Jezebel 
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New York, 3:38 AM
Wed Dec 23
63 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/23/09
11/23/09
It's not about Lori Drew. It's about Megan Meier and the legacy she left us. We have an obligation to focus on the kids like Megan who are, at this very minute, needing our help and support and protection.
11/23/09
I'd rather not people harass her, but I wouldn't cry if no one wants to give her a job.
11/23/09
11/23/09
11/23/09
@IBleedGlitter: The High Priestess of Tinsel: This.
11/23/09
11/23/09
11/23/09
#tips
11/23/09
11/23/09
Yup, because "karma" has certainly worked wonders on other criminal miscreants like Roman Polanski, OJ Simpson, guy released from prison early and killed dozens of girls... Yup, nothing more comforting than Christianized karma.
11/23/09
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11/23/09
11/25/09
You're right, Karma is not Christian but Hindu (and Buddhism mind you), but I did say ChristiaNIZED... as in your concept isn't the eastern kind.
Eastern Karma is strictly NON-RETRIBUTION. Let me Google that for you:
[lmgtfy.com]
"Eye for an eye", "do unto others as you would yourself", "sinners get theirs in the end"... Christian, not Karma.
The idea that karma is about someone getting payback is a Westernized cultural appropriation of karma.
It must be fun for you to use other people's beliefs to satisfy your trivialization.
PS. Polanski's out on bail. Yup, this stuff really works doesn't it?
11/25/09
Why, hello, omnipotent Jerkface, seer of all! Did you like that sweater I wore earlier? I picked it out especially for you. And you got to use the snarky little link you've probably had bookmarked in your browser for over a year now. Good for you! The universe works!
Now we can go back and forth cherry-picking Google links to prove our points on karma, but...well, actually you can. I have a karmic reward coming over in a little bit. I've been such a good girl!
11/23/09
Some part of me thinks that the prosecution just wanted Lori Drew to suffer.
11/23/09
11/23/09
11/23/09
If it had been merely another teenager doing this it would be par for the course for growing up. Shitty yes, no doubt.
Not to say that someone shouldn't be concerned with it but its just too subjective for criminal law. I think.
Creating a false identity with the intent to decieve or defraud someone online should be against the law.
11/23/09
How about libel cases? Or harassment cases? Aren't these all varying degrees of "hurting someone's feelings"?
11/23/09
11/23/09
I understand that we can't legislate "being nice" or even behaving in a non-harmful way, but really, this case is, IMHO, way, way beyond that. What this woman did was reckless and abusive.
#tips
11/23/09
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11/23/09
Who said anything about criminalizing unpleasantness?
11/23/09
I don't think the government should be in the business of keeping people from making you feel bad. It doesn't mean they're not scumbags for saying hateful things, but it does mean that hate isn't criminal.
You say that other countries pull it off just fine? Have any examples? The only ones I'm aware of are cripplingly oppressive.
#tips
11/23/09
11/23/09
Hate speech isn't simply making someone "feel bad".
Hate speech is a "type of speech which is used to deliberately offend an individual; or racial, ethnic, religious or other group. Such speech generally seeks to condemn or dehumanize the individual or group; or express anger, hatred, violence or contempt toward them." Not "insulting" someone. Not "being unpleasant".
When I think "oppressive nations" I don't think of most European nations.
France pulls it off pretty well. If any Europeans want to correct me, feel free, but I rarely hear them talk about the oppressive laws. I'm also fairly sure they don't prosecute people for "private" speech. Just their public stupidity.
[en.wikipedia.org]
11/23/09
11/23/09
There is a rather bizarre trend amongst that side to claim that if we somehow "acknowledge" how severe this particular subset of offensive speech is, criminalizing it, we'll somehow protect the innocent recipients of the hate.
No one in their right mind things the use of a racial epithet as an insult, e.g., isn't hate. But the people who want to criminalize it think that somehow punishing the speaker with jailtime will either (a) prevent future such hate, or (b) somehow heal the victim.
It will do neither.
All it will do is encourage the hateful speaker to do it in a way that allows him/her to circumvent the law.
