Originally a comment by Rob on A personal and professional impossibility.

Both the BBC and RNZ (our version of the Beeb) have a long and proud tradition of long running shows that cover a wide range of issues that broadly fall within a generic header. The presenters are expected to be expert in this field, to be able to collate years, even decades long shows that maintain interest by being fresh, topical and challenging. Whatever your interpretation of the printed standards and your supposition about what is in an employment contract – let alone the interpretation of that – the practice promoted by both organisations is to expect and encourage the presenters to use their expertise to bring the greatest value possible from an interview.

Every god-damned day I hear presenters express personal views, couched as questions, which are designed to challenge the interviewee and thus draw forth more information. Sometimes these conversations are collaborative, an intellectual dance in which each participant takes inspiration from the other and the interview takes on an organic life of its own, returning to the pre-scripted questions only when an interesting thread is exhausted. other times the interviews become combative, when one side or the other feels a statement or position is bullshit and requires challenging. Sometimes the interviewee gets eaten alive, sometimes it’s the interviewer.

This is what I, and many others I think, expect and want from such shows. Not a pissing match or an exposition of one persons views. A real life discussion that brings in the listener as a silent but active participant who is forced to consider, to really think about, the competing views being argued.

In my opinion Murray has done nothing less than her job and the BBC should be ashamed of its unjustified and downright weasily editorial interference. Murray’s job is to be an expert on things that affect women. She is. She distanced herself, carefully and explicitly, from hate speech against trans people, but took to task a specific aspect of the actions and philosophy of a certain class of tran-activism. One which frankly seems to adopt something halfway between pre-feminist thought and the wishy washy choice-feminism that has zero intellectual and political backbone.

The Washington Post reports that the Marines-sexual shaming scandal is spreading throughout the military.

Sunday, March 5:

The Naval Criminal Investigation Service, or NCIS, said it was launching an investigation into the drive, while Marine officials said the drive had been taken offline. Additionally, the Marines’ highest-ranking officer, Gen. Robert B. Neller issued a statement calling the incident “distasteful” but did not address the investigation directly.

“Distasteful”? My god, that’s feeble. It sounds as if he’s concerned about the nakedness instead of the lack of consent, the stalking, the degradation, the loathing.

Tuesday, March 7: 

Female Marines subjected to online harassment on Marines United and other pages began to come forward, detailing that the problem was larger than any one group.

“It’s Marine Corps wide,” Marine Pvt. Kally Wayne, 22, told The Washington Post. Wayne joined in 2013 and was removed from the service three years later for disciplinary problems.

Erika Butner, a Marine who left the service recently, told American Military News that “this scandal has never been a new incident within the military, but I am glad it is finally getting the recognition it deserves.”

“As a rape survivor, I can tell you that this exact behavior of sexualizing and objectifying women is why so much sexual harassment runs unchecked in the Corps. It’s become so normalized in the military that women just have to deal with it alone,” she added.

Sexualizing and objectifying and at the same time expressing hatred and contempt: eros linked to loathing – that too is normalized.

Wednesday, March 8:

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, said on the House floor that “heads should roll,” and called on Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to remove the Marines who participated in the incident. Speier had issued a similar statement Saturday. After another incident in 2013 involving unofficial Marine Corps Facebook pages, Speier called for greater oversight.

Neller also issued a video message Wednesday to the Marine Corps, saying that the incident is “embarrassing to our Corps, to our families and to our nation.” Neller mentioned the guiding ethos of the Marine Corps and that “unfortunately, it appears that some Marines may have forgotten these fundamental truths, and instead have acted selfishly and unprofessionally through their actions on social media.”

Jeezus, he really has no idea what the problem is.

Thursday, March 9

James LaPorta, a journalist and former Marine, shared with CNN that the Marines United Group had splintered and formed another group, called Marines United 2. LaPorta also said that the original cache of photos that Marine officials said were taken down had actually migrated to a new Dropbox folder and was still being shared.

Semper fi.

The military site Task and Purpose also reported Thursday that service members and veterans from the Marines United page had begun uploading images and videos to pornography websites following the War Horse’s initial report Saturday.

