Showing posts with label sex abuse. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label sex abuse. Show all posts

  • Today, yours truly will take a look at Rick Ross. No, not "Freeway" Rick Ross, infamous L.A.-based drug dealer with possible but not concretely proven CIA connections. I'm talking about William Roberts, the former corrections officer who appropriated Rick Ross's story and image to launch his own commercial rap career.

    I've actually listened to a few of Rick Ross's songs and they come off as the typical formulaic pablum that epitomizes commercial rap music: a few lines of verse about the money you're making, a few more about your material possessions, some mentions about your drug dealing/gangster past and how you still retain the capacity to kill in spite of your current profession, some lines about your sexual prowess and conquests, all topped off with a few shoutouts to your allies in the commercial rap business, packaged to either a machine-generated beat or a "sample" of some 70s/80s/90s R&B or soul tune, slowed down or sped up to invoke "fair use" and avoid royalty payments.

    In normal circumstances, Rick Ross wouldn't interest me. Except he's caught some flak over the lyrics in rapper Rocko's "U.O.E.N.O," an onomatopoeia for “you don’t even know.” Crafty wordsmiths, these folks.

    In particular, these two lines:

    Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it
    I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain't even know it

    Uh oh. Did "the Boss" just suggest that he slipped something (most likely MDMA or GHB) in her drink and then had sex with her, presumably while she was unconscious or too drugged up to notice?

    People say it's just lyrics. He probably meant nothing by it. At least that was Rick Ross's argument at first:

    I wanted to come down to the radio station. There is certain things you can’t tweet, you have to verbalize. I want to make sure this is clear, that woman is the most precious gift known to man, you understand? It was a misunderstanding with a lyric, a misinterpretation where the term rape wasn’t used. I would never use the term rape. As far as my camp, hip hop don’t condone that. The streets don’t condone that. Nobody condones that. So I wanted to reach out to all the queens that’s on my timeline, all the sexy ladies, the beautiful ladies that have been reaching out to me with the misunderstanding. We don’t condone rape and I’m not with that.

    It's the type of mea culpa that usually comes in printed or online press releases. If anyone was expecting a heartfelt apology, waiting for it would be akin to waiting for Godot. Or for the next C-Tran bus at Southlake Mall.

    Unlike that severely-underfunded and ultimately axed bus service, the criticism kept coming. As Talib Kweli and others took Ricky to the woodshed over his lyrics and as Ultraviolet started a concerted effort to shorn the rapper of his promotional deal with Reebok, Ross issued two more relatively weak appeals to his critics and fans:



    His fans will forgive him. Chances are they're only upset at everyone else being so hard on Ricky. To understand why, it means realizing how Rick Ross's lyrics (and those of other rappers) are both a reflection and a product of the culture that enables and glorifies the activity described by those lyrics. It's an echo chamber that amplifies itself many times over, with little to no opportunity for any positive message to break the cycle. Not that the people who are actually making money off of this stuff (music executives and their shareholders) mind - it'd probably be bad business to interrupt the cycle.

    But interrupt someone must. These lyrics reflect and reinforce a rape culture that promotes an overall view of women as sex objects who are duty-bound to either "give up the pussy" or have it taken, whether by fraud, deception or force. These sentiments echo throughout the rap subculture, to be internalized by fans who live vicariously through the imaginative storytelling of each song or through observing and emulating the actions of rappers and others around them.

    In the end, Rick Ross's apologies don't mean much. When things die down as they usually do in today's world of accelerated media cycles, he'll go back to doing the same thing he's been doing and get rewarded handsomely for it. At worst, he might lose his deal with Reebok, but that'll probably be it. Dismantling rape culture won't happen from the top, at least not solely on backhanding rappers who step over the line. On this issue, the line's been crossed hundreds of miles ago.

    Whenever the question of how to end rape culture comes about, solutions are always expected to be brought forth and put into play by the womenfolk. That's over and done, as it should have been a long time ago. Asking women to continuously shoulder the burden of preventing rape and blaming them when it happens while giving men implied card blanche on the issue is something that should end, posthaste.

    In other words, the beginning of the end of rape culture will happen once us menfolk finally understand and internalize one thing and one thing only: don't rape.

    Translation: the pussy is not yours to take.

