Tiger Beatdown

As you may have known, I spent much time these past two weeks protesting what I saw as irresponsible coverage of the Julian Assange case. Saying, for example, that these two women were far-flung agents of the CIA, or some other secret government agency, planted in the hopes of luring him in as “honeypots” and then framing him with the always-successful, always-easily-prosecuted, never-frequently-scoffed-at-and-minimized-and-dismissed means of DATE RAPE CLAIMS: I argued that this was misogynist, framed in the profound cultural desire to disbelieve in, minimize, and demean the actual rate of and damage done by rape that we refer to, in the not-using-several-words-when-you-could-use-two circles, as “rape apologism,” and also, coincidentally, just not basically rooted in any damn evidence at all. And also, not coincidentally, pretty much no-one reporting on the case seemed to know a damn thing about Sweden aside from as a place of surreal straight-dude nightmare fuel, as for example the many confusing claims that it is a country aimed pretty much entirely at criminalizing awesome heterosexual intercourse, where women routinely put men in jail for holding their hands at the movies, due possibly to the fact that their only elected official is Resurrected Zombie Andrea Dworkin, and also if you try to conceive a baby there via condomless sex your boyfriend will be executed with a rusty axe in a back alley. (He is not your husband. Marriage, as we all know, is illegal in Sweden.)

But regretfully, I must now admit that I was wrong to protest. And, as all responsible ladybusiness bloggers must do, I must now offer you a full apology, and retraction. I now have every reason to believe that the Swedish government has conspired with these two women against Assange. For shocking new video has come to light, of a Swedish government official violently THREATENING JULIAN ASSANGE’S VERY LIFE!!! Click below for this never before-seen footage!

(Continued)

Last night, I did something I hadn’t done in a very long time. I took a long, hot bath. I just laid there, and I started to feel how tired I was, and I started to feel less tense. And then I got up, and I went to my bedroom, and I laid down next to my boyfriend and my dog Hektor, who will insistently not act like a dog and sleep in a doggie bed or at the foot of the bed, he demands respect, damn it, he absolutely must sleep directly between you and the other person with his face right in your face, and I fell instantly asleep. I wasn’t distracted by sadness or anger or despair or tension, I wasn’t feeling awful for the first time in a long time, and so, I let the dog find a comfortable space next to me (FACE RIGHT IN YOUR FACE, FACE RIGHT IN YOUR FAAAACE), and I had a good night’s sleep. For the first time in a week.

Because I could do that, sort of. Because we won one. I’ll tell you why I’m certain we won it, a little later — the evidence may surprise you — but you might know part of it. The part where, in the last, final push of #MooreandMe, we turned all our hope and support and need for genuinely progressive media that takes rape claims seriously and does not smear or enable harm to women who report rape on to Rachel Maddow, and asked her to end #MooreandMe. And she got on her show, and she said this:

The timing could not be more suspicious. The man accused says he’s being pursued for political reasons. But even if you’re suspicious about the timing, there are two women who went to the police with what are essentially date-rape charges against this guy.

This doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.

Can your suspicion about the forces arrayed against Julian Assange and Wikileaks — your suspicion about the timing and pursuit of these charges — coexist with respect for the women making these accusations against him and with a commitment to take rape allegations seriously, even when the person accused is someone that for other reasons you like?

Yes. You undoubtedly can. We’ve all been doing it for well over a week; #MooreandMe was only the most evident and obvious and loud manifestation of that commitment. But can you get a beloved progressive media figure say it on TV? You couldn’t, before #MooreandMe. You simply couldn’t. Maddow hadn’t screwed up on this story before, it’s true. But last night, she said, with great seriousness, that respecting those women and taking those charges seriously was important. And when her team posted it, to @MaddowBlog and the Maddow Blog, they specifically credited #MooreandMe.

