Re: We Can't Not

1

I pause here for a quick word on the Ronan situation. Is he my son or, as Mia suggests, Frank Sinatra's? Granted, he looks a lot like Frank with the blue eyes and facial features, but if so what does this say? That all during the custody hearing Mia lied under oath and falsely represented Ronan as our son? Even if he is not Frank's, the possibility she raises that he could be, indicates she was secretly intimate with him during our years. Not to mention all the money I paid for child support. Was I supporting Frank's son?

That's quite a pause.


Posted by: Just Plain Jane | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 8:44 PM
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How can you drag us all further into this quagmire? How can you live with yourself?


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 8:52 PM
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Oh boy, another thread to ignore.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 8:56 PM
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That settles THAT. Good.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 9:25 PM
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Is there going to be a Kick Starter for a DNA test on Ronan? I'd like just one clear answer out of this.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 9:44 PM
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Soooooo, I'm thinking that no matter who gets the Republican nomination for president, Susana Martinez will be their VP pick (if she wants it).


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 9:45 PM
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It totes depends on who the Republican nominee is. The P and VP need to be complementary, age-wise and demographics wise, but also with respect to which states they may be able to bring on board. So it depends.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 9:49 PM
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will be their VP pick

Guess what? You're sexist.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 9:54 PM
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You can all try to derail the thread, but we all know a thread's not over until the lawyers decide it's over, and they haven't even arrived yet.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 9:56 PM
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Female, Hispanic, Republican governor of a Democratic state with some of the highest approval ratings in the country. That's gonna be a hard checklist to top.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 9:58 PM
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And yet the apostropher thinks that only qualifies her to be vice-president.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:00 PM
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I'm not evaluating merits, just placing bets.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:03 PM
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What's her stance on immigration reform? I don't even know. What if Marco Rubio is the Presidential pick? I am off, though.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:09 PM
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6: I sure hope not, if only because of how much that would enrage my mom. She hates Susana Martinez even more than I hate Chris Christie, which is really saying something.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:16 PM
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Is Christie still in the running? I tend to think not, but that may be a parochial, NJ-based perspective.


Posted by: Just Plain Jane | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:21 PM
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15: The general consensus seems to be no, that the scandal stuff is weighing him down too much even if he turns out to not be implicated personally.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:22 PM
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weighing him down

Inappropriate.


Posted by: Von Wafer | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:24 PM
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Anyone can be weighed down by external weights. It just takes fewer for some than for others.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:27 PM
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There's a fine line between gravitas and "lap band weight loss surgery." And there's another fine line between "guy from New Jersey who is refreshingly blunt" and "guy from New Jersey who is a dead ringer for that character actor who played a thug on 'The Sopranos.'"

If you are inclined to straddle, if you are in any danger of straddling, those particular lines, you should probably pay close attention to the emails sent out by your, er, associates.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:49 PM
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Eh, sorry. 19 was me.


Posted by: Just Plain Jane | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:51 PM
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Anyway, I don't know much about Martinez except what I hear from my mom, which is that she's super-conservative and her administration has been pushing all sorts of ridiculous requirements on teachers (not as bad as North Carolina, but that's a low bar) that are making people quit left and right. My mom herself is retiring after this school year, and this stuff is a big part of the reason.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 7-14 10:51 PM
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||

Can't sleep: icicles coming out of our soffits, and leaking on our porch.. While I realize now is not the time to climb out on the roof and try to knock the ice dams off... now definitely is a bad time for that, right? Because maybe then I could sleep.

|>


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 1:36 AM
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Soffits?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 1:48 AM
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Anyway, yes, this is a very bad time to climb out on your roof and break up ice dams.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 1:49 AM
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Probably I should have stayed home from work and done it, but in my defense I didn't yet know what ice dams were. Goddamned polar vortex.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 1:53 AM
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Huh. I had never encountered this term before.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 1:53 AM
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Sifu, don't. LIstento the Archers, instead. It's normally very soporific.


Posted by: Nworb Werdna | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 1:54 AM
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I did know what ice dams were, though.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 1:54 AM
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It's normally very soporific.