Even leaving aside the obvious reasons for keeping the government from engaging in content-specific targeting of speech (thankfully this is blatantly unconstitutional), it's just as obvious that the better solution is to teach our children that hate speech is nothing more than unpleasant.
Why do you want your kids to CARE when someone says something hateful? Shouldn't they just disregard it - and the speaker - as nothing? As inconsequential?
#tips
11/23/09
And again, I remind you, I am actually not in favor of criminalizing it. But that doesn't mean I would ever dare write it off as mere "unpleasantness."
11/23/09
11/23/09
You're continuing to speak nonsense. I never said the "victim" is to blame when someone speaks hatefully against them. I said that the victim can, however, be insulated all such harm by just being educated properly. Then, there is no "victim" because no injury can occur.
You cannot apparently distinguish between saying that the "victim" can proactively defend themselves by disregarding hateful speech and saying that the "victim" is the only person at fault.
Again, begging? Every single one of your posts is calling for the government to protect you against scary speech.
Moreover, I notice you are ignoring my point about your vulgarity, hateful slander (the rape comment), etc. I can't help but notice that your posts are still there, containing the precise hateful language you seek to make criminal.
11/23/09
Hey, asshole, putting words into a person's mouth is called lying. And on a feminist website, where the concept of 'no' means no---that's an important line not to cross.
You're even more of an anus than I thought.
#tips
11/23/09
Every one of your posts - at least the ones not dedicated to using vulgarity in precisely the way you think should be criminalized - in this thread has been in support of government censorship of free speech. It's not a lie, it's fact.
So now you've called me a dipshit, asshole, anus, and falsely claimed I blame rape victims for their own assault. Why do you think good of yourself?
Oh, and of course you've repeatedly claimed you were done replying to me, but then continued to post your defamatory, disgusting and vulgar responses. Why isn't that harassment under your definition?
#tips
11/23/09
11/23/09
in fact, all she's done is engage in personal attacks.
#tips
11/23/09
Sick women, sad case.
11/23/09
Children do not develop proper social values anymore. Community service has gone from being a noble pursuit, to be something one is punished with. Instead of reaching out to others, we are becoming more insular, hiding behind the fortress walls of our homes, paying little attention to what goes on outside. Ranting and shouting has replaced communication and discourse.
Lori Drew represents our new society, a society where people are no longer people, but objects. In essence, our society has a collective case of autism.
11/23/09
You beat a kid on the playground you can see scars...you beat up a kid online you can't see the emotional scars.
The internet has brought with it both wonderful inovations in communication and abject horrors. It's up to Reality to sort out the mess. But remember we are barely 20 years into redefining human communication in this way, and only 100 years or so if you count all of the 20 century( TV Radio ect).
Still in baby stage in the big picture.
#tips
11/23/09
11/23/09
"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers."
11/23/09
That's just plain ridiculous. It's the same precise complaint lobbed by inexplicably nostalgic people since the ancient Greeks. I'd presume that everyone was doing it before hand, but we only have records of it dating back until then.
11/23/09
Society has changed, and to ignore that fact is to ignore human history, where change is the only constant. The societal divides are sharper and more easily enumerated now, given the unlimited forums that people have to express their ideas. A child is now exposed to things which would have been scandalous one hundred years ago, and parents seem unable to cope with the tide of information. Facebook and MySpace have replaced the TV as babysitter, and neither one of them has the filters that television has. True, even TV is a wasteland of mindless babble, but it's far easier to turn off than the Internet, which is now a ubiquitous part of life that is slowly outstripping television.
Bury your head in the sand if you like, but Lori Drew and Megan Meier are only the tip of a very ugly iceberg.
11/23/09
First, it's irrelevant whether you're a parent or not. Your successes or failures with your children aren't indicative of anything about culture as a whole, positive or negative. Anecdotes aren't data.
Second, you claim (without any actual evidence or research) that people can "insulate themselves from their behavior even easier now than the could 100 years ago", but how so? You say that YouTube, etc. have "spurred an increase in negative behavior", but how do you know? Where is your actual study of whether more or less negative behavior is occurring? I've never found a single such claim in any scholarly work I've studied over the last few decades, and I'm pretty sure I never will since it's a specious claim. You're just asserting these things, not arguing for their existence or showing evidence thereof.
