Ewwwwww

by hilzoy

This LATimes profile of Joe Francis, the guy who makes the 'Girls Gone Wild' videos, is really worth reading, though in a way that made me want to take a shower afterwards. -- I started out trying to explain exactly why I found this story so disturbing, but failed miserably. So just a few short points:

* Francis is, in my unprofessional opinion, not just a sleazeball, but unhinged and possibly sociopathic. And there's something about both really, really bad people and really, really crazy people that spooks me. With him, we get a twofer.

* The story begins with Francis inexplicably assaulting the reporter. Later, his responses to the reporter's plans to print this and another episode from the same night, which we'll get to, start with verbal abuse:

"He seems to lose control, repeatedly referring to me by a crude word for female genitalia. "If you print that, I will [expletive] sue the [expletive] out of you. If you print that, baby, you just put the nail in your own coffin," he tells me. "You are a [expletive expletive]. You decided to blast me . . . You are a [expletive] bitch . . . I will get my last laugh on you. I will get you." He then refers me to Burke, his lawyer."

He then proceeds through various other tactics: lawyers, lies, calls to her editor saying that she wrote the story she did because she had a crush on him and became "aggressively romantic" and then "jealous and angry".

But on the night of the actual episode, he did this:

"Instead, the moment I saw Francis most clearly—his charm, his rage, his cunning and even his regret—came later, when no one was looking. I was waiting, still shaken, outside the club for a cab to take me back to my hotel. Francis, who had disappeared inside the bus, returned.

Ignoring the two policemen who hovered a few yards away, he tiptoed past them to stand over me. He rubbed my shoulder. His gestures were oddly gentle—even fond. I felt sick.

"I'm sorry," he said, reaching over to tousle my hair. "We love our little reporter. Don't we guys? We love our little reporter."

I stared down at the dirt as he whispered in my ear, "I'm sorry, baby, give me a kiss. Give me a kiss.""

This gives me flashbacks to working at the battered women's shelter. I used to mentally divide the batterers into two groups: the thugs, who just didn't understand that violence is not a normal part of human relationships, and the abusers proper, who were much more complicated. One of the things they always did was to apologize in ways that sounded just like this in several ways. First, the apparent belief that if you are really horrible for, say, an hour, there is some possible degree of niceness such that if you are that nice for another hour, it will cancel out what you did before. As if genuinely despicable conduct were like a negative number: just add a large enough positive number and it goes away! (Break your wife's arm? Set fire to the cat? Kill your in-laws? Don't worry: if you're really, really, REALLY nice, it will be just as though nothing ever happened!)

Second, the completely inappropriate sexualization of an apology. Here it's inappropriate partly because they don't have that kind of relationship, but also, and importantly, because the time to start one is not right after you have just made someone seriously afraid that you'll break her arm. (Which is part of what Francis did to the reporter.) Similarly, I have talked to a lot of women whose husbands wanted to reassure themselves that everything was OK by, say, having sex right after beating their wives up, often when their wives had, for instance, broken ribs or swollen, bleeding faces. Third, it's just one more way in which abusers say, essentially: your views and your emotions have no weight whatsoever. No one who has just been beaten wants to kiss, let alone have sex with, the person who has just beaten her. She may do it, if she's scared enough, but she will not want to. Tough, says the abuser: what matters is to reassure me. And to me, Francis' 'give me a kiss' schtick carries exactly the same message.

Consider this passage in that light:

"But the women are changing, Francis tells me, and that makes him sad. In the beginning, when "Girls Gone Wild" cameramen first popped up in clubs, the women who revealed themselves seemed innocent—surprised, even, by their own spontaneity. Now that the brand is so pervasive, the women who participate increasingly appear to be calculating exhibitionists, hoping that an appearance on a video might catapult them to Paris Hilton-like fame."