For values of soporific which include, "Make you want to drive dangerously fast to the nearest sea cliff and hurl your radio as far out into the ocean as you can", yes.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 4:28 AM
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I know this topic is dead but what is the Internet for if not sharing opinions no one else cares about?

But seriously, "how could I abuse my daughter when I married my other daughter?" is not the world's most convincing defense. I'm amazed that that marriage was allowed, and that it didn't result in global shunning. What nonsense.


Posted by: parodie | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 4:35 AM
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In the spirit of @30, don't child abusers tend to do it more than once? So where are the other victims? "Otherwise normal man starts abusing children at 55" doesn't sound really likely.


Posted by: bjk | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 5:09 AM
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31. "Otherwise normal hebephilic man starts abusing children at 55" doesn't sound really likely either, but possibly more likely than otherwise.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 5:23 AM
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In the interests of helping ogged shake the jar and make the insects fight, here is Dylan Farrow's response provided to The Hollywood Reporter. Neither it nor Allen's piece read by me, however.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 5:29 AM
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And Maureen Orth's (author of original Vanity Fair pieces) "10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation."


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 5:31 AM
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How 'bout them opening ceremonies? As usual I profess no interest in watching them and then stumble upon them and am captivated. They've become their own kind of weird competition, linked by NBC's annoying insipidness.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 5:41 AM
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34: I just learned she is Tim Russert's widow.
35: I've been greatly enjoying the media coverage of poor construction and general Russian weirdness. Like, surveillance cameras in the bathrooms? Why the hell not?


Posted by: ydnew | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 5:57 AM
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bow howdy it's a good thing I didn't read that thread below until now or I wouldn't have posted, instead thinking that I should KILL EVERYONE! WITH FIRE! OK, about 49% of you. WITH MOTHERFUCKING FIRE.


Posted by: alameida | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:19 AM
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36: Ah, I thought her name was familiar but could not quite place it. And it appears that her twitter handle is @LukeRsmom which, hmmm.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:31 AM
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38: Also seems to have been pretty prominent on the celebrity scandal beat, and some child abuse stories in particular (Michael Jackson for instance).


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:35 AM
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36.2: The ceremonies were pretty well done*; I was thinking maybe they just need to conceptualize building hotels and the like as putting on a show.

*Despite the embarrassing Olympic Rings fail.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:45 AM
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36.2: Seriously. Just cheerfully bizarre? "Why are you going on about the cameras?! They're wasting water and we have the proof!"


Posted by: Turgid Jacobian | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 7:10 AM
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Or the Russian police choir singing Get Lucky. Again, why the hell not? In full uniform, breaking it down.

It's funny because a lot of the culture is so insular, they have no idea why things might seem odd. I think conceptualizing the buildings as putting on a show is sort of the problem - I kind of wonder whether there are a bunch of facades with no actual structure. Screw the load-bearing I-beams; let's be sure the exterior looks pretty for media. Why would anyone complain about problems when there are perfectly good work-arounds - you can buy bottled water that's just fine! I seriously hope nothing collapses.


Posted by: ydnew | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 8:41 AM
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I had to deal with a pissed off Russian this morning and it was all I could do not to shout, "You people can only make a circle 80% of the time." He probably wouldn't have cared about that since he must have left for a reason. He probably fled Communism and has such a hatred of public goods that he has assumed ownership of the parking on the public street in front of his house. Local norms back him on that, so I did move my car, but only after establishing that he did not intend to threaten me and after I got a good insult* in.

* Him: Where to you live?
Me: I don't like you, so I'm not going to say.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 9:16 AM
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"You people can only make a circle 80% of the time."

Restraint was clearly the wrong course to take here.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 9:22 AM
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I'm not sure that people who encourage me to make more ethnic slurs have my best interests at heart.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 9:57 AM
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I actually read the OP and it's mostly a rehash of the Weide piece from last week. Nothing new to chew on.