I guess that’ll teach those bitches not to make a fuss.

Katie Hopkins done for libel:

The writer and food blogger Jack Monroe has won a libel action against the Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins and been awarded £24,000 damages, in a row over tweets suggesting Monroe approved of defacing a war memorial during an anti-austerity demonstration in Whitehall.

…

The case centred on a Twitter exchange in May 2015, in which Hopkins confused two well-known anti-austerity commentators: Monroe and Laurie Penny, a columnist for the New Statesman. Penny had tweeted about a memorial to the women of the second world war in Whitehall having been vandalised with the words “Fuck Tory scum” during an anti-austerity demonstration.

Commenting on the graffiti, Penny tweeted from her account @PennyRed that she “[didn’t] have a problem” with the vandalism as a form of protest, as “the bravery of past generations does not oblige us to be cowed today”.

Hopkins attributed the opinion to Monroe and tweeted to her then account @MsJackMonroe: “Scrawled on any memorials recently? Vandalised the memory of those who fought for your freedom. Grandma got any more medals?”

When Monroe, who is from an armed forces family, responded furiously and demanded £5,000 for a migrants’ charity on threat of a libel action, Hopkins deleted the original tweet but followed it up with one asking what the difference was between “irritant Penny and social anthrax Monroe”.

Shortly after Hopkins’ original message, Monroe, a contributor to the Guardian, tweeted in response: “I have NEVER ‘scrawled on a memorial’. Brother in the RAF. Dad was a Para in the Falklands. You’re a piece of shit.”

Monroe later sent a second message asking Hopkins to apologise: “Dear @KTHopkins, public apology + £5K to migrant rescue and I won’t sue. It’ll be cheaper for you and v satisfying for me.”

Hopkins deleted the first tweet but shortly afterwards tweeted: “Can someone explain to me – in 10 words or less – the difference between irritant @PennyRed and social anthrax @MsJackMonroe.”

Monroe’s lawyers argued that the second tweet carried an innuendo that Monroe approved or condoned the vandalism, which would cause lasting damage to her reputation. Monroe told the court the exchange had led to abuse from others on Twitter including death threats, and that the affair had been “an 18-month unproductive, devastating nightmare”.

I wonder if the verdict will have a dampening effect on Twitter abuse. That’s a branch of “free speech” I would be happy to see die out.

Further to that discussion of the BBC’s rebuke of Jenni Murray for writing a think piece about whether or not trans women are women in every sense – the BBC puts it this way:

4.4.31

BBC staff and regular BBC presenters or reporters associated with news or public policy-related output may offer professional judgements rooted in evidence.  However, it is not normally appropriate for them to present or write personal view programmes and content on public policy, on matters of political or industrial controversy, or on ‘controversial subjects’ in any area.

Does that cover their rebuke of Murray, or not? Is she a presenter “associated with news or public policy-related output”? Does that describe Woman’s Hour? Was she in fact offering her professional judgement rooted in evidence?

She presents Woman’s Hour. Suppose a bunch of men started writing editorials and tweets saying Woman’s Hour should be about men. Would it be not appropriate for her to write an editorial saying Woman’s Hour should be what it says on the tin? Wouldn’t that be a relevant bit of professional judgement from her?

I never knew Krazy Kat was genderfluid, but it’s so. Gabrielle Bellot at the New Yorker has the skinny:

“Krazy Kat,” George Herriman’s exuberant and idiosyncratic newspaper comic, was never broadly popular. From the beginning, though, it found fans among writers and artists. P. G. Wodehouse compared it favorably to Wagner’s “Parsifal”; Jack Kerouac later said it influenced the Beats. The strip ran from 1913 until 1944, the year that Herriman died. It is set in a dreamlike place called Coconino County, where a black cat named Krazy loves a white mouse named Ignatz, who throws bricks at Krazy’s head. Krazy interprets the bricks as “love letters.” Meanwhile, a police-officer dog, Offisa Pup, tries to protect Krazy, with whom he is smitten. The structure of the strip was built on reversals: a cat loves a mouse, a dog protects a feline, and, at a time when anti-miscegenation laws held sway in most of the United States, a black animal yearns for a white one.

