Never ones to let an opportunity to grift go by, Palin-bots use Joe McGinniss book as excuse to plea for more donations to SarahPAC. While also encouraging Todd Palin to commit assault and battery.

This comes from the site of Stacy McCain, the same little racist cockroach that helped to make up ridiculous stuff about me back when I did the "Splitsville" post, and threatened to out Audrey if she did not stop blogging, so I do NOT encourage anybody to click this link unless they have a strong stomach and a stiff drink at the ready.

Now get ready to witness the puffed out chest and bow legged strutting of perhaps the most pathetic little mama's boy on the internet.


Joe McGinniss deserves The Mother of All Ass-Whuppings, and Todd Palin ought to give him exactly what he deserves. 

So I’m asking readers to go make a $25 donation to SarahPAC to help defray Todd’s legal expenses when he shows up at McGinniss’s first book signing and pounds that scurvy worm into a bloody pulp.Please give $25 to SarahPAC, so that we can bail Todd Palin out on that assault charge — and then fly him to the next Joe McGinniss book signing to deliver yet another brutal ass-whupping. 

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Just give $25 to SarahPAC, you see, and we’ll cover Todd Palin’s legal expenses and fly him to wherever Joe McGinniss appears in public, turning McGinniss’s book tour into a nationwide beatdown tour. 

After McGinniss gets out of the hospital from his first ass-whupping, he’ll probably get a restraining order against Todd. Still, Random House will be forced to hire armed security to protect Creepy Joe because, hey, what’s a restraining order to an insulted husband who’s got thousands of loyal supporters donating $25 each to cover his legal expenses?

I don't think that ANY of us are surprised that the Palin-bots response to somebody telling the truth about Sarah Palin is to threaten the source of that truth with violence. After all we have seen that time, and time again.

Little Stacy even goes so far as to make up imaginary news stories that might be printed if his violent little boy fantasy were to play out:

New York Post, Oct. 6, 2011 
PAPA GRIZZLY 
Author of Palin Smear Book Hospitalized,Todd Charged After ‘Brutal’ NY Assault 

Joe McGinniss underwent emergency surgery Wednesday night after police say the author was beaten senseless by Republican presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s husband Todd at a Manhattan party where McGinniss was signing copies of his new book about the former Alaska governor. 

“It was one of the most brutal attacks I’ve ever seen,” said Venona Wineglass, who was waiting in line to get her copy of the controversial anti-Palin book signed at the Upper West Side reception when, she said, Todd “came out of nowhere” and began punching McGinniss. “He was just like bam, bam, bam, and it took three guards to pull him off.” 

While police charged Todd Palin with assault and resisting arrest, his wife was campaigning in South Carolina, two weeks after officially announcing her GOP presidential candidacy. Her campaign spokesman refused comment on the McGinniss incident, while the candidate — currently a distant third in polls, behind Rick Perry and Mitt Romney — told a rally in Spartanburg, S.C., that she wants to “focus on the issues important to ordinary Americans and not be distracted by the lamestream media.”Surgeons at St. Lukes Roosevelt Hospital expect McGinniss to be able to continue his book tour despite his injuries . . . 

Does anybody else imagine that this fucktard is using his special velvet tipped tweezers to rub one out as he types out his violence riddled homoerotic fantasies?

What is sort of surprising is that he would encourage Todd Palin to commit a crime that might get him locked up in a local jail somewhere far from the apron strings of his wife, or the protection of his Alaska friends.

Can any of you imagine what would happen to Todd Palin in jail? Somehow I think that he would emerge with a whole new respect for what Glen Rice did to Sarah back in '87.

Now I do understand why little Stacy has this hero worship thing going for Todd.

I mean Todd IS from Alaska, and people in the lower forty-eight are inordinately impressed with that.

And sadly for little Stacy he DOES look like this...

..so probably anybody who is NOT a chain smoking, asthmatic, with bad teeth probably seems like a God to the pathetic little cockroach.

However Stacy's little fantasy will of course remain unfulfilled as everybody who knows the Palins knows that Todd is a pathetic bullying cuckold who has spent many years hiding behind his wife's skirts.

Simply put he will not do a damn thing!  Not unless Sarah can hire somebody to ghostwrite some balls for him that is!

I know it is hard to learn that your hero has feet of clay, but hey little man that's not the worst of it.

Your heroine also has boobs of water!

Guns don't kill people. Until they do. (Or almost do.)

Courtesy of the Newsminer:

Fairbanks police are investigating a report that a 5-year-old boy accidentally shot his 3-year-old sister in the chest with a .357 revolver Friday afternoon in an apartment near Party Palace on Peger Road.

The girl was in stable condition as of Friday evening and had been flown to Anchorage, officer Alana Malloy said. 

The girl’s parents drove her to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, where police were called at 2:42 p.m. The gun belonged to the children’s parents and it was not immediately clear why the boy had access to it, she said.

You can already imagine what the father's argument was for purchasing this weapon. 

"We need to for protection.  The world is a dangerous place. Think of the kids."

Yes think of the kids.

A day ago this 5 year old boy was just a regular kid who had NOT just blown a hole in his little sister's chest with a .357 handgun.  And the suddenly in the blink of an eye, and the twitch of a finger, he was.

The good news is that it sounds like the little girl will pull through.

The bad news is that she will undoubtedly be returned to a family that clearly cannot protect her from their stupidity.

The mother of Christina Taylor Green: "I didn't know what had happened, but I knew it was bad."

I will warn you ahead of time that this story about the death of little Christina, and how her mother and family dealt with it, is heart wrenching.

