you cannot pretend that they were made by someone who would never molest children.
That has been clear to many people for a long time. See Spy magazine "Is That a Peccadillo in Your Ouvre?" from 1992.
I think Spy may have been Kurt Andersen's greatest achievement.
There's a big difference between the Polansky case where he admitted to doing it and the Allen case where it's un corroborated allegations made by unstable people in the middle of a custody dispute.
Woody Allen cannot be presumed to be innocent of molesting a child unless she is presumed to be lying to us.
This was almost certainly written by somebody who doesn't have much experience with children.
Oh please. Did you actually read her description of the abuse?
Can we all at least agree that Nicholas Kristof is a creepy creep?
Yes, and I have pretty clear memories of things from my early childhood that an adult knowledge of when I lived in specific places render impossible. Woody Allen may well have molested her. I have no idea. But I witnessed the Little Rascals witch hunt here in North Carolina, and while many of the allegations were obviously impossible, "lying" is the wrong word to use in reference to the kids' testimony.
3: Yeah. I've read some really, really good stuff from Bady in the past, and it surprises me to see him write something as dumb as that piece.
I really hate the whole debate, though, because it's pretty much inevitable that people are going to judge these things based on their own experiences rather than the actual evidence.
Me, I've seen false charges of child abuse up-close, and they fit the Allen-Farrow template so tidily that I think the preponderance of evidence favors Allen on this. That, at least, is my experience.
But what do I know? And am I going to share my opinion with Dylan Farrow, who obviously believes she was abused, and with Mia Farrow, who probably does? I am not. I also apologize to anyone who reads this whose experience of this sort of thing is different from mine.
Early childhood memories from the middle of an incredibly bitter divorce fight, reinforced over the years by the continuing hatred of the custodial parent for their former partner...that's not reliable. The charges were extensively investigated by the state of Connecticut at the time they were made, the internet is really going to re litigate this thing now and come to the opposite conclusion of professional investigators looking into it at the time?
I generally agree with 8, in terms of the reliability of child memory. But in this case we have an accusation that's not physically impossible or unlikely (that is, it's not the bizarre shit that little kids come up with if you pressure them into making up stories, like the satanic ritual abuse), and is corroborated by adults at the time saying that Allen was behaving in a manner consistent with the abuse (that Vanity Fair article that keeps on getting linked).
It still could have not happened, if Farrow coached Dylan into it (to the point that she now believes the story) and set up the third parties to talk about the abusive-looking public behavior from Allen (or if he really was weird about her in public, but didn't actually go any further than that). But this isn't a zero-corroboration case where the only fact outside the child's story is a nasty custody dispute.
10: From her letter:
After a custody hearing denied my father visitation rights, my mother declined to pursue criminal charges, despite findings of probable cause by the State of Connecticut - due to, in the words of the prosecutor, the fragility of the "child victim."
But I witnessed the Little Rascals witch hunt here in North Carolina
Yeah, for me it was Georgian Hills in Memphis. And I mean "witnessed" in the sense that I sat in the courtroom for basically all of one trial and part of another. It was an astonishing thing to see.
Also: "In September 1993, Connecticut State Attorney Frank Maco announced that, while he had 'probable cause' to prosecute Allen on charges of sexual molestation of Dylan, he was dropping the case to spare her the trauma of appearing in court."
Allen tried to get Maco disbarred for this statement and failed. And the family judge disagreed with the investigators and denied both parental and visitation rights.
Or I guess that should be custody, not parental rights precisely.
I really recommend reading the LGM threads on this -- not just the original posts but the comments. The Dylan abuse claims were very thoroughly investigated at the time and a team of experts appointed to be potential witnesses in a criminal prosecution concluded not only that there was no evidence of abuse at all and that the kid had probably been coached by Farrow as part of the custody battle. Not only was there no physical evidence of abuse, but all of the nannies who were primarily responsible for her care stated that there was no abuse and that they'd been pressured to tell an abuse story, and at least one of the Allen children in the household at the time believes that Farrow was coaching them. Obviously, with young kids, a custody situation, and coaching, it's certainly possible that Dylan (and maybe even Farrow) 100% believe that she was molested (and hence aren't "lying") but that the incident never happened. To get to "he definitely was an abuser" you just have to ignore all that -- this is a situation where there was a lot of investigation at the time. The better conclusion is that we just don't know what happened, except that this household was clearly extremely fucked up.
I don't say that out of any brief for Allen, I didn't follow this at the time and when I first heard about the revival of interest I just assumed Allen was definitely probably guilty. I thought it was like the Polanski situation, where there had just been a coverup and collective forgetting (my impression had always been that Polanski's thing had been a consensual relationship with a 13 year old, when the court papers made clear that it was rape). Plus I don't like Allen much as an artist. But it does seem in this one that there's really not much basis to go beyond "Allen is most definitely a creep and a weirdo, Mia Farrow also seems deeply fucked up, their kids got dealt a horrible situation, and we don't know what happened in that screwed up house."
Oh boy. This seems like an "easy cases make bad rules" situation. What wouldn't you believe about Woody Allen's creepiness? Not much! But Bady and Marcotte are stepping into something they surely don't want, which is a true court of public opinion trial, in which not everyone is going to be so sensitive about victim's rights. If Allen's creepiness is evidence, then what about Mia Farrow's perceived nuttiness? Dylan's suicide attempts: evidence of abuse, or of a troubled child who would say anything? I sure as hell don't want "us" or "the public" thinking that we can 1) be fair or 2) pass some kind of reliable judgment on these matters.