Herriman was mixed race but “passed” as white; Krazy Kat plays with racial identity as well as gender.

Krazy’s gender, to the consternation of many readers, was never stable. Herriman would switch the cat’s pronouns every so often, sometimes within a strip; in one, from 1921, Krazy switches gender four times in a single sentence. When Krazy is portrayed as male, the comic becomes the story of one male character openly pining for another—in some touching scenes, the characters even nestle together to sleep. For all his pestering and punishing of Krazy, Ignatz ultimately seems to have a soft spot for the ingenuous cat; when Krazy plants a kiss on a sleeping Ignatz in one daily, Ignatz’s dreams, suddenly visible to the reader, become filled with little cupids and hearts. In two strips from 1915, Krazy wonders aloud “whether to take unto myself a ‘wife’ or a ‘husband.’ ” In a strip from 1922, an owl attempts to find out Krazy’s gender by knocking on the cat’s door and asking if the lady or gentleman of the house is in, only to find that Krazy answers to both titles. At the end of the exchange, Krazy charmingly self-identifies simply as “me.”

Both and neither; simply me.

Some fans of “Krazy Kat” were mystified by all of this. In his autobiography, the director Frank Capra described a conversation he had with Herriman on the subject. “I asked him if Krazy Kat was a he or a she,” he writes. Herriman, Capra tells us, lit his pipe before answering. “I get dozens of letters asking me the same question,” Herriman told Capra. “I don’t know. I fooled around with it once; began to think the Kat is a girl—even drew up some strips with her being pregnant. It wasn’t the Kat any longer; too much concerned with her own problems—like a soap opera. . . . Then I realized Krazy was something like a sprite, an elf,” he continued, according to Capra. “They have no sex. So the Kat can’t be a he or a she. The Kat’s a spirit—a pixie—free to butt into anything.”

Puck and Ariel are like that.

I asked Tisserand if he thought Herriman’s own experience with racial identity and his depiction of gender in the strip were linked. Tisserand pointed me to a 1914 strip, in which Ignatz asks Krazy about sometimes being a “Miss” and sometimes a “Mr.” “It’s a sed story, ‘Ignatz,’ which will move you to a tear,” Krazy says. “When us ladies first got the ‘votes,’ I went to a voting boot to vote. The man said to me, Is you ‘Miss,’ ‘Mrs.,’ or ‘Mr.’? Not to offend him, I said, Any one which you like sir, or all three should you rather have it that way. Well, it’s here my sedness begun,” Krazy concludes. Tisserand said, “Herriman wouldn’t have had that exact experience, but would have, at the age of nineteen, while living in a boarding house at Coney Island, had to choose his own racial designation, for the first time in his life.” Herriman, like Krazy, might have decided “to choose whatever wouldn’t give offense,” Tisserand proposed. In a world that required rigid demarcations, being someone who didn’t fit neatly could feel both dangerous and demeaning.

Broadly speaking, not fitting neatly can be quite a fine thing. Fitting neatly can be terribly limiting. I recommend fitting sloppily.

That thing about closed-minded versus close minded? Whaddya know, I was wrong.

The Online Etymology Dictionary tells the story:

close (adj.)late 14c., “strictly confined,” also “secret,” from Old French clos “confined; concealed, secret; taciturn” (12c.), from Latin clausus “close, reserved,” past participle adjective from claudere “stop up, fasten, shut” (see close (v.)); main sense shifting to “near” (late 15c.) by way of “closing the gap between two things.” Related: Closely.

Meaning “narrowly confined, pent up” is late 14c. Meaning “near” in a figurative sense, of persons, from 1560s. Meaning “full of attention to detail” is from 1660s. Of contests, from 1855. Close call is from 1866, in a quotation in an anecdote from 1863, possibly a term from the American Civil War; close shave in the figurative sense is 1820, American English. Close range is from 1814. Close-minded is attested from 1818. Close-fisted “penurious, miserly” is from c. 1600.

Oh that “close.” I knew that but forgot about it. In the 16th century the close stool was the exciting new technology.

