"I have no information to share" is what we lawyers ALWAYS say in court, especially when cornered by the judge on something as sensitive as "do you know where your fugitive client is right now?" You cannot get into the habit of alternating between "I don't know" or "due to attorney-client privilege I am unable to disclose" because those answers on their own give the game away (especially the latter). A consistent and unyielding adherence to "I have no information to share" is our version of the Glomar response.
I think there's two different ways to understand the sentence--I have no information, and therefore no information I can share with you, and I have no shareable information. Pretty clear in context Bernard meant the second.
I misspoke/mistyped, "I have no information" is actually the ideal response. "I have no information to share" might imply that you know something but can't share it, although it can also imply that you literally have no information period. The whole point is to be vague, especially when you're entrusted with keeping information confidential.
Some of the conservative response to the rape abortion story bugs me for the same reason that progressive skepticism about the WI Spa flasher bugged me--they are saying it didn’t happen to avoid saying that if it did happen its perfectly fine. At least when Jesse and Katie criticize the story, I know its not so they don’t have to confront the real and inevitable consequences of an abortion ban.
Ten year olds get raped. Sometimes they get pregnant. Its not going to happen every day, but 50 abortions under 15 means about one a week. Multiply that by how many states had a trigger ban, and I am absolutely not surprised we saw this horror already.
I wasn't in love with Jesse and Katie's discussion of this either. I am not a journalist, and don't know what exactly constitutes journalistic ethics, but I kind of feel like reporting on this story with one named source with firsthand information, even if it could not have been otherwise confirmed.
There may be stories where you want more than one source, particularly where it is accusing a particular person of doing something wrong. But here, you are dealing with something that, even if it didn't happen likely will happen at some point in the not too distant future. I think that the numbers bear out that a 10 yo getting pregnant is fortunately the most common event, but it is unfortunately something that we can expect to happen at some point and it is going to happen with a somewhat older girl much more frequently. When it does happen, the OH law makes it pretty clear what the outcome will be. As a result, even if this particular story turned out to be false, it is still highlighting a real issue.
This, by the way, should have been included in the fact checking. This is the sort of story that, even if false, is illustrative of a real concern. As a result, the fact checking stories needed to make clear that, even if it turned out that this particular instance wasn't real, the law, in fact, has no rape exception and, therefore, even this isn't a real girl, is just a matter of time before there is a real girl in this situation.
When they read that stat about 50 abortions under 15 I immediately wanted to know the breakdown by age. How many of them were sexually active 13-14 year olds, vs. extremely young rape victims?
I thought the stat was about abortion, not rape. A 10-year-old needing an abortion has almost certainly been raped, but a 14-year-old could be sexually active with a same-age boyfriend.
I'm not saying it's better, I'm just curious. And yeah, per Ava's comment, the stat was about abortion not rape so I felt it was relevant because "under 15" is a wide age range that could include child rape victims AND sexually active young teenagers. It was one of those statistics that immediately gave rise to additional questions that are, in my mind, relevant to how we interpret the data. 🤷♀️
My first thought, as so often lately (*sigh*), when I saw the Professor's answers to Hawley's questions, was, "This is another example of why the Democrats are going to lose this fall."
I’m not voting for progressives anymore. Their litmus test on Israel is a step too far. I’m one of those moderate American Jews who think all settlers need to get out of the West Bank but that’s not enough for the DSA. so f**k em
I’ll never figure that turn of events out. The hostility toward Israel in young prog circles is one of the strangest developments of the last 20 years - to me anyway. Utterly flabbergasted.
My working theory is that the grafting of CRT and BLM language onto the conflict -- and the absolute deterioration of the situation (in all fairness) -- has introduced this younger generation to it. It’s a very compelling cause (especially with social media fueling it). and the $3bil in our military budget for Israel gives them a sense that they have a right (and duty) to speak up. Plus, squad is vocal (for better or worse).
Gabrielle is correct. US leftists have spent a good thirty years framing the Iseael-Palestine conflict in binary racial terms.
In this framework, the Israelis are white-adjacent racists oppressing Palestinian "people of color". Add in colonialism, imperialism, etc etc.
As far back the 1980s, Jesse Jackson and his ilk were lumping together American racism, South African apartheid, the treatment of American Indians and Israel/Palestine.
I think you are right. I would also recommend a Thomas so well essay "are Jews generic" in "Black rednecks and white liberals". In many cultures, there are successful groups who are also hated/discriminated against. I think some general envy of Jewish success explains a lot .
Yes, I thought the McArdle piece was 100% correct. A spot-on diagnosis of why many academics are so utterly unable to talk clearly or effectively to people outside their professional bubble.
I remember TAing for a humanities course related to gender as a young grad student and thinking, "How does this lecture material that I'm supposed to teach in my discussion section later this week sound to all the pre-med students in the room?"
This was before trans issues were a main topic of discussion, mind you. But we were covering a lot of material suggesting that "sex is complicated"--going right up to the edge of claiming there aren't two sexes--because intersex conditions (DSDs) exist, and the students were absolutely smacked down if they tried to suggest, clumsily, that perhaps not everything related to gender is cultural construction.
I guess the good news for my embarrassed feelings of yore is that now a lot of med schools are on board with the humanities lectures.
Great pieces, especially the one by Siegel. I like his coinage of The Yawn, nails it with the observation that people who employ it are trying to neutralize opposition by dissuading them from caring without attempting to defend what they must know at some level is indefensible.
I actually saw her give a talk on a book she was writing when she was still a law prof at BU. She discussed the invasion of privacy rights of poor mothers -- how by virtue of their poverty, they were subjected to regular intrusions by government agencies. Impressive and compelling speaker. Here's the book: https://www.amazon.com/Poverty-Privacy-Rights-Khiara-Bridges/dp/1503602265
Now I'm wondering how she would phrase it today! Poor cis women, nonbinary, trans men?! Back in 2015 she didn't have to manipulate her natural way of speaking about women's oppression.
And now a more recent article that has been cleansed of the word "women" (except in the footnotes, to highlight the privilege of "cis women," and to highlight the disadvantages of POC women) in favor of "pregnant people."
