Showing posts with label sexual assault. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexual assault. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

I've got something to say that might cause you pain





I keep thinking of the first line of a John Lennon song called, aptly, You Can't Do That: "I've got something to say that might cause you pain." Funny, though, how no one else seems to preface their own statements that way. 

Like everyone else, I've had Harvey Weinstein shoved in my face lately, and I cannot think of anyone more repulsive to take up space in my brain. I guess I'm just supposed to NOT think about it, not react too much, react only partially, feel good that "now it's all out in the open", and/or just get on with my own happy life because everything really is still great.






It is?

People are going around saying, "Ah! Now, at last, a man like this will be brought to justice."

Just like Jian Ghomeshi. Just like Stephen Galloway. Just like Bill Cosby. It seems that in every case, the man accused of sexual assault drew sympathy, cosseting, and strenuous denial they had done anything wrong. With Cosby, the attitude is "how could you even think such a thing?" This is the Jell-o Pudding man! The next step (which has already happened with the first two, and is just about to happen with the third) is that the whole thing "blows over" and is reburied.

"Oh, no, not THIS time," is the chorus. Oh yes? It will blow over. Just wait. Weinstein will find a role in Hollywood somewhere, the old boys' network (fellow abusers all) will forgive and forget, and he will serve no jail time, while the women he assaulted are haunted for the rest of their lives. (Though really, shouldn't they just forgive him? It's the only way to get over their anger, isn't it? And it's crucial they get over their anger. Anger in a woman is most unattractive.)





I saw a Facebook post or re-post by a young woman I sort-of know, the daughter of someone I used to know actually, just a rant rant rant about Weinstein, with every other word being FUCK! FUCK! FUCK-FUCK-FUCK!!!! This got lots and lots of likes and supportive comments and shares (or, no, sorry! Copy and paste! That's MUCH more noble and spiritual than share), but I doubt if too many will be interested in what I just wrote here. I'm ranting, see. I'm bitter. I'm angry, and that's a no-no. I'm past the threshhold of anger, which ends around age 50 when you are past your female expiry date.

Today I read a Facebook post which was, in essence, one of those gratitude lists Oprah said we should make about everything wonderful in our lives. This was a long one, introduced with, "I know things are horrible in the world, countless people are suffering, and I see all sorts of negative things on Facebook, BUT. . . " It was a list, a long list of a lot of nice things in her life, really nice things, one after another, wonderful and enjoyable and satisfying things, which should have I guess made me feel better.

Instead, it clanged. To me it just reeked of upper-middle-class white privilege. Yes, homelessness is rampant, people's houses have burned down or flooded out, children have vanished, women have been raped. . . and it's really too bad. . . but I baked a lovely pumpkin pie today, and everyone just loved it!





I'm not saying it's "bad" to count your blessings instead of sheep. We all have our Julie Andrews moments - and why not? But this had a definite flavour of "I have all this wonderful stuff in my life, and you don't". It's nice if you can go out for a brisk gallop on your thoroughbred mare at dawn, but hey. . . those beasts cost money. A lot of money. It's nice to have a wonderful six-week holiday in Greece coming up before Christmas, but. . . 

All those things she listed were attached to having the means to afford/enjoy them (not that that's an issue to those who have it: they become conveniently oblivious). The blatant smugness I see all over Facebook, with people oblivious to how their words will actually affect others, is disturbing. Of course this person's friends provided the usual Greek chorus of cheers, ooohs and ahhhs that SOMEBODY was (at last) being "positive" about something. How refreshing!

"Hey, YOU had to deal with a fire in your home, YOU lost everything in a flood, YOU got sick, YOU got a divorce or lost your child or your business or your mind, but there's still something positive in the world:  I won a literary prize and I lost ten pounds and I went for a charming walk and I. . .", etc. etc. Spawning a hundred likes, a hundred happy-faced comments, a hundred copy-and-pastes.






I don't know what the answer is, and like everyone else I have to live in the present and enjoy it as much as I can (and though it sometimes surprises me, I do: I lived through enough nightmares of chaos and alcoholism and psych wards to appreciate the bliss of an ordinary, sober day). My husband and I have so little money that we have to write down every expenditure to the nearest dollar, and I don't care because going for a walk in the woods is free. 

