Every once in a while, we get a comment that crashes right through the absurdity barrier, breaks the speed of hypocrisy and just kind of inspires me to keep doing what I’m doing. Today, we got one of those comments from someone going by “Jeri Lynn.” It was on the article wherein I suggested pro-lifers need to own that they just hate women. I have reproduced the comment here, but I break in on a few key points to offer some highlights.

No you murdering asshole. We hate those who murder. We especially hate those who murder the most innocent in our society…something you VILE PERVERSE MURDERING advocates seem to never understand.

You have the morals of Stalin and the attitude of of a chimp. You cannot even grasp SIMPLE concepts.

It’s true – we here at The Stalin & Hitler Fan Club throw our feces at each other all the time like you would not believe. The poor janitors, LOL! The lodge we rent for meetings actually asked us to find a new place, but we told them they and their families would be rounded up and shot as traitors if they said one more word, and that was the end of that. And we laughed and laughed and laughed!

Honestly, I wish your mothers had aborted the lot of you mass-murdering freaks of hell.

I, too, am pleased our mothers had the option of… wait, what? Let me get this straight. You’re against abortion, even in rape and incest situations, but you’ll make an exception for fetuses that are going to grow up to be pro-choice. Huh. It would be pretty tricky to enforce this, but you should get in touch with Dr. Who, who could transport you to each of our first trimesters so you can explain to our mothers why you want them to abort us.

Putting people to death for reasons, such as murder, is perfectly justified and that I why I think ALL WOMEN and ALL MEDICAL CARE MANGELAS, should be rounded up and PUT TO DEATH. WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.

You think all women should be put to death? I thought you were one, Jeri Lynn, but I won’t dust off my Freud pipe just yet. Let’s see – well, your unusual suggestion here will definitely resolve the abortion issue. This is a very avant garde take on the pro-life stance. I applaud your outside the box thinking, even though I can’t agree, myself, as I would like to see the human race continue.

And what’s a “mangela”? At first, I thought this was some kind of internet slang for “mangler” but I looked it up in my search engine and got something about “Mangela Animal Touch Farm” which… never mind. So then I remembered Josef Mengele (and no worries, I would’ve spelled it wrong, too), the man who decided who would die in the concentration camps. So I’m pretty sure you’re just continuing your comparison between Evil Dictators of the 20th Century and people who think raped 11 year old girls shouldn’t be forced to give birth to their own siblings.

Anyhow, I’m quite surprised to learn I have the ability to choose who gets an abortion and who doesn’t! I thought that was the job you wanted, Jeri, so I’m a little confused.

You THINGS, you CREATURES of death…. I swear you are so evil you think it bad when other actually OPPOSE putting CHILDREN to death.

Hey, we’re all totally opposed to putting children to death. Even when they’re going to grow up to think differently than we’d prefer. You’re the one calling for abortions of all future pro-choice adults.

DEATH TO YOU ALL!

Yeah! I am officially making you a member of the Stalin & Hitler Fan Club right now, girlfriend! You are much better at it than any of the rest of us – you put us to shame! In fact, I’m making you Vice Secretary of Torture. Keep up that violent tyrannical zealotry, and you’ll be Fuhrer of the club in no time!

You PERVERTS have NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER!

Well, okay, thanks for stopping by!

Note: This article deals with child molestation. If it will cause you distress to read it, please don’t.

Former FBI director Louis Freeh has issued a report after an exhaustive investigation into how Jerry Sandusky managed to molest boys for quite a long time without getting caught. His conclusion?

It cited former Penn State University president Graham Spanier, former vice president Gary Schultz, former head football coach Joe Paterno and Athletic Director Tim Curley, now on leave, as never demonstrating “through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky’s victims until after Sandusky’s arrest.”

This is depressing, but not exactly surprising. Molestation of strange boys in semi-public places actually isn’t that easy to hide. If you keep doing it over and over for years on end, there will be witnesses. The problem here is that the witnesses chose, or felt compelled, to be complicit rather than to do the right thing. See also: Catholic church.

Why does this happen? That’s what I want to understand, because in knowing why people collaborate with rapists, we might find a way to prevent it in the future.

“None of them ever spoke to Sandusky about his conduct,” Freeh said. “Nothing was done and Sandusky was allowed to continue with impunity. … None of these four men took responsible action.”

But now read this:

“What I found to be extremely telling and critical in deciding not just what I thought recommendations should be, is the janitors,” Freeh said. “These are the employees of Penn State who clean and maintain the locker rooms in the Lasch building where young boys are being raped. They witness, what I think in the report is probably the most horrific rape that’s described. And what do they do? They panic. The janitor who observes it says it’s the worst thing he ever saw. He’s a Korean war veteran. He said he’s never seen anything like that. ‘It makes me sick.’ He spoke to the other janitors. They were awed and shocked by it. But, what did they do? They said they can’t report this cause they’d be fired. They knew who Sandusky was.”