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 10:04 AM
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42

Daft Punk does not look at all like I thought they would without their robot suits.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 10:09 AM
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What if they're awesome ethnic slurs? ( IOW, you're bother perfectly correct and no fun anymore.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 10:11 AM
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It's just that Russians aren't capable of getting jokes.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 10:22 AM
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In Russia, joke gets you.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 10:52 AM
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Obviously nobody wants to talk about this, but that won't stop me: of the "10 Undeniable Facts" cited in the second link in the OP, 8 are deniable or irrelevant. The ninth is the crux of the whole public-factual dispute: "Yale exonerated him/the prosecutor was a crook vs. the Yale study was bought and paid for/the prosecutor had probable cause." The tenth ("Allen had been in therapy for alleged inappropriate behavior") would be very informative if we had any hope of getting any more facts about it.


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:03 AM
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I think there is something to be said for making it clear that he wasn't exonerated by the state -- that any 'exoneration' was a report based on some social workers who interviewed Dylan and didn't find her credible, and that the report itself wasn't found credible by the court that considered it.

Like I've said before, we aren't going to be able to know what happened, but what's on the public record does not appear to me to make Allen's innocence the substantially more likely possibility.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:15 AM
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There are cute little ice beavers on Sifume's roof. I am picturing them there anyway.


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:15 AM
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Fantasies about ice beavers belongs in the sexual identity thread, Smearcase.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:17 AM
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You can all try to derail the thread, but we all know a thread's not over until the lawyers decide it's over, and they haven't even arrived yet.

As Sondheim wrote: don't bother; they're here!


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:18 AM
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Yeah, my favorite part is the suggestion that Mia Farrow sleeping with Sinatra during her relationship with Allen reflects poorly on her integrity and honesty. You know, during the period when Allen was fucking Mia Farrow's 19 year old daughter.


Posted by: Di Kotimy | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:19 AM
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I was laughing at the script, however informative. "What Putin needs to present is a useable past..."

Is this parking dispute snow-related? Dibs make everything easier, and have a left wing, not libertarian pedigree, having been introduced in the national conversation by Eugene Dibs.


Posted by: Idp | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:23 AM
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Ice dams also sound like one of those dumb Wonder Twins transformations. Ice this; ice that. Form of: a less lame superpower!


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:26 AM
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52.1 is sort of equal-and-opposited by the prosecutor's "I could have convicted him if I felt like it" pose. Neither side has the clear upper hand on the outcome of the various legal proceedings. (But both sides will continue to claim that they do, with equal obtuseness.)


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:34 AM
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Yep. Like I've said before, we aren't going to be able to know what happened. All I'm saying is that the public record isn't unambiguously on Allen's side.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:36 AM
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would be very informative if we had any hope of getting any more facts about it

I think that at the end of 10 Facts, there's a link to the judge's write-up of the case (which I fucking read in its entirety) which is first, hilarious, because the judge clearly hates the fuck out of Allen, and loves Farrow, and also contains lots of details about the backstory, therapy, timeline, etc.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:38 AM
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||
Pretty fucked up about that food stamp cut going into effect, huh?
||>


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:44 AM
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Yeah. I wouldn't rely on a judge as the last word -- they get stuff wrong too, certainly. But it is a contemporaneous writeup from an initially neutral party who got a chance to evaluate as much of the evidence as anyone has.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:47 AM
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57.2: Nothing to do with snow. I wouldn't take a space somebody cleared. The wikipedia page for "parking chair" has a picture from down the block.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 11:49 AM
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Some have recommended this as a good analysis if anyone needs more.

(And I see that my link in 34 was a reprise of what was in the OP.)


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 12:26 PM
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In following up on Orth and Russert I came across a bit on his death that described his relationship with Luke:

Russert was especially energetic when it came to his son, 22. "When it came to Luke, there was no detail too small," says Betsy Fischer, executive producer of Meet the Press. On the morning of the day he died, she recalled, Russert took a chunk of time off from work to go to his son's new apartment in D.C. and wait for the cable man. "He could have hired someone to do it, but that wasn't Tim."
And I'm sure Luke could have arranged to meet the cable man, but that wan't Luke.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 12:43 PM
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So, Woody Allen is probably a child molester, which is pretty fucked up. But what's up with Errol Morris' campaign to exonerate Jeffrey MacDonald? Say what you will about Allen's monstrosity, at least he didn't murder his wife and kids. The whole business reeks of Morris' infatuation with casting himself as the counterintuitive truth-teller who's so superior to everyone else.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 1:07 PM
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I'm considering this the political thread.