Of course Hawley wasn't asking in good faith. I don't think that matters, in terms of the impact that this exchange will have politically. Hawley couldn't have scripted a better exchange to feature in a campaign ad if he'd have tried.
As McArdle says, the point of this sort of Congressional testimony, like it or not, is political gamesmanship. If you aren't prepared to answer any senator's questions, you shouldn't testify, because all you can do is hurt your own side.
Whether the senator questioning you is acting in good or bad faith doesn't matter. You'll still hurt your own side if you're not up to the challenge.
Literally every column Megan McArdle has written on both gender issues and abortion in the past year would have put Hawley in a tighter spot without losing the median TV viewer. The reason McArdle is so good at this is that she reads and understands arguments from many sides.
That's one of the things I like about McArdle. She actually makes an effort to understand what each side is actually saying. As someone from the left, I really wish there was more of an effort to understand the actual reasoning and arguments from the right so that we could actually address people's concerns instead of just saying things that turn people off even more.
Yes, Sen. Hawley's question didn't have anything to do with abortion, which is an issue where the majority of Americans disagree with him. It did have to do with how those on the far left define a woman, which is an issue where the majority of Americans agree with him. The best way to answer is to not give him this opening, and, for just one day, pretend that it's women who get pregnant.
We need a term similar to “the banality of evil” to describe people’s tendency to express outrage on social media and then quickly get on with their day. Can we bring “the banality of outrage” into common usage?
I am a firm believer that social media should set rules that require complete follow through on all news stories you share. If you fail to post updates on any article you share, Mark Zuckerberg fines you $50 per missed update. That will ensure people only share stories they legitimately care about!
RE SCHOOLS: I wish the unspoken underbelly of all of this were more frequently expressed so everyone is on the same page. The unspoken part about kids being in locker rooms or bunking for school trips is 1) the danger of sexual predation from the biological male who, while claiming to be trans, is still predatory and 2) that some biological females will be made to feel uncomfortable even if they are safe, because of the typical lifelong intake of the social dynamics between the sexes: objectification, harassment, predation, or actual sexual abuse.
Or, for a biological female who is trans-male, the danger of being put into biological male spaces.
We don't want to demonize men, but we also have to acknowledge the clear imbalance of "power" that is ever-present. Biological women tend not to be sexually predatory. Biological men tend to be. It is one of the most robust trends in the history of civilization.
If this is not spelled out, people don't get what the problem is. They get distracted by the need to protect trans people, even though half the population is biologically female and they are NOT the ones who trend as predators.
This is all a perfect parallel (on the surface) with the concept that the police are the danger to Black citizens in bad neighborhoods when actually their chances of getting murdered by a neighbor are so, so, so much higher, and that removing police presence increases that danger. It is missing the forest for the trees.
Yes, we need to protect trans people. Yes, we need to reform the police. But to ignore the more common realities on the ground is at the expense of exponentially greater tragedy.
I have a public professional email address because my job involves legislative testimony. Anyone willing to dig into the public record can email me to grill me on things I said publicly about my employers' policy positions, or to grill me for details about private people I helped line up to testify. When you're public-facing in that way, you have to have a standard response to everyone who reaches out to you for information you can't give them, whether they're a legislator or a random busybody - and it has to be bland, respectful, and impossible for someone to get a toehold in to grill you further. "Let me talk to my boss" implies "My boss has an answer for you," which may or may not be true. So the journalist's brick-wall response made perfect sense to me.
...And, not to be that guy, but related: I just published a post on my substack about how to evaluate state legislative news, centered on legislative efforts in the wake of the Dobbs decision leak. https://weirdemails.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-reading-state-legislative Check it out if you're interested.
I love these episodes where you guys get way into the weeds of local policy - that extended segment on the LGBT policy in the Florida school system was such a perfect example of how mind-numbingly intricate these supposedly-straightforward culture war issues are when you get down to the individuals trying to deal with them in daily life.
On BARpod and other outlets the last few days, I've repeatedly seen a comment along these lines: "Child sexual abuse occurs on a regular basis; therefore, how can anyone have the audacity to question the veracity of the Ohio abortion story."
The fallacious thinking on display is the assumption that because a general phenomenon occurs, we should never question the details of any specific story.
Someone can tell me, "my car flipped over six times, caught fire and I walked away without a scratch". Does the fact that in general, car accidents occur every single day everywhere preclude me from questioning the veracity of the account I was told?
Glenn Kessler never questioned the prevalence of child sexual assault; he questioned a specific story that had rather sensational details. While the story turned out to be true, there is no reason to abandon healthy skepticism, as K&J note.
Are there any ob/gyn or pediatricians on this board who can give solid stats on the probability of a 10 year old becoming pregnant? I'm curious if this story truly is a unicorn. Telling us that 10 year olds get assaulted tells us nothing about the size of the subset who get pregnant.
Some commenters keep throwing around a stat about the number of Ohio girls under 15 getting abortions. But I haven't seen a breakdown of the ages: maybe 48 out of 50 girls are at least 13-14 and the 10 year old is anomaly.
Aside from all the posturing on both sides, let's hope the child recovers and can lead a normal life
Girls are entering puberty earlier than they did a century ago, largely due to improved nutrition. There's also been some research suggesting that girls are more likely to enter puberty very early if they don't live with their biological father. So girls in dangerous living situations with a mom's predatory boyfriend might well be more likely than other girls to become pregnant if they were victims of rape.
This is anecdotal, of course, but I personally have a number of friends who lived with their biological fathers and still experienced menarche around age 9-10. It's just a little earlier than the American average for my generation (which was 12.1 in 1995).
I'm a 52 year old male whose knowledge does not extend beyond 1980s sex education. (Always taught by a clearly uncomfortable gym teacher, not a specialist in reproductive systems.)
Given that background, if the story was "13-14 year old denied abortion". I would not have blinked. Instinctively, it would have sounded about right
I always thought it was kind of funny that in real life, the actress playing the mother on the Cosby Show is only 10 years older than the actress playing her daughter. Because of the improbability.