However I feel it is an important story for people to read, especially for those who have a hard time understanding the devastating effect that easy access to handguns and assault weapons have on our citizens.

From AZ Central:

To the gunman, they probably looked about the same size - Hileman, tiny at not quite 5 feet, and Christina-Taylor, the tallest kid in third grade. Maybe he didn't know he was shooting a child. It doesn't matter. He did. 

Hileman was hit three times trying to shield her young charge. Christina-Taylor was shot once. The two fell to the pavement next to each other, bleeding. Hileman looked into the little girl's eyes and, in her best mom voice, admonished, "Don't you leave me, Christina-Taylor Green. Don't you die on me." 

But the 9-year-old was one of six people killed that day. Their names are written on six white wooden crosses that stand in memorial across Ina Road from the Safeway. Christina-Taylor's name is on the fifth one. Thirteen other people, including Hileman and Giffords, were shot and lived. 

A surgeon entered then, trailed by three nurses. He was crying, and so were the nurses, and then Green knew for sure. The surgeon sat next to her and said, "We tried the best we could." His voice caught, and he choked out: "We tried the best we could. Your daughter passed away." 

Green pinched her arm again and again. It still hurt. But this wasn't real. It couldn't be real. 

"This is the worst dream ever," she thought. 

And yet, ever the mother, ever the nurse, Green thanked the surgeon, repeating his words: "I know you tried your best. It's OK. Thank you." 

She looked into the face of her son sitting beside her, his eyes searching her face. 

"Can we see Christina now?" Dallas asked.He had heard the police officer, and the surgeon, but maybe he needed to hear the words from his mother for them to be true. 

"Christina is in heaven, Dallas," Green told him, and then she cried, holding her tearful son. 

Every death caused by a handgun in this country seems senseless, but this one, at least for me, just seemed especially unnecessary.  And especially painful.

However if the anger we feel over such a senseless act of violence translated into citizens demanding that lawmakers create laws making access to handguns significantly more difficult for those people who simply should NEVER have access to a weapon whose sole purpose is the ending of a human life, then perhaps little Christina's death would serve some higher purpose.

By the way speaking of senseless acts perpetrated on the citizens of this country, and I am not saying the two are directly related, today is the third anniversary of John McCain's announcement that he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate.

One cannot help but wonder how much better the country would be right now if he had NOT allowed himself to be bullied into making such a regrettable choice.

Little girl beaten to death in the name of God.

I am not going to use this incident to slam Christianity, or the teachings of the Bible. But I am going to say that we have learned SO much more about how to raise our children in the thousands of years that have passed since those books were written that following the guidelines for parenting that are laid out in the Old Testament is just nuts.

There is NO excuse for brutalizing a child, and if you believe in a God that condones or encourages such behavior, than my tolerance for your religious choice has to come to an end.

As hard as it is too watch this video I think it is important, because there are forces in this country that are demanding that we go back to a time when we received out instructions for how to live our lives, raise our children, and treat our spouses, from religious leaders instead of educators, scientists, and therapists.

There is a real attempt these days to discredit intelligence and to replace it with faith. In other words to believe, rather than to think. And in my opinion it is that kind of slippery slope which ultimately results in this kind of tragedy.

(H/T to CNN.)

Rick Santorum believes that allowing women to terminate the pregnancy which resulted from their rape would be to traumatize them twice. Wait, what?

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

"Would you allow no exceptions for cases of rape on incest?" Fox News host, Byron York asked. "Polls have shown that large majorities of Americans support some exceptions for abortion. Are your views too much, even for many conservatives to support?" 

"That child is an innocent victim," Santorum replied. "To be victimized twice would be a horrible thing. It is an innocent human life, genetically human from the moment of conception. We in America should be big enough to try to surround ourselves and help women in those terrible situations who have been traumatized already. To put them through another trauma of an abortion, I think is too much to ask. So I would absolutely stand and say that one violence is enough."

Now ladies I might need all of you weigh in here, because I am just one of those pathetic creatures burdened with a "Y" chromosome, but is there really ANY comparisons between the feelings associated with terminating an unwanted pregnancy and being forced to carry your rapists child to term?

Personally I would have to imagine that every day of those long nine months could potentially add layers upon layers of trauma to the initial pain of the assault.

It sounds as if Santorum, who believes that life begins as conception, feels this same way about the "morning after" pill. As if taking a precautionary medication to ensure that the potential of fertilization resulting from a violent insemination does not further burden the victim, can be compared to the act of rape.

Does Rick Santorum not have a wife, or sister, or daughter?

What is it about these people that makes them place the rights of a cluster of cells above that of every other already living person on the planet. 

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they support the death penalty.

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they have little problem sending our troops to kill people all over the world.

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they argue against sending aid to places like Africa where famine is killing thousands of innocent people.

I will just never understand why the protection of a POTENTIAL life, can take precedence over the protection of an ACTUAL life.

And perhaps it is better that I NEVER understand that.

o'union - "For Me, for me, for me, ...the power!" (video 1m2s)

video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=QaSnDrZNEg8 source: Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (GPS) http://www.crossroadsgps.org

image source: http://www.cafepress.com/+Union+t-shirts

intimidation, force, coercion, death threats, bullying, union thugs, anarchy, chaos, disorder, violent overthrow of the government, putsch, greed, corruption, left wing, democrats, progressive socialisim, closed shop, street justice, Da Da Movement,

---

Secrets, Shame, and Bullying

¡Hola! Everybody…
Here's something I once wrote as a response to bullying.

* * *

-=[ Shame ]=-

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinion, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The whole fifth grade class was laughing at him… including me.