Something between a nitpick and a point: 2-8% of sexual abuse allegations are false. What's that number for celebrities? What's the number for people in bitter custody fights? It's just not the relevant stat here. Not to mention, one way to read 2-8% is "Almost one in ten reports of sexual abuse are false." And, like pf, I've seen a false accusation play out in real life, and that is bad, bad news. It tied up the accused's life for years, and only very good legal representation uncovered the truth, which was that the kid was abused by someone other than who the kid claimed. So, 2%, 8%, those are numbers of victims.
A little humility is in order here, I think.
I'm neutral on the question of Allen's guilt, but I'm just gaping at some of the discussion going around on this. Here's a dude scoffing at the idea that the "Remembering Satan" case was made up out of whole cloth. Down in the comments, he asserts that there was never a presumption that any of the children in the Satanic Panic cases were telling the truth, which I'm sure will be a great comfort to the McMartins.
Yes, and I have pretty clear memories of things from my early childhood that an adult knowledge of when I lived in specific places render impossible.
I even have this for some adult memories. One example that is particularly striking only because it's so vivid a memory: I have a crystal clear memory of watching Michael Jordan's first game as a Washington Wizard while sitting on my mother's couch in the house that my mother moved out of in 1994. She was behind me in the kitchen (which was open to the main room), and I even remember a lot of our conversation.
I know that's impossible, and I've racked my brain to try and figure out: okay, if I wasn't there, where was I? Where did I watch that game? I'm sure it wasn't at the house where my mother lived in 2001. And I can't come up with anything else, and even trying to do so feels like trying to manufacture a lie. My memory is clear: I was on my mother's couch, in the house she moved out of in 1994. If it weren't demonstrably completely unpossible for that to be true, I would swear an oath that it's true.
This is actually something I think about a fair amount, not because I care where I was when watching Michael Jordan's first game as a Washington Wizard, but because I'm haunted by the question of how many of my other vivid memories are completely wrong in crucial details.
This thread is breaking down in an unfortunate way along gender lines (I don't think actual opinions on the issue are quite so stark). To resolve this, I will stay out of the thread, and 2-3 of the commenters who have already taken something of a side should volunteer to switch genders.
17: Those 2 percent numbers are from the feebs who don't actually investigate those types of cases. IME it's way higher, because crazy people ruin everything.
18 -- yes, the McMartin case (I know well people from both the legal and "victim" side of that case). Those people -- including definitely the children themselves, the parents, but also prosecutors and judges -- absolutely thought that the abuse happened based on the kids' testimony until it was absolutely clear that it didn't.
I think Spy may have been Kurt Andersen's greatest achievement.
That says very little for Spy, considering the fates of inside.com and his "hysterical-realist" novels.
Can't we all just shun Allen for sleeping with his teenaged step daughter and leave it at that?
We represented an accused in a civil suit brought by the accuser after the accused had plead guilty in a criminal action. Accuser ended up recanting, completely and unambiguously. Accused still has to register, though, and is barred from former occupation. And does not show in the stats as a false accusation.
I didn't know any wrasse went to law school.
Personally I'd put the odds of Allen being innocent of these allegations at something like 1/4, but I'd also put the odds around 1/4 that he's a serial child molester and this allegation is only the tip of the iceberg.
24: And having a prior relationship with a 17 year old girl. And saying horribly creepy things about sex with 12 year olds. And producing movies that are have about 5% brilliance and 95% whiny bullshit.
I come down on the side of thinking he more likely did than didn't do it, based on the Vanity Fair article's documenting of a pattern of inappropriate behavior towards Dylan. Even if he didn't do exactly what she recalls (and I don't doubt that she remembers clearly something happening, memory being what it is), he's still guilty of walking right up to the edge of the line. Coupled with his other creepy behavior I'm disinclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. If I it was a criminal case and I was on the jury I think I'd vote to acquit, but since my opinion carries no weight I'll let my distaste for the man allow me to think the worst of him.
I'd also put the odds around 1/4 that he's a serial child molester and this allegation is only the tip of the iceberg.
My understanding from reading Andrew Vachss and others is that there is never just one victim.
I like 27's attempts to turn qualititative into quantitative. My guesses would be 17% totally innocent, 35% serial abuser.
Found the discussion of the social aftermath of rape accusations very interesting. It's weird and confusing to think about how I would/should treat a friend differently if I reached the conclusion that there was about a 1/4 chance they had raped someone. Hang out with them 25% less?
I like 27's attempts to turn qualititative into quantitative.
"After computing the posterior probability distribution I'm afraid I have to shun you and avoid your movies. Nothing personal; it's the outcome of a rigorous calculation. The conclusion will be re-evaluated if further data becomes available."
But seriously, I wish society could agree on what "reasonable doubt" means. 5% chance of innocence? 2%? If I'm ever on a jury this will seriously stress me out.
The trouble with the LGM approach of "most allegations of abuse are true, therefore these are" is that it very much depends on the pool that you're drawing that conclusion from; and every time you reduce the size of the pool by adding more information about this specific case, the probability of guilt seems to go down.
I refuse to engage with any probability assessment that is not precise to 3 decimal places or more.