I'm a 32 year old female and my reaction was basically yours. I was thinking that me and my friends all started menstruating at 12-ish, maayybe 11. But now that I'm thinking about it, my one cousin started early. And she was the only one I know who didn't live with her bio-dad...
I’ve seen that too and it is irritating but for me questioning the story is getting lost in the weeds. I mean, veracity in reporting is important but even if this were merely a hypothetical the real issue is, are the legal ramifications possible. And the awful thing is, it appears that it is de facto possible, if not de jure, that a Dr., based on a reasonable fear of prosecution, would refuse to treat this girl in a horrific situation.
One think that I think is getting ignored here is the long shadow the murder of Dr. George Tiller has cast over how abortion providers think about the personal risk they're running. The way the right-wing media (and government) has made Dr. Bernard the center of attacks is fairly scary for that reason, and even before this she, like many public abortion providers, faced personal threats. In that context, I think a reluctance to share more information than strictly necessary with the media is understandable.
I'm also not sure I understand the reaction to the story's confirmation in the same way Katie does. Perhaps some media people were insensitive (I didn't personally see it), but saying that the vindication shouldn't be emphatically pointed out because we should be allowing the traumatized patient privacy seems to miss the point that this entire situation is political. This girl's right to an abortion in her home state was eliminated, and publicizing the situation is necessary to pointing out the horrific consequences of abortion restrictions.
I used to say I wanted more local media, but then I look at Seattle's local media and.... do I? Seattle has fantastic wall to wall coverage of anything transit and bike trails but not much else. There is only one crime reporter! And the people covering homelessness are hopeless ideologues (usually Stranger alumni). I stopped listening to KUOW during the Trump years because to say the jumped the shark, I mean they jumped to the pool with the shark.
Please do an episode about Erica C Barnett. The world deserves to know.
I paid for the SF Chronicle for a while but then stopped recently after yet another story on homelessness that was just ridiculous. Literally like who are you going to believe, the reporter or your own lying eyes? I’m pretty well aware of the nature of the visible street homeless population in the Bay Area because, you know, I’ve had many years of encounters with them, since I live and work here? You’re not going to convince me it’s actually no big deal when almost every day in the city I’d see someone shooting up or taking a shit on the sidewalk or having a psychotic break in traffic.
I find it weird someone would want to be a reporter if they’re just going to lie about easily verifiable facts. What’s the point?
I mean, I do think it’s a combination of a lot of things, including housing, but there most important is the redevelopment of SROs and slummy motels and other very-low-end housing, which is an obvious conundrum, because absolutely nobody, no matter how bleeding-heart they are, wants an SRO full of junkies and winos on their street. And in any case, they don’t make financial sense to build, because it’s not 1899 any more. The only other way you get that kind of very cheap housing is through sub-division and decay of existing housing, which is naturally resisted by residents and cities, so then you get sidewalk camping (or RVs in the cities without the resources to prevent it).
Then there’s the fentanyl problem, the DA not prosecuting which also ties in though with the police not policing, it is a complex problem. But denying the drug use angles or suggesting that anyone who complains about completely insane street scenes is a fascist isn’t very helpful.
In Seattle, SRO's functionally still exist. Some SRO's were sold and redeveloped as apartments. Others were bought by the city during the economic downturn in the 70's and turned into low income housing for addicts (like the Frye Hotel) or alcoholics (1811 Eastlake). There is a long waiting list for these places, and they are a mess, to put it mildly. The Josephinium was a luxury motel but now it is low income housing managed by Catholic Charities.
I do maintain it is largely a myth that people get priced out of a historically poorer neighborhood like the Central District and move into a tent under I-5. Those people moved to the South End, Kent, Federal Way, Lynnwood, etc...
It's not so much a combination of things as much as it's two completely different issues. You have the poor who are struggling to live in really expensive places like Seattle and San Francisco. They might be homeless for a bit and get by maybe with some couch surfing, maybe moving in with relatives for a bit. A completely different group are the drug addicted criminals, many of whom are also homeless. These are the people who are destroying neighborhoods. Saying that most homeless aren't drug addicts might be true, but it's not relevant when talking about those who are. Talking about the guy who stole a sandwich last year and had the cops called on him whenever you talk about crime and the homeless doesn't change that there are people who spend their days stealing catalytic converters, tools from home depot, and anything from Target. These are two very different problems yet those in Seattle's city government keep talking about the first group when people bring up any police response to the problems created by the second. Yes, housing affordability does make some people temporally homeless, but affordable housing isn't going to help someone who spends their day stealing to fund their meth habit, they have a very different problem.
I do think your groupings are right, but there’s overlap and movement in there.
For me, reverting the effective decriminalization of theft seems more likely to help than anything on housing. (Cue lecture about “the carceral state”.) Theft is very destructive to city economies and in the long-term to the people who engage in it. We didn’t discover something new about tolerating theft in the last ten years that nobody realized for the preceding 5,000.
Anyhow I don’t mind if reporters cover stories from multiple angles, I just think it’s a waste of time to keep “debunking myths about the homeless” by just lying about what everyone can see for themselves is true.
I highly recommend "The Least of Us" by Sam Quinones for a dive into the fentanyl and meth crises driving homelessness. The author threads the needle between empathy for people with addictions vs. the cold reality that enabling drug use and theft is not an acceptable solution. Why is it so hard for most journalists to admit that addiction plays a big role in visible homelessness?
That and his previous book are pretty good, although in this one he speculates a lot about a “new toxic meth” that’s the cause of new kinds of psychosis. But there’s no evidence for that, and the simpler explanation would be that new production and distribution methods simply made it cheaper, therefore used in larger quantities, and therefore more likely to induce psychosis.
But the discussion of meth is timely. We forgot the previous meth wave because of the deaths associated with the opioid wave, but it’s really meth that gives you the grit, determination, and work ethic to be out at 3am sawing off someone’s catalytic converter, and it’s back in a big way.
I second an episode about Erica C Barnett. She's now on the podcast Seattle Nice and some of the stuff she says is absolutely bananas. Like, apparently it's an overreaction if your kid gets stuck with a discarded needle in a park and you get upset.