His father stumbled into the middle of a spelling test arguing loudly with our teacher. His clothes were ragged and he was unkempt. He was there to make a case for his son, Kevin, who sat next to me. Kevin and I were the smartest kids in the class. Kevin was painfully shy and no one really liked him to begin with, so now everybody, including me, was laughing at him because his father was obviously a dope fiend and he showed up in the middle of a spelling test totally out of his mind. He was nodding out even as he argued his son’s case.

I don’t remember all the details, but I remember the shame. I can still remember vividly the shame on Kevin’s face, the humiliation in the knowledge that now everyone knew his deadly secret -- that his father was a “junkie.” I remember this because I remember my own shame too, because I felt hypocritical.

It’s so easy to join the mob, so easy to feel a part of the crowd at the expense of someone else. The mob mentality has no mercy. Just look at most of today’s headlines and you’ll bear witness to what the mob mentality, or the very human tendency to create scapegoats, can create.

The fact was that I knew too well that shame. My own father was an addict, and I remember when all my friends encircled me one day while chanting, “Your father’s a junkie, your father’s a junkie.” And I remember how I felt so ashamed, so humiliated, and so angry. I couldn’t resolve the anger and shame I felt about my father because I loved him so much and all those feelings were too overwhelming -- I didn’t know how to process all that. I just stood there in the middle of that circle tears of anger flowing until I lashed out at the first one to get close enough to me and I punched him in the nose. And that’s when the mob turned on me and I went home with a split lip and torn clothes.

Deep inside I hated my father for making me go through that, but I also adored him. He was so intelligent. I used to love to sit on his lap and put my ear to his chest and listen to the soft rumble of his voice as he taught me something or spoke. My father was like a God to me. And now I hated him and I hated myself for hating him because it felt so wrong.

I just didn’t know how to handle the inner conflict. So I guess somewhere, somehow, I internalized all those conflicting feelings and became ashamed of myself for everything: for my father, for my feelings, for my inability to fix it.

My father was a greatest storyteller and on some days, he would gather all the kids on our block and entertain us with stories. I guess it was a testament to his storytelling gift that he could keep us transfixed on that Lower East Side stoop and you could hear a pin drop. I was raised in a neighborhood where drug addicts were a common part of the urban landscape. As children we would place bets on how far a junkie would nod. Some junkies would nod so far, bent over by the waist, that you would swear they would tip over and fall. But they never did.

My father would nod when he told my friends stories. At first, we would sit there for what would seem minutes because invariably there was a punch line, a lesson, or a resolution to the story. At first, my friends wouldn’t say anything, but then my father’s nodding got worse and one day while arguing over a game or a rule, as boys are won’t to do, it came out: the outspoken truth that my father was a “junkie.” It was a hard lesson to learn at such a tender age.

Yet I sat there and laughed at Kevin just like everyone else did and even at that young age (5th grade), I knew it was wrong. I knew that I was being a phony because I didn’t want to feel that shame anymore, I wanted to be like the others, so I joined in on the cruelty. In making Kevin the scapegoat, the rest of us were saved from confronting our own shame. I wanted to reach out to Kevin, but he refused, perhaps sensing something worse: that I pitied him. Eventually I told Kevin my secret and while we never became close friends, in the fifth grade we stuck it out together. I did so even though even talking to Kevin made me an outsider, but that was OK, because I think it was at that time I decided I would always be an outsider. I reasoned that no one could really know me if I was an outsider, so fuck them.

And in that way, I began to build a wall of protection that kept others out so no one could ever know me -- a fortress surrounding my heart.

Shame is a prison. I don’t know for sure, if this was all the beginning, or the setting of the table for my own life, but the one thing I’m certainly of is that our secrets kill us, as surely as cigarettes or drugs. Secrets kill because embedded in our secrets lies our shame.

If you notice I’m not that particular about who reads my madness, but I am particular about making someone -- even a stranger -- feel excluded because I know that feeling intimately. It has haunted me for most of my life. Not many people can successfully accuse me of not having a sense of humor, but I abhor humor at the expense of another.

Even now, sometimes it’s easy for me to join in with the mob and feast on another’s soul so that I could feel better about myself. It’s the easiest thing because it trips that “You belong” mechanism. I've done it before and felt stupid after when the object of ridicule was kind to me.

But really: how many of us are laughing or forming cliques, or creating scapegoats because we too have secrets? How many of us can say we’re not turning away from our own shame at some level?

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization...

Secrets

¡Hola! Everybody…
I need a vacation!

* * *

-=[ Shame ]=-

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinion, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
-- George Bernard Shaw

The whole fifth grade class was laughing at him. Including me.

His father stumbled into the middle of a spelling test arguing loudly with our teacher. His clothes were ragged and he was unkempt. He was there to make a case for his son, Kevin, who sat next to me. Kevin and I were the smartest kids in the class. Kevin was painfully shy and no one really liked him to begin with, so now everybody, including me, was laughing at him because his father was obviously a dope fiend and he showed up in the middle of a spelling test totally out of his mind. He was nodding out even as he argued his son’s case.

I don’t remember all the details, but I remember the shame. I still can remember the shame on Kevin’s face, the humiliation in the knowledge that now everyone knew his deadly secret -- that his father was a “junkie.” I remember my own shame too, because I felt hypocritical.

It’s so easy to join the mob, so easy to feel a part of the crowd at the expense of someone else. The mob mentality has no mercy. Just look at most of today’s headlines and you’ll be a witness to what the mob mentality, or the very human tendency to create scapegoats, can create.

