THERE IS NO CODE INTENDED IN ANYTHING I WRITE HERE TODAY, IN ANYTHING I WEAR, SAY OR DO.
April 12, 2011 @ 2:10 p.m.
--Yesterday, I went to this town's office of the Department of Labor for the first time. This morning, when I went back, the door of the restroom closest to the DOL had a sign on it that said "This restroom is out of order for today." The door had been left open; I went in and flushed the toilet to see if it worked. It worked fine.
I left in the middle of the day. When I went back this afternoon, there were "Caution: Wet Floor" signs all over the place, even though there was no wet floor anywhere at all.
The answer to the question that I posed to the White House yesterday is this: discrimination.
Copyright L. Kochman, April 12, 2011 @ 2:12 p.m.
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April 12, 2011 @ 2:51 p.m.
If Crystal Mangum has been arrested again in regard to her disturbed relationship with her boyfriend, it doesn't mean that she wasn't raped by members of the Duke lacrosse team or that she has ever lied about anything.
Ms. Mangum has been under constant pressure, condemned, since the Duke case. It would have been a miracle if she had been able to find a boyfriend who wasn't abusive to her or for anything else in her life to go right since the Duke case was dismissed and she was branded a liar all across the country.
It's not as if her life were easy before the Duke case; after the case, every day must have been a living hell.
In addition to what she was already going through, the same people and organizations who have been most dedicated to harassing me have been going after her since I posited another theory for what might have happened the night that she claims that was raped. Pressure is pressure; things have been difficult for me as it is, and I have significant advantages and resources which she doesn't have. If at times I've feared for my safety and had a harrowing experience over the past year and a half, how much worse and more terrifying must the harassment have been for her?
Some would say that people do the best they can; I would imagine that both Ms. Mangum and her boyfriend do they best they can. What do you think they've been going through, just because I wrote a theory that described how she might be innocent of being "The Duke Liar?"
The problems that I have, the ways in which I am erratic, don't express myself well, am not consistent, and all of the mistakes I make that seem like such obvious mistakes not to make; all of that is a byproduct of the same life I have lived which has given me the insights and abilities that people occasionally marvel over. That life, which in some ways and at some times I chose out of ignorance of what it would lead to, is also what finally rattled me out of a deadly belief that I think a lot of white, middle class Americans are born and raised with; the belief that I am inherently good just because I'm me. I am not inherently good; nobody is. It is difficult to be a good person; for people who are raised in a privileged group, which all who are born white, middle-class Americans are, it is difficult even to figure out what distinguishes good behavior from bad behavior.
The saying "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger" hasn't rung true to me for more than a decade. I amended it several years ago, to myself, to say "What doesn't kill me can hurt me badly and make me sick or otherwise make my life hard for a long time if I can't ameliorate the problem and its effects."
They say that what you make of your experiences is where the true meaning of those experiences can be found. It is not easy to create meaning out of bad experiences; people fail at it more often than not.
Copyright L. Kochman, April 12, 2011 @ 3:09 p.m.
April 12, 2011 @ 2:10 p.m.
--Yesterday, I went to this town's office of the Department of Labor for the first time. This morning, when I went back, the door of the restroom closest to the DOL had a sign on it that said "This restroom is out of order for today." The door had been left open; I went in and flushed the toilet to see if it worked. It worked fine.
I left in the middle of the day. When I went back this afternoon, there were "Caution: Wet Floor" signs all over the place, even though there was no wet floor anywhere at all.
The answer to the question that I posed to the White House yesterday is this: discrimination.
Copyright L. Kochman, April 12, 2011 @ 2:12 p.m.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 12, 2011 @ 2:51 p.m.
If Crystal Mangum has been arrested again in regard to her disturbed relationship with her boyfriend, it doesn't mean that she wasn't raped by members of the Duke lacrosse team or that she has ever lied about anything.
Ms. Mangum has been under constant pressure, condemned, since the Duke case. It would have been a miracle if she had been able to find a boyfriend who wasn't abusive to her or for anything else in her life to go right since the Duke case was dismissed and she was branded a liar all across the country.
It's not as if her life were easy before the Duke case; after the case, every day must have been a living hell.
In addition to what she was already going through, the same people and organizations who have been most dedicated to harassing me have been going after her since I posited another theory for what might have happened the night that she claims that was raped. Pressure is pressure; things have been difficult for me as it is, and I have significant advantages and resources which she doesn't have. If at times I've feared for my safety and had a harrowing experience over the past year and a half, how much worse and more terrifying must the harassment have been for her?
Some would say that people do the best they can; I would imagine that both Ms. Mangum and her boyfriend do they best they can. What do you think they've been going through, just because I wrote a theory that described how she might be innocent of being "The Duke Liar?"
The problems that I have, the ways in which I am erratic, don't express myself well, am not consistent, and all of the mistakes I make that seem like such obvious mistakes not to make; all of that is a byproduct of the same life I have lived which has given me the insights and abilities that people occasionally marvel over. That life, which in some ways and at some times I chose out of ignorance of what it would lead to, is also what finally rattled me out of a deadly belief that I think a lot of white, middle class Americans are born and raised with; the belief that I am inherently good just because I'm me. I am not inherently good; nobody is. It is difficult to be a good person; for people who are raised in a privileged group, which all who are born white, middle-class Americans are, it is difficult even to figure out what distinguishes good behavior from bad behavior.
The saying "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger" hasn't rung true to me for more than a decade. I amended it several years ago, to myself, to say "What doesn't kill me can hurt me badly and make me sick or otherwise make my life hard for a long time if I can't ameliorate the problem and its effects."
They say that what you make of your experiences is where the true meaning of those experiences can be found. It is not easy to create meaning out of bad experiences; people fail at it more often than not.
Copyright L. Kochman, April 12, 2011 @ 3:09 p.m.