This is important: Red states refusing Medicaid expansion fight legally to bar their citizens from receiving federal subsidies for federal Healthcare.gov plans. They tried this before, as I recall, and I thought it was dead in the water, but apparently not.

The bad guys: Sens. Cruz, Rubio, Lee. The bad guys: Alabama, Georgia, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 2:27 PM
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I'd give Woody Allen a 5% chance of winning the Democratic nomination, tops.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 2:50 PM
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Antisemite.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 2:54 PM
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Re:Farrow-Allen.

Terry Cochrane, "The Matter of Language", in Paul Bove ed Edward Said

...Paul de Man remarks on Nietzsche's definition of truth: "Tropes are neither true nor false but are both at once. To call them an army is however to imply that their effect and their effectiveness is not a matter of judgment but of power. What characterizes a good army, as distinct for instance from a good cause, is that its success has little to do with immanent justice and a great deal with the proper economic use of its power." Although de Man primarily seeks to read the figures of Nietzsche's text and to show how the anthropomorphism of its language plays out its assertions, his comments are revealing of the dual power that inhabits language. De Man refers to this power as "epistemological" and "strategic," tied simultaneously to the production of knowledge and to persuading, to convincing, to provoking actions. In other words, as a product of ongoing institutionalization, language enforces, cajoles, and convinces, but its power is also more insidious because it lurks in its concepts, in the very matter of thought. Conceptually, this power is an antecedent to judgment*, which acts in the name of that power even as the judge can do little more than assert his or her impartiality.

It is a little interesting about what precipitates these hegemonic battles, conducted entirely on the terrain of ideology with dueling psuedo-facts, with propaganda of the dining-room and comment thread, in order as I said, to force an affiliation with a side, tribe, an army.

*It is the passion that precedes the argument that coerces. Always. "I need you on our side."


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 3:28 PM
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McManus is full of crap.


Posted by: Archie Debunker | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 3:32 PM
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You can get 100:1 odds on Kiefer Sutherland getting the nomination


Posted by: beamish | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 3:37 PM
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62: Somewhat, but as I've linked before, the cuts do have a program integrity rationale - it's getting rid of a rule under which households were allowed to count expenses they didn't necessarily have. Fucking centrism, rather than fucking Tea Partiers (who pushed a cut five times as big and were eventually sidestepped).


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:06 PM
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Don't they know Kiefer Sutherland is a Canadian, unless by chance he was born in the US? Both his parents were Canadians.


Posted by: Idp | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:10 PM
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He was born in London.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:15 PM
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Oh hi, Minivet. I was at this Affordable Care Act even this week where an audience member asked if there is anything being done about people who are getting told by the feds that they are Medicaid-eligible (and thus not eligible for subsidies) but in fact their state's Medicaid rules exclude them.

I haven't done a lot of research on this online but was curious if you (or anyone) can point me to an article or info about it. Not that I need one more reason to be angry and frustrated at Gov. Corbett on this issue.*

*For those of you who haven't been paying attention, his proposed "Healthy PA" alternative to Medicaid expansion is likely to reduce Medicaid benefits for people who already have it.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:22 PM
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I can't find the source, but I remember hearing someone defend his neoliberalism and its similarities to conservatism as "their methods, our goals". 74 is a nice example of the far more common "their goals, our rationales".


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:23 PM
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74 s/b "the behavior described in 74". Not accusing Minivet.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:24 PM
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Okay, I just found this from Kaiser.

The ACA envisioned people below 138% of poverty receiving Medicaid and thus does not provide premium tax credits for the lowest income. As a result, individuals below poverty are not eligible for Marketplace tax credits, even if Medicaid coverage is not available to them. Individuals with incomes above 100% of poverty in states that do not expand may be eligible to purchase subsidized coverage through the Marketplaces; however, only about a third of uninsured adults (3 million people) who could have been eligible for Medicaid if their state expanded fall into this income range. Thus, there will be a large gap in coverage for adults in states that do not expand Medicaid (Figure 3).