I feel most powerless when I look at Trump, feel most alarmed when people still make jokes about him, as if that helps people and doesn't just temporarily numb them. He might just destroy the world, perhaps believes that is his ultimate mission. Weinstein and his ilk are legion, I am sure, but with anything this traumatic, it comes out explosively at first, then tends to get reburied. It's a cycle, which means, ultimately, that nothing happens.

Trump crudely bragged about grabbing women's pussies and STILL got elected. Probably he got a lot of votes because he bragged about it. God knows Harvey did, and for how long we don't know.




My hope is in my grandkids, not so scarred or twisted just yet, and the hope-against-hope that those three beautiful, accomplished, bravehearted girls WON'T be mauled or molested or nastily propositioned, as women and girls have been for countless centuries. I see no signs of it yet, but puberty looms, and I know what comes next. They become fair game.

Weinstein will buy his way out of jail, Cosby will go doddering into an institution somewhere, Trump will serve his four years, and all the rest will keep on being sleazeballs until a small percentage of them actually have to take responsibility for what they have done. What they have done is leave a mark on someone's soul forever, take their joy and never give it back. No jail sentence, not even the death penalty, could cause that kind of pain.



Sunday, November 20, 2016

Steven Galloway: outside of Canada, nobody cares




BLOGGER'S LAMENT.  I am absolutely exhausted. Just wiped out. I've been - somehow - don't know how - didn't want to do it, didn't want to do it - caught up in the Steven Galloway "affaire".

What's that, you ask? Who he? Outside of Canada, nobody cares. Steven Galloway is a former professor of Creative Writing at UBC (University of British Columbia, for my hordes of overseas fans). Professor Galloway had a habit of sexually assaulting female students, quite a number of them in fact, and some of them were beginning to actually complain about it. After an internal investigation, UBC dismissed him. 





But that is not the end, readers! The muck really begins here. In the past few days, 80 of Canada's creme de la creme/elite/"just plain old BEST" authors all lined up to sign an "open letter" to UBC protesting his dismissal. These Big 80, described in the press as "a Who's Who" of Canadian Literature, didn't think it was too gol-dern fair for The Professor to be held accountable for his actions - not to the point of actually losing his job! They insisted that a proper investigation be held to drag the situation out endlessly and allow Galloway to hire some crack lawyer who would blow down the (likely poor and marginalized) injured parties with one breath.

But the more people looked at this petition and the signatures under it, the more they smelled days'-old fish.





UBC is known as a sort of literary mill, a vast machine churning out new writers, who then, eventually, become Establishment: the new elite of CanLit. This is how the system renews itself: think of an immense, seething termite queen whose sole purpose is spewing out more termites.

If one unit of this family (and I use the term in a Sicilian sense) suffers in any way, the others must, according to their contract, rush to his/her aid. It is the termite way, and it is immutable.





The whole thing made me ill. To my mind, it was an extreme example of the wagons going in a circle, not to mention what Orwell might have called "wethink" (or, perhaps, "we-think"). A number of these CanLit muckety-mucks actually took their names OFF the "open" letter (which, to my mind, was about as closed a thing as I have ever seen), once they realized what it was they had actually signed.





Not to jest, because this has left me feeling like road kill. For the glittering Literatti will surely mass together when one of their own is under attack - while casually throwing a number of vulnerable, relatively powerless sexual assault survivors under the bus.

Or so it seems to me. 





Margaret Atwood, the Queen Bee or perhaps the Termite Queen of CanLit, wrote a letter of her own, which I won't reproduce here, but it's haughty. She tries to backtrack on her original statement, which compared Steven Galloway's dismissal to being burned at the stake in Salem. (Her references to a "witch hunt" strongly implied the students' claims were driven by hysterical delusion).

She has since made an effort to cover her literary ass, but it's a little late for that. Charmingly, she does remind us all that Galloway was "thrown in a mental hospital", which is apparently the worst fate which can befall a human being. The indignity of it - the horror, the shame - a Gulag Archipelago, UBC-style! It was all designed to cue the "He's Really The Victim" music.





If I jest about all this, it's so I won't cry. The whole thing exhausts me. Like Dorothy Parker, I only jest to keep from howling. (And please don't think I am comparing myself to her - I stopped drinking 26 years ago).


Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Jian Ghomeshi: a sorry son-of-a-bitch




(From today's Globe and Mail) Editor’s note: This is a statement delivered by Kathryn Borel, whose allegations against former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi were settled by peace bond on Wednesday. Mr. Ghomeshi admitted no criminal wrongdoing, but apologized to Ms. Borel in the course of the proceedings. He will no longer face trial. Mr. Ghomeshi was previously found not guilty of sex-assault charges in a separate case involving three women, four counts of sexual assault and one of overcoming resistance by choking.

Hi everyone. Thank you for coming out and listening. My name is Kathryn Borel. In December of 2014, I pressed sexual assault charges against Jian Ghomeshi. As you know, Mr. Ghomeshi initially denied all the charges that were brought against him. But today, as you just heard, Jian Ghomeshi admitted wrongdoing and apologized to me.






It’s unfortunate, but maybe not surprising, that he chose not to say much about what exactly he was apologizing for. I’m going to provide those details for you now.

Every day, over the course of a three-year period, Mr. Ghomeshi made it clear to me that he could do what he wanted to me and my body. He made it clear that he could humiliate me repeatedly and walk away with impunity. There are at least three documented incidents of physical touching. This includes the one charge he just apologized for, when he came up behind me while I was standing near my desk, put his hands on my hips, and rammed his pelvis against my backside over and over, simulating sexual intercourse. Throughout the time that I worked with him, he framed his actions with near daily verbal assaults and emotional manipulations. These inferences felt like threats, or declarations like I deserved to have happening to me what was happening to me. It became very difficult for me to trust what I was feeling.






Up until recently, I didn’t even internalize that what he was doing to my body was sexual assault. Because when I went to the CBC for help, what I received in return was a directive that yes, he could do this, and yes, it was my job to let him. The relentless message to me, from my celebrity boss and the national institution we worked for, were that his whims were more important than my humanity or my dignity. So I came to accept this. I came to believe that it was his right. But when I spoke to the police at the end of 2014, and detailed my experiences with Mr. Ghomeshi, they confirmed to me what he did to me was, in fact, sexual assault.






And that’s what Jian Ghomeshi just apologized for: the crime of sexual assault. This is the story of a man who had immense power over me and my livelihood, admitting that he chronically abused his power and violated me in ways that violate the law. Mr. Ghomeshi’s constant workplace abuse of me and my many colleagues and friends has since been corroborated by multiple sources, a CBC Fifth Estate documentary, and a third-party investigation.






In a perfect world, people who commit sexual assaults would be convicted for their crimes. Jian Ghomeshi is guilty of having done the things that I’ve outlined today. So when it was presented to me that the defence would be offering us an apology, I was prepared to forego the trial. It seemed like the clearest path to the truth. A trial would have maintained his lie, the lie that he was not guilty, and it would have further subjected me to the very same pattern of abuse that I’m currently trying to stop.






Jian Ghomeshi has apologized, but only to me. There are 20 other women who have come forward to the media and made serious allegations about his violent behaviour. Women who have come forward to say that he punched, and choked, and smothered and silenced them. There is no way that I would have come forward if it weren’t for their courage. And yet Mr. Ghomeshi hasn’t met any of their allegations head on, as he vowed to do in his Facebook post of 2014. He hasn’t taken the stand on any charge. All he has said about his other accusers is that they’re all lying and that he’s not guilty. And remember: that’s what he said about me.

I think we all want this to be over. But it won’t be until he admits to everything that he’s done. Thank you.




Wednesday, February 10, 2016

The Ghomeshi trial: tips for damaged girls


Dos and don’ts for testifying women: don’t
What the Jian Ghomeshi trial teaches us about how to be the perfect sexual assault complainant




CHRIS YOUNG / THE CANADIAN PRESS Former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi leaves a Toronto courthouse with his lawyer Marie Henein, right, following day six of his trial on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016.

By: Heather Mallick Columnist, Published on Wed Feb 10 2016

Wanted: an immaculate complainant for the Ghomeshi trial, and all such future trials.

It is apparent that the three women saying Jian Ghomeshi bit, punched, slapped or choked them were all faulty to some degree. Oh these ladies and their vapours, telling tales to make a name for themselves while they continued with their nasty ways, as the defence would put it.

They were eviscerated. But in a world where police did only hasty interviews with the complainants and a sweet shy Crown attorney faced knife-ish lawyers hired by a rich man, it’s time for victims of sexual attack to raise their game. Why should the public sector do all the work?

And I’m a feminist, but may I say the ladies were frightened and weak, qualities famously much valued by the monstrous regiment. A frightened weak female is not useful to our cause.