33: Really? I started out from the position that batshit crazy mom in a hideious fight is likely to have manipulated the daughter into believing she was molested. As more information became available about his creepy-ass behavior towards young women, and Dylan in particular, became available sense of the preponderance of the evidence shifted dramatically.
It's kind of disgusting to liken accusations of molestation to the Satanic ritual hysteria.
38: You're coming at this from different directions. ajay is saying that if you start from the most inclusive viewpoint, the set of all allegations of sexual abuse, you would begin by assuming a very low probability that the accusation is false. You're starting from a point where you've already folded in much more selective information about this particular case, namely the custody dispute and your opinions of Mia Farrow.
39: what? Why? Those were literally, specifically, allegations of abuse, often sexual.
The McMartin case was about accusations of molestation. I don't know if it's disgusting to compare accusations of molestation to other accusations of molestation. I mean it is, but probably not in the way you mean.
how many of my other vivid memories are completely wrong in crucial details.
All of them. Also, every time you try to remember more, you invent more incorrect detail that becomes part of your memory.
41: actually my point was that the LGM guys started from the most inclusive viewpoint and didn't move at all.
(Actually I suppose the most inclusive viewpoint would have been "most people aren't abusers, therefore neither is he".)
41: Right, you start from the 2-8% figure, fold in the crazy and get something much higher, then fold in the creepy and get something more in line with the original.
45.1: Yeah, I know. I think you and togolosh are sort of starting from opposite ends of the spectrum and maybe would meet somewhere in the middle after weighing all the evidence.
45: Most animals on the planet are insects, and insect behavior is totally disgusting.
44: Isn't it more or less established that each time you access a memory you overwrite it with the new and slightly garbled version?
My shit memory is a great advantage here, since I can't remember garbled nonsense because I can't remember anything at all.
If we can reduce this to a model specification problem, it will be like work.
what? Why? Those were literally, specifically, allegations of abuse, often sexual.
Because there has never been any actual epidemic (and probably barely a single case) of Satanic abuse. But there is always a lot of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people, and the victims are routinely, forcefully discredited.
If you want to discuss whether or not she's mistaken, compare it to a crime which actually occurs all the goddamn time and where the victims are regularly marginalized. Not one single bizarre kerfloofy hysteria situation in the 80s.
49: yes. I mean, the encoding process is inherently imaginative (e.g. garbling), so really it's more like the memory system just isn't designed to be meaningfully veridical.
44: While this is true, I think it's possible to overstate how much it means. Certainly, memory is very unreliable, certainly, most of what we think we remember vividly is a narrative partially confabulated after the fact, and this is very disturbing to think about.
But it also remains true that memory is a fairly good source of information about things that have happened to us. Even if it's not as good as we subjectively feel it is, it's pretty good in practice. And this is true even for kids -- while there's a whole lot of research showing how easy it is to accidentally or purposefully create reliable-seeming false memories, it's also true that if a seven-year-old tells you something happened to them, the odds are generally (allowing for correction by the probability of the event generally and all that sort of thing) that it did happen.
As for 19, I fairly often remember having a conversation about something but can't quite remember who I had the conversation with. Sometimes I'm convinced it was some particular person until I talk to them about it again and they look completely confused. So either that sort of distorted memory is very common, or I'm insane.
52.2: I think you might be wrong about the degree to which those events are dissociable from regular fear of abuse, and about how bizarre and singular the whole thing was, outside of a couple of not terribly relevant specifics (the Satan part).
So either that sort of distorted memory is very common, or I'm insane.
I think it is very common. I used to think I had a really unusually bad memory. Then I started reading all this stuff about how unreliable memory generally is, and I now think my memory's probably pretty average, but I'm unusually willing to be skeptical about it when faced with contrary evidence.
52: The point is more to show how good-faith accusations of abuse can be untrue, without requiring that either of the Farrows is a cartoonish Gillian Flynn villain. I think Allen probably is guilty, but I'm kind of losing my mind at people making the leap from "accusers should be taken seriously and most accusations are true" to "no accusation is ever false and saying that false accusations made is a betrayal of women".
I used to think I had a really unusually bad memory
Or maybe you didn't!
it's also true that if a seven-year-old tells you something happened to them, the odds are generally (allowing for correction by the probability of the event generally and all that sort of thing) that it did happen
Are they? How would we know?
(I am not arguing against believing accusers, incidentally, or against living our lives as if our memories basically represent reality. But the relative veridicality of memory is a genuinely thorny scientific question, the undetermined aspects of which at least occasionally have terrible real world consequences. So it's worth thinking about what we really mean when we say something like the quoted statement.)
ut it also remains true that memory is a fairly good source of information about things that have happened to us.
Unfortunately, that really might not be true at all.
how bizarre and singular the whole thing was, outside of a couple of not terribly relevant specifics (the Satan part)
Right, that's just the detail that made those particular cases stand out. And *of course* sexual abuse of children is widespread; nobody is disputing that. I only brought it up to take issue with the argument that not joining in the moral condemnation of someone I've never met necessarily means that I'm presuming another person I've never met is lying.
It is certainly true that we don't generally have a better source of information.
60: Day to day experience of living with seven-year-olds. They tell you about how their day went, and when you happen across corroborating evidence, mostly it checks out. "Billy invited me to his party on Saturday", and then you go to Billy's house on Saturday and there are people there in silly hats who are unsurprised by your kid showing up. They're not perfect, but if a seven-year-old tells you something plausible happened to them, IME your odds that it can be confirmed aren't wildly far off an adult's.