So basically my beef is with John Roberts, then.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:26 PM
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So basically my beef is with John Roberts, then.

Yes, but also with your governor, since the supreme court ruling only allowed rather than required this kind of bullshit.


Posted by: x.trapnel | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 6:39 PM
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80: I thought we had found something where if you estimated your income in the subsidy range and then your income ended up being too low you owed some of it back.

Ah if this paper is correct: (but there probably are some ethical (legal?) issues with explicit use of this as a "strategy." Intended I believe to deal with actual volatile income.

Repayments are capped on a sliding scale for families whose annual income is under 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL):
• If annual family income is under 200% FPL, repayment is capped at $600 ($300 for individuals).
• If annual family income is at least 200% FPL but less than 300% FPL, repayment is capped at $1,500 ($750 for individuals).
• If annual income is at least 300% but less than 400% FPL, repayment is capped at $2,500 ($1,250 for individuals).
• If the final annual family income is 400% FPL or greater, the subsidy must be repaid in full.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 7:01 PM
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Interesting--so it seems like the right strategy for someone Medicaid-eligible in a non-expansion state is to declare an anticipated income of 100% FPL, get the maximum subsidy, and then repay $600/300 of it at tax time.


Posted by: x.trapnel | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 7:09 PM
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77: I don't know much about what the feds are telling people, but what you're describing sounds quite plausible, and 81 is quite right.

I have maintained for some time that the federal exchange should be explicitly informing people that they can't get coverage because their state government doesn't want them to. OTOH, I'm not sure healthcare.gov has the capability to distinguish people in the coverage gap from people who could get existing Medicaid in their non-expansion state.

I don't know of anything in the law that would keep the strategy in 82 from working, but I suspect if it becomes widespread there will be some kind of crackdown. In an ACA subprogram I've done some work with, some people will get temporary Medicaid coverage pending an official determination, but the government will be tracking how many recipients actually go on to full annual coverage to see if the program is being abused.

78: Quite so.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 8:31 PM
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Off-topic: this amuses me.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 9:31 PM
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From a link in the link at 85, I learn that Zimmerman will not fight DMX.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02- 8-14 9:44 PM
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If you have the appetite for yet another Woody Allen piece, I found this extremely convincing:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/why-young-sexual-assault-victims-tell-incoherent-stories/283613/

It's about why the author's descriptions of her own abuse came out sounding "rehearsed"/"incoherent": she had only just learned all the relevant verbiage, and it was stressful trying to understand why all the adults were so worked up about a situation that didn't seem like that big a deal to her at the time.


Posted by: dz | Link to this comment | 02- 9-14 11:02 AM
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http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-blog-piece-on-woody-allen-to-settle-everything,35197/

And despite that, I must say, reading the judge's ruling ogged linked above _did_ change my thinking (which had been running moderately-but-not-conclusively pro-Woody). He is such a shitty father and human being, in ways beyond just fucking his girlfriends' teenage daughter, that probably he should fuck off and die even if he didn't molest Dylan.


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 02- 9-14 4:16 PM
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in ways beyond just fucking his girlfriends' teenage daughter,

The defences/apologia that I've come across for this relationship just sort of floor me. "The heart wants what it wants," and adopted children, adoptive relationships, don't actually count, aren't really real.

She was/is the [adoptive] sister of his [biological* and adopted] children. The only way this doesn't violate an incest taboo is to assert that blood is all, and that adoptive relationships don't mean anything at all.

His apparent willingness to ignore the social (rather than strictly biological) aspects of familial relationships takes us well beyond the realm of bad parenting, imho, and into the domain of borderline-sociopathic-at-the-very-least narcissism.

I have no idea whether he is guilty of sexual assault on his 7-year old [adopted] daughter Dylan. If I had to place a bet, I'd place the odds on "guilty," but of course I do not, and cannot, know. I think he is very, very creepy, though.

*Unless Frank Sinatra is actually the bio-daddy of Ronan Farrow? Inquiring minds want to know, and eagerly await the next Nicholas Kristof column.


Posted by: Just Plain Jane | Link to this comment | 02- 9-14 11:32 PM
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89 I agree that it was creepy, but think the limitations period on that has passed. She's in her 40s now, give her some agency.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 12:13 AM
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She's in her 40s now, give her some agency.