The fact was that I knew too well that shame. My own father was an addict, and I remember when all my friends one day encircled me while chanting, “Your father’s a junkie, your father’s a junkie,” and I felt so ashamed, so humiliated, and so angry. I couldn’t resolve the anger and shame I felt about my father because I loved him so much and all those feelings were too overwhelming -- I didn’t know how to process all that. I just stood there in the middle of that circle tears of anger flowing until I lashed out at the first one to get close enough to me and I punched him in the nose. And that’s when the mob turned on me and I went home with a split lip and torn clothes.

Deep inside I hated my father for making me go through that, but I also adored my father. He was so smart. I used to love to sit on his lap and put my ear to his chest and listen to the soft rumble of his voice as he taught me something or spoke. My father was like a God to me. And now I hated him and I hated myself for hating him because I felt it was wrong.

I just didn’t know how to handle the inner conflict. So I guess somewhere, somehow, I internalized all those conflicting feelings and became ashamed of myself for everything: for my father, for my feelings, for my inability to fix it.

My father was a greatest storyteller and on some days, he would gather all the kids on our block and entertain us with stories. I guess it was a testament to his storytelling gift that he could keep us transfixed on that Lower East Side stoop and you could hear a pin drop. I was raised in a neighborhood where drug addicts were a common part of the urban landscape. As children we would place bets on how far a junkie would nod. Some junkies would nod so far, bent over by the waist that you would swear they would tip over and fall. But they never did.

My father would nod when he told my friends stories. At first, we would sit there for what would seem minutes because invariably there was a punch line, a lesson, or a resolution to the story. At first, my friends wouldn’t say anything, but then my father’s nodding got worse and one day while arguing over a game or a rule, as boys are won’t to do, it came out: the outspoken truth that my father was a “junkie.” It was a hard lesson to be learned at such a tender age.

Yet I sat there and laughed at Kevin just like everyone else did and even at that young age (5^th grade), I knew it was wrong. I knew that I was being a phony because I didn’t want to feel that shame anymore, I wanted to be like the others, so I joined in on the cruelty. In making Kevin the scapegoat, the rest of us were saved from confronting our own shame. I wanted to reach out to Kevin, but he refused, sensing something worse: that I pitied him. Eventually I told Kevin my secret and while we never became close friends, in the fifth grade we stuck it out together. I did so even though even talking to Kevin made me an outsider, but that was OK, because I think it was at that time I decided I would always be an outsider. I reasoned that no one could really know me if I was an outsider, so fuck them.

And in that way, I began to build a wall of protection that kept others out so no one could ever know me -- a fortress surrounding my heart.

Shame is a prison. I don’t know for sure, if this was all the beginning, or the setting of the table for my own life, but I certainly know that our secrets kill us, as surely as cigarettes or drugs. Secrets kill because embedded in our secrets lies our shame.

If you notice I’m not that particular about who reads this madness, but I am particular about making someone -- even a stranger -- feel excluded because I know that feeling intimately. It has haunted me for most of my life. Not many people can successfully accuse me of not having a sense of humor, but I abhor humor at the expense of another.

Even now, sometimes it’s easy for me to join in with the mob and feast on another’s soul so that I could feel better about myself. It’s the easiest thing because it trips that “You belong” mechanism. I've done it before and felt stupid after when the object of ridicule was kind to me.

But really: how many of us are laughing or forming cliques, or creating scapegoats because we too have secrets? How many of us can say we’re not turning away from our own shame at some level?

Love,

Eddie

Hate and Fear [Homophobia]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I haven’t any time to write these days... This is from a while back. I thought I’d repost this in light of the horrible murder and decapitation of a gay man in Puerto Rico.

* * *

-=[ Homophobia]=

If you feared no one you would hate no one.

Nothing has been more effective in uncovering the dark side of homophobia than the work of researchers. One researcher, who interviewed over 400 men incarcerated for gay-bashing noted that the gay bashers generally saw nothing wrong in what they did, and more often than not, stated that their religious leaders and traditions condoned their behavior. One particular adolescent stated that the pastor of his church had said, “Homosexuals represent the devil, Satan.”

Another study showed that homophobes were more prone to be aroused by gay porn than others. Somewhere, deep inside, those who bash gays are actually lashing out at something inside of themselves. As with other marginalized groups, gays become the object of hatred and scapegoating. On a societal level, we purposely encourage hate for those who are deemed different. Killing a gay person, in an unspeakable manner is often considered less heinous than killing an individual who is heterosexual. The same can be said for other marginalized groups, such as black and brown people, or women, for example. A rape victim "asked for it" by dressing provocatively, or a massacred black man was deemed as reaching for a weapon.

Societies in which gender roles are strictly defined and where a high patriarchal god is worshiped are violent societies. We see that example in the US, one of the most “religious” of advanced democracies. We scream in outrage if a breast is exposed on prime time TV, but say nothing to the fact that our children are exposed to thousands of violent images and messages daily. We teach our young boys to hate gays. How many times have you heard one young boy call another a fag or a queer in jest or anger? Boys are taught that emotions are weak, that demonstrating kindness or love is weak or effeminate. Not manly. I once witnessed a man slash another man, horribly disfiguring his face for life, because one called the other a “faggot” in jest.

I used to run a leadership development workshop and when asked to define leadership values, almost no one ever mentioned nurturing as a valuable leadership asset. Nurturing, relating, bonding, empathizing -- these are all womanly qualities, not qualities that strong leaders possess (of, course, this isn’t true at all). I’ve heard grown men tell their daughters that they would prefer a whore as a daughter than a lesbian.

