Krauthammer’s comments are not only poorly informed, they are recklessly irresponsible.

For future discussions about this issue, I’d like to recommend the following resources – both of which are widely available on the internet – to persons who participate in discussions about this issue –

There are two relevant crime databases in the U.S. – the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The UCR compiles police reports from across the country; the NCVS anonymously surveys a wide range of American households.

According to the UCR, approximately 90,000 rapes were reported to law enforcement authorities last year.

But according to the NCVS – which permits people to report crimes without anyone knowing about it – 300,000 rapes were reported. That is, two-thirds of incidents where women were raped last year were reported only when the person reporting the crime was afforded anonymity. This discrepancy is listed in the NCVS’s Table 91 – its tabulations indicate that only 32.7 percent of survey respondents who were victims of rape or attempted rape said that they reported the crime to the police.

Now, why would an overwhelming majority of women choose to not report such a horrific violation of their safety and dignity? A logical person might deduce that the social stigma associated with being a rape victim remains significant, if not severe.

Let’s be intellectually honest – today, rape remains the only crime in our society in which the victim is somehow to blame.

For evidence of this attitude, you only need to rewind the April 17 episode of The O’Reilly Factor, where Geraldo Rivera summed up the situation at Duke with the following – “It’s not always the nuns [who] get raped. Sometimes it’s the strippers [who] get raped.�

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I have to work with some Repugs. I don’t know how I can possibly look at them tomorrow without scowling or puking ot something.

THIS is what you vote for when you vote Repug …

Guiney,

If you really weren’t making excuses, please forgive my remarks, but liberals are people too, and they will deal with shocking stuff however best they know how. For some of them, it’s humor- sometimes stupid humor, but humor nonetheless. It doesn’t make them evil or anything, just human.

sounded like you were making an excuse to me.

My bad, I guess. *eye roll*

First: Get over yourself (and stop being paranoid about the intentions of the commenters, if you can gather the moral fiber to do so).

Second: How was I making excuses for them? I merely pointed out that some people write the first thing that pops into their head, stupid though it is. Hang around the internet for .5 second, and you’ll see someone post the first idiotic and inflammatory thing that comes into their head…
And how do you gather I think only Republican men do idiotic things? I’m a Democratic man, and I do and say stupid things all the time, and think homophobic, sexist, racist or otherwise not-good things all the time (I generally don’t act on them, and I usually feel guilty about thinking them, but I would be lying to say they don’t pop into my head)! Hell, I have friends who I often taunt as “commies” for being so far to the left of me, who do dumber shit than I could ever concieve of doing. Hell, I imagine I qualify as a “sexist pig” in your book: so be it. I don’t particularly care in any abstract way how or what you think of me, nor do I expect anything in that vein from you, though it is important to get one’s message across so I can say “I tried to get them off their foolish/wicked/incorrect in some way path”, even if I don’t expect them to care what little old I have to say.
If you wish to continue, cool, but as you can see, few are taking your statements as you apparently wish them to be taken.

Oh yes, and the beer gods will remember your mispellings, and you will be forced to drink Steel Reserve for the length of your afterlife.

First, get over yourself!

Second, you all seen to think only Republican men are sexist disgusting pigs and will use the pain of women for their own sick humor. You’re wrong.

Take it like a man, stop trying to make excuses for other men. You’re all fucking pigs. :)

On Atrios they told me I need to be ralying around the Republican “Christian” who jerked himself off in front of that little girl. What the fuck is up with that??

Now here you are making excuses for those jokes which were malicious and sexist. Excuses for bad behavior are weak and show a boomshagalaga mentality.

Talking about them as if they’re children, not mentally competent adults who should be responsible for their actions is pretty silly.

I suspect, given the context, that she found it shocking that liberals- who must, by definition, be ultra-tolerant, PC and above all sympathetic to the feminist cause- were acting in a non-uber-PC feminist-friendly manner.
Because we come out of a factory, you know. Because I, a straight, white, Aquinas-reading Catholic, midwestern male with some ingrained ‘redneck’ tendancies and prejudices (not that I act on them), must have virtually the same beliefs and feelings as the New Englanders, Europeans, Canadians, atheists, Jews, women, gays, and the veritable potpourri of “everything/one else” that I have the great pleasure of interacting with on this site, constantly disagree with them on minor things though I may.

Honestly, when I first read the story, I had the same “she watched him jerk off for 15 minutes?” reaction as a lot of those commenters, which was quickly followed with “what a bastard” and “too bad for the victim”, but I can see how someone could stupidly post whatever first popped into their heads.

Jillian: Sounds to me like a _Silence of the Lambs_ reference. To what end, I couldn’t guess.

However, I’ve tried to come up with a scenario in which someone could compose the lines in that email quoted from above that doesn’t end with the observation that the author of said lines is morally bankrupt….and I’ve failed.

Regardless of whether they are ever found to be rapists in a court of law, there’s something seriously, seriously wrong with at least one of them.

And it seems to me that the community outrage is right where it needs to be – directed at the university that apparently hasn’t been able to do a very good job of explaining the idea of “acceptable standards of behavior” to its athletic division.

There have already been incidents of “retaliation” by area blacks against white Duke students. Is that what we want? Where’s the community outrage?

I think that Duke is handling the situation well.

See: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2006/04/rhbletter.html

Earlier Wednesday, authorities unsealed documents stating that hours after the alleged rape, a player apparently sent an e-mail saying he wanted to invite more strippers to his dorm room, kill them and skin them. It was not clear whether the message was serious or a joke.

…

In the e-mail, addressed “To whom it may concern,” the player says he has “decided to have some strippers over” to his dorm room, “however there will be no nudity.”

“I plan on killing the bitches as soon as they walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off,” the author of the e-mail says, adding in vulgar terms that he would find the act sexually satisfying. The e-mail was signed with what police said is the player’s jersey number.

Jesus. Just….Jesus. I don’t know what to say.

Premise (1). People who act like jerks are morally imperfect.

Premise (2). Some LIBERALS act like jerks on occasion.

Conclusion (3). All LIBERALS are morally imperfect.

Premise (4). LIBERALS claim to be morally perfect.

Premise (5). Claiming moral perfection while being morally imperfect is evil.

Conclusion (6). LIBERALS are evil. Q.E.D.

Note the strawmen and fallacies with which this syllogism is riddled. Yet it certainly appears to represent annieangel’s thought process in pointing out that it was LIBERALS who made obnoxious jokes in that thread. Perhaps I’m wrong. I’d love to hear a different explanation of why she felt it necessary to berate us over the comments of the “LIBERALS” at another site on an entirely different topic.