And he is in his late 70s now (maybe 79 years old?), and I don't see how there's anything in my comment that would deny him agency. Interesting that you would want to shift the agency from him to his much younger (though in her forties now, admittedly) spouse-who-is-the-sibling-of-his-children, though. But she is not the one who has been accused of sexual assault on a child, and she is not the one who penned that shockingly tone-deaf and self-serving op-ed that was published in the NYTimes.


Posted by: Just Plain Jane | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 12:33 AM
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Inquiring minds want to know

Not all of them. I have a reasonably inquiring mind, and I couldn't give a shit. In fact this mind is inquiring as to whether there's any way we could pack the whole tribe into a spaceship and shoot it into the sun.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 3:26 AM
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93

Antisemite.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 3:33 AM
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94

90: she's got all the agency in the world now, but his kids still have a sister-mom. that happens in horror movies set in appalacia but not ever in ordinary life after which you still go on talking to that dude like he's normal. straight-up, no-holds-barred, positively no dispute whatsoever, SISTER-MOTHER.

just imagine you know nothing about the family except that the father gave his young (under 10 years old) children a sister-mother, whom he photographed nude when she was (almost certainly, but not provably in court due to her adoption process) underage but maybe barely legal as he contends, and whom he definitely didn't start fucking until she was a teenager it was legal to fuck. definitely. you can take it from him and his now wife--he had romantic feelings for her, sure, but he's a person with moral integrity and he did not fuck her at all until she was a teenager whom it was legal to fuck in NY state.

would you think the father was psychologically well adjusted were you presented with this hypothetical account? if another of the daughters in this household accused this hypothetical father of being sexually involved with her in some inappropriate way, would you feel, let's say, mildly inclined to believe the accusation? I would, am, do, etc.

and look, setting the soon-yi thing totally aside, can anyone link to an example of 'implanted memories' such as are being alleged here ever happening? (since no one seems to think his daughter (one of "those children" as he called her not so long ago) is consciously lying.) 'implanted memories' that a child consistently articulates from the time of the abuse until her adulthood, while never wavering in any of the details or the accusation of abuse in general...? ever? are there former mcmartin pre-school kids who still maintain now that they were taken up in hot-air balloons to have sex with satan or something? this is just a common, boring yet horrible and revolting crime. tons of little girls and boys tell someone while it's happening, get scared by all the huge emotion the adults bring in, but stick with their basic story, and then as an adult say, yep, father o'flanaghan was a child molestin' fuckstick like I said. that is just so much likelier than the counter-scenarios that I am really having my sight dim in a blood-tide of rage mystified as to why anyone thinks that this common, boring, yet horrible crime, which was reported by a mandatory reporter (her pediatrician) and which dylan never wavered from even for a short time as a rebellious 15-year-old, isn't true. roman polanski I can see, but woody allen movies aren't good enough to warrant this self-delusion. here, I'll just tell you: he has other girls over and tries to do the thing with the lobster but it's never the same.


Posted by: alameida | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 5:34 AM
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95

To quibble slightly, it also happens in Chinatown, Jake.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 5:47 AM
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96

the thing with the lobster? but I thought there were water supply issues?


Posted by: alameida | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 6:04 AM
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97

Greg the Bunny explicitized the thing with the lobster.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 6:31 AM
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98

he's a person with moral integrity and he did not fuck her at all until she was a teenager whom it was legal to fuck in NY state.

Also, he never paid any attention to her at all before they started fucking. I mean, none. It's not like he's some kind of pervert, he completely ignored his kids' adopted sister, showed zero interest in her, zilch, barely knew she existed, because there was some other dude who was officially her father, so why should he, it's not like he had adopted her or married her mother, his kids were just her siblings growing up in the same household, that's more of a coincidence than a real relationship. And then once this girl turned 18 it turned out she was the sexy love of his life. Crazy!