However memory does work, it works well enough as a record of past experience that we're shocked by proof that it's very imperfect, which means that it has to function accurately on some level.
What 58 said, basically. FWIW, I'm also inclined to believe that Allen is probably guilty.
re: 57
Yeah. I have clear and distinct memories of events at which I know I wasn't present. I can think of a few funny teenage things that happened, where I can vividly recall being there, but where I'm 99% sure I wasn't, and have confabulated it from retellings of those events by friends who were there. In some cases those friends also remember me being there: because they were the sort of typical things that we got up to, and because 9 times out of 10, I would be there.
Specifically re: age 7 -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia
Most people's memories before age 10 are pretty sparse and hazy. So that's a period when it's particularly likely that memory will be unreliable, and confabulated [sincerely] later.
My (younger) sister sometimes tells stories from our shared childhood to my wife, and I have to quietly correct them when she's gone. Because some of them are either entirely false recollections, or they are stories of events at which she was a tiny infant, or even not present, and thus has no memories of them.
I'm not swearing up and down that false allegations never happen. I've seen a false rape allegation made out of spite, and it was awful. I also know of a mom who planted ideas of abuse in the kid, and it didn't take, and the kid (age 6 or so) was very clear on the witness stand "Mom says that I played The Dragon Game with Daddy, but I never played The Dragon Game with Daddy."
But also - with the SRA, if we're making that comparison - my understanding is that nearly all the children recanted their testimony over the next 20 years and agreed that they were coached.
That's wildly different than the tone of this letter, which is of someone traumatized and retching over trains. Sure, that could all be implanted memories, or maybe she was abused by another person entirely and generally just had an awful childhood, as people mention above. Or maybe she's telling the truth.
Finally: our memories are notoriously awful. But there's a difference between recalling details about an event, and the existence of an ongoing pattern of events that spanned years.
I do not believe that you can implant an ongoing memory and get someone to believe that over many years, they were abused regularly.
I'm agnostic on the question of Allen's guilt here. We know he creepily got involved with someone who was practically, if not legally, his daughter, so right there, not a very pleasant or trustworthy person.
At the same time, isn't it a form of abuse to adopt a bunch of children that you know you are not going to be able to personally care for? What kind of monster of vanity adopts ELEVEN children to be raised by nannies? And if bad things then happen to one or more of them because you were otherwise occupied, making movies or fucking Frank Sinatra, it seems like some of the blame has to be shared around.
The wikipedia entry is also pretty bizarre in terms of the question of their names. Why did she keep renaming her already-named kids? You want to fuck up someone's sense of identity and integrity, that seems like a good way to do it.
65 also to 61. Again, I'm not doubting the shocking ease of constructing completely or partially false memories. All I'm saying is that memory in practice is a reasonably (and there's room for infinite discussion of how reasonable is reasonable) reliable way of making our way through the world -- if it were completely unconnected with the actual facts of our prior experiences, we would have to live in a very different way.
65.last is of course a fallacy! "Well enough" does not have to be well, especially since, as a constructive process, confirmatory evidence could easily be novel information that is integrated into the recollection as it is parsed.
Also, I don't think that seven year olds are necessarily wildly far off from adults. I just think adults could easily be quite bad as well. (And adults recalling distant and/or iconic events are probably the worst.)
That last line isn't true - I know people believe that they live in haunted houses, or that they've been abducted by aliens many, many times. But that's a pretty strong character smear to assign to Farrow.
69: nobody is saying it's completely unconnected. But in most cases, is a memory that's some combination of things that happened at different times and in different places jumbled together possibly with memories of conversations with people or movies probably is good enough. Why would we need to remember all the details of specific episodes?
68 gets it right. 67 is wrong, at least w/r/t McMartin. It's not that the kids now *remember* that they were coached. It's that once it became blindingly obvious that the testimony was based in hysteria, they started to doubt their memories. The person I know who was involved as a kid is basically at "I don't know what happened."
Not one single bizarre kerfloofy hysteria situation in the 80s.
I think the preponderance of the evidence that I have seen is against Allen, in part because I do think that this situation is not analogous to the satanic panic situations.
However, it is totally wrong to say that the McMartin case is a single bizarre kerfloofy incident. Crazy witch hunts like that happen all the time. The main point is that this does not look like a witch hunt situation. The accusations aren't being driven by a mob mentality.
72: why? What if she (Mia) believes it happened (and it did not happen, which I am not arguing one way or the other)? What if she is totally convinced -- for internally consistent and well-supported reasons -- and she does not want her daughter to forget, because she believes that it is vital for her safety and lifetime happiness that she remember?
I still don't get why it's a character smear. Are you saying the kids in the whole SRA thing were of poor or weak character?
It's not that the kids now *remember* that they were coached. It's that once it became blindingly obvious that the testimony was based in hysteria, they started to doubt their memories.
And you don't think there's been an equivalent amount of pressure on Dylan to reconsider her memories?
68: As unconventional as Mia is, I think there's little question that if Woody is a child molester, he wins the monster contest - and I think that's what most of us are talking about.
Woody's and Mia's separate creepiness is another interesting subject, but in my opinion, it's a subject that's at about 90% off-topic.
Fuck. I've spent the last several days promising myself that I would not get sucked into long discussions of this issue. And now I have failed.