Much of this physical and psychological violence and hatred is rooted in religious fundamentalism and the social construction of rigid gender roles. The man who allegedly confessed to the hate crime in Puerto Rico said he became enraged when he realized the individual he thought was a woman, was a man dressed in women’s clothing. He had picked him up at an area known for its prostitution and he freaked when he realized the object of his lust was a homosexual. As I heard this, I realized that this man was attacking something he couldn't face inside himself. The tragedy being that the gay man dressed in women’s clothing died simply because everything his killer feared was projected onto him. How else do you explain the decapitation if not as some warped, deep-seated, repressed sense of self-loathing?

Hatred is an extreme form of anger but also a form of deep connection. The teachings of the path I follow take anger very seriously, because anger causes so much suffering. I see hate as being rooted primarily in fear. Fear being a powerful core emotion.

When anger is acted out and results in violence, the damage is obvious. Some years ago, I came across the words of Cambodian monk, Maha Ghosananda, who observed “When this defilement of anger really gets strong, it has no sense of good or evil, right or wrong, of husbands, wives, children. It can even drink human blood.” This was a tragic comment upon a bloody civil war that had torn Cambodia apart and literally killed almost everyone he knew.

An angry mind is a suffering mind. An angry mind is agitated and unyielding, constricted and narrow in its thinking. Judgment and perspective vanish. All sense disappears. One feels restless and driven. Nothing is satisfying, everything is tense. What happens during anger is that as the sense of self increases, as does the sense of the other. A major reason anger is so very painful is that it instantly creates a sharp distinction between self and other. An imaginary line is drawn that cannot be passed. For example, if I make the statement, “A faggot is the devil,” I am drawing a line as well as dehumanizing the object of my fear/ wrath.

There is also an intoxicating effect to anger. There is a strong feeling of self-righteousness. Thoughts rooted in justification take over: “He was dressed as a woman. He was not a real man. He was a freak!” This, combined with feelings of defiance and rectitude (“I am right!”), creates the killing ground for mindless hate and fear. Underlying the delusional intoxication of anger is the pain of a mind so narrowly constricted that it closes itself off from human all connection.

Anger is like a poison in the mind. It generates an unhealthy cycle of cause and effect. Every thought, word, or act has an angry after-effect. Like throwing a pebble into a pond, an act or thought sets into motion a series of ripple effects irradiating out in every direction. We are stuck with what we have done, and with the effects that we have caused.

I believe that the majority of harmful patterns of behavior are rooted in unconscious anger/ hatred/ fear. On a more subtle level, angry people gossip about others, spread false accusations about others as a way of justifying their angry/ fearful state of mind. Existing in an environment of fear, hate, and anger, they lash out at others and create the necessary condition that maintain their bloated egos. I guess the answer is not to respond in anger, but to generate love instead. However, one can also choose to love from afar. We can choose to minimize our contact with harmful and negative influences.

Unfortunately, sometimes there isn’t a choice: you can become an object of hate and violence simply for being you... for being black, a woman, or gay. The judicial response to this crime in Puerto Rico was beyond pathetic. I hear the Feds will intervene and I hope they do.

Eddie

Shame and Violence

¡Hola! Everybody...
I will be out in the field for most of the day. That's cool. The following is another “summer rerun.” It’s a edited (shortened) story about shame and violence. I’ve submitted it to an anthology on bullying. Let me know if you have any constructive insights...

* * *

-=[ Shame ]=-

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinion, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The whole fifth grade class was laughing at him. Including me.

His father stumbled into the middle of a spelling test and began arguing with our teacher. His clothes were ragged and he was unkempt. He was there to make a case for his son, Kevin, who sat next to me. Kevin and I were the smartest kids in the class, but Kevin was painfully shy and no one really liked him to begin with, so now everybody, including me, was laughing at him because his father was a junkie and he showed up in the middle of a spelling test totally out of his mind. He was nodding out even as he argued his son’s case.

I don’t remember all the details, but I remember the shame. I remember the shame on Kevin’s face, the humiliation in the knowledge that now everyone knew his deadly secret – that his father was a junkie. I remember my own shame too, because I felt hypocritical.

It’s so easy to join the mob, so easy to feel a part of the crowd at the expense of someone else. The mob mentality has no mercy.

The fact was that I too knew that shame. My own father was a heroin addict, and I remember when all my friends one day encircled me and chanted, “Your father’s a junkie, your father’s a junkie,” and I remember the deep feeling of shame, of humiliation, and of anger. I was much too young and I had no way to resolve the anger and shame I felt about my father because I adored him so and all those feelings -- I just didn’t know how to process all those feelings. I just stood there in the middle of that circle and cried tears of anger until I lashed out at the first one fool enough to get close to me and I punched him in the nose. And that’s when the mob turned on me and I went home with a split lip and torn clothes.

I hated him – my father – for making me go through that, but I adored my father so much. He was so smart. I used to love to sit on his lap and put my ear to his chest and listen to the soft rumble of his voice as he taught me something or had a conversation with someone else. My father was like a God to me. And now I hated him and I loathed myself for that.

I was too young and didn’t have the psychological resources. So I guess somewhere, somehow, I internalized all those feelings and became ashamed of myself for everything: for my father and for my feelings.

My father was one of the greatest storytellers and on some days, he would gather all the kids on the block and tell us stories. I guess it was a testament to his storytelling gift that he could keep us transfixed on that Lower East Side stoop, and you could hear a pin drop. I was raised in a neighborhood where junkies were a common part of the urban landscape. As children, we would place bets on how far a junkie would nod. Some junkies would nod so far, bent over by the waist that you would swear they would tip over and fall.

But they never did.

My father would nod when he told my friends stories. At first, we would sit there for what would seem minutes because invariably there was a punch line, a moral, or a resolution to the story. At first, my friends wouldn’t say anything, but eventually my father’s nodding got worse and one day while arguing over a game or a rule, as boys are won’t to do, it came out: the unspoken truth that my father was a junkie. It was a hard lesson learned at such a tender age.