Posted by: Disingenuous Bastard | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 6:36 AM
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99

What really creeps me out about the dynamic in 89 is that after all that they adopted two kids (both girls). Again I'm not sure at all what happened, but the fact that he still lives with 13 and 14 year old girls really makes the situation extra bothersome.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 8:06 AM
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100

That's one of those things that makes you wonder if everyone involved read all the paperwork.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 8:23 AM
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101

"Mr. Konigsberg, are you sure you've never used a different name? You look very familiar."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 8:29 AM
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102

I think we can just push Woody off a high balcony now. It's not as though we'd be losing Caravaggio in his prime.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 8:40 AM
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103

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/02/dylan_farrow_woody_allen_and_roman_polanski_why_i_chose_to_work_with_polanski.html


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 3:18 PM
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104

Interesting that you would want to shift the agency from him to his much younger (though in her forties now, admittedly) spouse-who-is-the-sibling-of-his-children, though.

Yes, very interesting. What is your agenda, Charley, that you think someone in their 40s has the agency of someone in their 70s? Interesting.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 3:29 PM
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105

103: That's really, really well done.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 4:11 PM
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106

103 is indeed great.


Posted by: x.trapnel | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 4:56 PM
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107

96: when they'd decimated all the surface water supplies in the Owens Valley they promptly set about sucking down the aquifer, leading to a concentration of salts and the creation of the ideal habitat for MUTANT UNDERGROUND LOBSTERS.

But that's all in the sequel.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 5:10 PM
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108

Another vote for 103.


Posted by: Idp | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 5:11 PM
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109

107 was me, have no idea why it came out blank re pseud?


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 5:13 PM
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110

Agree re link in 103. Bracing honesty re motive to work with Polanski, statement in beginning of piece pats off hugely at end when he describes specific changes he insisted on. Hope getting Polanski to agree to those changes was deeply satisfying for him personally.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 5:18 PM
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111

103 by Y/gg/le/s' the elder (but not the elder elder). Unless I am over-explicitizing.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 5:30 PM
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112

roman polanski I can see, but woody allen movies aren't good enough to warrant this self-delusion.

Woody Allen has made some of my favorite movies ever, which is why the temptation to self-delusion is so strong. Of course this case has as much to do with the McMartin Preschool case as it does with the Scopes Monkey Trial. It's still been really sad for me to watch this pall settle over my heretofore uncomplicated anticipation of showing my daughter What's Up Tiger Lily, Take the Money and Run, Bananas and Annie Hall, or playing the old standup routines for her.

I agree with just about everything in 94 but the tic of "He's a sleaze and I hated his movies"... at best, it turns it into a gusty bus argument, which it isn't.


Posted by: k-sky | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 6:45 PM
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113

Well said. 112 is pretty close to my sentiment.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 7:07 PM
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114

It's good to remember that watching his movies doesn't mean you support his actions. It means nothing more than that you enjoy the same type of jokes as a guy whose most successful relationship is only not incest on a bare technicality and not statutory rape beyond a reasonable doubt.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 7:11 PM
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115

It means nothing more than that you enjoy the same type of jokes as a guy whose most successful relationship is only not incest on a bare technicality and not statutory rape beyond a reasonable doubt.

I enjoy your jokes.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 7:13 PM
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116

115 is pretty close to my sentiment.


Posted by: k-sky | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 7:30 PM
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117

It's not transitive.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 7:50 PM
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118

Of course this case has as much to do with the McMartin Preschool case as it does with the Scopes Monkey Trial.

I'm probably a little too close to the McMartin case, but to be earnest for a second, this is bullshit, as was Alameida's reference to it above. It's true that the McMartin case eventually fell apart because -- after story added to story and the number of kids involved increased and increased -- the kids' stories got too fantastical to possibly be believed. But this took a long time -- a period of years -- and required a full trial on the merits to sort through. People (with the exception of one parent, who eventually turned out to be schizophrenic) weren't making fantastical allegations; they were claiming that their kids were earnestly talking about being sexually abused in fairly ordinary ways, because the kids were saying just that. At the beginning, when questioning was begun by the police, most of the stories were more or less tales of routine abuse, simply that day care workers had molested children. What had happened was that (a) the police had sent out a form asking parents to question their children; (b) the parents (unintentionally) in questioning their children, prompted many of them to tell stories of abuse, and (c) the investigators (in conducting the investigation) compounded the problem substantially by unintentionally coaching the children into believing that they had been abused. But these weren't insane people from another time. Credible investigators, including cops, prosecutors, and judges all believed them, as did the parents, most of whom were smart and well educated, and most of the stories were at least reasonably plausible and earnestly believed by the kids. The reporting on the topic was, at the time, uniformly supportive of the allegations of abuse. To this day most of the kids aren't totally sure what happened, although in that case since abuse was basically disproven they think that (in reality) nothing must have happened.