Third, you quite absurdly and falsely claim that I'm saying society hasn't changed. Of course it changes; it changes constantly. However, you act as if this somehow supports your conclusion, when it doesn't at all. You think societal divides are worse now than 100 years ago? Are you completely ignorant of what the world was like in the early 1900s? When racism, sexism and other bigotries were not only acceptable but legally enforceable? When bastardized versions of science (e.g. phrenology) purported to actually show that people were better or worse than one another based on their physical attributes?
I think you're just a frustrated parent who isn't happy with their own performance (by your own description) and who is apparently blaming others (i.e. society as a whole) for whatever shortcomings you're perceiving.
#tips
11/23/09
If I do something stupid today, the whole world can know about it tonight. That was not the case before the internet.
11/23/09
#tips
11/23/09
#tips
11/23/09
Humanity: Chasing youngsters off its lawn since 5000 BC.
11/23/09
You cannot scar someone emotionally if they don't care about your opinion. If the child understands why some opinions are worthless, and the speakers even more so, then you don't need a government censor to intervene in your daily lives' conversations.
#tips
11/23/09
11/23/09
11/23/09
In short, dipshit, you're all about excusing the attackers and blaming the victims. "Unpleasant", you say. "Offensive," you say, as if somebody didn't raise a pinkie finger when sipping tea at the tea party. You do think you're so clever, but I have a news flash for you: the only person you're fooling is, perhaps, yourself.
If you're the big Internet Lawyer, shouldn't you have something Big and Important to do?
#tips
11/23/09
Do you honestly think that's a legitimate way to argue your point? Do you honestly not see the childish petulance in words like that?
Moreover, now you're resorting to vulgarity by calling me a "dipshit".
Honestly, you think you're speaking well here?
By the way, the hate speech regulations you're hoping for would be holding you criminally liable, now, right? Or is it okay to use hateful slurs like "dipshit" and falsely slander someone by suggesting they're anti-victim in rape cases in your mind, but not okay to say something racist?
What a hypocrite.
#tips
11/23/09
#tips
11/23/09
#tips
11/23/09
11/23/09
10/01/09
Kids don't know enough about laws for them to be a real deterrent anyway.
10/01/09
10/01/09
I didn't tell my grandparents who I lived with at the time about it, because I knew they'd just discount it, like they discounted all of the bullying at school. Even the TEACHERS got in on it, it was that bad.
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
don't get me wrong. cyberbullying, and any type of bullying for that matter, is wrong. but i think we too often take a reactionary approach by passing a law to punish someone after the fact, instead of being more proactive and trying to change the culture that allows this to happen in the first place.
laws like this seem like an excuse for elected officials to wipe their hand of the issue and say, "there. we did something. moving on." and then the issue is forgotten.
10/01/09
I walk to the bus stop with my 4 year old sons and 6 your old daughter every morning. There's always a group of kids, I'm guessing ages 5-9, across the street, waiting with their mom. Today, she wasn't there.
From the moment we arrived, they were taunting my kids. Screaming across the street, mocking anything they overheard my children saying, etc. My daughter was clearly bothered and clinched my arm. My sons were pretty oblivious to it. I was *this* close to warning them. (Stop or I'm telling your mother, etc) Right then, she arrived and they stopped. I didn't say anything.
The situation left me really uncomfortable. What should I do if it happens again? Inform their mom? The school? One of the kids is in my daughter's class and she previously said he's mean to her.
10/01/09
My husband and I have been discussing bullying a lot lately, and how we dealt with it. My father always counseled me to punch them. Get the first hit in, do it in a public place where it is likely to be broken up quickly, and be loud about it. That approach garnered me a trip to the police station, but I was never picked on again. I don't know how I am going to counsel my child.
10/01/09
And cause this is a situation between girls, its always going to be name calling and insults and the like (for the most part). So difficult. We're practicing her 'oh go fuck yourself' death stare right now.
10/01/09
10/01/09
The thing is, once it gets to the point of physicallity, it's gone too far in my opinion. Better for your daughter to control when, where and how it goes down.
10/01/09
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10/01/09
To my knowledge a lot of the law regarding how juvenile cases are handled in general is case law that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from judge to judge. Prosecutorial discretion also plays a role in how teens are tried and what options regarding rehabilitation/restitution are offered.
