Force of Absence

"I mean, you've got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy."-- Joe Biden's sterling liberal? honesty, circa 2007

With her tinnitus in full force, the weary dowager should be rolling back to her sunken coil mattress which may be viewed as a reminiscent freedom in a few weeks, but has strolled back in to contemplate cessation of following SVU regularly with so much of the original ensemble gutted. Peter Gallagher's scar tissue as Deputy Chief Dodd doesn't fill the spaces left by Florek, who seemingly convinced us of world weary NYC skepticism, and as much as can be said for Hargitay's longevity, doing the expected positive spin being quoted "It's like a new show," in reality the remnants of Wolf's formula are more like a funeral dirge; Benson cannot carry the series to it's twilight with the implied intimacy between her and the IAB barker  who was her long time nemesis with Meloni always  burly. Ice -T seems to have nothing to do with himself except to back run Ghost Whisperer, which is referenced for a reason: namely, I am not positive I have a favorite SVU episode. I do savor some of the more acerbic Law and Orders, and when in the mood agree with standard critical sentiment that CI is the best of them, but SVU does have tendencies to make sexual victimization overwhelming, only rarely hitting the right keynotes in relation to the reverberating impact of sexual exploitation. The Hewitt rape stalker episode is one of them, mystified as anyone as to what drug they put Jennifer on to get that raw desperate helplessness seeking any outlet elicited from her sparse range, since she failed in Criminal Minds, a formula serial as nearly despised as the actress. Criminal Minds seeps  a bit of a Chicago mindset to it which I never enjoyed and shall elucidate, if I'm able to keep my online account afloat, at a later date. L&O is more forgiven because it is more New York, or was, with Beltzer and Florek. You do not have to fill the dowager in on what particular womb Noah was ejected from. She doesn't fucking care, but it looms ahead that a freaking curtain call is in order. The show lost its force with Pino's entry after Cold Case. Actors have contracts and it's a business, but milking an urban concept crime drama to the last wrecking ball never made much sense. SVU has little capital on which to retire and return as a special we might eagerly relish from hospice.    

The complex nature of human decency

What Lisa Glatt actually wants to say is the Bill Cosby we thought we knew actually exists, that this Bill Cosby we loved was decent and charming with her mother's memory, but Salon is such a bleeding heart progressive vehicle, that Glatt has to diminish an event that is important to her mother's memory.

Now, as you know, I follow Joan Tarshis, and I respect her memory, her emotional pain at the suppression of self blame. I have a lot of that. My trust was abused in numerous instances, including my very brief attempted date rape, but this doesn't mean, within those violations of interpersonal dignity, that Cosby isn't good, in certain respects, and contributors like Glatt should not fear this, nor is everything about being an icon a gross distortion. I do not get the joke about Wilt's shyness. I would not have been able to join in the humor of what was being underscored, but still. Americans still have a great deal of difficulty, unlike the French, with handling the more salient aspects of human need.

I have not yet been forcibly penetrated, and George Will, the embattled columnist, would say the number of hits I've taken veers on triviality, and taken out of context, he is probably right: Rick trying to force his penis through my robe and clenched legs was sordid but not truly traumatic. Beaky trying to rape me in the middle of my crush on Tassoni was as deflationary as Joan's account of her struggle with the celebrity she obviously looked up to, and I got lucky. I could not stop Beaky, his hands were up my blouse after I got home from that party before I could sneeze, and he made me jerk, but he was too stoned to make me eat that bullet.

Adding up my totals is another matter. Perhaps I over-reacted to former supervisor Linda's graphic statement of her sexual pleasure: I was, after all, soliciting her advice because I am plagued by dryness, however I stated it, and I showed her a Tassoni love poem (all dried up) but her need to be domineering and over the top was unexpected, and shocked me, even if I opened the door; it is too much. Destroying what we need to admire about Cosby's fictional restraint, responsibility of manner, destroying what reticence would, supposedly, increase in value, so yes, I mourn the luxury of ignorance for our greater good.

Naivete

Bill Cosby needs to be prosecuted. If progressives believe Darren Wilson evaded a fair verdict, and I don't, whatever the inconsistencies of his grand jury testimony, something needs to be done to alleviate the accusers of the comedian, as well, and this is where I disagree with most of the Post's opinion writers on the matter, statue of limitations be damned. Kathleen, having a deadline to meet, doesn't speculate on whether NBC protected Cosby as a brand name asset, and liability may be easier to sustain against a big network. This should be investigated. I cannot claim shock. Merely minimal awareness, but the details are making me sick, turning my stomach, and this is why we're all guilty, myself included, never paying the old man's innuendo any mind.

But some of his accusers have their own culpability, just as I do. Tarshis is on the record as saying she blamed herself for many years, and this is easy to comprehend. I cannot blame myself for my mother's low life, sometimes dangerous strays, as I had no ability to get away from them, but I blamed myself for trusting my former supervisor Linda C Dezenski, as I admitted to Brian Sims aide, in tears. I *talked* to her, told her things, trusted her, and the humiliation this purchased me was and is too much to bear. Did it end her career at Liberty earlier than she would have liked? Maybe not directly, but nothing I have written about her, our interaction, is hearsay: the email threads, Liberty's assurances to me before doing me incalculable economic harm, can be traced, verified-- but I am culpable, and should have restrained myself. The trauma from that and subsequent instances, like losing unrestricted Paratransit access, the building renovations when I was absent reliable power chairs, the abuse, I am lucky to be alive.

But I'd consider it a significant lack of judgment to go to a bungalow of any sort with a celebrity like Cosby, and drink with him, by myself-- this is not to imply that Joan was looking for sexual trouble due to the fact that she was 19 and star struck, but whether or not it was the last year of the flower power decade, she displayed a critical lapse in judgment, and in Hill's case, this lapse falls on her parents. Hill was a minor, and if her allegations have any merit, she should have had an escort. Their unwillingness, or inability, to file charges within the appropriate time frame is another factor, just as it is in my case.

Statutory limitations should offer at least some latitude for the stability of the victim: I wasn't strong enough to win a settlement from Liberty Resources in the immediate aftermath of their breach, and can understand the power of that stigma. Robinson may be factually correct that serial rape has a time window, but serial revictimization is also a killer of women, crippling and impairing notwithstanding that some victims remain physically intact. 

Merci, Todd Akins

I'd go further than WaPo's editorial board. Every woman who stretches her thighs wide open to get humped is a victim. Some learn to like it, but I think everyone with a vagina carries the psychic scars of hymen breaking penetration. You know what my first lover told me?

"I'm gay."

And I did not get it; now I do, and yes, the memory hurts, rather badly, despite the passage of time, despite my married gallants. My first time making love, and this is what I get hit with, twenty four years old. If my stepfather had in fact raped me, I doubt things would have turned out much differently. That does not mean the right wing is wrong about psycho-sexual gradations, only that Akins has the mental acuity of a wart hog.