Yet I sat there and laughed at Kevin just like everyone else did and even as a fifth-grader I knew it was wrong. I knew that I was being a phony because I didn’t want to feel that shame anymore, I wanted to be like the others, so I joined in on the cruelty. After, I tried to reach out to Kevin, but he refused, sensing something worse: that I pitied him. Eventually, I told Kevin my secret and while we never became close friends, in the fifth grade we stuck it out together. I did so even though talking to Kevin made me an outsider, but that was OK, because I think it was at that time I decided I would always be an outsider. I reasoned that no one could really know me if I was an outsider, so fuck them.

And in that way, I began to build a wall of protection that kept others out so no one could ever know me -- a fortress surrounding my heart. I made sure no one could ever know me...

Shame is a prison. I don’t know for sure if this was the beginning, or the setting of the table for my own life, but I certainly know that our secrets kill us, as surely as cigarettes or drugs. Secrets kill because embedded in our secrets is our shame. Eventually, my shame would guide me on my own journey to destruction, addiction, prisons, and intuitions, and it almost killed me. Shame fed my inner rage. A rage I learned to keep secret deep inside of me. A rage turned inwards that almost destroyed my life.

Even now, sometimes it’s easy for me to join in with the mob and feast on another’s soul so that I could feel better about myself. It’s the easiest thing – because it trips that “You belong” button. I’ve done it before and felt stupid after when the object of ridicule was kind to me.

But really: how many of us are laughing or forming cliques because we too have secrets? How many of us can say we’re not ashamed at some level?

Love,

Eddie

Shame and Violence

¡Hola! Everybody... Imagine having me as a student in your classroom. LOL! I went to university at a later age and I got my money’s worth. I challenged, and was often challenged in return, all my professors. If you didn’t have your shit together, I was mos’ def going to ream you a new asshole. Most

professors enjoyed my participation. Most professors were dedicated individuals deeply invested in intellectual development. Most...

::arches eyebrow::

In fact, I remember one professor catching me in conversation with one of her colleagues and she stopped and asked him, pointing to me, “Is this guy in your class?” When the professor affirmed that I was, she added, in these exact words, “Well, you better have your shit together because Eddie doesn’t play around!”

LMAO!

I loved that woman and she helped me tremendously.

I’ll be in prison all day, running my women’s prison workshop and running my men’s group at night. Make it a great day, it may be your last...

* * *

-=[ Shame, Guilt and Violence ]=-

“’How do you know so much about everything?’ was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was ‘By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant.’”

-- John Abbott (1821–1893) Prime minister of Canada

Some of you know that I work in the area of criminal justice. More specifically, for the last eight years, I’ve participated in the creation of a community-based model for supporting the men and women returning from incarceration. One of areas of interest is whether pure punishment, without regard to rehabilitation -- or in many cases, habilitation -- is an effective means of social justice. Of course, it isn’t. In fact, there’s an empirically strong case for shame as a major factor in violence and violent crime. I tend to agree with this, generally speaking. I actually see it all the time. Psychiatrist James Gilligan, who has worked in prisons for 35 years, describes an interesting experience. He was called in to resolve a running battle with a prisoner in which he would assault corrections officers and they would punish him. The more they punished him the more violent he became, and the more violent he became the more they punished him. Nothing they did (at least legally) could stop this man from assaulting the officers.

When Gilligan went to see this man he asked him what he thought was an obvious question, “What do you want so badly that you are willing to give up everything else in order to get it?” His answer astonished the doctor. Usually inarticulate to the point that it was difficult to get a clear answer to any question, he stood up, and with perfect clarity he stated: “Pride. Dignity. Self-esteem.” And then he added, “And I’ll kill every motherfucker in that cell block if I have to in order to get it.” He went on to describe how the officers were attempting to strip away his last shred of dignity and self-esteem by disrespecting him, and said, “I still have my pride and I won’t let them take that away from me. If you ain’t got pride, you got nothin'.” He made it clear that he would die before he would humble himself to the officers by submitting to their demands.

According to Gilligan, this wasn’t true of just this man. In fact, several hundred violent criminals in this country provoke their own deaths at the hands of the police in exactly that way every year. Indeed, this phenomenon is so common that police forces (and this is not counting the clear cases of police misconduct) around the country have given it a nickname: “suicide by cop.” In World War II, Japan’s kamikaze pilots behaved in a way that had much the same result, as do contemporary suicide bombers in the Middle East and elsewhere. In the prisons and on the streets of the United States, such behavior appears to be committed by people who are so tormented by feelings of being shamed and disrespected by their perceived enemies that they are willing to sacrifice their bodies and their lives to replace those intolerable feelings with the opposite feelings of pride and self-respect, and of being honored and admired by their friends and families and at least respected by their enemies. Such people experience the fear that they provoke in their victims as a kind of artificial form of respect, the only type they are capable of achieving.

Articulating a powerful insight, Gilligan adds, “In the prisons and on the streets of the United States, such behavior appears to be committed by people who are so tormented by feelings of being shamed and disrespected by their enemies that they are willing to sacrifice their bodies and their physical existence to replace those intolerable feelings with the opposite feelings of pride and self-respect, and of being honored and admired by their allies and at least respected by their enemies. Such people experience the fear that they provoke in their victims as a kind of ersatz form of respect, the only type they are capable of achieving.”