The Seattle Times's equity and social justice correspondent is also churning out stuff that's kinda crazy.
I'm trying to remember what happened with her. She and another Stranger alum started an outlet but then had a falling out? I'm missing details on this.
This episode has to be the thinnest media criticism from Jessie and Katie that I have ever heard. They end up bitching back and forth about whether some people did or didn’t say things in they way that they would have. Not really compelling arguments, you two.
I wish they hadn't glossed over the personal threats Dr. Bernard has dealt with, and the bizarre right wing conspiracy theorizing that abortion providers somehow conspire with human traffickers and child abusers to cover up sexual abuse that this has dragged up from the depths. It's unhinged.
How has neither of you ever spackled?! It’s when you’ve got a small hole in the wall and you fill it with that white putty stuff. (Which is called, wait for it, spackle.)
You just solved a mystery for me. On a UK based podcast I recently heard a phrase like “slap a little pollyfilla on it and move on…” When I searched “pollyfilla” I got a New Zealand drag queen. I was very confused.
At the 12 minute mark, both hosts describe the rape story as “horrible” (which it is), and it’s the perfect distillation of east coast vs west coast accents.
Yes! While it pains me to praise my city government, the local library system is pretty wonderful.
You get free access to the latest abominations from the NYTimes, WaPo & New York Mag, plus access to fun historical databases and news archives going back to the 1700's
Katie with her podcasting millions should also be able to afford at least some digital subscriptions to major newspapers. No wonder there’s no money in journalism...
This was my exact thought too. Like really? We're literally paying them to do this.
Edit: Just so I don't come across as an ahole, totally fine if this was a technical issue or she didn't have time to get to it before the podcast or whatever, but I'm really hoping it's not cause they aren't willing to pay for a subscription...
This whole sordid story is one of the saddest I’ve ever heard. Eventually this kid will grow up and be a spokeswoman for one side or the other and on and on it churns and grinds. Poor kid. Anybody else just want to scoop her up in a big hug and run away?
Sorry, why is it sad for her to speak out in favor of a right she was denied in her home state? I don't want to run away, I don't want any other child to be in her position, and pretending this isn't the result of politics doesn't get us there.
Because she’s a ten year old rape victim and I think it would be awesome if we could be more concerned about getting her trauma therapy, which is orders of magnitude more successful if done early, a safe home environment which she statistically may not have, maybe even an inpatient therapeutic program, protecting her privacy, etc etc etc. Using her for political ends is disgusting. Maybe she wanted to be a veterinarian or a ballerina and not “Ohio abortion girl”. I’ve been around long enough to see how people get chewed up and spit out when they’re used this way and it’s f***** sad when it’s an abused child. Both sides are doing it. The left for abortion and the right for illegal immigration and it’s gross and sad in both cases.
Everyone wants this child to get whatever support and privacy she needs. One side also wants to force her ten-year-old body to birth a baby. Her identity has not actually been disclosed, as demonstrated by the fact that you are calling her "Ohio abortion girl" and not her name. This is not "both sides."
I genuinely have no idea what someone could find revolting about drawing attention to the fact that a raped ten year old was unable to access an abortion. I am also not sure how someone can be neutral about whether a raped ten year old should have access to abortion.
It's not as though forcing her to give birth at ten is going to protect her privacy. A nine-months-pregnant fourth grader is going to get noticed at school.
It’s sad because she shouldn’t be in this terrible position to begin with.
Also, people are surprising. She may speak out one day for the other side. She may say she was coerced into an abortion she didn’t want. It happens! You never know.
Speaking from what might be a more pro-life perspective than Jesse and Katie, it is self-evidently true that Republican state legislatures make everything worse and can’t seem to draft a sensible law to save their lives, much less their electoral fortunes.
I fear that this is a subset of a general case, that all state legislatures have been pretty powerless and irrelevant to an increasingly nationalized culture warry politics that they were free to just be the JV team for performative virtue signaling BS.
If such institutions are going to continue to exist, I worry that we’re going to have to endure a lot of shitty lawmaking that leads to people being thrown out in outrage.
I think they also never thought in a million years that Roe would be overturned and these laws would go into effect. So they didn’t care. They could get brownie points from the base for no work. I’m starting to think there is no such thing as good lawmaking.
I'm sort of tired of the assumption that only Republicans are shitty lawmakers. State lawmakers are shitty lawmakers. It's super frustrating when I see bonkers laws in Oregon, CA MD etc.
They are, when they have power. They haven’t had power for a while though, so they haven’t done much besides signal and pander to the tiny fraction of the population that pays enough attention to vote for them
Part of the problem is that multiple legislatures rely on templates from think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council. So you see many states adopting the same poorly drafted laws.
"I have no information to share" is what we lawyers ALWAYS say in court, especially when cornered by the judge on something as sensitive as "do you know where your fugitive client is right now?" You cannot get into the habit of alternating between "I don't know" or "due to attorney-client privilege I am unable to disclose" because those answers on their own give the game away (especially the latter). A consistent and unyielding adherence to "I have no information to share" is our version of the Glomar response.
I think there's two different ways to understand the sentence--I have no information, and therefore no information I can share with you, and I have no shareable information. Pretty clear in context Bernard meant the second.
The nice part of the phrase is that it is vague. Sometimes you can’t admit to having information--since the fact that you know something IS private.
I misspoke/mistyped, "I have no information" is actually the ideal response. "I have no information to share" might imply that you know something but can't share it, although it can also imply that you literally have no information period. The whole point is to be vague, especially when you're entrusted with keeping information confidential.
Some of the conservative response to the rape abortion story bugs me for the same reason that progressive skepticism about the WI Spa flasher bugged me--they are saying it didn’t happen to avoid saying that if it did happen its perfectly fine. At least when Jesse and Katie criticize the story, I know its not so they don’t have to confront the real and inevitable consequences of an abortion ban.
Ten year olds get raped. Sometimes they get pregnant. Its not going to happen every day, but 50 abortions under 15 means about one a week. Multiply that by how many states had a trigger ban, and I am absolutely not surprised we saw this horror already.