    P.S. If you have kids, don't let them consume commercial rap in their formative years. Yours truly spent most of his childhood blissfully unaware of rap while being exposed to copious amounts of jazz, R&B, soul and soft rock. The impact it made on my growing up was drastically different than the kids next door, who were basically given free rein to listen to commercial rap.
  • A jury convicted former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 counts related to child sex abuse, closing a dark chapter for Penn State that led to the ouster of a university president and icon Joe Paterno and cast a cloud over the rural center of this state.

    He faces a maximum sentence of 442 years in prison and barring an appeal will spend the rest of his life in prison. Family members of victims in attendance wept and hugged one another after the verdict was read.

    At trial, the prosecution's case centered on the often graphic and emotional testimony of eight young men, ages 18 to 28, who said Mr. Sandusky abused them as boys, and two witnesses who said they saw the former coach abuse two boys who were never identified.

    The young men testified that Mr. Sandusky gave them clothes and other gifts and took them to football games after he met them through the Second Mile charity he founded in 1977.

    Eventually, they testified, affectionate touching became sexual. Several young men said Mr. Sandusky engaged in oral sex with them in the basement of his home, in hotels and in athletic-facility showers on Penn State's campus.

    A common theme in this and many other similar cases is how administrative officials, people with the power to do the right thing and put an end to the predation, instead chose to look the other way, pass the buck or keep the entire incident and the person behind it under wraps, usually to protect their own careers and the institution's reputation. There were many people who knew what Sandusky was doing and how it was hurting the young boys in his charge. Yet and still, administrators like Tim Curley chose to look the other way in the interests of preserving PSU's

    Sometime before the Jerry Sandusky case broke wide open, there were similar goings-on at Grace Fellowship Christian School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. In Grace Fellowship's case, administrators chose to look the other way for a time and later on, dropped the ball when Aaron Thompson's actions and behavior became even more apparent. In the end, scores of victims were preyed upon and the school was practically buried underneath the publicity, outrage and legal action.

    The Catholic Church could have cast out predators in their midst and left them to law enforcement to deal with. Instead, the church used its considerable wealth and size to shuffle clergy suspected of child sexual abuse from parish to parish as well as stymie investigations into their behavior. Doing so cost the Catholic Church its image, the well-being of scores of young children victimized by priests, bishops and other clergy and a generation of people who, as a result, are not inclined to set foot in another church, let alone a Catholic church, for the rest of their lives.

    In short, it's always the cover-up that gets you. Not acting upon or dismissing allegations does more damage to an institution than stepping up and doing what needs to be done.


  • No bond. He's out on $100K UNSECURED. Granted by a judge who, get this, sits on the board of Second Mile.

    That comes courtesy of commentator Plucky from Jack and Jill Politics. I wondered "WTF" and went searching for some answers.

    When Jerry Sandusky was initially arraigned, as previously reported by Sara Ganim, prosecutors requested $500,000.00 bail and that Sandusky be required to wear a leg monitor. District Judge Leslie Dutchcot, however, ordered that Sandusky be freed on $100,000 unsecured bail. She ordered that Sandusky be freed and pay nothing unless he failed to show up for a court hearing.

    Of course, also according to her profile, Judge Dutchcot is a volunteer for Sandusky's group, The Second Mile. Sandusky turned himself in the morning of Nov. 5, a Saturday, at Judge Dutchot's Centre County office. He was released, under the aforementioned terms, shortly thereafter.

    Any judge worth their robe would have recused his or herself at this point. You have to wonder what kind of connections she had to Sandusky or how much she got paid to let him off so lightly. This is one of those things that are worthy of booting a judge off the bench for.

    Meanwhile, Jerry Sandusky is facing a possible life sentence over the following charges:

    • Seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, all first-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
    • One count of aggravated indecent assault, a second-degree felony punishable by up to ten years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
    • Four counts of unlawful contact with a minor, all first-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
    • Four counts of unlawful contact with a minor, all third-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
    • Four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, all third-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
    • Four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, all first-degree misdemeanors which are each punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
    • Eight counts of corruption of minors, all first-degree misdemeanors which are each punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
    • One count of indecent assault, a third-degree felony punishable by up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
    • Four counts of indecent assault, all second-degree misdemeanors which are each punishable by up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
    • Two counts of indecent assault, all first-degree misdemeanors which are each punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
    • One count of attempt to commit indecent assault, a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

    Given the proposition of living one's waning years in a jail cell, I figure Sandusky will use this opportunity to flee the country. I'm pretty sure he'll have a lot of supporters who are still in shock or denial help him out in that regard, too.
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