Comments on: Kudos to L.A. Journalists: Their Investigations Uncover Widespread Cover-Ups of Abuse in Public Schools; But Rest of Media Snores

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:31:19 +0000

[...] abuse committed at an elementary school in Los Angeles continue to explode. On the heels of other recent shocking reports involving child sex abuse in L.A. schools, NBC4 in Los Angeles has reported:"On the same day [...]

By: TheMediaReport.com

TheMediaReport.com — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:53:42 +0000

Thank you, everyone, for your contributions!

I will be shutting down comments on this thread for now.

By: jim robertson

jim robertson — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:41:18 +0000

I trust no one who doesn't know the difference between a human being and a dog.

By: Publion

Publion — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:36:42 +0000

Notice the neat dodge here: as if I expect JR – JR! – to do reliable research for me. Rather, I have asked him to: share with us some very relevant information / about points he himself raised / to which he as Party to the case would have easy and immediate access. (If, of course, his stories are to be believed.) Not all of the documents in the 2006 LA 562-Plaintff case (now that is bundled lawsuit) appear online and since most of us aren’t in LA to look up the records at the court-house, and JR has – if his story is to be believed – the information almost literally at his fingertips … then here’s a chance for him to post a meaty and informative and useful comment indeed. But … apparently not.

The point in the prior comments was whether the Church was indeed ‘wealthy’ – which in successive comments has not been established. Now we get a neatly diverting scriptural theology lesson from JR about what Jesus said. Jesus also said “let the dead bury their dead”, so why are there Christian and Catholic undertakers and why are there Christian funeral services? Answer: because Jesus expected the end-times to come rather quickly and as it turned out, they haven’t arrived and over the course of time Christians and their churches have had to make do among the material complexities of human existence. The same charge can be leveled at the Anglicans or any other Christian ecclesiastical polity and the same Answer can be given.

I’d need to see the supporting reference about “downtown Chicago”. Until I see that, this assertion is just as likely to be one more internet legend passed around the victim groups like baseball cards or Trivial-Pursuit bits. As of this afternoon the Google search-engine returns 323 million responses to “largest property owner in downtown Chicago”; the most I could come up with under “Archdiocese of Chicago largest property owner in downtown Chicago” was a passing reference to the fact that the Archdiocese owns the ground under a hotel downtown; although given the mindset of victim groups, I can easily see this being inflated to JR’s assertion as stated in his comment.

Now the story changes and victimization (no distinction between genuine and otherwise, nor about where on the spectrum the allegated activity falls) is now only “usually the most devastating experience of our lives”. That’s no doubt a retreat in the service of accuracy, but who’s to say it’s gone far enough? And how does JR know what most victims experience? For that matter, even if he talks directly with others who claim to be victims, how does he know they are telling the truth and relating an accurate story about their experience? If one were sitting face-to-face with JR and got all the same information and material he has posted in internet comments, would one feel any more certain of his veracity or his capacity to convey actual facts accurately? How do any of these folks really know – without careful corroboration and investigation – that they are all telling each other the truth? Which brings us back to the Tuning-Fork phenomenon I have mentioned in prior comments.

The closer you look, the more it becomes a hall of mirrors like the ones on an old carnival midway.

As for the stories about himself which JR has volunteered in his 414 PM comment (which was not visible when I submitted my 416 PM comment): even if his reports about his life are accepted, there are other, and hardly remote, possibilities to explain such a trajectory in an individual’s life. And certainly, there remains the fact – as I have often mentioned – that no causal link has been established here between whatever abuse (wherever it falls on the spectrum) he experienced (presuming his victimization claim to be genuine) and the events and shape of his subsequent life. (Let the record show here that I didn’t go barging into JR’s personal life but rather am simply responding to information about himself that he chose to publish in a comment.)

