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OWS and a Hill to Die On

In 1984 George Orwell's O'Brien declared, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face--forever."  That's the way I felt when I heard the participants in the Anita Hill lovefest, "Sex, Power, and Speaking Truth."    His narrow confirmation to the Court allowed him to revive American constitutionalism.  We must ever keep in mind this victory in our cultural wars.

Meanwhile, further south in Manhattan, the OWS mobs continue to flourish.  Comparing them to the Tea Party misses the heart of these true descendants of the American Founding:  They stand for the restraints, protections, and procedures of constitutional government. 

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Discussions - 15 Comments

It is true that what Hill did, "altered the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace." After that, any woman could accuse any man of anything and everyone was supposed to take her seriously. The man was guilty until proven innocent. Why do I say, "was"? In the case of sexual harassment, any man accused is guilty until proven innocent. We women know we have that power and know it is too much power.
Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court was a triumph of politics, but I am not sure that we won any cultural war. Anita Hill is still making congratulatory speeches, which tempers the victory.

I'm curious because you speak with authority, what were the rates of reported sexual harassment after those hearings relative to the rates prior to the hearings? To be fair, let's take the 10 year window before and after the hearings. I look forward to seeing those statistics.

"mobs" ...? Right. Yes. Very nice.

Protesting against gross financial abuses that have crippled huge swathes of the world's population and gone unchecked and unpunished is, of course, mob rule, mob rule that's now extending across the western world.

Screaming hysterically at a democratically elected government whose biggest offense was to be marginally of the left and to have chosen a negro, of all people, as its leader ... that's the proud exercise of a constitutional right!

You find the statistics and prove me wrong. My only authority comes with age and that is long memory. Prove my memory incorrect.

Mr. one,

Mob rule? Only in that the president and members of Congress claim to embrace the mob. That makes sense since those folks have been trying to incite this bizarre class warfare for years. Politically, it sure beats effectively and efficently running the federal government, I suppose. Mess things up and find a favorite scapegoat.

As to the rest of what you write, except for the invective, it is really unclear what you mean. Who is screaming hysterically?

The best story abou the Occupiers:

Townhall interviewed one of the Wall Street Occupiers, who was either stoned or stupid (of course in liberal laid there is no difference between stoned and stupid). This whack job was shifting between yelling and crying about the Wall Street F**ckers (you can fill in the blanks). The wonderful Breibart T.V. decided to find out who this whack job really was and to everyone surprise, this guy's name is Edward T Hall, III (wow is that conservative) and he has a Trust Fund. Bet my house that Trust Fund is managed by those evil Wall Street F.... ers. On top of that, he was arrested for jumping on a baggage carousel in an aiport and is on probation. If he gets arrested again before January 2012 he is going jail. He has been living in Kiddie Kamp Alinskey for three weeks - off that Trust Fund managed by Wall Street F......ers. Liberalism is a ......

You just can't make this stuff up.

Do you accept such shoddy reasoning ('because I said so') in a persuasive argument from your students? No wonder people complain about the quality of teaching in higher ed.

Anon, Anon, this is a blog. There is a difference between a classroom and a blog, especially the back pages in the comment section.

I do invite my students to seek out truth. I am doing the same with you. If I am wrong, show me. That was an invitation, not a refutation. I'm busy.

"Protesting against gross financial abuses that have crippled huge swathes of the world's population and gone unchecked and unpunished is, of course, mob rule, mob rule that's now extending across the western world."

As far as America is concerned, the "gross financial abuses" were the sub-prime mortgage market artificially created by the federal government when Uncle Sam began incentivizing banks to offer home loans to risky borrowers (ie people whose credit history would traditionally be considered either too bad or not well-established enough to receive a loan for a mortgage). The government began subsidizing said sub-prime mortgages under Clinton, continued under Bush, and expanded the program after the Democrats retook Congress in 2006. Unless those folks are out there protesting government involvement in the mortgage industry they're off-target.


"Screaming hysterically at a democratically elected government whose biggest offense was to be marginally of the left and to have chosen a negro, of all people, as its leader ... that's the proud exercise of a constitutional right!"