70, 73: At this point, I think the only dispute is over 'reasonably'. Subjectively, we tend to think our memories are very reliable, because they check pretty well against objective evidence, usually. Research shows that our subjective sense of the reliability of memory is very overstated, and that it's extremely vulnerable to confabulation. But that still doesn't change the basic experience that most (not all) memories check pretty well (not perfectly) against the objective evidence.
If I think I bought paper towels when I went to the grocery story, they are very likely to actually be in the bag when I unpack them. If I walk in the apartment and tell Buck that I ran into a neighbor on the street, and we talked about the good job our super is doing clearing the snow, it is likely that if Buck mentions that conversation to the neighbor, he will remember it as well. If Sally tells me she was invited to a party, there will probably be a party there when we show up. Memory is unreliable, but it's not absolutely useless.
I'm saying that to be susceptible to a longterm, ongoing implanted memory puts you in a crowd with people who think they've been abducted with aliens for the past decade. That's generally an uncredible crowd. That's the character smear.
I don't know exactly what the SRA kids testified to, but I don't see how they could have said that it spanned years, given that most kids aren't in a single daycare for many years. I do remember that some of them were seven year olds thinking back to daycare a few years earlier. There are tons of reasons that the SRA case isn't analogous.
84: maybe you're misremembering how often your memories are accurate.
83: Forget that you promised yourself that, and you're fine!
I have another case I'm involved in I'd really love to talk about, but I can't even though it's making me very angry. Blech.
83: Right. I was reading those hideous LGM threads that Halford unwisely recommends in 16, and I was proud of myself for only getting sucked into commenting once, at the very end of the second thread.
I said to myself: Thank God Unfogged didn't take this up, because I probably wouldn't be able to resist shooting my mouth off.
The McMartins aren't the ones that filmed themselves and then later it became the documentary. Who am I thinking of? Wikipedia lists most of the cases by daycare center, not last name. Kaufman?
to be susceptible to a longterm, ongoing implanted memory puts you in a crowd with a majority of people, per Elizabeth Loftus's work on the topic, and quite possibly everybody.
86 continued: anyhow, I am obviously not claiming the memory is useless. It is quite exquisite lay useful for what it is for! But what it is for is not maintaining veridical representations of events, and the degree to which it deviates from that is incredibly hard to discern, either subjectively or empirically.
I know the lost-in-the-mall example, but I don't know the work on longterm, ongoing implanted memories. Can you point me to something?
"Exquisitely" not "exquisite lay", ipad you sicko.
What does "long term", "ongoing" mean? Like you still believe them several years hence?
Also, from Wikipedia:
In her initial study, Loftus found that 25% of subjects came to develop a "memory" for the event which had never actually taken place.[10][14] Extensions and variations of the lost in the mall technique found that an average of one third of experimental subjects could become convinced that they experienced things in childhood that had never really occurred--even highly traumatic, and impossible events.[14]
One third. So let's not overstate how susceptible we all, always, are. Sometimes memories are reasonable indicators of the past, as LB is saying.
Fuck. I've spent the last several days promising myself that I would not get sucked into long discussions of this issue. And now I have failed.
How about a meta-discussion, of the way every controversy, no matter how major or minor, becomes an indistinguishable Twitter shitstorm?
The same people who constantly fly into rages about minutiae leave no room to then fly into a more significant rage about something like this. And in fact, it seemed like people were more comfortable turning it back into a shitstorm about minutiae, becoming blinded by rage at the fact that the New York Times put a disclaimer on the article.
What does "long term", "ongoing" mean? Like you still believe them several years hence?
No, referring to a memory of an event that supposedly spanned several years and happened on a regular basis, and would have affected your life on a daily basis (ie charting routes around a house, etc.)
85.2: But several of those cases were said to have spanned years. And the prosecutions lasted for years as well. The issue here isn't the alleged Satanism, it's whether people, especially children, are susceptible to having false events implanted in their memories. And we know for a fact that they are. So the issue then becomes "did this happen in this particular case" for which the answer would have to be "it's hard to say".
Sometimes memories are reasonable indicators of the past,
Well good lord, I hope so! Almost always. Even in Loftus's experiments the subjects are remembering something that really happened -- they talked about these events, and imagined them occurring. They are just conflating that memory with a memory of having experienced those events.
On Allen specifically, I don't think that we're at "preponderance of the evidence" and getting there requires one to just ignore that there was a pretty extensive state investigation at the time which had an incentive to find him guilty (significantly, the early 1990s, not the 1950s) that concluded affirmatively that he was not guilty and that Mia Farrow had probably coached the story. The countervailing evidence is basically (a) the accusation and (b) Allen generally seems like a creep. Which definitely isn't nothing, but also, given other and more specific information about the event, isn't close to enough to say that "the balance of evidence leads me to conclude that he probably did it."
Which doesn't mean he's not a creep (he definitely is) or that I'm saying he's innocent (I have no idea) just that I don't think we're close to "more likely than not."
The LGM comment threads 600+ are worth reading, if facts and arguments are your thing here.
What interests me
a) These periodic intense loyalty tests, both macro and micro, and how they build communities with degrees of affiliation and agreement on communal "facts" and narratives
b) That (some? most?) women still feed the need for a communal unconditional commitment from mostly men to their general protection, from small children to 19-yr-olds to mature women.