Props to Maureen Brian for alerting me.

LGBTQ Nation reports:

Last Friday, a Maine high school raised a rainbow flag, becoming the first school in the state to do so. The flag came down yesterday as one student didn’t want to attract media attention to the school.

The Rainbow Flag went up in front of Kennebunk High School after work by the school’s GSTA (Gay-Straight-Trans Alliance, presumably) put it up. The school’s Feminist Club caught the event on video and posted it to Twitter.

It’s true, they did:

But.

The flag attracted limited local media coverage, including the short article from a radio station linked above.

KMTW, the local ABC affiliate, is now reporting that the flag was removed because a transgender student did not want to attract media attention. No other details about the removal are available.

That seems extremely sad, and counterproductive. But! There’s another but – another peripateia. In checking the Feminist Club’s Twitter I found up to date news:

Discussion on the take down of the pride flag occurred today. Issue is being resolved and flag will be flying in the future. DM for info.

— Kennebunk GSTA (@kbk_glsta) March 8, 2017

They talked, and the issue is resolved. Awesome! That’s how these things should go.

The Guardian reports:

Kellie Maloney hits back at Jenni Murray’s trans women comments

Hm. Perhaps not the best headline ever chosen, seeing as how Kellie Maloney, back when she was called Frank Maloney, tried to strangle her wife.

Getting undressed for bed, Tracey tells him the only time she sees him happy is when he is drinking.

The red mist descends. He snaps and lunges at her, closing his hands around her neck. He sees fear flood her face. Then their two young daughters burst into the room screaming…

Kellie takes a deep breath as the ­flashback to 2005 subsides. “Who knows what could have happened,” she says.

Oh well. That was twelve whole years ago. Let’s find out about how Maloney hits back at Jenni Murray.

Kellie Maloney has said she was shocked by broadcaster Dame Jenni Murray’s suggestion that people who have undergone “sex change” operations from male to female are not “real women”.

Maloney, a fight promoter who announced in 2014 she was beginning gender reassignment, said she sees herself as a woman and would love to debate the issue with Murray.

In a room with a lot of other people, I hope.

In response, Maloney told the Press Association on Monday: “We have lived in a male-privileged world, but not by our choice. Nobody has lived in a more male-dominated world than me, but I was fighting with me, I was battling with me. This wasn’t how I wanted to live.

“You can’t choose but you can correct it if you’re wrong. That’s what a trans male or female does. I see myself as a woman and I believe I’m a woman.

“I may not have gone through everything a woman has, like childbirth, but I’ve gone through other anxiety. I would have given anything to be born a woman.”

Well we’ve all gone through anxiety. Some of us have gone through anxiety about violent men, so seeing the Guardian gloating about a man with a violent history “hitting back” at a woman for saying things is not all that soothing.

The UN says Ireland’s investigation into mother and baby homes isn’t good enough.

It says the Commission of Investigation as established may not uncover all abuses inflicted on women and girls in these homes, the perpetrators of which should be “prosecuted and punished”.

In its “concluding observations” report – following examination of Ireland last month – the UN Committee on the elimination of discrimination against women (CEDAW) says Ireland has, “failed to establish an independent, thorough and effective investigation, in line with international standards, into all allegations of abuse, ill-treatment or neglect of women and children in the Magdalene laundries in order [to] establish the role of the State and church in the perpetration of alleged violations”.

The terms of reference for the commission of investigation into the homes, “is narrow such that it does not cover all homes and analogous institutions [and] therefore may not address the whole spectrum of abuses perpetrated against women and girls”.

“The committee therefore urges the State party to conduct prompt, independent and thorough investigations, in line with international human rights standards, into all allegations of abuse in Magdalene laundries, children’s institutions, Mother and Baby homes, and symphysiotomy in order to prosecute and punish the perpetrators of those involved in violations of women’s rights”.

It continues that “all victims/survivors of such abuse [should] obtain an effective remedy including appropriate compensation, official apologies, restitution, satisfaction and rehabilitative services”.

Even though they’re only women.

Point of order.

The word is not “close-minded.” It’s “closed-minded.”

