more advanced than before the start of negotiations,” President Rouhani said, addressing the parliament in Tehran on Tuesday.

So if Iran can, at will, resume a nuclear weapons development status more advanced than when the agreement was entered into “within hours,” what did we buy for $1 billion and relief of sanctions that caused serious problems for the mullahs? Little or nothing.

Of course, it is possible that Rouhani is bluffing, but I see no reason to believe that. This is the eventuality that many foresaw when the ineffective “joint plan of action” was being debated.

   Logic. . .

Posted: 16 Aug 2017 08:12 AM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

is oppressive, patriarchal, and probably racist. At least it is in the increasingly numerous instances where it undermines the liberal narrative.

So I hesitate to point out that the following two things both can be true: (1) neo-Nazis are despicable and must take blame for the violence in Charlottesville and (2) the antifa left-wingers share responsibility for some of the violence.

President Trump has affirmed both propositions. Should he have affirmed the first one faster than he did? I think so.

However, I’m glad Trump is not letting go of the second proposition. Left-wing lawlessness is a growing problem in this country. It should not be swept under the rug. The fascists who are engaging in it need to be called out.

Standing up to the braying asses in the media during his press conference yesterday was the right thing for the president to do. I’m not a fan of Trump, and my view of his presidency is mixed. But I enjoyed watching (via replay) his performance.

   A monument falls in Durham

Posted: 15 Aug 2017 09:39 PM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

The crazed left has an uncontrollable urge not just to vent, but to destroy. The latest manifestation is the destruction in Durham, North Carolina of a monument to Confederate soldiers (“the boys who wore gray”).

I have no problem with removing monuments to Confederate generals and soldiers if that’s what the public wants. The monuments were erected because those in control of the political process at the time considered them worthy of the honor. If those now in control of the political process consider them dishonorable or evil, there’s nothing wrong with removing the monuments.

But there is plenty wrong with a group of activists pulling down monuments. By doing so, they usurp the power to decide who should be honored with a statue.

They also violate the law. The police shouldn’t stand by and watch, as they did in Durham. They should protect town property and break up any mob that can’t resist attacking it.

There are pragmatic reasons for doing so. People — protesters and bystanders — can be injured in the process of toppling statues or by the toppling itself. At some point, moreover, folks who don’t want to monuments taken down will start showing up to protect them. This may lead to more Charlottesvilles.

But the main reason why the police should protect monuments from mobs is that, in a democracy, mobs shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions for the rest of us.

North Carolina has a law, passed in 2015, that prevents removal or relocation of monuments. That law usurps the power of cities and counties to decide who should be honored with a statue. I think it should be repealed. Until it is, the law should be enforced.

   PowerLine -> Statues of Limitation – A monument falls in Durham PowerLine -> Statues of Limitation - A monument falls in Durham Daily Digest About Trump’s “re-election” ad…