Privilege clearly plays a part. Sandusky wasn’t just a white male – he was also a VIP. But why did Sandusky’s superiors, who had power over him, not stop him from molesting kids? Where is this “total disregard” coming from?

Is it that they saw these kids as unimportant? Is it that they just didn’t want to get involved, because sometimes whistle blowers don’t come off as well as they should? They – and in the case of Paterno, his family – have claimed they just didn’t quite know what was going on, but Freeh is having none of that, and I agree. At the very least, they should have created an atmosphere in which janitors felt welcome to report what they saw.

So why didn’t they? Keep in mind that the average person, even when they don’t care that much about the victims, is grossed out by the idea of shaking hands with a child molester. These men didn’t just cover up for Sandusky; they continued to work with him. What was going on in their minds?

Thanks to Sunless Nick for this one! It took me ages to think of three… and then it was just like ‘OMG! These are my women!

You know what? Whenever the hero needs a ghostly spirit to encourage them on their way, it’s almost always a freaking man. So here’s this week’s challenge: Choose the women you thing would make great spirit guides, encouraging our plucky heroines in their journeys to save/discover stuff.

The rules: she has to be dead, or ascended, or in some canonically way not strictly living. Or, if it’s vague, have popular opinion lead towards it. I say that last bit because one of my picks is…

1. Bonnie Duncan, a recurring character in Iris Johansen’s books. Bonnie is the missing daughter of Eve Duncan, who disappeared as a child and hasn’t been seen – alive or dead – in a good decade. This not knowing prompted Eve to become a forensic sculptor; she takes badly damaged heads (extreme fire, brutal bashing etc) of children and builds them to what they would have been like in life. She did it out of her own limbo of not knowing so she could help bring the other children home. At some point (I read the books out of order so I don’t know the exact chronology), Bonnie starts to visit Eve, encouraging her to get on with her life, embrace new love with Joe, who eventually becomes Eve’s husband/Bonnie’s stepfather; there’s usually half a dozen conversations with Bonnie in each book, usually on the theme of ‘be strong’ and ‘be brave’. Oh, and just in case you though Eve was hallucinating in her state of uncertainty/grief, Bonnie also visits Joe and her biological father John, who never knew of Eve’s pregnancy/Bonnie’s existence and is rotting away in a Korean cell when Bonnie first comes to him. Also, Eve’s mum Sandra was an alcoholic/drug addict who cleaned up her act to help Eve take care of Bonnie… and never went back to the booze/drugs following Bonnie’s disappearance; Eve says Bonnie had a kind of effect on people that stayed even after she left. This girl has one awesome mojo.

2. Cordelia Chase from Buffy/Angel. Goes from spoilt rich girl to broke overnight, embraces demonhood in order to cope with the pre-cognitive abilities that assist Angel, was a higher power, then calls in a favour from The Powers that Be to say goodbye to her friends before she dies. Bet she’s got a lot of knowledge and insight tucked away there.

3. Sarah Conner. OK, I usually refuse to recognize Rise of the Machines as Terminator canon, but in this case, it’s handy from me to have Sarah dead. I specifically have Sarah in mind for a warrior’s spirit guide (like spirit guide/hallucination Kyle was at the beginning of T2) – very much a woman’s ‘keep going, soldier’ kind of spirit guiide.

Your picks?

OK, guys,

Now we have the issue of food sorted, we need women who will document the history and culture of our New World. Who do you pick?

My choices:

1. Dr. Temperence ‘Bones’ Brennan. Because that women can work out anything from a pile of, well, bones. She’ll cover the anthropological side of things.

2. Colonel Samantha Carter from Stargate: SG1. Is there any alien technology she hasn’t managed to reverse-engineer? (Ok, there were a few… but she had far more hits than misses.) She’ll be the scientist.

3. Nina Wilde from Andy McDermott’s series. She’s an archaeologist who discovered, among other things, Atlantis and the tomb of Hercules.  She’s totes the historian of the group.

Your picks? (Note, you don’t have to follow the same field of interest as I did. You don’t even need  fields of interest. I just liked how the first three that came to mind all had distinct specialties.)

Alright,

This week’s challenge: You’ve set sail (on a sailing ship or a spaceship, take your pick) to a Brave New World (which, oddly enough, always seems to resemble the US east cost or an amalgamation of Australia and New Zealand, ‘cos don’t y’all know they’re the same country) and you need (at least) three women that you know will get straight into cultivating this strange new land. Who do you choose?

My picks:

1. Jenny Taggart/Broome/Hawley from Vivien Stuart’s The Australians series. Wrongly convicted of theft and sent to the penal colony Botany Bay/Sydney on the first fleet, she doesn’t cry that she’s innocent (she is) or that she doesn’t belong there (she doesn’t), she just gets on with growing food and raising animals for the fledgling colony to survive off.

2. Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind for similar reasons. She’s lost the life of luxury she was raised to expect, but she knows that crying about it will achieve nothing but wasting time that could be spent growing crops and raising animals so they can eat.

3. Tayla from Stargate: Atlantis. Because we all need a native to the area who knows their way around.

Your picks?