And then Michael Moore came on. And the first question Rachel Maddow asked him, the first one she asked him, was about this. That the story had “blown up in a lot of directions.” It had blown up, and had reached out to Rachel Maddow, in one specific direction, and I can’t for the life of me see why she wouldn’t mention us on-air, but, OK. She asked him; she mentioned us, if not by name. And that’s the point at which Michael Moore said this:

Every woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted or raped has to be, must be, taken seriously. Those charges have to be investigated to the fullest extent possible. For too long, and too many women have been abused in our society, because they were not listened to, and they just got shoved aside… The older people here remember how it used to be. It’s not that much better now, it got a little better, because of the women’s movement made that happen.

And no, Michael Moore: It is not that much better now. It is, indisputably, not that much better. Naomi Wolf went on TV and told every viewer there that it isn’t rape if the victim is unconscious, that penetrating an unconscious woman is “consensual”: It’s not that much better. Those two women’s names were outed, to over 900,000 people, by you and by Keith Olbermann, and attached to a derogatory smear by a Holocaust denier and WikiLeaks representative on little to no evidence, because you support WikiLeaks and treated those two women as expendable in so doing: It’s not that much better. I got a message from a woman that the pro-Assange group, pro-WikiLeaks group she’s allied with, is posting messages that these women are liars and Assange is innocent, on its Facebook group, and that she’s being attacked for standing up to them: It’s not that much better. I got forwarded a link to an actual product that is being sold, an e-card featuring a drawing of a traumatized-looking woman huddled in a shower, reading “Congratulations! You just got bad touched”: It’s not that much better. A woman who was part of the protest told me that a message reading, in part, that she was “a cum-guzzling super slut wannabe hasbian dyke that is angry with the world because no matter how many times she flashed her uneven nigger breasts no man would ever touch her” was posted to streamofwikileaks.tumblr.com: It is not that much better. A man told me he had to stop protesting, had to stop posting #MooreandMe, because the harassment had gotten too intense, and “they have my home address and have explicitly threatened me and my wife,” and then he was such a goddamned good person that he actually apologized: It’s not that much better. Many of my friends, people I know and have worked with and respect, have come forward to tell me that they, too, are survivors, the absolute epidemic of rape and sexual assault that we face in this society has become that much clearer to me, the list of women I know who are also rape survivors has become much, much longer since I posted it on Saturday: It is not, it is indisputably not, that much better.

But you went on TV, Michael Moore, and you said that “every woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted or raped has to be, must be, taken seriously.” And when I realized that I was actually grateful for that, that I was so grateful I actually broke down sobbing, well: That’s when I realized the extent of what we’re actually up against. Certain people have been quick to condemn me for “settling” for so little, for taking “crumbs,” but the thing is? We all worked for a goddamned week, non-stop, risking our lives and safety, to hear a man say that women who report sexual assault and rape have to be taken seriously. And we shouldn’t ever, ever have to fight to hear people say that. It should never take a week for us to get through to those people. We should never, ever have to point out to a man that laughing out loud, discussing rape allegations, and calling them a “so-called crime” when the actual extent of the allegations is public knowledge, and OUTING THEM TO HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHILE REPEATING UNSUBSTANTIATED DEROGATORY SHIT INTENDED TO MAKE PEOPLE DOUBT AND HATE THEM, is WRONG.

The widespread cultural belief that every woman who reports a rape must be taken seriously should be a common part of my day-to-day experience. I should expect that people believe that; I should expect that people behave in accordance with that belief; I should have the right to be shocked or surprised when they don’t. But I don’t expect it. It’s not a common expectation. And that’s why I actually felt real, pure, huge gratitude last night, hearing Michael Moore. Because rape culture is so powerful that even hearing a man say that rape culture and rape apologism isn’t okay comes as a surprise. Strikes me as receiving a special favor. When it shouldn’t be a favor, or a victory; it should be a basic human right.

We’ve been fighting for a long time, and we still didn’t win it all. And as for Keith Olbermann, well… I have certain feelings about Keith Olbermann.

But you know we fought, and we fought, and I was tired, and I was scared, and I was crying, and I was outside the tower, and I knew we had to not go away. And then, well… then he came down.