So, all women in future sexual assault trials, stop being frightened and weak.

Big up. Don’t be slender like Lucy DeCoutere, be tall, big-boned and muscled to the point where you could silence a soft fattish man by sitting on him until his little limbs waggled the way turtles’ do when you flip them onto their shells. It’s a nice image, no?

Be born into a moneyed family so that you can hire lawyers to advise and prepare, to coat you like the fine glossy sports car you are and purr along close to the road/witness stand. Be an Eaton or a Frum. Bonus: afterwards you can be a Conservative senator.




Don’t drink alcohol. Try sparkling water or fruit juices, just as enjoyable.

Be sexually immaculate, and if that’s not workable be in a fortress-like marriage with children as evidence of having done the sex, purely for the evidentiary purpose of knowing what was done to you.

Call the cops on your cellphone as soon as your attacker is out of sight. Tell no one what happened, especially your female friends. Do not consult your doctor who may draw his own conclusions. Have no medical conditions beyond a dry cough or whatever happens to tendons.

Memorize all angles, colours, shapes, makes of cars and note how many seconds passed during your attack. Helpful hint: Say “one thousand one, one thousand two,” etc. as you are overpowered.

Never get the days confused, even from a decade before. Keep a paper day-timer and a detailed diary. Do not express your feelings in your diary as they could taint your testimony. Have no inappropriate uncontrolled emotions and do not express hatred of your attacker as it could be seen in retrospect as a motive to lie.

Don’t do what the attacker wants you to do. Do the opposite. If this fails, as it will, go back in time and do everything differently, an excellent strategy as it saves on pointless regret.

Don’t contact the perpetrator or talk to him at industry parties. In fact, leave the industry.

Be the woman your parents raised you to be, nice, apologetic, at fault. I didn’t know I could disagree with men until I read a novel when I was a tween where a woman said, on a train, “I disagree.” And look at me now. I’m disagreeable! Who wants that in a woman?

Do not make jokes, especially sexual jokes. There’s nothing funny about intercoursing.




Don’t wear a bikini or any kind of outdoor minimalist garment, and if you do, do not be photographed in it. Frankly, best be a never-nude like Dr. Tobias Funke in Arrested Development who wears cut-offs under his underwear at all times. Never knowingly be naked, even in the shower or at night. Nobody wants to see your Down Theres, especially you.

Do not be online. Do not be on Twitter or Facebook, as they keep records for the rest of your life, which will not be as short as you will come to wish it. Restrict yourself to phone conversations. Whisper in restaurants.

Be silent and numb, draw no attention to yourself, be like a headless armless Greek statue in an alcove in an ill-attended area of the museum.

On March 30, Ghomeshi’s lead defence lawyer Marie Henein will be the keynote speaker at a Young Women in Law charity event at the Arcadian Court in Toronto, sponsored by an all-female legal recruiter and four major Toronto law firms. Proceeds of the evening will pay for “work with war-affected communities to help children reclaim their childhood.”

The charity was founded by 10 young women lawyers and helps such lawyers consider career paths, of which “become the men we once detested” is one.

I trust the audience members will be immaculately behaved, unsullied and, above all, silent.

hmallick@thestar.ca





Please be aware, as I hope you are by now, that this is NOT my piece. I cut and paste it here because if I post a link, it will be 100% ignored, or perhaps glanced at. That's just the way it is with links: we see hundreds of them a day. Mostly it's skip, skip, skip. But I really wanted my readers - and I do have some, though not the masses that deem a blog "successful" - to read this, all the way through. Every word. Not just the first paragraph, then - skip, skip, skip.

Lately I've been Ghomeshied, and the same thing happened when all this ugliness first broke out like a disease. Then it went underground for a very long time while Ghomeshi's defense lawyer planned her military strategy.

Ghomeshi is a narcissistic thug. Even those who write off the women he attacked as "morons" and "dingbats" (including a very well-respected - OK, it was Michael Redhill, and I've included some of his comments below) have to grudgingly admit that he likely "did it".





When this all came out of the woodwork, there were vitriolic articles blaming the CBC for all this, for sucking up to Ghomeshi when they KNEW he was a son-of-a-bitch who casually hurt women. When they KNEW that he, with his smarmy, self-important style and preening body language, reeked of the worst kind of narcissism. The fact they sent him to live with his mother was telling: he's the kind of guy Mama fawned over, telling him he could do no wrong, that he was entitled to anything he wanted, up to and including destroying women's self-regard and even their credibility by pushing them into a corner where he held all the cards.