To make that less sexist or gendered, this is what communities do, declare "war," command unconditional loyalty (Schmitt, Agamben). The interesting question, as for nations, is who can command war, think they can, feel a need to be able to declare a state of exception.
All the intricate disputing of facts and arguments are about as important as the interminable "yellow cake" and "weapons of mass destruction" narratives at the beginning of the Iraq War.
It's all about loyalty and power.
"Sure, that could all be implanted memories, or maybe she was abused by another person entirely and generally just had an awful childhood, as people mention above."
Mia Farrow's brother is a convicted child molester. Presumably a coincidence, but crazy. It's like that family is cursed.
92: Right. If we put Farrow's presumed craziness to one side, though, and imagine we didn't know anything negative about her, and further imagine that it was twenty-whatever years ago, at the time of the alleged molestation (I know I'm asking you to spot me a lot here, but hear me out), the kind of story Dylan Farrow now tells seems like the kind of thing that memory works just fine for: if a seven-year-old of my acquaintance told me that something like that had happened to them in the recent past, I'd be pretty sure that either that it had happened, or that they were consciously lying. (I wouldn't be all that surprised if there were details wrong -- if the train set wasn't in the position described -- but that's different from the main event not having happened.)
If seven-year-old Dylan, uncoached, told the story she's now telling, I'd strongly believe it happened. 90% of any doubt seems to me about the reliability of Mia (and anyone else involved at the time) as reporters of what Dylan was spontaneously saying when she was seven.
here was a pretty extensive state investigation at the time which had an incentive to find him guilty (significantly, the early 1990s, not the 1950s) that concluded affirmatively that he was not guilty and that Mia Farrow had probably coached the story.
I honestly don't know a thing about the facts here, but Dylan's article contradicts this. What are you relying on?
105: Right. The thing Bady misses is that basically nobody is accusing Dylan of lying.
It is also important that these regular loyalty tests generate themselves around what are really the most difficult and controversial cases, in order to make the "decision" cathartic and irrevocable.
Carry on. Whatever. I won't be back here.
On McMartin, aside from a "victim,"the other person I know well who was involved was one of the judges. One of the smartest people I know, feminist, secular, reasonable, liberal, etc. And absolutely convinced that the abuse happened, because, when you have a bunch of kids saying that something horrible happened to them, and their parents agreeing (quite recently, in that case) of course you would believe them. Until it became clear that it didn't happen. Which is just to point out that the 1980s stuff wasn't all some inexplicable hysteria by crazy people that we can waive away as having to relevance to anything.
106: Some of it is about halfway through this article.
106: Halford's pretty clearly relying on the Weide piece in the Daily Beast that cites an investigation by Yale-New Have Hospital -- that never interviewed Dylan Farrow. The AG of CT however said that there was probably cause indict Allen. (See Minivet's comments above. Also see page 6 of the Vanity Fair article.)
97: How about a meta-discussion, of the way every controversy, no matter how major or minor, becomes an indistinguishable Twitter shitstorm?
It's a natural consequence of engaging with information in chunky, context-crossing streams. The vehicle of the content dictates more of your manner of responding to it than the content itself. Something that can be communicated in 144 characters come in, something that can be communicated in 144 characters goes out. Policing the minutiae of discourse seems perfect for the medium; focusing attention on what's important and putting aside trivial distractions, not so much.
From Vanity Fair (Thibault is an investigative journalist):
Thibault cited a litany of practices employed by the Yale-New Haven clinic that at least one expert put into question. Based on an examination of court documents and the report, he wrote, "The Yale team used psychologists on Allen's payroll to make mental health conclusions." He reported that the team had destroyed all of its notes, and that Leventhal did not interview Dylan, although she was called in nine times for questioning. They did not interview anyone who would corroborate her molestation claims. Judge Elliott Wilk, who presided over the custody hearing brought by Allen, wrote in his decision that he had "reservations about the reliability of the report."
Here's the most surprising thing: I genuinely didn't realize this was a shitstorm when I posted it. Some off-blog prompting led me to throw it up there. I'd read the linked pieces and nothing else, and thought it was pretty cut-and-dried. Somehow I hadn't followed the comments on any of this, elsewhere.
What does "probable cause to indict" mean when a prosecutor says that? I am genuinely curious. I know about probable cause to arrest, or search, but on the prosecutorial side am more used to hearing about evidence sufficient to convict or, I guess, try. Is he saying there was sufficient evidence for them to attempt to bring the case? Because getting an indictment doesn't seem like quite the same thing.
Anybody seen Theseus? Also, who left the string all over.
That's the indictment standard, AFAIR. Probable cause means good enough, legally, to go to trial.
118: Beats me. I brought it up only because Halford claimed that there was a "pretty extensive state investigation" that "concluded affirmatively that he was not guilty" and that "Mia Farrow had probably coached the story." Which happens not to be true.
There's ambiguity all over everything surrounding this. Which is why I don't like the argument I'm seeing in various places around the web that 1) it's a moral imperative to take a side in the dispute, and 2) the available sides are ally of abused children or child-rape apologist.
Here's a question I haven't seen answered: my understanding is that child molesters are drawn either to prepubescent or pubescent children, not both. And so while I agree that Allen's attraction to very young women (like Mariel Hemingway, like Soon-Yi Previn) is creepy, it doesn't follow for me that he would therefore also be attracted to a seven-year-old girl. It just seems like an entirely different object choice.