I agree.
I wasn't in love with Jesse and Katie's discussion of this either. I am not a journalist, and don't know what exactly constitutes journalistic ethics, but I kind of feel like reporting on this story with one named source with firsthand information, even if it could not have been otherwise confirmed.
There may be stories where you want more than one source, particularly where it is accusing a particular person of doing something wrong. But here, you are dealing with something that, even if it didn't happen likely will happen at some point in the not too distant future. I think that the numbers bear out that a 10 yo getting pregnant is fortunately the most common event, but it is unfortunately something that we can expect to happen at some point and it is going to happen with a somewhat older girl much more frequently. When it does happen, the OH law makes it pretty clear what the outcome will be. As a result, even if this particular story turned out to be false, it is still highlighting a real issue.
This, by the way, should have been included in the fact checking. This is the sort of story that, even if false, is illustrative of a real concern. As a result, the fact checking stories needed to make clear that, even if it turned out that this particular instance wasn't real, the law, in fact, has no rape exception and, therefore, even this isn't a real girl, is just a matter of time before there is a real girl in this situation.
"This is the sort of story that, even if false, is illustrative of a real concern"
Why we have fake news...
"fake, but accurate"
Not what fake news is at all... How skeptical should anyone be of "dog bites man"?
Isn’t this a case where waiting a few weeks to dig out facts rather than rushing to publish would have got a better result?
When they read that stat about 50 abortions under 15 I immediately wanted to know the breakdown by age. How many of them were sexually active 13-14 year olds, vs. extremely young rape victims?
The proportion of teenage pregnancies fathered by older men is quite high. "Sexually active 13-14 year olds" are very often victims of statutory rape.
I thought the stat was about abortion, not rape. A 10-year-old needing an abortion has almost certainly been raped, but a 14-year-old could be sexually active with a same-age boyfriend.
I'm not saying it's better, I'm just curious. And yeah, per Ava's comment, the stat was about abortion not rape so I felt it was relevant because "under 15" is a wide age range that could include child rape victims AND sexually active young teenagers. It was one of those statistics that immediately gave rise to additional questions that are, in my mind, relevant to how we interpret the data. 🤷♀️
Wondering if anyone’s read Megan McArdle’s piece on Josh Hawley vs Khiara Bridges https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/14/berkeley-law-professors-senate-testimony-didnt-go-how-left-thinks-it-did/
And, now I’m reading this one by Jacob Siegel that’s really interesting https://thedailyscroll.substack.com/p/the-evil-of-banality
My first thought, as so often lately (*sigh*), when I saw the Professor's answers to Hawley's questions, was, "This is another example of why the Democrats are going to lose this fall."
I keep looking for sane people to vote for and it just keeps getting harder to find them every year. It’s depressing.
I’m not voting for progressives anymore. Their litmus test on Israel is a step too far. I’m one of those moderate American Jews who think all settlers need to get out of the West Bank but that’s not enough for the DSA. so f**k em
I’ll never figure that turn of events out. The hostility toward Israel in young prog circles is one of the strangest developments of the last 20 years - to me anyway. Utterly flabbergasted.
My working theory is that the grafting of CRT and BLM language onto the conflict -- and the absolute deterioration of the situation (in all fairness) -- has introduced this younger generation to it. It’s a very compelling cause (especially with social media fueling it). and the $3bil in our military budget for Israel gives them a sense that they have a right (and duty) to speak up. Plus, squad is vocal (for better or worse).
Gabrielle is correct. US leftists have spent a good thirty years framing the Iseael-Palestine conflict in binary racial terms.
In this framework, the Israelis are white-adjacent racists oppressing Palestinian "people of color". Add in colonialism, imperialism, etc etc.
As far back the 1980s, Jesse Jackson and his ilk were lumping together American racism, South African apartheid, the treatment of American Indians and Israel/Palestine.
I think you are right. I would also recommend a Thomas so well essay "are Jews generic" in "Black rednecks and white liberals". In many cultures, there are successful groups who are also hated/discriminated against. I think some general envy of Jewish success explains a lot .
I know that feeling well 😑
Yes, I thought the McArdle piece was 100% correct. A spot-on diagnosis of why many academics are so utterly unable to talk clearly or effectively to people outside their professional bubble.
I remember TAing for a humanities course related to gender as a young grad student and thinking, "How does this lecture material that I'm supposed to teach in my discussion section later this week sound to all the pre-med students in the room?"
This was before trans issues were a main topic of discussion, mind you. But we were covering a lot of material suggesting that "sex is complicated"--going right up to the edge of claiming there aren't two sexes--because intersex conditions (DSDs) exist, and the students were absolutely smacked down if they tried to suggest, clumsily, that perhaps not everything related to gender is cultural construction.
I guess the good news for my embarrassed feelings of yore is that now a lot of med schools are on board with the humanities lectures.
Great pieces, especially the one by Siegel. I like his coinage of The Yawn, nails it with the observation that people who employ it are trying to neutralize opposition by dissuading them from caring without attempting to defend what they must know at some level is indefensible.
Ugh, this is so embarrassing for Bridges.
I actually saw her give a talk on a book she was writing when she was still a law prof at BU. She discussed the invasion of privacy rights of poor mothers -- how by virtue of their poverty, they were subjected to regular intrusions by government agencies. Impressive and compelling speaker. Here's the book: https://www.amazon.com/Poverty-Privacy-Rights-Khiara-Bridges/dp/1503602265
Now I'm wondering how she would phrase it today! Poor cis women, nonbinary, trans men?! Back in 2015 she didn't have to manipulate her natural way of speaking about women's oppression.
That is an important issue. Sucks how institutional dogma changes people.
And now a more recent article that has been cleansed of the word "women" (except in the footnotes, to highlight the privilege of "cis women," and to highlight the disadvantages of POC women) in favor of "pregnant people."
https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1234411?ln=en
Of course Hawley wasn't asking in good faith. I don't think that matters, in terms of the impact that this exchange will have politically. Hawley couldn't have scripted a better exchange to feature in a campaign ad if he'd have tried.