Here’s the travesty: we recreate environments, at an enormous social and economic expense, that exacerbate these feelings of impotent rage. Our prisons are filled with people whop have become part of a human experiment in how to further destroy destroyed lives. In other words, we take individuals who probably weren’t functioning well to begin with (addiction, abuse, illiteracy, etc.) and make them worse. The icing on the cake is that we do this at an enormous economic expense and that money gets taken out of, yes, you guessed it, luxuries such as education.

There has to be a better way. In fact, there are better ways. Gilligan has run an extremely successful prison restorative justice program utilizing his insights, for example. It is also known that education and supportive services (vocational training, employment assistance, family reunification, etc.) cost a fraction of what prisons cost and are extremely more effective. I believe social justice needs to be brought back to the community, but that’s a fuckin’ crazy idea, huh?

Not too long ago, while reviewing some literature, a colleague sent me the following snippet:

In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed at the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and everyone in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, recalling the good things the person has done in his life. Every experience that can be recalled with detail and accuracy is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully. This ceremony often lasts for several days. At the end, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.”

* * *

Love,

Eddie

Nigger of the World

¡Hola! Everybody...
Well, as expected, my blog yesterday elicited many responses. While I expect some of the responses, they still never cease to amaze me. Let’s get some shit straight:

My blog was about Domestic Violence, not violence in general. Some of you, while in the ecstatic throes of logical contortions, seemed to forget that. Secondly, please don’t start your comment by saying you’re not condoning Domestic Violence and then defend the perpetrators of Domestic Violence -- men! Finally, if you don’t like me and have a beef with me or the forceful manner in which I present the issue, get to the back of the line. There are plenty people that share your animosity. However, while here, address the fuckin' issue!

* * *

-=[ The Universal Victim ]=-

“Woman is the nigger of the world.”

-- Yoko Ono

First things first:

If you think you’re trapped in an abusive relationship, please try to get help. At the end of this blog there is a link to a resource where you can locate assistance and support for your situation. I realize it’s not easy. No matter what the idiots post here as a response, you are not at fault. You’re also not alone.

The history of the world and the history of family violence are inseparable. Across cultures with different languages and customs, women have been beaten by their male partners the world over. In almost every society we know about, men have considered themselves superior to women. When one group considers itself superior, it presumes the right to oppress the other.

Eventually, that oppression will evolve into some form of physical abuse.

Someone responded yesterday that violence against women and domestic violence are different. I believe this remark to be ignorant of the issue. Domestic violence and violence against women are part and parcel of the same issue.

· Sixty percent of the women killed in the U.S. are killed by their husband or boyfriend.

· A woman is nine times more likely to be assaulted in her own home than on the street.

Yes, you’re correct in noting I’ve already posted the above statistics. Thanks for noticing.

I emphasize women because they are by far the group most likely to be victims of domestic violence. There are reasons for that and those reasons have to do with systemic barriers embedded in a patriarchal society that not only condones, but encourages violence against women. Yeah, I know that’s fucked up that I’m emphasizing the 95% of the victims of domestic violence. I’m fucked up that way. If you don’t like it, throw yourself against the floor. LOL!

Let’s try the following exercise:

If you’re a male and you woke up tomorrow as a female, what would you do?

If you’re a female, and you woke up tomorrow as a male, what would you do?

I realize the questions are an open invitation to joke, but when this test was posed to elementary school children, most of the boys said they’d kill themselves if they woke up as girls. Most of the girls said they’d be happy to wake up as a boy. They stated that they would be firemen, baseball players, the president, a doctor, etc. It was obvious that both boys and girls think that it is better to be a boy. Everyone would rather be a boy (Freud lives).

This is why male privilege is so powerful. It’s not just boys who think they have more power; girls also think that boys have more power.

It’s been pointed out ad nauseum that men are also victims of domestic violence. I don’t dispute that, but to emphasize men, who represent a miniscule fraction of DV cases, is stupid.

Yes I said it was stupid.

Why is it stupid? Because it ignores male privilege. No one, at least not this writer, is saying that abused men should be ignored. But even battered men have more economic and systemic resources at their disposal than women. For example men get paid about 30% more than women for the same work, for example. It is stupid to ignore this fact. One responder yesterday even went so far as to cherry-pick “statistics” from studies glommed from a mens’ website with a gender axe to grind.

The reason why women are more frequently victims of domestic violence is because we live in a society that is based on ideas of supremacy and privilege. This set of values is based on the notion that one group or type of person is better, smarter, and more valuable than another. Therefore, it follows, it is the right and duty of those who are better to be in control. Sound familiar?

Any discussion that refuses to recognize these historical and systematic dynamics is ignorant of the issue.

For example, if a woman flees an abusive relationship, but leaves her children, the courts will award custody to the men. I don’t have my notes handy right now, but I believe that about 70% of men who have custody, gain custody under these conditions.

If we lose sight of the fact of male privilege, then we lose sight of the fact that:

The average sentence for a man who kills his wife/ girlfriend is 7-11 years.

A woman who kills her man gets on the average 25 years to life.

So, let’s say a woman lashes out after years of abuse. She gets life. A coward who preys on women will get a comparative slap on the wrist. Are we seeing a pattern here?

Muthafuckas, I asked are we seeing a fuckin pattern here?!!

I have to go, but I will write on this shit until I have it all covered because people are still mostly ignorant of the issue.

Eddie

Resources

Click here for help and domestic violence resources

Refuse to Abuse

¡Hola! Everybody...
Today seems hard...

* * *

-=[ Cowardice ]=-

“Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.”

-- Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American clergyman

I like to say that I write on the ‘net because I’m “Here to tell the truth.” At first blush that might sound arrogant and perhaps it is, I don’t honestly know. I do know that it is my intention to tell the truth as I see it.

