Simonton Says

Justice for rape survivors? Look at the Kobe Bryant case

The dropping of rape charges against NBA player Kobe Bryant last week is being portrayed as an agreement that makes both sides happy.

ABC News called it a win-win situation. I think not.

The fact is, the deck was stacked against that young woman from the beginning.

Bryant benefits, of course, because he’s no longer being prosecuted for rape. He’s made a statement that he’s sorry, and, by the way, he thought the sex was consensual

Visiting Celo, fleeing the bureaucracy

I catch glimpses of Camp Celo through the children. They describe it to me.

There’s the South Toe River, sloshing over rocks, coming through the Black Mountains and the Blue Ridge. That’s where they swim.

There’s Anna, 15, in her barn boots feeding the chickens. Or working in the garden, which supplies much of the camp food and which is planted in fanciful curving rows.

Chewing the fat: Handwringing about obesity

Is obesity a disease? I don’t think so.

The rhetoric around obesity got more frenzied last week after the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was changing the language in its Medicare policy. The policy now considers obesity to be an illness.

To its great credit, the department made the change in order to allow Medicare to cover some weight loss treatments. That’s a good thing, because obesity-related diseases need to be prevented. However, it has succeeded in muddying the waters in a vast linguistic swamp.

Wal-Mart in the hot seat

“What surprised and offended me most about the low-wage workplace was the extent to which one is required to surrender one’s civil rights,” writes Barbara Ehrenreich. “I learned this at the very beginning of my stint as a waitress, when management warned me that my purse could be searched at any time.”

Ehrenreich, a journalist, spent several months in 1998 working as a waitress, as a maid and finally as a salesperson at Wal-Mart, where she earned $7 an hour.

Her goal was to investigate how difficult it would be to pay for housing, food and other expenses on those earnings. What she also discovered was a world in which workers were treated with very little respect. Drug testing was routine. At Wal-Mart, she was lectured on “time theft,” which essentially meant having conversations with co-workers. (It was a theft of Wal-Mart’s time.) She and other middle-aged women workers were patronized by their younger male boss.

In short, workers were viewed with suspicion and treated like children.

Message to myself: Fight fair ... and what about the f-word?

Perhaps it was a real cheap shot on my part to attack a newspaper story in the manner I did in the previous entry. I didn’t intend to make a personal attack, but it came out that way.

The way information is presented in newspapers, magazines, TV and other media needs to be held up for scrutiny. Sometimes, ideas really need to be attacked -- and satirized. Issues need to be aired, and (I believe) indignation needs to be expressed. But personal attacks, no.

So I’m bumbling on. Maybe the Foot in Mouth Award is the thing here. Or the Learn to Fight Fair Award. I'm sorry for turning criticism into a personal attack.

Ideas about what’s appropriate are really jumbled these days. Witness the Washington Post’s use of obscenity today in its story on Vice President Dick Cheney. He cussed at Sen. Patrick Leahy. He used the f-word. And so did the Post. (So do I spell it out or not? I feel really stupid using a euphemism.) The Post then felt compelled to print its rationale: Post explains spelling out word.

"Saved!" from self-knowledge

The movie “Saved!” is a hoot, except maybe to those Christians it’s taking a jab at. Unfortunately, it’s so mocking it will alienate some of the people it claims to be addressing.

It’s timely, too, especially since there’s such a hoopla right now about the religious faith of politicians.

“Saved” is set in American Eagle Christian High School, an aggressively Christian place, where two popular girls find themselves at odds. There’s Mary, seemingly sweet and idealistic, who begins to fear she’s pregnant. There’s Hilary Faye (I thought her name was Hilary Faith through the entire movie), who’s a lead singer in the band “The Christian Jewels” and self-styled monitor of everyone’s morals.

So torture is OK (until the public finds out)?

When asked if he believed torturing prisoners was ever OK, the head of the Justice Department beat around the bush.

John Ashcroft was asked the question three times on Tuesday in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee before he finally answered it directly. He said he didn’t think torture was productive, let alone justified.

A secret memo indicates he believes otherwise – and that U.S. policy has been otherwise. Written by the Justice Department in August 2002, the memo appears to explore how far interrogators can go when questioning suspects overseas. It was written for the CIA and sent to the White House.

The G-8 protest: What's it all about?

Newspaper coverage of protests generally focuses on spectacle: splashy images of people in the streets. The major questions seem to be whether windows are broken, what the police are doing, how much disruption will ensue.

There’s a real absence of reporting on the issues protestors are raising.

However, on Sunday, an AJC story gave a more in-depth look at protestors lining up for the G-8 summit on Georgia’s Sea Island. Even so, readers could still be excused for wondering what the protests are all about.