100% agree. He’s a horrible person. I don’t think he looks good, I think the Left’s argument looks ridiculous
Exactly.
As McArdle says, the point of this sort of Congressional testimony, like it or not, is political gamesmanship. If you aren't prepared to answer any senator's questions, you shouldn't testify, because all you can do is hurt your own side.
Whether the senator questioning you is acting in good or bad faith doesn't matter. You'll still hurt your own side if you're not up to the challenge.
Literally every column Megan McArdle has written on both gender issues and abortion in the past year would have put Hawley in a tighter spot without losing the median TV viewer. The reason McArdle is so good at this is that she reads and understands arguments from many sides.
That's one of the things I like about McArdle. She actually makes an effort to understand what each side is actually saying. As someone from the left, I really wish there was more of an effort to understand the actual reasoning and arguments from the right so that we could actually address people's concerns instead of just saying things that turn people off even more.
Yes, Sen. Hawley's question didn't have anything to do with abortion, which is an issue where the majority of Americans disagree with him. It did have to do with how those on the far left define a woman, which is an issue where the majority of Americans agree with him. The best way to answer is to not give him this opening, and, for just one day, pretend that it's women who get pregnant.
We need a term similar to “the banality of evil” to describe people’s tendency to express outrage on social media and then quickly get on with their day. Can we bring “the banality of outrage” into common usage?
I am a firm believer that social media should set rules that require complete follow through on all news stories you share. If you fail to post updates on any article you share, Mark Zuckerberg fines you $50 per missed update. That will ensure people only share stories they legitimately care about!
RE SCHOOLS: I wish the unspoken underbelly of all of this were more frequently expressed so everyone is on the same page. The unspoken part about kids being in locker rooms or bunking for school trips is 1) the danger of sexual predation from the biological male who, while claiming to be trans, is still predatory and 2) that some biological females will be made to feel uncomfortable even if they are safe, because of the typical lifelong intake of the social dynamics between the sexes: objectification, harassment, predation, or actual sexual abuse.
Or, for a biological female who is trans-male, the danger of being put into biological male spaces.
We don't want to demonize men, but we also have to acknowledge the clear imbalance of "power" that is ever-present. Biological women tend not to be sexually predatory. Biological men tend to be. It is one of the most robust trends in the history of civilization.
If this is not spelled out, people don't get what the problem is. They get distracted by the need to protect trans people, even though half the population is biologically female and they are NOT the ones who trend as predators.
This is all a perfect parallel (on the surface) with the concept that the police are the danger to Black citizens in bad neighborhoods when actually their chances of getting murdered by a neighbor are so, so, so much higher, and that removing police presence increases that danger. It is missing the forest for the trees.
Yes, we need to protect trans people. Yes, we need to reform the police. But to ignore the more common realities on the ground is at the expense of exponentially greater tragedy.
Thanks for this. I cannot wrap my head around why everyone doesn't get this- it's so obvious!!
I have a public professional email address because my job involves legislative testimony. Anyone willing to dig into the public record can email me to grill me on things I said publicly about my employers' policy positions, or to grill me for details about private people I helped line up to testify. When you're public-facing in that way, you have to have a standard response to everyone who reaches out to you for information you can't give them, whether they're a legislator or a random busybody - and it has to be bland, respectful, and impossible for someone to get a toehold in to grill you further. "Let me talk to my boss" implies "My boss has an answer for you," which may or may not be true. So the journalist's brick-wall response made perfect sense to me.
...And, not to be that guy, but related: I just published a post on my substack about how to evaluate state legislative news, centered on legislative efforts in the wake of the Dobbs decision leak. https://weirdemails.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-reading-state-legislative Check it out if you're interested.
I love these episodes where you guys get way into the weeds of local policy - that extended segment on the LGBT policy in the Florida school system was such a perfect example of how mind-numbingly intricate these supposedly-straightforward culture war issues are when you get down to the individuals trying to deal with them in daily life.
On BARpod and other outlets the last few days, I've repeatedly seen a comment along these lines: "Child sexual abuse occurs on a regular basis; therefore, how can anyone have the audacity to question the veracity of the Ohio abortion story."
The fallacious thinking on display is the assumption that because a general phenomenon occurs, we should never question the details of any specific story.
Someone can tell me, "my car flipped over six times, caught fire and I walked away without a scratch". Does the fact that in general, car accidents occur every single day everywhere preclude me from questioning the veracity of the account I was told?
Glenn Kessler never questioned the prevalence of child sexual assault; he questioned a specific story that had rather sensational details. While the story turned out to be true, there is no reason to abandon healthy skepticism, as K&J note.
Are there any ob/gyn or pediatricians on this board who can give solid stats on the probability of a 10 year old becoming pregnant? I'm curious if this story truly is a unicorn. Telling us that 10 year olds get assaulted tells us nothing about the size of the subset who get pregnant.
Some commenters keep throwing around a stat about the number of Ohio girls under 15 getting abortions. But I haven't seen a breakdown of the ages: maybe 48 out of 50 girls are at least 13-14 and the 10 year old is anomaly.
Aside from all the posturing on both sides, let's hope the child recovers and can lead a normal life
Girls are entering puberty earlier than they did a century ago, largely due to improved nutrition. There's also been some research suggesting that girls are more likely to enter puberty very early if they don't live with their biological father. So girls in dangerous living situations with a mom's predatory boyfriend might well be more likely than other girls to become pregnant if they were victims of rape.
This is anecdotal, of course, but I personally have a number of friends who lived with their biological fathers and still experienced menarche around age 9-10. It's just a little earlier than the American average for my generation (which was 12.1 in 1995).
That said, I completely agree that skepticism is good, as is changing your opinion once a story is confirmed.
I'm a 52 year old male whose knowledge does not extend beyond 1980s sex education. (Always taught by a clearly uncomfortable gym teacher, not a specialist in reproductive systems.)