Here I agree with Amanda Marcotte:

"To rephrase this bluntly, Francis doesn’t like working with women who are getting something out of it. (...) The fantasy is not just regular girls getting naked, which is something I have exactly zero problem with. It’s a little more complex than that. The idea is to bend a usually unwilling woman to your will and enjoy the submission. Women who march up to the camera and say they want to be filmed in sexual situations are not bending to anyone’s will and that takes the fun out of it. Very, very telling."

If seeing women get naked were the point, it wouldn't matter so much whether they were 'calculating exhibitionists'. But if talking a woman into doing something she would never normally do -- getting her to do something way out of character through his persuasive powers, his sheer sexual magnetism, or whatever, is the point, then the fact that Francis has started encountering a lot of women who don't need to be talked into anything would be a problem.

* And then there's the fact that he apparently rapes an 18 year old.

About which all I have to say is: if someone is flattered by the attentions of someone famous who singles her out, and lets him get her pretty seriously drunk, and is then willing to go to his bus for what she assumes will be him filming her flashing her breasts, she should then be able to wake up the next morning and simply think: gosh, that was embarrassing, as opposed to: oh my God, I was raped.

Also, the current frontrunner in my "year's most callous thing to say" contest is now this:

"When she says she's a virgin, he responds: "Great. You won't be after my cameraman gets done with you.""

***

I found that story via Ezra. His comments contain a link to another story of complete human awfulness involving videos:

"Of all the things Rufus Hannah regrets — discovering alcohol at age 14, living homeless for 12 years — it is his notoriety that haunts him. Every time someone recognizes him, he told me recently, he feels “so ashamed.” Hannah, known to his fans as Rufus the Stunt Bum, is one of the inadvertent stars of a DVD series called “Bumfights.” Filmed on the streets of suburban San Diego and Las Vegas, the videos portray homeless people fighting one another, being pushed down hills in shopping carts and jumping off buildings into Dumpsters. What unfolds looks like a cross between “Jackass,” MTV’s stunt-based show, and a cinéma vérité portrait of the homeless as addicted, crazy and desperate enough to, for a little cash, light their hair on fire, pull out a tooth with pliers and have “Bumfights” tattooed on their bodies.

Hannah, who is 51 and an Army veteran, became involved with Bumfights more than five years ago, when Ryan McPherson, a high-school student and aspiring filmmaker, offered him $5 to run headfirst into milk crates stacked in the parking lot of a grocery store in El Cajon, Calif. “He told me he was doing a video for his economics class on what it was like when you don’t have a job,” Hannah said. “I just wanted some money to get drunk, so I did what he told me to. I never had any idea the stuff he was filming would become what it did.”

What it became, according to the film’s producers, was the “fastest-selling independent video series.” Released in 2002, the first “Bumfights” sold for $19.95, mainly through the Bumfights Web site. Soon after, McPherson and his fellow filmmakers sold the rights for $1.5 million to two Las Vegas producers, who have since churned out sequels. Sales, initially modest but steady, exploded after Howard Stern featured the video on air. Within six months, revenues neared $600,000. (...)

Many homeless people in the video seem drunk, stoned or mentally ill. Hannah said he was never sober during filming and participated for the money (at most $10 per stunt). In one recurring segment called “Bum Hunter,” a young man in safari clothes sneaks up on sleeping homeless people. He binds and gags them, then “marks” them by writing a number on their foreheads. (...)

Hannah, who says he has been sober for three years and is employed and no longer homeless, recently settled a lawsuit with the filmmakers. They agreed to an undisclosed amount in damages and to not use his image in future videos. He is also working with the homeless coalition toward legislation that would make violence against the homeless a hate crime. Meanwhile, the current “Bumfights” producers have just released “Bumfights 4.”"

***

Who are the people who watch these things?

I have an overwhelming urge to do two things right now: first, take a shower; second, do something genuinely good, however tiny and insignificant, since I hate to leave evil unanswered. And I will absolutely be really, really nice to the next homeless person I see, not to mention the next woman I see running away from a bus in tears.