Now, Dylan Farrow was somewhat older than the McMartin kids, which makes a difference. But the idea that it's just impossible to coach a small child into believing that sexual abuse occurred, when it didn't, or that somehow just maintaining the memory for a significant period of time is itself sufficient to demonstrate that the abuse did happen, is bullshit and damn straight is the McMartin case relevant to that issue.

Now, I'm not saying, at all, that we know or should think that the abuse didn't happen to Dylan Farrow. We don't know, and Woody Allen is certainly a creep. But the idea that Dylan's past and current statement as to her memory is decisively dispositive, or that cases like McMartin have nothing even conceivably to teach us about these kinds of situations, is just dead.wrong.

Incidentally, here's a profile of the hack doctor who (with a team of other social workers) improperly cleared Allen, a guy who definitely didn't know anything about, and definitely hasn't done anything to work against, child sexual abuse.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 8:06 PM
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What had happened was that (a) the police had sent out a form asking parents to question their children; (b) the parents (unintentionally) in questioning their children, prompted many of them to tell stories of abuse, and (c) the investigators (in conducting the investigation) compounded the problem substantially by unintentionally coaching the children into believing that they had been abused. But these weren't insane people from another time.

This seems very different from the story of Dylan Farrow. Granted it requires a finer brush to distinguish her case from McMartin than from Scopes. But McMartin is about social hysteria in a way that doesn't comport with this.


Posted by: k-sky | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 8:50 PM
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120

"Social hysteria" in the media, maybe. But for the parents themselves it was mostly driven by their beliefs in the stories the children were telling them, which, as it turned out, had been unwittingly coached. In the Dylan Farrow situation, you have at least a plausible (not decisive, but plausible) possibility of unwitting coaching, and some possibility of deliberate coaching.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 8:52 PM
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121

But, really, I have no idea what happened with Dylan Farrow. It's the certainty (or just as stupid in this context, the "preponderance of the evidence") we get from people here that pisses me off. All we know is (a) Woody Allen is a creep (b) Mia doesn't really seem like a peach either, though she's not demonstrably nearly as much of a creep, and (c) Dylan had a really shitty life.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 9:05 PM
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120: yeah, in the media. And then in the parents. Satanic ritual abuse panic wouldnt have happened throughout the anglosphere and France more or less simultaneously without something besides independent credible allegations. Just does not make sense


Posted by: Turgid Jacobian | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 9:13 PM
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123

The McMartin incident was not about "satanic ritual abuse" (those were other incidents). It was clearly a panic of a kind, but a panic that was produced by egregious mishandling of an investigation of child sexual abuse, in a way that ended up effectively coaching the children.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 9:45 PM
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124

I didn't say he was a sleaze and I hated his movies; I just said he was a sleaze and I preferred roman polanski's movies.


Posted by: alameida | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 9:51 PM
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125

Meh. Thermohasis should be on panic. There was also a lot of weird magical thinking coming from one accuser and the children. It's of a piece, and almost certainly some odd contagion.


Posted by: Turgid Jacobian | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 9:54 PM
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"The emphasis should be"? Maybe so, but there's certainly tons of evidence of severe suggestibility through the interviewing and reporting process, that doesn't necessarily depend on panic, and that was the key aspect of McMartin.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 02-10-14 10:15 PM
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McMartin preschool and Dylan Farrow can be distinguished by the age of the alleged victims. I find it much more credible that preschoolers can be coached than that seven-year-olds can be coached. (This is purely anecdotal, of course: I'm remembering when I was seven, and when my own kids were seven.)


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 02-11-14 7:45 AM
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