Contrary to popular sentiment, opinions and knowledge are two distinct constructs: having a plenitude of the former doesn’t equate to possessing even a smidgen of the latter.

In fact, opinions mostly suck -- big time.

No, what I offer isn’t mere opinion...

I’ve been listening and reading some of the most ignorant shit regarding domestic violence recently (connected to the Chris Brown violence) and I am disgusted. I have to sit back and wonder what the fuck people are using to make choices or form “opinions” because it damn sure has nothing to do with the truth.

Some of you may question my position regarding knowing the truth, and I would respond that you have a good question there. My response to such a question follows...

First, let me say right off that I come from a violent household. I am the oldest of five children and some of my earliest memories are of my mother using me as a shield so that my father would stop hitting her. He would hit her anyway... I can still clearly hear the thuds his fists made as he lashed out at my mother.

Whenever my father would hit my mother, I used to cry into my pillow and swear that I would never hit a woman. I have seen my mother have to face the public with a black eye, or make excuses for his behavior and I hated my father for that. But I also loved my father deeply and those feelings welled inside of me, creating demons that I would spend most of my life battling.

This does not privilege my position, or what I have to say on the subject. I am offering this personal information as an attempt at transparency. However, my experience does not detract from the following truth:

It is never right for a man to hit a woman... Period.

I don’t give a fuck what you say. I’ve heard women who admit to being abused actually go out of their way to rationalize the behavior of male batterers. I’ve heard so-called men, do likewise. To these women I say: when you say it’s okay to hit a woman (under any circumstances), you’re saying it’s okay for me to beat your funky ass down. When you rationalize or justify the behavior celebrity batterers/ abusers, you’re saying it’s okay for me to beat your daughter down. You’re saying that it’s okay for me to fuck your mother and treat her like a piece of shit.

Think about it.

If you’re a man and you’re rationalizing beating a woman, then you’re a coward. And I hope you never do time for beating on a woman, because male batterers suffer a lot inside the walls. Other criminals actually develop morals and you’ll be only fractionally better than a pedophile. This brings me to my second truth:

If you hit a woman, no matter what, you’re a coward. Period.

I believe the greatest danger we face as a society is a widespread inability to empathize. We form opinions and belief systems based solely on our insulated and often backward principles. Empathy is the ability to see the world through another person’s eyes without losing yourself in the process. It’s an ability we must learn to cultivate. Most people see or hear about a situation and immediately wade in with prefabricated (and often borrowed) notions about the world and how it should be.

In this way, women who get beat up are at fault for allowing it. Furthermore, you would never allow something like to happen to you. You’re different. You’re superior, smarter, slicker -- you’re morally and intellectually superior than your abused sisters.

Perhaps empathy is best expressed in the Christian refrain, “There but for the grace of God go I... ”

But I’m not seeing a whole lotta Christianity being practiced these days. I see a lot whoopin' and hollerin', but I damn sure ain’t seeing no true Christian sentiment. Perhaps religion is part of the problem. After all, wasn’t it Eve’s fault we’re all in this mess to begin with?

Anyone can become part of a domestic violent relationship. What is domestic violence? It’s something that usually happens in the home. It is perpetrated by people who share some kind of intimate relationship. What is violent about it?

• Sixty percent of the women killed in the U.S. are killed by their husband or boyfriend.
• A woman is nine times more likely to be assaulted in her own home than on the street.

You may not believe that you’re not the type to get battered or be a batterer. I certainly hope you’re right -- but the fact is that there is no way to know.

Battering relationships start out just like other relationships: with kisses, flowers, long walks on the beach, etc. One reason these relationships are so hard to detect (and harder to escape) is because they usually start out as romances and sometimes continue being romantic even while they are abusive.

If you bothered to get out of your comfort zone and actually attempted to understand this issue you would see repeatedly how easy it is to be abused and how hard it is to get out of once the abuse starts.

Why should you care? Here are a few numbers:

• In one year, there were about 4 million reported domestic assaults on women.
• 20% of those resulted in serious injury.
• A third of the women in hospital emergency rooms at any given time are there because of Domestic Violence.
• 25% of all female psychiatric patients who attempt suicide are victims of Domestic Violence.
• 85% of women in substance abuse programs are victims of Domestic Violence.
• 50% of the children in foster care are there largely because of Domestic Violence.
• 70% of child abuse is committed by the man of the house.
• In NYC, 40% of homeless families are fleeing Domestic Violence. Other large cities report similar numbers.

I have little patience and I am not here to sway anyone’s opinion. However, rather than compounding the issue with stupidity, perhaps educating yourself before sticking your fingers up your arse and offering the stench for others to smell would be in order.

The issue isn’t as simple as just walking away, but if you bothered to attempt some knowledge on the subject, you would see that truth immediately. Women attempt to escape all the time, but the way our social institutions are structured and the deep-seated bias against women, they often are not able to escape and often are forced to return to their batterers.

Finally, I’ve written about this before and have had one or two women say that I was trying to get some poosie by writing sympathetically on the subject. I have to shake my head in disgust when I hear such bullshit.

I will say that I am not a saint. My own hands are not clean. And while I didn’t grow up to be a batterer, I have hit a woman on one occasion and it was wrong. It was cowardly of me. There is never any justification for a man to hit a woman.

Period.

If you want some more information on the subject (rather than spouting off some of the dumbest bullshit I’ve ever heard), please visit the National Coalition against Domestic Violence website (click here). If you think you’re trapped in an abusive relationship, please visit the link, there are resources listed for organizations in every state. You’re not alone. For those who would judge? Read a book (click here for a list)

I’m here to tell the fuckin' truth...

Love,

Eddie