Comments

[liberal japonicus]

What struck me about that profile was the vast number of enablers who surrounded Francis. The crew, the employees of his company, his fan base, the club owners who pay him to have his film crew show up. If it were just one guy, I wouldn't be so upset, but it's not, unfortunately.

[sujal]

it never is, japonicus...

[Sigmund Freud]

...the folks who pony up cash for the product...

Confession: not me. I draw the line somewhere to the tasteful side of "So You Want To Marry A _____".

[Slartibartfast]

Crap. That was me.

Eye vass pullink a leetle choke on hilzoy urrlier.

[Jon h]

Meet another likely beneficiary of the estate tax cut.

[Jon h]

(Or, rather, his heirs.)

[Gary Farber]

I've read stories about this guy before. Stories like this, and guys like him, encourage my misanthropic tendencies. Guys like, him, on the other hand, are simple misogynists.

Reading that story makes me feel dirty, and utterly in the bad way.

[bob mcmanus]

This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but but with a whimper.

I was like, so totally not in the mood to have this filth pop up on my favorite blogs.
What with several stupid wars and global warming killing people and all, I have been depressed for weeks. It is my habit to move from the specific to the general, and from these cases to most "adult entertainment" to all gender relations to all human relations.

Who watches these things? Human beings. But I have watched me some porn, and all were smiling and consensual and having fun and I kept hearing a background whimper of whipped dogs. But cruelty and competition is the background radiation of the world. I like my despair more Kultured, I have watched "Dogville" over a dozen times.

It always been my belief that while personal acts of kindness can make you feel better, they actually do little to make the world better. A kind of Law of Conservation of Kindness, that the net amount of kindness can be neither increased or diminished, but simply moved from one place or form to another. That net quantity of kindness in the world being very very small, if not totally an illusion.

Helping a lil ole lady cross the street or making a child smile will not redeem the world. And if the world is damned, my own salvation matters naught at all. Especially to me.

[hilzoy]

bob m: it may not make the world a very much better place, but it definitely makes it a slightly better place. Moreover, it has always been, for me, by far the best way to deal with this stuff. Because misanthropy is the wrong answer: the world needs both less misanthropy and less grounds for misanthropy. Doing something decent helps on both counts, I find.

Although I've always been partial to cleaning parks where kids play, myself.

[lily]

It won't save the world but...phoning for Lamont is a do-goody thing.
I did my calls today and I feel full of virtue.

[Gary Farber]

"I did my calls today and I feel full of virtue."

It certainly looks like there is very good reason to be optimistic that Lieberman will be crushed (alas, poor Joementum, we knew thee... not so well). I hope I'm not jinxing by saying this. But who would have thought six months ago that the numbers would be where they are today?

(Tangentially, digressively: I was almost as unimpressed with Jane Hamsher's classically non-apology apology as with her poor judgment in the first place, which surprised me not at all; but an apology must stand on its own, and come to a full stop; when you devote one sentence to an apology, and then proceed breathlessly into, however, why you were so entirely justified, and why the important thing is that the other person is really bad and why that's what we should talk about and why blahblahblah... that's a classic non-apology apology, and those always piss me off no end.)

I think that most of the elected establishment is going to be forced to put pressure on Preachin' Joe to drop out after he loses the primary; I don't know that it will work, but I think the odds are at least 60-40 that it will.

If somehow he pulls out a miracle and squeaks to a win, I shall be quite quite irritated. But that seems very unlikely.

[Andrew]

On making the world a better place (warning: major geekage), I often think of something I read in a Star Trek novel. The Enterprise had been boarded and Sulu was attempting to crawl through the vent system to reach the bridge with weapons before the boarding party could break in. As he was working his way along through the cramped vents, he realized that if he ran into anyone while sneaking along, he would most likely be killed, and nobody would ever know anything about it. At which point he expressed his belief that each individual act of courage extended the universe's life span, if only a little, and that would have to do.

I don't personally believe that acts of courage or kindness are capable of making the universe last any longer. But it's not a bad way to live one's life.