(What does seem likely to me, were I to speculate irresponsibly, is that Dylan was understandably traumatized by learning that her father was sexually involved with her sister, knowledge that then led her to interpret his actions toward her as revealing sexual attraction as well. And that this interpretation has been reinforced for her over the years in the context of a bitter divorce).
118 -- Something about ham sandwich.
It's hardly a "moral imperative" to take any side in any dispute not involving people you don't know personally. But lots of people probably have some threshold of probably-a-child-molester at which point they'd stop seeing a guy's movies, and it's valuable to publicize the fact that Woody Allen is likely over many people's threshold.
Sifu - just because I'm dangling from earlier in the thread - were you able to dig up any studies of implanted memories that allegedly took place regularly over many years? (Or possibly you are actually doing other things in your life.)
my understanding is that child molesters are drawn either to prepubescent or pubescent children, not both.
I don't think this is reliable -- that is, plenty of child molesters are also sexually active with adult women.
123: My uninformed belief is that it's not as binary as you're making it out to be.
126: i was referring to the stuff you know about -- and the anti-recovered memory advocacy stuff that Loftus did -- which seems to me largely sufficient evidence that serious, traumatic, long-term events can be false memories. Once somebody believes something to be true. I'm not sure why maintaining that belief is so much more of a trick (and with the way memory works the more they were asked about it the more vivid and detailed that memory would become).
127, 128. You're right, of course. What I meant to say was something more like this: I think people are too quick to take Allen's inappropriate involvement with his 19 year old stepdaughter as evidence that he was likely to be inappropriately involved with his 7 year old daughter as well. But there's a big difference between being attracted to women in late adolescence and being attracted to young girls, and I haven't seen any evidence that Allen is the latter.
That said, ugh. I feel gross even trying to parse the various forms of sexual exploitation.
To me, it seems far more ludicrous. A one-time or small scale implanted memory, sure. Fanciful details accompanying a real event, absolutely. There is plenty of evidence that recounts of one-off events are suspect.
But there's also a whole lot of evidence that episodic memory is very different than one-off memory. (Is episodic the right word? Habitual, ongoing, etc.)
So a wholesale re-writing of several years of someone's life? Their daily home life? That seems incredibly far-fetched. Her memory allegedly is of feeling fearful for years, for avoiding being in the same room as him, for not liking how he stuck his thumb in her mouth, etc. I would need to see some evidence that this episodic implantation happens even occasionally.
130: While you're kind of right, I think the issue there is more step-daughter (although that's not technically accurate) than 19-year-old. I wouldn't take a middle-aged-man's involvement with a 19-year-old as indicative of any particular propensity to molest children (although I'd probably disapprove anyway). A middle-aged-man's involvement with a 19-year-old who he has known since she was a small child and been in a quasi-familial relationship with for all that time, on the other hand, seems like a different kettle of being fucked up, that might indicate a propensity to develop sexual attraction to children in the family.
episodic memory is very different than one-off memory
No, wait. What? A memory of one event and a memory of a bunch of events are both roughly the same kind of memory. Are you thining of procedural memory (remembering how to do things)? Or semantic memory? Or are you thinking of the difference between working memory and longer term memories? I'm really not sure what your "whole lot of evidence" is about.
Memories of a whole lot of events are the same as memory of a single event? I was thinking of how people who supposedly can't form new memories (like whatsisname) can learn new memories (procedural, I suppose), if the same thing happens day in and day out, for long enough.
I know we're all supposed to just take them at their word that his involvement with Soon-Yi started when she was 19, but I'm not so sure.
Lemieux fires another round:
"I didn't know this, but Bill Cosby has been accused multiple times of sexual assault. Perhaps this is all an extraordinary coincidence, and he's entirely innocent. But that's really not how to bet."
(Last link puts it in the context of the current discussion)
Banned, but anyway: I can't really remember any single soccer practice, growing up, but I have a pretty clear sense of what my soccer practices were like - where we practiced, what kind of drills we did, etc. Someone could implant a memory that I attended a basketball practice, but could they really implant the memory that I played basketball for years and years, in addition to soccer?
136 seems awfully close to either denying Soon-Yi Previn agency or asserting that she's actively involved in some sort of coverup.
I never know what 'denying agency' means in contexts like this. I mean, disbelieving that the relationship started when she was 19 means disbelieving any statements she's made to that effect, certainly.
Can someone post a link to the best explication of "banned, but...?"
It's always been current but I'm not completely sure what its parameters are.
There's nothing really beyond 'analogies'.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2006_12_03.html#005891
Wait a minute, the analogy ban was only supposed to last a week?!
Analogies and emoticons?
It seems pretty common in relationships where there's a big meaningful age cutoff even if it isn't the age-of-consent one to insist that nothing happened until after a certain date. Surely that's sometimes true, but it's sometimes not, just like not all babies born eight months post-wedding are just oddly big preemies but I'd be willing to believe such a baby could exist.
And the rationale was that it was supposed to help threads stay more on topic? This ogged guy sounds like he's trolling his own blog or something.
Think of it like the 7 days it took to create the universe, Eggplant.
