Rant of the Week

50 Shades of Jian Ghomeshi

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The first lie is that anyone who dares to question the almost hysterical rush to pile on Jian Ghomeshi, is therefore defending Jian Ghomeshi. Even when what is being criticized is the distasteful spectacle of the media hyping a particular issue beyond all reason and rationality. But hey, Ebola might be over soon: we need to whip up something to keep the public reading. 

I have now read and heard three specific commentators who insist that what this means for our justice system is that women are always telling the truth in these matters and must always be believed. This very morning on the CBC, one of their panelists in a discussion of why women are so reluctant to bring charges against a man who assaults her, asserted that the justice system must be changed so that the victim does not have any burden of proof.

The accused is guilty until proven innocent.

This is a repulsive, stupid, deeply offensive idea.

Joel Rubinoff in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record raised the issue of why, to his credulous incredulity, would anyone make up something so humiliating? So they must be telling the truth.  I can't believe that anyone, in 2014, still believes this.  In first place, why would the woman be humiliated?   Some guy was a jerk and you don't want to say anything because it makes you feel humiliated?  Is it awful to humiliate someone?  It is awful to engage in the public shaming of someone?  Is it different?

He couldn't have invested the slightest effort in checking into his theory: has any woman ever lied about being sexually assaulted?

How wickedly casual this upending of the foundations of our justice system slips into the conversation. It should not be countenanced. It is outrageously, fundamentally, horribly wrong.

 Oh, they say, but it makes it so difficult to punish people. It should be difficult. History is loaded to the brim with governments and authorities and mobs who made it easier to arrest and imprison people. It has taken hundreds of years and millions of lives to establish the principle that no one may be imprisoned unless it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he or she has committed a crime.

The last reason anyone should contemplate sacraficing that principle is this media frenzy piling on one particularly distasteful individual. The second last reason might be because of one shooting in Ottawa.

It's also something of amusing paradox that, while insisting that women are never believed, virtually everyone in the media believes them. They all go on and on about how Jian Ghomeshi is a monster who needs to be locked up because, as Elizabeth May says, you should "always believe the women" (unless you're a 15-year-old pimp from Ottawa). Is there even a single pundit out there who does not believe the women?  (Haven't you even read "To Kill a Mockingbird"?)  Yet, the blather from the CBC and Toronto Star and even the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, goes on and on about how our society constantly excuses male aggression and abuse and ridicules the victim. Who? Who is excusing it? I'm sure there are some marginal tabloids and perhaps Fox News, but nobody serious is defending Ghomeshi.

A national radio program is raising the allegations against Ghomeshi and treating all of them as fact and simultaneously complaining bitterly that nobody ever believes the women and that that should be fixed by simply ordaining that the women who charge men with bad behaviour should always automatically be believed, as if there is not the slightest evidence that any woman ever lied about what a man did to her.

It even made it's way to the Ontario Legislature where, long, long before any trial or investigation, the NDP asserts that this proves that the governnment needs to do more to prevent workplace sexual harassment.  Like what?  Make it "more illegal"?

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