[John Thullen]

Well, if we count this as the outer fringe of the reality T.V/video movement, wherein everyone gets to work a video camera in the great "techmocracy" we live in, we now have the abusers, the humiliators, the cruel, and the sadists to match up with plenty of folks who like the abuse, the humiliation, the cruelty, and the masochism, plus the voyeurs.

Even the most mild of the reality T.V. shows rely on humiliation, rancid behavior, and someone at least getting dissed, betrayed, and mocked in front of millions. Watching people get voted off the island always gave me a warm feeling. Too bad they didn't eat the losers. Audience share would have been even higher.

I was always hoping on the Trump show, "The Apprentice", that one of the contestants would turn out to have a really (as opposed for our entertainment) bad attitude and after finding out that they have been FIRED, because even folks on their own team conspired against them and stabbed them in the back, that the bitter contestant would open their business jacket to reveal some huge bomb attached to their body or maybe concealed in those stupid suitcases on wheels they drag around all the time.

The segment would end with one last shot of the smug Trump and his muscle to either side and then the Trump Towers coming down, followed by the Donald's toupee floating delicately into the New York Harbor.

I suspect the same phenomenon is at work when liberals agree to appear on Hannity and Colmes or O'Reilly. Howard Stern: need I say more?

America digs cruelty. It helps us get over the awful ravages of political correctness, you know, when people bent over backwards to be a little nice to the halt, the lame, the poor, the fat, the folks who come in second, not to mention each other.

My suggestion to curb all of this is to raise the minimum wage a great deal. Then folks would be incentivized to seek productive employment. No? Then we're not serious.

[JakeB]

bob--
well, I must disagree. As I see it, kindness tends to reproduce, and one of our human goals ought to be to make it as fecund as rabbits in Australia. Every diminuition of unnecessary suffering makes the world a better place.
(This doesn't restrain me from wishing great suffering on those who strike me as evil. My views on Joe Francis, if expressed here, might violate posting rules, so . . . .)

[Gary Farber]

"(warning: major geekage)"

Nonsense. It couldn't possibly even begin to be major geekage unless you told us who the author was and which book it was.

;-)

"Even the most mild of the reality T.V. shows rely on humiliation, rancid behavior, and someone at least getting dissed, betrayed, and mocked in front of millions."

This is possibly why I watch none of them, and haven't even sampled more than a couple (some ten minutes worth of "Beauty And The Geek," and a bit of the comedy elimination show; two minutes of the inventors show), and can't begin to imagine taking an interest in any of them. (Not that I hold my taste out as superior to anyone else's; I simply prefer my mindless junk in different forms, and I certainly do like my own, other, forms of low culture; I have nothing against those who find fascinating sociological points of interest, or drama, or amusment, or whatever, in "reality" tv; it's just not my cup of Earl Grey.)

But from my own, subjective, POV, broadcast tv (all I have) has mostly gone to hell, and most all I have left to watch is sporadic PBS documentaries, and the news, and Boston Legal and Smallville. (I'd be watching syndicated Stargates and 24 if the local Fox station hadn't stopped broadcasting so I could receive it.)

[Andrew]

Nonsense. It couldn't possibly even begin to be major geekage unless you told us who the author was and which book it was.

Diane Duane, My Enemy, My Ally. :P

[Anarch]

Well, now I'm depressed.

[That's not aimed at Andrew, incidentally, whose geek-fu is indeed impressive.]

[hilzoy]

Sometimes I like Law and Order... but I agree, pretty slim pickings out there. Although CSPAN does its best to make up for it all.

Last night I was eating a late dinner, and there on CSPAN was, of all people, Susan McDougall, giving a talk before AltWeeklies, and also giving one of the best explanations of what (I take to be) real Christianity I've heard in a long, long time. It was really quite good.

[drive-by triangulation]

I think it's not so much innocence that is being prized; it's a lack of premeditation in manipulation.

The film side has always been AWOL there. Why would they be upset when the lens side catches up? More importantly, why would their existing customers?