That was in my Direct Messages inbox. On my Twitter. At the bottom of the 200 unanswered e-mails; I almost ignored it, almost blitzed right past it, because it was on Twitter and those are just new “follow” notifications.

I got a “thank you” from Michael Moore. You did. We all did.

HE FUCKING CAME DOWN FROM THE TOWER. HE CAME DOWN. We stood out here, and we waited, with our megaphones, and then THE MAN CAME DOWN.

The story ended better this time. I mean, in Roger & Me, Roger talking to Michael, that wasn’t going to give those people their jobs back, right? “Gosh, Michael, you have such a good point, allow me to immediately reverse all of this economic devastation.” No. That was never how it was going to work, even as a best-case scenarion. But we wanted Roger to talk to Michael, anyway. We wanted to talk.

They’re talking now. Keith Olbermann is on his Twitter saying it’s “misogynist” to characterize two women with date rape claims as being “in a tizzy,” which Assange did. (It’s also misogynist to refer to one of them as a “notorious radical feminist” — because us feminists, we just plain CAN’T EVER be raped, right, many many many many feminist survivors participating in this protest? — and it’s a flat-out lie to say that they “wrote many articles” about seeking revenge, when in fact what one of them did was TRANSLATE and REPOST an EHOW ARTICLE, and Assange did both things yesterday. Care to address that, Mr. Olbermann?) Keith Olbermann will never thank us for making him a better journalist, or a better person; Keith Olbermann will never acknowledge that his prior coverage kind of skimped on basic standards of both journalism and human decency. But, as many of us pointed out last night, we still accomplished something.

We made it clear that the media narrative of the Assange case, which told us that in order to be pro-WikiLeaks we’d have to minimize, discount, and smear those two women, which told us that women who allege rape and rape survivors are EXPENDABLE when it comes to certain left-wing celebrities or causes, is unacceptable. We made it clear that journalists — men and women — who do this, who minimize and misrepresent those claims, who leak those names, who endanger those women, are going to face consequences. And that those consequences might be bigger than anything they’ve ever seen before; bigger than anything that they had any reason to expect.

I said this on Twitter, before, but: We fought for basic human decency for over a week. We fought, tirelessly, at great risk and expense, to make a mountain move. The mountain moved, like, three inches to the left. If you weren’t looking closely, you wouldn’t notice that it had moved at all. You definitely wouldn’t think to thank or acknowledge the incredibly hard work of the people who moved it. But we moved a mountain. We did the impossible. We went from just a random bunch of frustrated feminists, a random bunch of people on Twitter, to a force capable of changing the rape apologism in the narrative of one of the world’s biggest news stories.

The mountain moved. The man came down from the tower. And we still live in a rape culture; we’re still not done fighting it; the narrative around Assange, in particular, is still hugely misogynist and hugely dangerous for those two women and will still encourage rape survivors not to report. We didn’t get a full apology and correction from Michael Moore; we didn’t get a full apology and correction from Keith Olbermann; neither of them have donated to the many rape crisis and anti-rape organizations to which we’ve provided links; heck, we didn’t even get credit on air. But we know what we’re capable of now. And that is immensely important.

That’s the most important lesson of #MooreandMe, for me, the most important take-away: The next time something is this fucked up, and we feel like we have to fight it, we will. The next time we feel like we have to fight something, we will know fighting can make a difference. The chief thing #MooreandMe gave me, the girl who started out a week ago just writing an irritated Tweet and then eventually hearing a “thank you” from Michael Moore, was faith in the idea that activism can change things. Faith in the idea that you matter. Faith in the idea that, next time we set out to oppose rape culture in our media or our lives, we can do so with that most precious, most rare, most essential of qualities: We can fight rape, and we can have hope.

1. CRIME

Assange has been charged with something called “sex by surprise,” which reportedly carries a $715 fine. According to Assange’s London attorney, Mark Stephens, prosecutors have yet to explain the charges or meet with the WikiLeaks chief to discuss them, which he’s agreed to do. “Whatever ‘sex by surprise’ is, it’s only an offense in Sweden—not in the U.K. or the U.S. or even Ibiza,” Stephens fumed.

