Blame the victim

In the old DC comic books, Superman used to visit
the Bizarro World.
Remember?
I do.
The Bizarro World was a strange place. In the Bizarro
world, everything operated exactly the opposite of the
real world.
In the Bizarro World, muggers helped old ladies across
the street while policemen robbed people at gunpoint in
alleys.
In the Bizarro World, elevators travelled sideways
isntead of up and down, and surgeons murdered people
with shivs, while hit men performed surgery to save
patients' lives.

Carl Lumma's latest post shows us that he seems to
be visting the Bizarro World:

Message 7074 of 7075 | Previous | Next
Msg#
From: "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...>
Date: Mon Apr 12, 2004 7:20 am
Subject: Re: The junior senator from Wisconsin

>Why is it that when Dante makes a mistake, he's a liar,
>while when Brian McLaren makes a mistake, he's doing you
>a favor? Weird.

This is an example of Jesuitical casuistry on Carl
Lumma's part so sleazy and so slimy that it qualifies
as out-and-out dishonesty.

I made a trivial mistake of fact, and too generously gave Dante
Rosati credit for a real accomplishment he hadn't earned.
Dante Rosati made a different kind of mistake. The mistake
Dante Rosati made was a mistake in choosing deliberately to
do the wrong thing. Dante Rosati had a good angel and a
bad angel sitting. on his shoulders. Rosati listened to the
bad angel. And instead of doing the right thing, Dante Rosati
deliberately chose to tell repeated lies in public about me and about
the magnificently talented JI composer Jacky Ligon.

My mistake was by definition innocent, since I erred on the
side of generosity. Dante Rosati's mistake was by definition
malicious, since he erred by deliberately telling repeated
lies about me, over and over again, with malice aforethought,
and then giggling about his contemptible dishonesty in
public with the kind of grotesque joy in doing wrong that we
usually associate with those thugs who tied Mathew Shephard
to a rail fence in the dead of winter in 1998 after beating
him to death for being gay, so that that he froze to death
while screaming in agony.

Second, and more importantly, Dante Rosati's deliberate
lies about me cannot be called "mistakes." The only mistake
Dante Rosati made was in ruining his own reputation by
decided to tell lies and turn his good name into a lump
of sewage in everyone's mouth. But Dante Rosati's deliberate
lies ("you are a baboon," "you are mentally deranged")
cannot possibly be described as mistakes by any reasonable
person. A mistake occurs when someone gets the facts
wrong without malice aforethought. But when someone
like Dante Rosati tells lie ("you are mentally deranged")
after lie ("Jacky Ligon is a slow brain") deliberately
in public, this is not a "mistake" any more than it
was a "mistake" for Southern segregationists to call
Dr. Martin Luther King "Martin Luther Coon" in 1963.

They knew what they were doing, and the malice of
their actions proves it. So did Dante Rosati. He
knew exactly what he was doing when he told those
lies about me and about Jacky Ligon.

Such envenomed vituperation by Dante Rosati proves prima
facie malice. The fact that I inadvertently gave Dante
Rosati too much credit for an accomplishment he hadn't
made proves my prima facie lack of malice.

>Now that Brian admits he made a mistake, let's check for
>a couple of the things any normal, decent person would do...

>() Apologize to Dante.

>No, Brian McLaren hasn't done that. Remember, he did
>Dante a favor, and he isn't afraid to point it out. While
>he's at it, he'll throw an insult or two in Pat Pagano's
>direction.

>() Take the time to go out and listen to Dante's music,
>and revise his review.

>Nope, Brian hasn't done this either. Instead, he's busy
>writing diatribes on taking responsibility for what we
>write. Well, Brian, now that you've publicly insulted Dante
>and his music without ever having heard it, why not take
>responsibility for what you wrote, and do what any self-
>respecting journalist would do?
>-Carl

In the weird twisted Bizarro World inhabited by
Carl Lumma, victims of character assassination must
now apologize to the perpeetrators for having their
character assassinated.

Think about that for a moment.

Let it sink in.

In the hallucinogenic Bizarro World of Carl Lumma
has entered, people who are lied about in public must
humbly beg the forgiveness of the liars for having
been besmirched.
"Oh, please, sir...PLEASE forgive for having been
lied about!" the victim of the lies must sob. "Please
let me do whatever it takes to make up to you for
having been lied about...oh, _please_!"

According to Carl Lumma's unimaginably warped
reasoning, victims must be berated and browbeaten,
while the perpetrators must be praised.

Think about that for a minute. Think what happens
when we apply Carl Lumma's Bizarro World outlooko
to everyday life:

When a mugging victim gets his face bashed in with
a baseball bat and gets his teeth knocked out and
his eye sockets crushed, and then when the mugger
kicks the victim's face into bloody pulp and douses
the victim with gasoline and set him on fire, the
mugging victim must according to Carl Lumma's
way of thinking raise a smoking hand and croak
"Please...forgive me. I apologize for having been
mugged."

According to the Carl Lumma Bizzaro-World-view,
a woman who gets raped and sodomized must wipe
the blood off her thighs and kiss the rapist's
hand, mumbling constritely, "I'm terribly sorry
for having been raped, please forgive me for
my horrible transgression. I only have a hundred
dollars in my wallet -- will that be enough to
make up for what I did when you held me down
and choked me while sodomizing me?"

And when survivors of Stalin's purges meet
with former Siberian gulag guards, according to
the Carl Lumma Bizarro World way of reasoning
the Siberian death camp survivors must fall
to their knees weeping and clutch the former
Soviet guards' shooes while begging, "What I
can I ever do to apologize for having my
family murdered by you? Oh, tell me how I can
make up for having my penis cut off with
a hacksaw by you and your friends... Please
tell me, so I can apologize to you for what
you did to me and my family."

Shame on you, Carl Lumma.

For shame.

Dante Rosati lied ("mclaren is mentally deranged")
and lied ("you baboon") and lied ("you are an asshole")
about me in public, over and over and over again...
and YOU ask me to apologize to HIM?

Almost every perp tries the old blame-the-victim
game, but this is a new low.

Yes, almost every perp tries it nowadays. Rapists
scream "She led me on! That six-year-old girl is
a slut who wanted it!" and murderers howl "It was
pure self-defense, that guy tried to stab me with
his arms tied behind his back, so what could I do?"
and people like Peter Wakefield Sault call Israelis
"Jewish terrorists" while never uttering
a peep to criticize Palestinian homicide bombers.

We're all familiar with the old blame-the-victim
game...but I never thought you'd stoop that low,
Carl Lumma.

Shame on you. For shame!
----------
--mclaren