This also told us that at nearly age 50, Ghomeshi has no friends, no other relatives who are speaking to him, and has never had any sort of long-term relationship. No, he prefers to slap them around, punch them in the face, then discard them and go on to the next one.

I can't get into the why-does-she-go-back-to-him dynamic, but it should be well-known by now. Women repeatedly go back to abusive partners: it's the rare one who doesn't. This causes a great segment of society to abuse them all over again by calling them weaklings, ninnies and, yes, morons.





Heather Mallick nails it here, and says all the things I've been thinking but have been too stunned to say. Just do these few simple things and you will succeed! At what, we are still not sure.

It's hard to get through a day now and feel happy and OK about the state of things. There are people I cherish, and though I risk being labelled codependent for doing so, I live for them. Left to my own devices - no, I won't finish that, because if I'm too forthcoming I seem to lose readers. 

Below is a selection of Michael Redhill's remarks. I could not include the entire Facebook conversation here because it was hundreds of words long, though I may be accused of that terrible crime of journalism, "editing". Including these comments is not an attack on him personally, but I present them here to demonstrate the kind of language and reasoning I have seen to describe both Ghomeshi and the women he damaged.

To his credit, Redhill seems to back away or even partially deny his initial insult and begins to apply the term "moron" to Lucy DeCoutere's lawyer (I very nearly called it her "defense team", though I cannot imagine why). In fact, there is a fair amount of backpedalling here, though "tear a strip off me" feels like recoiling from the unfair attacks of feminist harpies. At any rate, these are public comments from a high-profile writer, and I think I've presented them fairly. You can draw any conclusion you want from them.






The Ghomeshi trial is a joke now. Ex-Mayor Ford must be breathing a sigh of relief: there are now TWO gigantic morons at the heart of a story so tawdry it could only have happened in Toronto. One moron likes to hit women and pretends he doesn't know what consent is, and the other moron pursued him tirelessly, for years, after he beat *her*. Love letters. Who let her on the stand again? Lucy DeCoutere is going to change the subject of this trial and quite possibly torpedo any chance of justice the other accusers might be entitled to.
It's not just that he might get away with assaulting women it's that it will be the fault of this monumental dingbat.


I am NOT blaming this accuser. I'm pissed off that the people working with and for her were clearly not prepared for for Heinin's line of attack and have helped her reinforce the idea that she was somehow asking for it! What happened AFTER the alleged assault is not material in any way.







Much offense is given by my use of the word "moron," which has only served to obscure my point. My anger leads me to tar everyone with the same brush, which is intemperate of me. I would be corrected sooner in conversation while also making my point more clearly. To wit: Given what's at stake in this trial, why does the prosecution (and accuser) seem so woefully underprepared to combat the specious argument Ms. Henein has put forward with ease. Why was Ms. DeCoutere not counselled to respond that her contact w JG after the alleged incident has nothing to do with what he's accused of? She is not on trial, he is. And yet her legal representation has left her dangling. Before the trial, there was much talk about how the accusers could be dragged through the mud in this process. Did they fail to prepare? I think that's moronic.


I didn't compare her to Rob Ford. I said he can feel relief because he won't be what people are gossiping about when they talk about the latest circus in this city. And I stand by my comment that she's a dingbat and a moron to have been THIS unprepared in a case she brought for the sake of being the face of the accusers in this trial! She arrived in court unaware of what Heinin was going to make her look like? I don't agree with the case Henein is building! DeCoutere and her team have handed it to her and allowed the bugaboo "she was asking for it" to enter into the conversation.



You're right. Ghomeshi had star power and people turned a blind eye to his reputation for being a sleaze. You seem to be saying his victims did too. If this is the case, did his victims effectively give him a pass because of who he was? Did they stay in touch with him because his star power eclipsed his crimes? Or did they maintain a bond with him because victims of abuse often form seemingly illogical bonds with their abusers? Is it both? It strains credulity that it would be.