— Mark Stephens, via Slate, 12/3/2010. None of the above statements are true. They have all been proven wrong. A retraction of these false statements has not been publicly made by Mark Stephens.

KeithOlbermann RT @BiancaJagger ‘#Assange “rape” accuser has #CIA ties’ [LINK REDACTED FOR NAMING AND THEREBY ENDANGERING ACCUSERS.]

— Michael Moore, on his Twitter, 2:22 p.m., 12/5/2010. The above statement is not true. It cannot be proven. It was taken from the website of MarkCrispinMiller.com, using information “broken” by a Holocaust denier who is associated with WikiLeaks. It leaks the names of both Assange accusers, thus endangering them immensely. A retraction has yet to be made by Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann.

And the issue here is that if he were any other just normal Brit, with this so-called ‘crime’ that he’s been accused of — which I understand isn’t, wouldn’t actually be a crime if it was committed in Britain, a condom broke I believe is the ‘evidence.’

— Michael Moore, while literally laughing out loud, BBC, 12/14/2010. None of the above statements are true. They have been proven wrong. They had been proven wrong before Michael Moore went on the air and made them. A retraction of these false statements has not been publicly made by Michael Moore.

2. AND PUNISHMENT

“Mr. Borgstrom said Mr. Assange’s statement that he has “heard no evidence whatsoever” to support the allegations was false, since the contents of the police report were made available to his Swedish lawyers weeks ago. By presenting the case as a vendetta, he said, Mr. Assange and his legal team were misrepresenting a justice system that required approval from Sweden’s highest appeal court before the extradition warrant was approved. “Those who say that the judges in our court of appeal were influenced by pressure from the United States don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said. “It’s absurd”.

He said by presenting the allegations against him as part of a political conspiracy, Mr. Assange had made “victims” of the two women, who now faced vilification on the Internet and regular death threats.

— The New York Times, 12/18/2010. This article also provides full and accurate information of the allegations against Assange, including that he (a) pulled one woman’s clothes off & snapped her necklace, then tore them off again when she tried to put them back on, (b) pinned that woman and held her down to prevent her from getting the condoms, then put one on to penetrate her — as per this account, penetration happening after he’d demonstrated force toward her twice and she had every reason to reasonably believe resisting him might get her physically hurt; that is to say, after physical force had been used to coerce the victim and remove her ability to consent, thus constituting rape — and apparently “did something to it” to make it break, (c) penetrated an unconscious woman, and (d) went back to the first woman, naked from the waist down, and rubbed himself against her without her consent. In the wake of one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers publishing proof that their earlier statements were false and had demonstrably endangered the lives of the two women in the case, neither Mark Stephens nor Michael Moore nor Keith Olbermann have issued a public retraction of their false statements.

I do not know who has given these documents to the media, but the purpose can only be one thing – trying to make Julian look bad.

— Bjorn Hurtig, lawyer of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, now apparently opposing leaks of accurate information that had previously been misrepresented to or hidden from the press if those leaks also happen to make someone “look bad,” 12/18/2010.

3. AND CONSEQUENCES (RUN IT ALL THE WAY DOWN).

We require — not ask, not prefer, absolutely require – progressive media and public figures to stand against rape in every case. Again, this is not negotiable. This is mandatory. This is a requirement: If you don’t stand against rape, and make that stand a crucial and central part of your platform, we do not accept you either as a real “progressive” or as someone who is in any way qualified for authority or a leadership position. We will not buy your merchandise; we will not support you; we will speak out against you. Because a progressive movement that doesn’t stand against rape isn’t a progressive movement. It’s just The Man, it’s just the oppressor, it’s just oppression, in a baseball hat, holding a camcorder.