I see the former written more and more, no doubt because the two sound alike when spoken. But come on – what would “close-minded” even mean? The mind in question is closed, to new ideas or information or argument. It’s a Trump-style mind.

Thank you for your compliance in this matter.

I saw dark murmurs about a pattern on Facebook a couple of days ago and wasn’t sure how well founded they were, but now that the Independent is murmuring…

When Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations died suddenly in New York last week, he became the sixth Russian diplomat to die unexpectedly since November, leaving internet conspiracy theorists trying to spot a pattern.

Vitaly Churkin, 64, was rushed to hospital from his office at Russia’s UN mission on 20 February, after becoming ill without warning on his way in to work.

It was initially reported that Mr Churkin may have suffered a heart attack, but following an autopsy medical examiners said the death required further study.

Media company Axios note that not only is Mr Churkin’s death unexplained, but it is also remarkably similar to the deaths of Russia’s Ambassador to India on 27 January, the country’s consul in Athens on 9 January, and a Russian diplomat in New York on US election day, 8 November.

Those three were also called heart attacks or, cryptically, the result of “brief illnesses.”

It could be just a meaningless cluster. On the other hand, Putin.

Two more diplomats died more clearly violent deaths in the same period: Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was assassinated by in Ankara at a photography exhibition on 19 December, and on the same day another diplomat, Petr Polshikov, was shot dead in his Moscow apartment.

Additionally, an ex-KGB chief, Oleg Erovinkin, who was suspected of helping a British spy draft a dossier on Donald Trump, was found dead in the back of his car on boxing day, 26 December. Mr Erovinkin also was an aide to former deputy prime minister Igor Sechin, who now heads up state-owned oil company Rosneft.

Meaningless cluster or Putin?

Samantha Bee and Jo Miller were on Fresh Air yesterday; it was good.

An excerpt:

Jo Miller is the head writer and showrunner.

GROSS: Let’s get back to, Jo, your work studying medieval Jewish history and planning to become a history teacher or a history professor. Was there a part of you thinking, what I really want to do is comedy, but I can’t do that…

MILLER: Yes.

GROSS: …I can’t become a comedian or a comic writer, so I’d better just keep to history?

MILLER: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: Why did you think that?

MILLER: Because I’m a girl.

(LAUGHTER)

MILLER: I hate myself like girls do. That’s exactly why. I was in – well, when Lizz Winstead started “The Daily Show” in 1996, and I was watching it from day one. And I had these little fantasies of going to work for Lizz Winstead. But that’s all it was, was a fantasy. I later did work for Lizz Winstead on “Wake Up World,” and she taught me so much. She’s a wonderful person.

When I was at “The Daily Show,” we would have interns, college kids every semester. And at the end, they would gather in the writers lounge and – to ask us questions. And we’d ask them questions about what they wanted to do. They’d be half men, half women. And if you – we’d ask them, do you want to be a writer? And go down the line. And the men would all say, yeah. I’m going to be a writer. I’m Jake (ph). I’m going to be a writer. I’m Carl (ph). I’m going to write. And the women would say, I’m Amanda. You know, maybe some day. I don’t know. I’m not good enough.

BEE: We’ll see. I mean…

MILLER: I’d like to. We’ll see.

BEE: …I don’t know. I might go into teaching.

MILLER: Yeah. And finally, one day I just had a meltdown. You know, somewhere between the unearned confidence of the men and the unjustified self-censorship of the women is the truth lies. Yes. Donna (ph), you were good enough. You just started. Do it, and you’ll get good. But – and we plucked some – our best writers out of other fields, like, you know, journalism, the best writers at “The Daily Show” like Tim Carvell, who’s running John Oliver’s show came from journalism.

And that’s – we’re not – the women are out there doing journalism, doing academics, doing social work, doing lawyer stuff. And we just have to find them because they’re sitting there like I was sitting in Ithaca going, I suck. Boy, it’d be fun to write for “The Daily Show” if I didn’t suck.

(LAUGHTER)

MILLER: They’re out there.

(LAUGHTER)

MILLER: It seems like a very far away dream.

BEE: Yes. It seems like a very far away dream.

