On blaming the victim

It used to be common place when a women was raped to blame her in America: to say that she wore the wrong clothes, she was at the wrong place at the wrong time, or sent out the ‘wrong signals’. Unfortunately, this attitude still exists in parts of the world.

It is still commonin America to take the default position that when a person loses their job, their house, their lively hoods, to put the blame on their shoulders. Even in the ‘Great Recession’ we are now in. They didn’t work hard enough. They didn’t move with the times fast enough. They were losers or uneducated due to their own laziness.

I have heard, horrifically, when people have lost children, or gotten cancer, or were dealing with mental illness, they simply didn’t *pray* enough. That God must be teaching them a lesson.

All this is echoed in what Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson spewed this week.

I’m a free speech absolutist, so I’m not going to say these creatures don’t have a right to speak.

But fuck them.

You have the power to walk away, turn the channel, delete that bookmark.

Events like the earthquake in Haiti do put things in perspective. In addition they help separate those that actually *care* for other human beings from those that think they are the center of the world or are the marketers of that.

Update: Satan writes Pat Robertson a letter.

As Fred Clark says Pat Robertson would tell Jesus he must have deserved it.