Ok, I'm ready to have another strip torn off me. I think we can all agree that we are discussing a court case that is in progress. The fact that (so far) witness one and Lucy Decoutere had contact with Ghomeshi after the crimes he is accused of is NOT proof that he committed the crimes. This kind of reasoning is called "petitio principii" -- also known as begging the question. You take the conclusion of the argument and make it the premise: These women kept in touch with Ghomeshi BECAUSE he assaulted them. But we are in a court of law. An accusation has been made. We cannot presume the guilt of the defendant based on what the accusers did after the alleged assaults any more than we can presume that their contact with him was expressly a result of the alleged assault. The court of public opinion has already made its ruling: Ghomeshi is a "predator" and "criminal". We have made our "ruling" because we have reasonably concluded that many women with similar stories of assault are highly unlikely to have worked together on a huge lie and a conspiracy. I personally dismiss it and conclude that they are telling the truth. I BELIEVE that Ghomeshi is guilty, but not because I have proof. I am one small part of the emotional throb of public opinion, but it does not entitle me to draw legal conclusions that are currently being tested in court. My opinion that the case is a disaster for the plaintiffs and the lawyers who are representing them remains unchanged and I think the extent of the disaster will become clearer as the case moves forward.



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Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Ghomeshi: what once was cool




Strange and sad, and shows how blind we be
when we see
the epitome




of cool
is nothing much but drool.




We kept that parasite within our sight 
and glued ourselves and grew ourselves a spot
(and women sure liked him a lot)






We didn't see old photos of him much
from rocker days
though we sort of heard his group
Bare Naked something? - No,
it was that other one 




though he was Hip, we knew because he told us, 
he sold us on the look 
and forced the Like.




Jian Ghomeshi, Jian Ghomeshi:
this country's got a hangover
your name is on the bottle

we fell for you
sucked up to you
full throttle
full throttle




Little teddies
have big ears
they see too much
and smell the fear
Turn him to the wall
and it will all disappear
close your eyes, girl
and you will see no evil




Oh come host us, host us! - jack up
our national boredom! Your killer smile
dilutes our memories 
of Lester Pearson and Juliette
grey wool socks
and other national traits
Canada the sleeping virgin
is now orgasmic
 drowned in lubrication
a slow hot fudge slide
of seduction




Was there an end to his poses? his suitability?
His male model shine?
His entitled gleam?
His internal spotlight?
The batteries that never ran out?
The vibrator in his larynx
that sent us all into 
paroxysms?




And here, let's not forget this! 
It was great at the time.
Great!

Great. I, um. I. 




Things change. Do they!
But not the man, the slug on the sidewalk,
the slug in his pants, slimy
the thug with his hands, grasping
the punch
the blackening, the blueing, the pearly smile
the woman now on trial
for being his victim
the man
(if you can call him a man) 
ass-licked, ass-wipened, then kicked back down
and cheered and jeered at, back in the spotlight
 as he walks up the courtroom stairs 




CODA

Jian Gomeshi, this is what you look like
after the fall.
I see no glamour here, 
no glisten or gleam,
just the dead eyes of a thug
and those celebrated lips 
compressed into a line. 

Pictures of the back of your head
taken by your former fans
are now trophies of your downfall
they don't even need to see your face 
any old part of you will do.




This was not what he expected
you can see it's killing him
but don't fret over Jian
the man will survive
there is still room
in his mother's basement
and someone will surely take him on
as a security guard
somewhere
the last remaining video store in Canada
or perhaps he'll open his own 
s & m parlour
it could be quite popular
but you'll have to check your iphones
at the door



  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!


Thursday, August 20, 2015

Josh Duggar: let's read that first draft!

Josh Duggar's Apology: "I Have Been the Biggest Hypocrite Ever" [Updated]
Josh Duggar's Apology: "I Have Been the Biggest Hypocrite Ever" [Updated]


Thus, the abject, Jimmy-Swaggart-esque apology written by Josh Duggar's lawyers, before yet another lawyer edited the thing. Red-pencilled are the remarks that might be considered "litigious". In other words, too close to the truth.

Needless to say, Josh's little escapades led to TLC cancelling (after long and ratings-conscious deliberation) the wildly-popular paean to assembly-line babymaking in the Fundamentalist realm, 19 Kids and Counting.

So what will Josh do now? I think he ought to drag his sorry ass to jail for some serious time, but that won't happen. He'll twist things around so that if WE don't forgive him, there will be something wrong with us. We'll be choosing to hold bitterness in our hearts rather than surrender the whole icky mess to the Lord God Almighty and his sidekick, J. Christ.

But it's more likely TLC will choose to build another reality show around Josh. Shall we call it 19 Sins and Counting? 





Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!