Given that background, if the story was "13-14 year old denied abortion". I would not have blinked. Instinctively, it would have sounded about right
I always thought it was kind of funny that in real life, the actress playing the mother on the Cosby Show is only 10 years older than the actress playing her daughter. Because of the improbability.
I would guess that I am far from alone.
I'm a 32 year old female and my reaction was basically yours. I was thinking that me and my friends all started menstruating at 12-ish, maayybe 11. But now that I'm thinking about it, my one cousin started early. And she was the only one I know who didn't live with her bio-dad...
I’ve seen that too and it is irritating but for me questioning the story is getting lost in the weeds. I mean, veracity in reporting is important but even if this were merely a hypothetical the real issue is, are the legal ramifications possible. And the awful thing is, it appears that it is de facto possible, if not de jure, that a Dr., based on a reasonable fear of prosecution, would refuse to treat this girl in a horrific situation.
One think that I think is getting ignored here is the long shadow the murder of Dr. George Tiller has cast over how abortion providers think about the personal risk they're running. The way the right-wing media (and government) has made Dr. Bernard the center of attacks is fairly scary for that reason, and even before this she, like many public abortion providers, faced personal threats. In that context, I think a reluctance to share more information than strictly necessary with the media is understandable.
I'm also not sure I understand the reaction to the story's confirmation in the same way Katie does. Perhaps some media people were insensitive (I didn't personally see it), but saying that the vindication shouldn't be emphatically pointed out because we should be allowing the traumatized patient privacy seems to miss the point that this entire situation is political. This girl's right to an abortion in her home state was eliminated, and publicizing the situation is necessary to pointing out the horrific consequences of abortion restrictions.
I used to say I wanted more local media, but then I look at Seattle's local media and.... do I? Seattle has fantastic wall to wall coverage of anything transit and bike trails but not much else. There is only one crime reporter! And the people covering homelessness are hopeless ideologues (usually Stranger alumni). I stopped listening to KUOW during the Trump years because to say the jumped the shark, I mean they jumped to the pool with the shark.
Please do an episode about Erica C Barnett. The world deserves to know.
I paid for the SF Chronicle for a while but then stopped recently after yet another story on homelessness that was just ridiculous. Literally like who are you going to believe, the reporter or your own lying eyes? I’m pretty well aware of the nature of the visible street homeless population in the Bay Area because, you know, I’ve had many years of encounters with them, since I live and work here? You’re not going to convince me it’s actually no big deal when almost every day in the city I’d see someone shooting up or taking a shit on the sidewalk or having a psychotic break in traffic.
I find it weird someone would want to be a reporter if they’re just going to lie about easily verifiable facts. What’s the point?
It's definitely only about affordable housing and absolutely nothing to do with drug addiction and lax enforcement.
But then again.... cops always lie.
I mean, I do think it’s a combination of a lot of things, including housing, but there most important is the redevelopment of SROs and slummy motels and other very-low-end housing, which is an obvious conundrum, because absolutely nobody, no matter how bleeding-heart they are, wants an SRO full of junkies and winos on their street. And in any case, they don’t make financial sense to build, because it’s not 1899 any more. The only other way you get that kind of very cheap housing is through sub-division and decay of existing housing, which is naturally resisted by residents and cities, so then you get sidewalk camping (or RVs in the cities without the resources to prevent it).
Then there’s the fentanyl problem, the DA not prosecuting which also ties in though with the police not policing, it is a complex problem. But denying the drug use angles or suggesting that anyone who complains about completely insane street scenes is a fascist isn’t very helpful.
In Seattle, SRO's functionally still exist. Some SRO's were sold and redeveloped as apartments. Others were bought by the city during the economic downturn in the 70's and turned into low income housing for addicts (like the Frye Hotel) or alcoholics (1811 Eastlake). There is a long waiting list for these places, and they are a mess, to put it mildly. The Josephinium was a luxury motel but now it is low income housing managed by Catholic Charities.
I do maintain it is largely a myth that people get priced out of a historically poorer neighborhood like the Central District and move into a tent under I-5. Those people moved to the South End, Kent, Federal Way, Lynnwood, etc...
It's not so much a combination of things as much as it's two completely different issues. You have the poor who are struggling to live in really expensive places like Seattle and San Francisco. They might be homeless for a bit and get by maybe with some couch surfing, maybe moving in with relatives for a bit. A completely different group are the drug addicted criminals, many of whom are also homeless. These are the people who are destroying neighborhoods. Saying that most homeless aren't drug addicts might be true, but it's not relevant when talking about those who are. Talking about the guy who stole a sandwich last year and had the cops called on him whenever you talk about crime and the homeless doesn't change that there are people who spend their days stealing catalytic converters, tools from home depot, and anything from Target. These are two very different problems yet those in Seattle's city government keep talking about the first group when people bring up any police response to the problems created by the second. Yes, housing affordability does make some people temporally homeless, but affordable housing isn't going to help someone who spends their day stealing to fund their meth habit, they have a very different problem.
I do think your groupings are right, but there’s overlap and movement in there.
For me, reverting the effective decriminalization of theft seems more likely to help than anything on housing. (Cue lecture about “the carceral state”.) Theft is very destructive to city economies and in the long-term to the people who engage in it. We didn’t discover something new about tolerating theft in the last ten years that nobody realized for the preceding 5,000.
Anyhow I don’t mind if reporters cover stories from multiple angles, I just think it’s a waste of time to keep “debunking myths about the homeless” by just lying about what everyone can see for themselves is true.
I highly recommend "The Least of Us" by Sam Quinones for a dive into the fentanyl and meth crises driving homelessness. The author threads the needle between empathy for people with addictions vs. the cold reality that enabling drug use and theft is not an acceptable solution. Why is it so hard for most journalists to admit that addiction plays a big role in visible homelessness?
That and his previous book are pretty good, although in this one he speculates a lot about a “new toxic meth” that’s the cause of new kinds of psychosis. But there’s no evidence for that, and the simpler explanation would be that new production and distribution methods simply made it cheaper, therefore used in larger quantities, and therefore more likely to induce psychosis.