— Tiger Beatdown, 12/15/10

And that’s what I wanted to write about—the friends, brothers, lovers in the counterfeit male-dominated Left. The good guys who think they know what Women’s Lib, as they so chummily call it, is all about—who then proceed to degrade and destroy women by almost everything they say and do: The cover on the last issue of Rat (front and back). The token pussy power orclit militancy articles. The snide descriptions of women staffers on the masthead. The little jokes, the personal ads, the smile, the snarl. No more, brothers. No more well-meaning ignorance, no more cooptation, no more assuming that this thing we’re all fighting for is the same; one revolution under one man, with liberty and justice for all. No more... A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or coin as well). Goodbye to all that.

Run it all the way down.

— Robin Morgan, “Goodbye To All That,” Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and fucking SEVENTY.

I’ll suspend this account until/if this frenzy is stopped.

— Keith Olbermann, on his Twitter, 2:01 P.M., 12/16/2010

Keep dreaming, Keith Olbermann. And, for that matter, the suspiciously silent-again Michael Moore. We have been opposing the rape culture and misogyny of our pretend “allies” on the “left” — which is not a genuine Left, if it doesn’t stand by women, and if it doesn’t stand against rape in all cases — since this movement began. We have been exposing, protesting, and resisting it. We are the Left: We do not stand for rape apologism and rape culture. We oppose it. By definition, opposing rape apologism and rape culture is what the Left must do. If we agree on nothing else — if I, personally, disagree with Robin Morgan all the damn time, if I sometimes feel like I agree with her about literally nothing else — we agree on this.  And, given that we’ve been saying this stuff since at least 1970, we can keep saying it for a few more days. A few more weeks. A few more months, or a few more years: We can keep putting pressure on you to apologize for giving false information, failing to correct it, and endangering rape victims and/or women who report rape for as long as we have to, until you come down from that tower and tell us you know what you did was wrong.

Hashtag: #MooreandMe. User name: @MMFlint. Until it stops.

*OH SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT??? Did you see THAT RIGHT THERE???? That was A CORRECTION, SON. That’s right: I got something factually wrong, and someone pointed it out to me, and I was all “oh whoops” and issued a PUBLIC FUCKING CORRECTION, as soon as someone pointed it out to me. And I am, despite all odds, not leaving Twitter, not crying in the bathrooms, not writing multiple angry Tweets about how angry the person asking for correction makes me, not hiding under the couch, and not actually, physically DEAD. Which means (a) that making corrections is physically possible, (b) that responsible writers, bloggers, media figures, AND JOURNALISTS ALL DO IT, and (c) the person running this website — “Sady Doyle?” — is apparently less of a wimp than Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann. And so are you. We are all demonstrably stronger than they are. These notably loud, vocal, opinionated, impressive, intimidating, world-famous and/or Oscar-winning men are evidently so intimidated by us asking them to be accountable that they have responded with temper tantrums and silence rather than look us in the face. Like, they can’t even come up with something about how we’re wrong. Because we aren’t, and it scares the shit out of them. Take a minute to think about how fucking impressive you all are for doing this. And then keep going. Because you’re winning. We all are. And we can win more, and better, tomorrow.

Here’s the thing. Michael Moore has DEMONSTRATED an unwillingness to engage, or even to apologize, for what he did wrong that sparked #MooreandMe. The likelihood that he’ll donate $20K to an anti-sexual assault organization? It is very, very low. Because Michael Moore’s actions indicate that rape survivors just don’t mean as much to Michael Moore as Julian Assange getting bail. They just don’t. He has assigned a demonstrable, monetary value to these two causes, and as far as we know, Assange is worth $20,000 and providing necessary aid to sexual assault survivors is worth $0.

But sexual assault survivors mean something to me. And to you. Probably none of us have $20,000 — my average monthly income is less than a tenth of that amount. But I have enough money to support rape survivors. To assign them a demonstrable, monetary value, and go without the almond pear brioches from Bakeway (NOOO THEY’RE SO DELICIOUS) and make my own coffee instead of buying it from coffee shops, for a little while. Which is why I just donated $50 to RAINN.