[Gary Farber]

"Diane D/ane, My Enemy, My Ally. :P"

Ah, see, I wanted to know because of things like this: Diane is an old friend of mine. (Casual, to be sure.) I read her original Door Into Fire manuscript when I was working freelance for my old friend, her editor, Jim Fr/nkel, at Dell (Jim later tried to hire me to be his assistant at Bluejay Books). She dedicated that or another (I forget at this point) to my then roommate Lise Eisenberg.

I know very well indeed a number of other Trek authors (V/nda McIntrye, Greg C/x, Jo Sh/rman, John M. "Mike" F/rd, various others). (And don't at all know a vastly larger number.)

So that's why I was curious. They're not strange abstract distant people to me (hell, I knew Greg when he was just a kid in Seattle, and then helped introduce him to publishing when he moved to NYC, for instance; was in V/nda's house just about every week for eight years, and so on). (Or for instance, the time anthologist and old friend since she was 15, K/thryn C**** was drunk and poured her beer over Trek editor John Ord/ver's head, and then tried to strangle him at a midnight panel....)

Diane's original Rihannsu (Romulan) books are about to be republished, with the new one, sometime this or next month, incidentally. (Names obscured to interfere with Googling.)

[Gary Farber]

"Although CSPAN does its best to make up for it all."

It's difficult to get that without cable.

If I had cable, that would be a different story: when I've had it in the past, I'm a huge sucker for the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, old movies, C-Span, C-Span II, cable news, endless documentaries, and a fair amount of reruns of old tv series, and some of the cable tv series, Comedy Central, what have you.

That Would Be Different.

But since there's no way cable is in my budget, I'm limited to somewhat static-y versions of CBS, NBC, ABC, two PBS stations, a barely-watchable version of the WB (more like radio, with Indonesian shadow puppets), and a fuzzy version of UPN; oh, and a UHF Spanish-language station, two shopping channels, and a Christian station, joy, joy, joy. (And WB and UPN will be merged into one CW in another month or so.) As I indicated, I used to be able to receive a Fox station, too, but it vanished completely last year; I assume they moved the broadcast antenna.

So pickins' is slim. Thus my dependence on gifted-Netflix-subscription as my sole entertainment budget, along with 2 movies in theaters per year.

And the internet. You may have noticed I'm on the internet a certain amount.

(And the public library, of course.)

[lily]

Paul and I get only three stations and I have a sort of inverted snob thing going about that since we are surrounded by people who bitch endlessly about the damn trees interfering with TV reception (our community has a covenent against cutting trees). So we watch PBS. That's pretty much it except for sitting on the deck and watching the trees.

[Michael Weholt]

And on top of everything else, they can't even properly drive the stinkin' bus:

'Girls Gone Wild' bus strikes cyclist

[Gary Farber]

Michael! Long time no see!

[liberal japonicus]

To move a bit back towards the subject of the post, and the notion of selling humiliation, I would just observe that one reason I hang around in these comments is that humiliation seems to me to be the coin of the realm. Someone not being aware of something, or not reading something, or expressing an opinion without proper thought, a pile up occurs and the person (who maybe should have known) tends to dig in their heels and either denigrate the other person's knowledge or parse the answer. Not that this is unheard of here, but I think it occurs a bit less than a lot of other places. This is not to call anyone out, as I fall prey to it as well, but I think that these bigger problems of wanting to see people humiliated stem from the constant drip drop of one upsmanship.

[liberal japonicus]

Gack! post instead of preview. One of the reasons I hang around here is that people are a lot less prone to try and humiliate others, whereas it is the coin of the realm in the blogosphere.

[Gary Farber]

Hahaha! Look how dumb LJ was for posting instead of previewing! He made an error! What a dummy!

;-) ;-) ;-)

[Paul]

Can I wish that some day some group of women kicks the hell out of Francis (Francis. What kind of name is than for a pornographer? Is this some kind of Napoleonic thing?) and takes all his camera equipment? No? Well, I'm going to anyway.

[Paul]

"kicks" & "takes" s/b "kick" & "take"

I am humiliated.