Adding to this is the fact that many juvenile records are eventually sealed, which is generally a good thing, but makes it harder for people outside the legal system to understand how these types of cases work.
So although the law can be applied to teens, there are a lot of questions about how it would be applied that haven't been answered.
10/01/09
@haystacks: Thanks, Captain Obvious.
10/01/09
Current life going-ons: MiniBelle and her BFF are having an issue with another girl in their grade. AnotherGirl has been insulting them, teasing, calling them names, and in the case of the BFF, sending nasty textmessages to the BFF. Last week, AnotherGirl called them 'bitches' at lunch. When the BFF went to the school guidance counseler about what's been going on, the counseler told her to call the cops.
Let me be perfectly clear: there were no threats of violence. The girls are all 12. The counseler's first reaction was 'call the cops' instead of 'address this with AnotherGirl and her parents'. This sits so badly with me. To me, this is a place where the schools and parents need to intervene and deal with the issue. Its not a legal matter, and given the zero-tolerance policies in many schools these days, it concerns me that instead of addressing the underlying issues that set off this bullying, its just straight to punishment.
As a child, I was harassed so badly I was withdrawn from elementary school and placed in another campus. I was offered no help from my school despite them knowing what was going on and numerous conferences with the principal and classroom teachers. Sometimes, I still have mild fantasies about popping this girl in her face, and I'm 34. But I still don't think it was criminal. Reprehensible? Yeah. But not criminal.
Again, I'm conflicted. I completely think that what Lori Drew did needs to be punishible by law. But the average school yard bully situation? I don't know.
10/01/09
However, this is one of the many problems with our country. A kid cannot resolve a situation in a peaceful manner, so they go to an administrator or a counselor for advice/help/resolution. Instead, they are told to call the cops? How about a little bit of responsibility on the part of the counselor/admin?
Back when I was a small kiddicus, we punched bullies in the face. Then got punched in the face, wrestled around for a bit until someone got the upper hand, it got broken up and you were (usually) left alone... for some other kid who wouldn't punch dudeman in the face.
Violence isn't the answer, but if this little brat is giving your kid a bunch of grief, nothing shuts an 8 year old up like another 8 year old's fist.
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
Given that the counseler has been pretty level headed on any number of other matters, I can't help but assume her reaction is a product of the ridiculous zero-tolerance policies in affect at the moment in our district.
@kiddicus My advice to my daughter started out with 'please do not punch this girl in the face, no matter how much you may want to, because you will get kicked out of school'. When I was a bit younger than her, I nailed some guys in the nads on the playground after they were harassing me. They never harassed me again, which was very satisfying, but when I think about this incident as an adult, I can't imagine the kind of trouble I would get into if I did that today (er, as a child, not as an adult running around kicking small boys in the crotch).
10/01/09
And I think a large part of the problem with bullying today comes from the fact that kid's AREN'T just allowed to punch it out between each other anymore. Obviously that is not always going to work and there's a point at which intervention is necessary, but I think intervening before giving the kids a chance to have it out amongst themselves sometimes just inflates the whole problem
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10/01/09
My question about VB's post is does this mean that talking smack about someone online should be a criminal offense? That seems very extreme to me.
10/01/09
10/01/09
But yeah, it would be hard to prosecute, and I'm kind of iffy on it. But there should be laws in place to punish people who bully directly online (oxymoron??).
10/01/09
Does that make sense? I know it's crazy, but that's how I felt as a 13 year old girl. I knew if I went to the cool girls' parties I'd be snickered at and bullied, but my god if I got invited I would be there with bloody bells on. Because not going would make me an even bigger loser/
10/01/09
No. But they can make people face consequences for their actions. Laws don't 100% stop anything.
10/01/09
09/29/09
09/29/09
09/29/09
09/29/09
I would love to believe that the prosecutors have some super secret legal trick up their sleeves to ensnare Ms. Drew with. But sadly, this is not Law and Order. If they had anything, I'm sure they would have used it already. I have to content myself that Ms. Drew will find her punishment in the court of public opinion. We are far harsher judges, and there is no appealing our verdict.