And I raise this point not to single out JR but simply because I think we see here a classic dynamic that feeds so much of this victimist approach and the Abuse Matter as well: grasping at the role of ‘victim’, with its attendant status (‘heroic’ and yet also ‘helpless’ in the face of consequences), is far less daunting than considering other possible reasons for the shape and the negative aspects of how one’s life has turned out. Nor am I breaking any new ground here – this is Basics of Therapy 101 (second semester): most human beings, if left to themselves, are going to go for the least self-responsible explanations for their life problems, and it is precisely the job of competent therapy to help them gain mastery, first and foremost, over themselves in order to gain mastery over whatever experiences they have had and will create for themselves in the future.

So when JR – and I am going to imagine this goes for a lot of other folks as well – claims to know all about “this devastating tragedy” and knows it “first-hand”, I would have to say that at this point, with what there is to go on, that “tragedy” may be his life, but not necessarily because of whatever abuse may have been suffered. That link and that ‘knowledge’ still remain to be established and achieved.

By: jim robertson

jim robertson — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:28:55 +0000

Truth must look like a "magic trick" to you.

By: jim robertson

jim robertson — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:27:41 +0000

Why Delphin then you shouldn't fling dung at walls or anything else that's the first sign of sanity not throwing your own dung dear. I know u meant me but u said "I" Freud would have a field day. Mean noting????? Why thanks again, I can take a mean note.
You are so angry. Who stepped on your gown? And I'm so old I can hardly move. Ooooooooh I am old. Old old old am I old dear oh dear old and irrellevent. And what charm school gave us you?

By: jim robertson

jim robertson — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:15:56 +0000

Delphin pick a finger. Don't tell me which one.

By: Delphin

Delphin — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:07:24 +0000

Just peeking in to see how Ol' Robertson is keeping you all focused on his magic tricks…"look over here" ….at what other enormous amounts of dung I can throw up on the wall to keep you all too busy cleaning up my mess to fight the real battle.
Such great and informed minds on this site being wasted on Robertson's insanity. He has NOTHING, means NOTING and is NOTHING (as pertains to the mission of this site) but an angry, confused, embittered and embattled "victim" with way too much time on his idle (and somewhat culpable) hands.
It is far more fruitful for the occasional (yet, loyal) visitors to come to this site to learn from the resident sages of this site than to see the same old, tired tail-chasing that Roberston initiates and continues to feed.
May be time to just pat that old, faithful (albeit curmudgeony) doggie on the head and send him along his way, already….

By: Publion

Publion — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:16:36 +0000

And let me add another point to what I have just said above.
We see also the conflation of a) the individual (presumably genuine) victims and b) the Game into which their issues have mutated through the efforts of such organizational entities as SNAP. Or, to put it another way: we see the organizations hiding behind the suffering of the individual victims; using them as a cover for the organization’s (and its supportive special-interests’) purposes. Sort of like bank-robbers hiding behind hostages or submarines sneaking in through torpedo-nets by hiding under supply-ships.

Such that – as we have seen – any questioning of the Game is quickly spun as an attack on the individual (presumably genuine) victims.

And in saying this I am not denying that there are genuine victims in all of this Matter. (Although one still has to establish just where on that abuse-spectrum their victimization occurred and just how much high-end abuse occurred.)

By: jim robertson

jim robertson — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:14:06 +0000

It isn't that we victims grant ourselves title , to the most devastating experiences of our lives. It's that it usually is the most devastating experience of our lives. In grade school I think I got the second most honors in my graduating class. and a full scholarship to the high school I was injured at.
My class mate Dennis Murray either came in first or third just after me. We came from Ascension School on 112thst. and Figueroa in south central L.A.
Dennis is now President of Marist college. Bobby Zamora (who came in first, I think) Has had a great career as a teacher and coach.
I have been a messenger, a security gaurd; a paper deliverer. All decent professions but my peers did so well. More power to them. They weren't touched by their teachers. I was. I've done every drug but crack. I've had sex with literally thousands of people, yet no relationships. And been fired from every low level job I've ever had.
When I speak of this devastating tragedy. I know what I'm talking about. First hand.