But the discussion of meth is timely. We forgot the previous meth wave because of the deaths associated with the opioid wave, but it’s really meth that gives you the grit, determination, and work ethic to be out at 3am sawing off someone’s catalytic converter, and it’s back in a big way.
I second an episode about Erica C Barnett. She's now on the podcast Seattle Nice and some of the stuff she says is absolutely bananas. Like, apparently it's an overreaction if your kid gets stuck with a discarded needle in a park and you get upset.
The Seattle Times's equity and social justice correspondent is also churning out stuff that's kinda crazy.
I'm trying to remember what happened with her. She and another Stranger alum started an outlet but then had a falling out? I'm missing details on this.
THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW!!
This episode has to be the thinnest media criticism from Jessie and Katie that I have ever heard. They end up bitching back and forth about whether some people did or didn’t say things in they way that they would have. Not really compelling arguments, you two.
I too find thier lack of anger disheartening.
We need some background music like Sleep or Electric Wizard!
I wish they hadn't glossed over the personal threats Dr. Bernard has dealt with, and the bizarre right wing conspiracy theorizing that abortion providers somehow conspire with human traffickers and child abusers to cover up sexual abuse that this has dragged up from the depths. It's unhinged.
How has neither of you ever spackled?! It’s when you’ve got a small hole in the wall and you fill it with that white putty stuff. (Which is called, wait for it, spackle.)
Renting Shitty Apartments 101--Lessons in How to Get Your Deposit Back, Pt. 6: fill any holes with toothpaste.
Ah, that’s polyfilla in the U.K. I was wondering what spackle was!
You just solved a mystery for me. On a UK based podcast I recently heard a phrase like “slap a little pollyfilla on it and move on…” When I searched “pollyfilla” I got a New Zealand drag queen. I was very confused.
But is there a US drag queen named Spackle.
At the 12 minute mark, both hosts describe the rape story as “horrible” (which it is), and it’s the perfect distillation of east coast vs west coast accents.
Katie, if you encounter a WSJ or NYT paywall, you should be able to find the story via your local WA library (e.g., here: https://ezproxy.krl.org/login?url=https://proquest.com/wallstreetjournal?accountid=1165). You've already paid for it with your taxes!
Yes! While it pains me to praise my city government, the local library system is pretty wonderful.
You get free access to the latest abominations from the NYTimes, WaPo & New York Mag, plus access to fun historical databases and news archives going back to the 1700's
Katie with her podcasting millions should also be able to afford at least some digital subscriptions to major newspapers. No wonder there’s no money in journalism...
This was my exact thought too. Like really? We're literally paying them to do this.
Edit: Just so I don't come across as an ahole, totally fine if this was a technical issue or she didn't have time to get to it before the podcast or whatever, but I'm really hoping it's not cause they aren't willing to pay for a subscription...
I used to compulsively pick my face. Now I compulsively pick apart panic tweets of internet "journalists". While also picking my face.
This whole sordid story is one of the saddest I’ve ever heard. Eventually this kid will grow up and be a spokeswoman for one side or the other and on and on it churns and grinds. Poor kid. Anybody else just want to scoop her up in a big hug and run away?
Sorry, why is it sad for her to speak out in favor of a right she was denied in her home state? I don't want to run away, I don't want any other child to be in her position, and pretending this isn't the result of politics doesn't get us there.
Because she’s a ten year old rape victim and I think it would be awesome if we could be more concerned about getting her trauma therapy, which is orders of magnitude more successful if done early, a safe home environment which she statistically may not have, maybe even an inpatient therapeutic program, protecting her privacy, etc etc etc. Using her for political ends is disgusting. Maybe she wanted to be a veterinarian or a ballerina and not “Ohio abortion girl”. I’ve been around long enough to see how people get chewed up and spit out when they’re used this way and it’s f***** sad when it’s an abused child. Both sides are doing it. The left for abortion and the right for illegal immigration and it’s gross and sad in both cases.
Everyone wants this child to get whatever support and privacy she needs. One side also wants to force her ten-year-old body to birth a baby. Her identity has not actually been disclosed, as demonstrated by the fact that you are calling her "Ohio abortion girl" and not her name. This is not "both sides."
I guess it depends on which side you’re on. I’m on neither and I find both revolting in this case. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I genuinely have no idea what someone could find revolting about drawing attention to the fact that a raped ten year old was unable to access an abortion. I am also not sure how someone can be neutral about whether a raped ten year old should have access to abortion.
It's not as though forcing her to give birth at ten is going to protect her privacy. A nine-months-pregnant fourth grader is going to get noticed at school.
It’s sad because she shouldn’t be in this terrible position to begin with.
Also, people are surprising. She may speak out one day for the other side. She may say she was coerced into an abortion she didn’t want. It happens! You never know.
It seems phenomenally unlikely that an adult would regret not having had a baby at age ten. TEN.
True. Wtf is going on in a world where 10 year olds need abortions. So sad.
Men.
Speaking from what might be a more pro-life perspective than Jesse and Katie, it is self-evidently true that Republican state legislatures make everything worse and can’t seem to draft a sensible law to save their lives, much less their electoral fortunes.
I fear that this is a subset of a general case, that all state legislatures have been pretty powerless and irrelevant to an increasingly nationalized culture warry politics that they were free to just be the JV team for performative virtue signaling BS.
If such institutions are going to continue to exist, I worry that we’re going to have to endure a lot of shitty lawmaking that leads to people being thrown out in outrage.
I think they also never thought in a million years that Roe would be overturned and these laws would go into effect. So they didn’t care. They could get brownie points from the base for no work. I’m starting to think there is no such thing as good lawmaking.
I'm sort of tired of the assumption that only Republicans are shitty lawmakers. State lawmakers are shitty lawmakers. It's super frustrating when I see bonkers laws in Oregon, CA MD etc.
Agreed.
"LaBoRaToRiEs Of DeMoCrAcY"
They are, when they have power. They haven’t had power for a while though, so they haven’t done much besides signal and pander to the tiny fraction of the population that pays enough attention to vote for them
Part of the problem is that multiple legislatures rely on templates from think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council. So you see many states adopting the same poorly drafted laws.