[hilzoy]

When I read some of the kinds of comments that lj refers to, I find myself wondering: are these people like this all the time -- just waiting for an opportunity to ridicule people? If so, why? If not, why do they act like it? Do they think life is somehow better if you approach discourse as a contact sport and want to win?

[J. Michael Neal]

I am humiliated.

You damned well should be, since you were right the first time. The subject of the sentence is the singular "group" which is modified by "of women."

[J. Michael Neal]

As for the substance of the article, it strikes a chord. For a variety of psychological reasons that I think I have mostly tracked down but won't go into, I do get off on humiliation and have a not so insignificant misogynist streak in me. At the same time, unlike Joe Francis, I'm not a sociopath.

So, unlike a lot of people, I think I can understand him, while also being disgusted by him. He is evil and sleazy, but he's also sad and pathetic.

[Anarch]

So, unlike a lot of people, I think I can understand him, while also being disgusted by him. He is evil and sleazy, but he's also sad and pathetic.

Seconded, fwiw, which is why I was depressed upthread. I disagree somewhat, though: were he simply a quiet wanker in the corner, or just a local barfly pervert, I'd agree he was sad and pathetic; as it is, he's been given a much vaster on which to parade his vices and his smallness, and that changes everything.

[Jesurgislac]

J Michael/Bob, there is a vast difference between fantasies/roleplay and actually doing it.

At least, there should be.

I don't believe that anyone should be judged on what gets them off providing they're doing no harm to anyone else. Fantasies demonstrably do no harm to anyone: roleplay between consenting adults, fine.

But someone who actually goes out to humiliate and hurt people because that's what gets them off - as Joe Francis does, and you say you can "understand" - I don't. Do you mean you would like to transfer your fantasies of hurting and humiliating women into fact, and so you can understand a man who does? That's scary.

I do get off on humiliation and have a not so insignificant misogynist streak in me.

It's a measure of how friendly and respectful this culture is of misogyny that you have no problem admitting this in public, where I suspect you wouldn't write "I have a not so insignificant racist streak in me" when responding to a post about videos in which black people were humiliated because their exposing themselves got some white people off. People feel ashamed of being racist, in a way that they don't feel ashamed of being misogynistic - or indeed homophobic.

[liberal japonicus]

When I read some of the kinds of comments that lj refers to, I find myself wondering: are these people like this all the time -- just waiting for an opportunity to ridicule people?

Hilzoy, there's a line by (I think) Bertrand Russell about referring his youth and the way previous ideas and the people who held them were viciously ridiculed, for which he was embarassed, but then notes something like 'but if you have never known this, you have never known true intellectual happiness'

Jes,
I think that if you consider that misogyny is the product of a couple of millenia of social patterns, it is amazing that any headway is made at all.

[CharleyCarp]

LJ, that's one of the most depressing things I've read in quite a while. Humiliation? As motivation? Really?

I'm going to go have a shower.

[liberal japonicus]

I'll try and find the exact quote, I think it's at my office. It's depressing, but it gets at a certain facet of the academic mindset. However, it's not so much about humiliation, it's the conviction that you are right and everyone else is wrong. I think we don't pay much attention to humiliation as a rule.

[Gary Farber]

"I don't believe that anyone should be judged on what gets them off providing they're doing no harm to anyone else."

I'm certainly with Jes there.

"It's a measure of how friendly and respectful this culture is of misogyny that you have no problem admitting this in public...."

On the other hand, that's absolutely typical mind-reading from Jes: how she knows how easily, or with how much anguish and trembling, or whatever in-between, or whatever else was going on with J. Michael Neal when he wrote those comments, I have no idea. But, my, but she has a wonderful mind-reading machine.

[Slartibartfast]

One that seems utterly unreceptive to some of the thoughts I think at it very hard, from time to time.

[Slartibartfast]

Oh, and because we lack a recent open thread, Brendan Hansen's breaking of his own world records in both breaststroke events went without comment. Pity.