MILLER: All the grad students who are listening – because every grad student in the world listens to this show, I know – try it. Put your stuff out on the internet. Put out YouTube videos. Put up – just put up your funny writings. Tweet funny things. Someone will find you.

GROSS: So, Sam, did you experience the kind of thing that Jo was talking about of thinking, like, I’m not good enough to actually be a comedian?

BEE: Oh, my God, of course. Oh, of course. I lived my whole life – I’ve been a fan of comedy and just like a very deep fan of comedy my entire life. But I never grew – I mean, I grew up in Canada, also. And, you know, comedy coming out of the United States is – it feels completely inaccessible.

I came to comedy very late in life for a comedy person – late 20s. It never occurred to me to do comedy in my entire life until someone literally forced me to do it – until friends who I’d worked on a play with needed to replace a woman in their sketch troupe, and they forced me to say yes to them and assured me that I would love it. And they were correct to do so, and I did love it. And it really changed the direction of my life. But – and I found that I was quite good at it, but someone had to force me into it.

MILLER: Maybe we need conscription if we introduced a draft.

BEE: Yeah (laughter).

MILLER: Force women into – because you and I were career waitresses.

BEE: Oh, yes. Oh, God, definitely.

GROSS: What kind of restaurants?

MILLER: Terrible ones.

BEE: Oh, God. I worked at pan – I worked on an all-night pancake house for a really long time and a terrible cockroach-infested seafood restaurant. I worked at a place where I had to wear a nametag. Aw, I don’t think it exists anymore. It was called Joe Badali’s in Toronto. And I had to wear a nametag that said Samantha Badali. I still have it.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MILLER: Wait. Like, you we’re all sister wives…

BEE: Every – we were all sister wives.

MILLER: …Or something?

BEE: Yeah. We were all…

MILLER: OK. That’s creepy.

BEE: …Joe’s wives – Joe’s concubines.

GROSS: Do you still have the waiter nightmares?

BEE: I still have waiter – I will never not have waiter nightmares.

MILLER: Yeah, still have them.

BEE: I honestly think that part of my very visceral reaction to Donald Trump is because I served so many people in the restaurant who were just like him. I have PTSD from it.

MILLER: Yeah. I worked in Washington.

GROSS: What do you mean when you say that? What are you picking up on?

MILLER: Douchey (ph).

BEE: A man in a suit – an arrogant business person in a suit.

MILLER: Oh, God, doing wine service for them…

BEE: Doing wine service.

MILLER: …Is the worst.

BEE: The man who is at the head of the table who says, if you give us good service tonight, I’ll give you a pretty sweet tip. Give us extra special service. I mean, that is…

MILLER: Hey, toots, right?

BEE: Yeah. It – its in my DNA (laughter).

MILLER: What do you like on the menu?

BEE: Oh (laughter). Do you serve grouper?

(LAUGHTER)

BEE: And they don’t tip. They dont. They never do.

MILLER: They don’t because nobody can see them signing the bill. So they’ll make a big, you know, show of taking the bill…

BEE: There’s a showmanship to it.

MILLER: …And put your 6 percent down.

BEE: The tip is very lean.

That’s good to know. It’s not at all surprising, but it’s good to know. Trump is like the most obnoxious kind of business bro who is annoying to the wait staff. Well of course he is.

Allison Stanger, a political scientist at Middlebury, wrote:

I agreed to participate in the event with Charles Murray, because several of my students asked me to do so. They are smart and good people, all of them, and this was their big event of the year. I actually welcomed the opportunity to be involved, because while my students may know I am a Democrat, all of my courses are nonpartisan, and this was a chance to demonstrate publicly my commitment to a free and fair exchange of views in my classroom. As the campus uproar about his visit built, I was genuinely surprised and troubled to learn that some of my faculty colleagues had rendered judgement on Dr. Murray’s work and character, while openly admitting that they had not read anything he had written. With the best of intentions, they offered their leadership to enraged students, and we all now know what the results were.

Charles Murray co-wrote the highly controversial The Bell Curve, published in 1994.