I don't begrudge the Left their desire to protest - I am, in fact, quite concerned/interested in the very real fact that there is a growing disparity of wealth between the top-earners in our society and the middle class. However, to compare the OWS crowds with the Tea Party and try to claim the Tea Party was "screaming hysterically" and racist is utterly ridiculous. The Tea Party folks clean up after themselves whenever they rally, for God's sake, and I haven't seen much footage of the Tea Partiers screaming at cops the same way the OWS folks often do. Meanwhile, the OWS ladies and gentlemen have been using/destroying local restaurant owners' bathrooms (without buying anything I'll have you know), taking over parks, defecating on police vehicles, and generally being a nuisance to the people who live in the areas they've chosen to protest at (by the testimony of the folks who live and work there).

As to the ridiculous racist canard (how pathetic of you to play it), the Tea Party did not begin protesting soon after President Obama was elected, they began protesting after the $850 billion stimulus was passed. Most people didn't like the TARP bill passed under President Bush, and they liked the massive "stimulus" even less. Then, immediately after passing the unpopular stimulus, President Obama pushed Obamacare through a resistant Congress against the wishes of an even more resistant American public. Your attempt to paint people's dissatisfaction with these political developments is vulgar and disgusting.

^That was me. For the reaction of New Yorkers to the protests, both residents and local small business owners, check out the New York Times if you don't believe me. And my final sentence should read that JAO's "attempt to paint people's dissatisfaction with these political developments *as racist* is vulgar and disgusting", which it is.

Herman Cain is now on the GOP short-list thanks to the Tea Party, but facts don't matter to people like JAO. As I read in an article the other day, if you don't like the politics of a black man who is the son of a globe-trotting couple, whose mother was white, who grew up in Hawaii, went to a private school, and was educated at Harvard and Columbia, you're a racist. If you do like the politics of a black man who is the son of a limo driver/janitor/barber and cleaning lady, who grew up in a segregated Georgia, was educated at Morehouse College, and became a successful business man, you're still a racist.

If you listen to what these wackos are saying, corporate greed and bank bailouts are just an excuse to air deeper grievances with capitalism and democracy. The problem is, they think someone should be taking care of them, and no one seems to be (although I notice that they have sufficient cash to stay out in the streets day after day). And they are doing this 1) to distract America from how abysmal the economy really is, and 2) shoot across Obama's bow so that he doesn't lean to the Right in the coming election (as if that were a possibility!).

I also think the protests are ill-timed. They are coming too early to affect the election. Stupid lefties and their increasingly irrelevant street theater.

You may be busy, but you're also lazy. Clearly you do not model for your students the behavior which you purport to instill.

Anon.,

You checked the data and I am right, aren't I? It seems typical of you, whoever you are, to go ad hominem when you are wrong.

The website linked to on Thomas's post has a related article from Newsweek. Here's a quote:

"Sexual-harassment complaints filed with the EEOC increased by 50 percent in the year following the hearings—and that was only the beginning. “Women’s willingness to come forward and file sexual-harassment complaints doubled in the five years after that,” Hill says."

But why take the word of those women on that?

I didn't check anything. I didn't make the assertion. You would have been better served to say "It seems to me (or Based on my experiences that after that, any woman could accuse any man of anything and everyone was supposed to take her seriously."

There's no ad hominem attack, just an attempt to get you to ground your assertion in facts. See...you did, and now I'm satisfied. Once a professor, always one, I guess.

The most problematic institutions were as follows:

1. American International Group (headquartered in Lower Manhattan, @ 50 Pine St).

2. Federal National Mortgage Association (headquartered on Wisconsin Ave in Washington).

3. Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (headquartered in McLean, Va, across the Potomac from the capital).

4. Citigroup (headquartered on Park Ave. in Midtown Manhattan).

5. Lehman Bros. International (bankrupt, Sept. 2008)

6. Bank of America / Merrill Lynch / Countrywide (headquartered in Charlotte, N.C.)

7. Royal Bank of Scotland (headquartered in Edinburgh)

8. Fortis (headquartered in Brussels).

9. Wachovia (headquartered in North Carolina, married off to Wells Fargo, which needed little aid and is headquartered in San Francisco).

10. Washington Mutual (headquartered in Seattle and married off to J.P. Morgan Chase in a transaction that cost both its equity holders and its bondholders to lose all of their investment).

11. United Auto Workers &c. (headquartered in Detroit).

Unless your specific target is AIG, what is the point of being on Wall Street?

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