There were assorted other fine swims at USA NAtionals last weekend, not least of which is this:

N.C. State's Cullen Jones blazed to victory with a conquest of the 50-meter freestyle at the 2006 ConocoPhillips USA Swimming National Championships. Overall, he posted a blistering 21.94 time to become the second African-American male sprinter to win a national title behind Olympic gold medalist Anthony Ervin.

Excellent. I'd always thought swimming was one of those sports that was a little light in participation from that ethnicity. Comparatively speaking, that is.

And what I wouldn't give to have a body like that again. Again? Hey, even once would be nice.

[Jesurgislac]

And what I wouldn't give to have a body like that again. Again? Hey, even once would be nice.

Thinking along those lines, Slarti, did you notice another world record broken - Daniel Veatch, in the 200-meter backstroke in the 40-44 age category, last Thursday at the World Outgames in Montreal.

[bellatrys]

Anyone who is surprised at this, or that humiliation and control-of-women - and misogyny - is a core part of American porn - needs to go and actually look at some of the offers in their spam in-boxes.

Group bewitching teens hardcoore! Do you want captivating virgiin Slut?

Youngest bewitching Woman fucked by oldman. Young Eighteens so admirable and glorious!

appealing Teen in hard fuckingg.

aesthetic Bitches in harrdcore actiion!

goluptious teens in bukkkake action
interesting Bitch in hard fuckiing.

pretty Innnocent Slut getting it anallyy!
Do you want admirable viirgin Schoolgirl

and

YOUNGyEST asian girls ever! HORNhY LAvTIN SLhUTS! The Hotgtest, horwniest, hongey-skinned bzabes from around the wokrld! :-)

Nope, no control/humiliation/misogyny issues going on there...

[Slartibartfast]

Serious violation of posting rules, bellatrys.

Jesurgislac, I keep track of master's world records on a less-than-diligent basis. Occasionally a world-record swim doesn't go into the record books because of non-FINA judging, , nonregulation pool, and a number of other factors. I'm sure that Mr. Veatch and his coaching staff are working this issue now. I've heard of cases where the pool is right but one little detail or other was wrong, and so the time didn't go into the record books.

No surprise that Swimming World hasn't covered it; if it hasn't been written in to them, it won't get an article. The last meet I attended (I think it was three years ago) Martin Zubero set a world record in the 200 back (SCM) for his age group. Pretty exciting to see. They didn't publish it until I wrote them advising them of the new record.

Wow. I just checked; it was five years ago. Dang. It's still on the books, obviously.

Oh, and Veatch's record won't stand in any event, because it was broken at by Sean Murphy at the FINA World Masters last weekend by over a second. Which I also didn't mention.

[Slartibartfast]

Oh, and Veatch is an interesting guy, it seems. I hadn't heard of him before, but he's still got some top-ten times on the Princeton all-time list, and having been an Olympian is always a distinction.

[KCinDC]

I was the commenter who linked to the Ryan McPherson story at Ezra's. I found that link in comments somewhere else. I was thinking it was here, but now I can't find it. Such is the blogosphere.

Gary, the most amazing thing about Jane's blackface mistake is that it's almost exactly the same thing Steve Gilliard did right before the Kaine-Kilgore election last year, so the reaction to it was completely predictable (being a repeat of the reaction to Steve). I can't imagine what she was thinking.

[JakeB]

doesn't some of the vituperativity and oneupmanship we find on teh internets just seem like sublimated anger at something else? Just about everyone agrees (if they don't they're fools! FOOLS, I TELL YOU! :) ) that people tend to express themselves much more violently online and say things they would never have the cojones to say face-to-face. You write something nasty online and get the satisfaction of feeling like you acted brave without having to bear any of the consequences (except perhaps a flame war).
Having lived in academia for awhile, it seems to me like a more directly personal version of a lot of academic argumentation. That is, the point isn't really a joint search for the truth, but rather getting the sense that you beat someone else--a little zero-sum game of self-esteem boosting.