We’re being accused of being far-right-wing operatives, of trying to build our own fame by attacking left-wing celebrities, of being bitches and cunts and liars and haters of freedom and the truth and the right of the people to engage in activism, and none of that matters, because we know who we are: We’re the people who stand in support of rape survivors against rape. And against the culture that smears rape survivors, harasses them, attacks them, threatens them, or treats them as expendable, especially when those rape survivors are socially marginalized, and especially when their rapists are powerful men.

This is why I’m asking everyone who cares about #MooreandMe to treat it, not as a spectator sport, not as a diversion, not just as something you do to put pressure on rape apologists, but as a way for you, you personally, to support organizations that provide aid to sexual assault survivors.

I chose to donate to RAINN, because they’re one of the largest and most wide-reaching sexual assault organizations, and because, until December 31, donations will be matched. Therefore, as I understand it, my $50 donation made $100 for the organization. A Twitter follower mentioned donating $20, which means we’ve already made $140 through #MooreandMe.

How much more can we raise? How much value can we demonstrably, actually, monetarily place on the aid and support of sexual assault survivors? Could we make $20,000 — the amount Moore posted for Assange’s bail? Could we make $315,000 — the total amount of Assange’s bail? I don’t know. Do the thousands of people who know about #MooreandMe care about rape survivors as much as Michael Moore and a handful of other extremely rich celebrities care about bailing out Assange?

No matter how much we can raise, it won’t be enough. But by donating, we demonstrate two things: First, that every rape survivor, every rape survivor, is exactly as important as this one WikiLeaks member (and keep in mind that the organization of WikiLeaks, no matter how you feel about it, could in fact keep going without Assange). Second, we communicate the same thing we’ve been saying all along, which is: If you are a rape survivor, we have your back. We care. We don’t care who comes at you, or how hostile the culture is to you, or who you are: We care about you, about your right to live in a world without rape culture or rape apologism, about dismantling rape culture and rape apologism, about providing you with the support and resources you need, about opposing those who would smear or endanger or hurt you, and just, basically, making sure that if you need a hand we will give it. We care about you.

We are going to keep pressuring Michael Moore (@MMFlint! #MooreandMe!) for an apology, an explanation, and a donation of $20,000. But we can help rape victims, too.

I’m asking everybody who supports #MooreandMe to donate to an anti-sexual-assault organization, as much as they can (and trust me, I get not having cash. But you probably have at least some cash. You probably have $5, or $10, or $20, or $50 — and maybe, like Michael Moore, you’re one of the lucky few who has more) and record how much they donated, publicly, so that we can see how much this one wacky fringe-dwelling man-hating Internet feminist protest has been able to raise, in terms of actual financial support for the organizations that help rape survivors.

The link to donate to RAINN is here. No matter how much harm Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann cause with their massive funds and massive influence, we can still do good. And as this whole thing has demonstrated, when we operate together, we are way more powerful than anyone expects.

Oh, that Keith Olbermann. So adept with the Twitter, that one! For yesterday, he followed up “Keith Olbermann’s Late Night Tantrum About Anti-Rape Protesters” with “Keith Olbermann’s Tantrum About Anti-Rape Protesters 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.” And you know, I wouldn’t have believed it? But sure enough, just like Aliens, the sequel was EVEN BETTER than the first installment! Seeing as how it concluded with this one:

I will thus unblock all blocks, wish you all a Merry Christmas and I’ll suspend this account until this frenzy is stopped.

FRENZY!!!!!!! FRENZYYYYYYYYY. Oh, Keith Olbermann. Surely QUITTING TWITTER FOREVER because of an anti-rape protest will make this go away, right? I mean, it’s not like it’s going to draw more attention to you and the protest; it’s not like it will be REPORTED by Mediaite and the Huffington Post and the Washington Post and REUTERS, because if there’s one thing we know, it’s that celebrity Twitter freakouts hold absolutely no interest for the media or the general public. You can make this go away, Keith Olbermann. You’re a news man; you decide what the news is. You’re The Media, unlike that rabble of anti-rape protesters, or that no-good no-account nobody Sady DoylOHHHHHH, SHIT, SON! It would appear I have published an article on the subject! AT SALON!