I want you to know what it feels like to look out at a sea of students yelling obscenities at other members of my beloved community. There were students and faculty who wanted to hear the exchange, but were unable to do so, either because of the screaming and chanting and chair-pounding in the room, or because their seats were occupied by those who refused to listen, and they were stranded outside the doors. I saw some of my faculty colleagues who had publicly acknowledged that they had not read anything Dr. Murray had written join the effort to shut down the lecture. All of this was deeply unsettling to me. What alarmed me most, however, was what I saw in student eyes from up on that stage. Those who wanted the event to take place made eye contact with me. Those intent on disrupting it steadfastly refused to do so. It was clear to me that they had effectively dehumanized me. They couldn’t look me in the eye, because if they had, they would have seen another human being. There is a lot to be angry about in America today, but nothing good ever comes from demonizing our brothers and sisters.

Things deteriorated from there as we went to another location in an attempt to salvage the event via live-stream for those who were still interested in engaging. I want you to know how hard it was for us to continue with fire alarms going off and enraged students and outside agitators banging on the windows. I thought they were going to break through, and I then wondered what would happen next. It is hard to think and listen in such an environment. I am proud that we somehow continued the conversation. Listen to the video and judge for yourself whether this was an event that should take place on a college campus.

When the event ended, and it was time to leave the building, I breathed a sigh of relief. We had made it. I was ready for dinner and conversation with faculty and students in a tranquil setting. What transpired instead felt like a scene from Homeland rather than an evening at an institution of higher learning. We confronted an angry mob as we tried to exit the building. Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm both to shield him from attack and to make sure we stayed together so I could reach the car too, that’s when the hatred turned on me. One thug grabbed me by the hair and another shoved me in a different direction. I noticed signs with expletives and my name on them. There was also an angry human on crutches, and I remember thinking to myself, “What are you doing? That’s so dangerous!” For those of you who marched in Washington the day after the inauguration, imagine being in a crowd like that, only being surrounded by hatred rather than love. I feared for my life.

Once we got into the car, the intimidation escalated. That story has already been told well. What I want you to know is how it felt to land safely at Kirk Alumni Center after taking a decoy route. I was so happy to see my students there to greet me. I took off my coat and realized I was hungry. I told a colleague in my department that I felt proud of myself for not having slugged someone. Then Bill Burger charged back into the room (he is my hero) and told Dr. Murray and I to get our coats and leave—NOW. The protestors knew where the dinner was. We raced back to the car, driving over the curb and sidewalk to escape quickly. It was then we decided that it was probably best to leave town.

After the adrenaline and a martini (full disclosure; you would have needed a martini too) wore off, I realized that there was something wrong with my neck. My husband took me to the ER, and President Patton, God bless her, showed up there, despite my insistence that it was unnecessary. I have a soft brace that allowed me, after cancelling my Friday class, resting up all day, and taking painkillers, to attend our son’s district jazz festival. He’s a high school senior who plays tenor sax, and I cried when I realized that these events had not prevented me from hearing him play his last district concert.

To people who wish to spin this story as one about what’s wrong with elite colleges and universities, you are mistaken. Please instead consider this as a metaphor for what is wrong with our country, and on that, Charles Murray and I would agree. This was the saddest day of my life. We have got to do better by those who feel and are marginalized. Our 230-year constitutional democracy depends on it, especially when our current President is blind to the evils he has unleashed. We must all realize the precious inheritance we have as fellow Americans and defend the Constitution against all its enemies, both foreign and domestic. That is why I do not regret my involvement in the event with Dr. Murray. But as we find a way to move forward, we should also hold fast to the wisdom of James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

In a post a couple of days later she reported that she’d been diagnosed with a concussion.

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed has more:

Middlebury officials now say that a small group of six to 12 people who appeared not to be students were involved in the attack on the car and Stanger. These people were dressed in black and wore masks. Earlier some of them tried to enter the lecture hall and were turned away. Those who shouted down Murray were students, but those who attacked the car (a group that included students) appeared to be led by the outside group (who Middlebury officials said appeared older than most of the college’s students). College officials called the town police when the car was attacked, but the attackers had run away by the time police officers arrived. No one was arrested. College officials said the size and intensity of the protest surprised them.