[Gary Farber]

"I can't imagine what she was thinking."

I'm just mindreading here, but when one is truly self-righteous, and filled with the wrath of the self-righteous all the time, one knows that one's heart is pure, and one can do know wrong, so actually thinking about one's actions, and their implications and consequences, is optional.

Arrogance, in other words. I don't like it, no matter what the side.

JakeB: "That is, the point isn't really a joint search for the truth, but rather getting the sense that you beat someone else--a little zero-sum game of self-esteem boosting."

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that.

[mimi]

"she should then be able to wake up the next morning and simply think: gosh, that was embarrassing, as opposed to: oh my God, I was raped."

Since when does being a dummy mean you have no right to consent to sex? Its still rape. If Joe had stolen her wallet, after she stupidly got completely drunk in his truck, away from her friends, it would still be theft - not merely embarrassing. If Joe had broken her nose, it would still be assault, not merely embarrassing. If Joe had killed her, it would still be murder, not merely embarrassing.

Just because she doesn't seem to know how to look after herself, doesn't make forced sex legal. Its still a felony crime.

[Francis]

I simply would like to register my profound objection to his mis-use of a perfectly good name.

[hilzoy]

Mimi: that was sort of my point.

[J. Michael Neal]

But someone who actually goes out to humiliate and hurt people because that's what gets them off - as Joe Francis does, and you say you can "understand" - I don't. Do you mean you would like to transfer your fantasies of hurting and humiliating women into fact, and so you can understand a man who does? That's scary.

The answer, of course, is yes and no. Yes, a part of me would like to do that. However, since I am not, as I said, a sociopath, the rest of me knows not only that it is wrong, but also that I wouldn't actually enjoy doing it. So, I don't do it, and the impulse to do it is weak and small, so it isn't even hard not to do it. But it is there, and it does understand Joe Francis.

It's a measure of how friendly and respectful this culture is of misogyny that you have no problem admitting this in public, where I suspect you wouldn't write "I have a not so insignificant racist streak in me" when responding to a post about videos in which black people were humiliated because their exposing themselves got some white people off. People feel ashamed of being racist, in a way that they don't feel ashamed of being misogynistic - or indeed homophobic.

Am I ashamed to admit this? Not in the slightest. Am I ashamed that I feel it? That's a more complicated question. For the most part, I'm a lot less ashamed than I used to be, as I've spent time coming to understand the origins and find acceptable outlets for the anger, so that I don't just bottle it up.

What is the case is that I have long since decided to stop pretending, to myself and to others, that there aren't demons that lurk in here with me. I tend to believe that the rest of you have them too, though not necessarily these ones in particular. Most of the rest of you, for reasons both valid and a few not, choose not to speak about them in public. That's fine. I have no problem with that, and I also know that I say a lot more about myself than I probably should and that other people would prefer that I didn't bother them with.

Still, there it is. Deal with it or not, as you choose.

[Harald Korneliussen]

Paul, there was someone who got back at Francis, but I believe it was a man, and you'll have to decide for yourself whether he's equally perverse. This guy apparently broke into Francis' home and forced him to do unpleasant things, filmed it, and tried to use the video for extortion.

[Jesurgislac]

J. Michael, my response to your response to my response to your response is...

...complicated.

But thanks for answering, anyway.

[liberal japonicus]

It was mentioned in the article, much more graphically than Harald put it.

[karlfr]

First:

As if genuinely despicable conduct were like a negative number: just add a large enough positive number and it goes away! (Break your wife's arm? Set fire to the cat? Kill your in-laws? Don't worry: if you're really, really, REALLY nice, it will be just as though nothing ever happened!)

Then, later:

I have an overwhelming urge to do two things right now: first, take a shower; second, do something genuinely good, however tiny and insignificant, since I hate to leave evil unanswered.

Ironic.

[Slartibartfast]

That might have been ironic, I imagine, had hilzoy suggested that perhaps she might erase a bit of evil by doing good. As it is, though, it's only ironic by some Alannis Morissette definition.