Except that it wasn’t a frenzy. It was a protest. Olbermann had no problem with describing the notoriously unruly Anonymous as “online activists,” and yet, when online activists who happened to be feminists took issue with him, well… they’d gone FRENZIED! They were like sharks in the salty sea water of Twitter, thrashing and chomping at Keith Olbermann’s tender, online flesh!

They had reason to protest. One of the chief objections, from fans of Moore and Olbermann, is that Assange isn’t being charged with rape. “He was accused ONLY of consense.sex w/o a condom,” wrote Twitter user MariahWestwind. “u r all fucking retarded, really fucking dumb……….it was consensual sex and his condom broke which is a crime in sweden u fucking retards,” wrote a commenter on my blog, “Ralph,” who was sadly deleted. This is demonstrably wrong. It’s untrue. But Ralph, Mariah, and all the others have reason to believe it. Because they got the information from the news. They got it from Michael Moore. And they got it from Keith Olbermann.

People trust journalists: If a journalist says something, like “the term ‘rape’ in Sweden includes consensual sex without a condom” (Olbermann’s own, demonstrably false, as-yet-unredacted words), most people will believe that what he has said is true, and act as if it is true, without doing further research. Because the job of a journalist is to tell people the truth, to give them all of the information they will reasonably need, and to redact and correct his statements if they are later proven wrong. Statements made by journalists, particularly those as prominent as Olbermann, have measurable impact on how people make decisions: MariahWestwind is basically quoting Keith Olbermann. There’s a rape investigation going on, and Mariah doesn’t know it. Because Mariah trusted Keith Olbermann to tell her the truth, and Keith Olbermann failed to honor that.

Perhaps you would like to read? Hmmmmm???

Meanwhile, Michael Moore has written a letter to THE ENTIRETY OF SWEDEN, and has yet to respond to the #MooreandMe hashtag. His take on the allegations, and his repeated misinformation and false statements regarding them?

I don’t pretend to know what happened between Mr. Assange and the two women complainants (all I know is what I’ve heard in the media, so I’m as confused as the next person).

Except that he did. He did “pretend to know,” on Keith Olbermann’s show, and on the BBC. He pretended to know, TWICE, and what he pretended to know was that Assange wasn’t actually charged with raping anyone, which was false, that the charges were for consensual sex with a broken condom, which was false, and that he had every reason to believe that Assange was probably innocent, which, given that he now says he doesn’t know what actually happened, would appear to be false as well. Right now, he says that “all I know is what I’ve heard in the media.” Awww. He’s just an ordinary guy! Except that all of this started because he told us to “never, ever believe the ‘official story.'” He’s been calling out the “mainstream media,” for their supposed role in framing or “smearing” Assange, since Day One of this controversy. And now, “all he knows is what he reads in the media.”

Michael Moore IS the media. He and Keith Olbermann are fixtures and celebrities in the left-wing media; they have more power to make people hear their voices and opinions than most of us will ever have; they reach more people than most of us ever, ever will. Michael Moore doesn’t just “know what he reads in the media,” he CREATED and PARTICIPATED IN a left-wing media campaign of minimizing rape allegations and misrepresenting them to the public.

And I’m sorry if I’ve jumped to any unnecessary or wrong-headed conclusions in my efforts

That is not what you need to apologize for, dude. Trust me. It’s mostly just the spreading of flat-out inaccuracies in order to aid an extremely powerful, progressive accused rapist. And the rape culture.

We want an apology, we want an explanation (an honest one, this time), and we would really, really like $20,000 donated to an anti-rape organization such as RAINN or a state organization providing shelters or rape crisis assistance to women. We’re tweeting @MMFlint until it happens, using the hashtag #MooreandMe, for as long as it takes.

Or, he could just run away and refuse to respond. After all, it worked out so well for Keith Olbermann.