The reports about the nonstudents, dressed in black and with their faces covered, are similar to those from the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere about anarchist “black bloc” protests that have turned up on some campuses.

None of that is helpful.

The Times on that secret Facebook group for male Marines to degrade women.

Now the Defense Department has opened a criminal investigation and the Marine Corps is facing its latest unwanted controversy after it was revealed over the weekend that a secret online Facebook group of active-duty and veteran Marines shared thousands of naked and private photos of Marine Corps women.

The invitation-only group, called Marines United and made up of more than 30,000 active duty Marines and veterans, built online dossiers on Marine women without their knowledge or consent, listing dozens of women’s names, ranks, social media handles and where they are stationed.

…

Several Marines said the Marines United postings are an evolution of a retaliatory practice called “make her famous.” Marines would share nude photographs of girlfriends or spouses they believed were cheating through text messages to a broad swath of people, encouraging them to forward the photos.

Wow. Men would do that to women they were close to, women they perhaps “loved.”

Jason Elsdon, a Marine in his early 40s, who said he was a member of Marines United and said he played no role in posting, organizing or disseminating the photographs, argued that people were overreacting. “It was just nudes,” he said. “I scrolled past it.” He added: “I don’t feel that it’s right, but I don’t feel that people should be utterly surprised that it is happening. There are other groups, and many are civilians, that are the same way.”

Well that’s easy for Jason Elsdon, isn’t it – that kind of thing doesn’t happen to him. You could say he has male privilege.

Though all military branches face problems with integrating women, the Marine Corps has perhaps the toughest challenge. Not only does it have the smallest proportion of women of all the services — 7 percent, compared with 14 percent in the Army — it also has the highest rate of sexual assault reports. Reforms also continually collide with a culture of ground-pounding infantry fighters that despite the efforts of some in the leadership, embrace a tradition of brawling, hard-drinking and sexual exploits.

Sexual “exploits” – which include violence and degradation, right? It’s not an exploit if there’s not a touch of sadism?

“That is absolute nonsense,” said Maj. Clark Carpenter, a Marine Corps spokesman. “A true warrior carries himself with a sense of decency and compassion, but is always ready for the fight,” he said. “Those who hide in the dark corners of the internet with a shield of anonymity and purport to be warriors are nothing of the sort — they are nothing more than cowards.”

Still, the Marine Corps leadership has never fully rid the Corps of its rough ethos, and in recent years it has been hit with a number of scandals when this mentality broke into the open, including allegations that commanders retaliated against women who reported sexual assaults and recent reports that drill instructors hazed recruits, especially Muslims.

Just Muslims? Not bad hombres from Mexico?

Women in the Marine Corps say the culture has been hostile to them for years.

“When I was in Iraq, I always carried a can of black spray paint to cover up what was written about me in the port-a-johns,” said Kate Hendricks Thomas, a Marine veteran who is now a professor of behavioral health at Charleston Southern University. “I tried to laugh it off, but the harassment is so pervasive that it can have a real effect.”

It’s hard to laugh off having to work among people who have active, expressed contempt for you.

In September, a Marine veteran named John Albert was invited to join the site, and, disgusted by what he found, alerted Facebook.

“I have tons of friends who got killed in Afghanistan and have died since they came home. These types of actions dishonor their names and the entire Marine Corps,” Mr. Albert said in an interview.

Facebook took down the page temporarily for violating a ban on nudity after the complaint, Mr. Albert said, but the group apparently got around restrictions on nudity by shifting photos to a shared Google file.

Then on Saturday, a Marine veteran named Thomas Brennan, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade, and later founded the nonprofit news site The War Horse, wrote about the group.

Marine Corps officials, alerted to the site by Mr. Brennan, contacted Google and had the files removed.

Since publishing the story, Mr. Brennan said he and his family had received death threats from members of the group. He charged that one member was offering “500 bucks for nudes” of Mr. Brennan’s wife and said he was “cooperating with multiple law enforcement agencies” regarding threats to him and his family.

I’m so sick of bullies. I feel so sick about having a noisy bully in the White House.