There was an investigation by a state-appointed team (which is usually what happens in child abuse investigations). Generally, for obvious reasons, since these teams work with prosecutors, they are incentivized to find guilt. In this case, the investigators concluded that not only was their insufficient evidence to prosecute, but that more likely than not Allen didn't do it. That was combined with testimony from others in a position to know (the nannies) that he didn't do it and they were being pressured to make up a story. The prosecutor in the case then apparently said that he had cause to "indict" (he didn't) but was apparently sanctioned for doing so. The main knock on the investigators seems to be that, when Mia Farrow later tried to attack their report in the custody battle, their notes hadn't been kept. Of course it's possible that these investigators were corrupt or incompetent (though there's no credible evidence of corruption, and this is a case where both husband and wife were equally resourced and "powerful") but the fact remains that the only serious investigation done of the incident, by the responsible state agency, concluded that Allen probably hadn't done it and that Dylan had likely (but not definitely) been coached. You have to ignore that fact to come up with "more likely than not he did it."
There's nothing really beyond 'analogies'.
And re-- uh, Beetlejuice.
148- I honestly think Lemieux is trying to participate in this thread without lowering himself to actually commenting here:
"And this is the kind of thing you have to consider before accepting the conclusion psychiatric panel (based on notes that were destroyed, and without the court testimony of anyone who interviewed Farrow) that that Dylan Farrow wasn't a credible witness. This panel exists, after all, in a world in which articles as transparently misogynist as Weide's can get extensive praise from people with otherwise progressive politics, in which people don't want to believe that men are sexual predators, and really don't want to believe that wealthy celebrities are sexual predators."
148: This says that the prosecutor was not sanctioned. Is it wrong?
a world [...] in which people don't want to believe that men are sexual predators
You'd only need to spend a day flipping through your cable channels to wonder what world Lemieux lives in.
I dunno -- I haven't been following this at all until a few days ago. It looks like there were at least proceedings on whether or not he should have been sanctioned.
Yeah, Lemieux (usually one of my favorite commenters on anything) just seems super weak here. The argument seems to be "sure, experts investigated and reached the opposite conclusion, but we live in a misogynistic world and therefore he probably did it." Which seems . . . really wrong*, for some reason that probably one of our philosophers or statisticians can probably explain better than me.
*as would, to be clear, reaching a firm conclusion that he definitely didn't do it.
There was probable cause to have proceedings looking into whether he should be sanctioned?
I believe the statistician would say that he has different priors than you do.
Also, procedurally, I really don't understand the nature of the finding that nothing happened. What agency was tasked with generating what report for what purpose? The news coverage I find googling is really unclear. I kind of suspect that what's being characterized as an official state finding after an investigation is something that was more of an unofficial set of statements from someone who may have been exceeding their authority.
155 -- it seems so. I don't know what the relevant evidentiary standards are there or how the hearings proceeded.
More of 157: Which, to be clear, is something the prosecutor did in the other direction as well. I'm just not finding a description of whatever it was that cleared Allen (it gets described as the Yale team of psychologists, but not more clearly than than that I've found) that makes it clear what evidence it was based on and what purpose it was supposed to serve.
This thread, well-intentioned and intelligent though it is, is great evidence for why "let's make up our own minds based on a 'preponderance of the evidence'" is a misguided undertaking.
Had everyone heard about the allegations against Allen and Cosby? This is the first I've heard about either. Must read more People and Vanity Fair.
I hadn't heard either allegation before. But I wasn't paying much attention in the 90s, either.
160: I think I must have heard about Cosby and forgotten, because I have an "ugh, sleazy" reaction to him that I can't explain otherwise. But I didn't remember them specifically. With Allen, I think I knew that there were allegations of ickiness generally, but not that there was a specific allegation of abuse rather than just general inappropriateness.
160: I hadn't, either. The comments on the Gawker article about Cosby were instructive: almost every one was of the form "OMG how did I not know about this? Totally forgot/never knew, even though I knew about the affair/illegitimate child." And the Cosby allegations were less than ten years ago! There's some amazing collective forgetting going on.
The only non-entertainment thing I remember about Cosby is when his son was murdered. I did not remember that the case was cracked because the National Enquirer offered a $100k reward.
Later, in a NY state family court:
"Justice Wilk, however, questioned the manner in which the Yale-New Haven team carried out its investigation of the allegations, as well as conclusions by two psychotherapists who treated Dylan that she had not been abused. "I am less certain, however, than is the Yale-New Haven team, that the evidence proves conclusively that there was no sexual abuse," Justice Wilk wrote.
The justice said he believed the conclusions of the psychotherapists had been "colored by their loyalty to Mr. Allen." He added that the unwillingness of members of the Yale-New Haven team to testify at the trial, except through a deposition by the team leader, and the destruction of the team's notes had "compromised my ability to scrutinize their findings and resulted in a report which was sanitized and, therefore, less credible." "
Regardless of sanctions, we know what Maco did: By calling Dylan the "child victim" in the case but refusing to prosecute because Dylan would make a poor witness, he was trying to have it both ways.
Apparently, the relevant authorities decided there's nothing much wrong with that.
Must read more People
Here you go. You'd need scientific notation to quantify the amount of dysfunction in that family.
I had heard the Cosby allegations! In fact, they (sort of) show up in 30 Rock. Tracy refuses to have anything to do with Cosby because of "what he did to my Aunt [Whoever] when she was working as a cocktail waitress in 1974."
"But while a team of experts concluded that Dylan was not abused, the judge said he found the evidence inconclusive."
Damn lawyers think having a JD makes them experts in everything.
Can't we all just shun Allen for sleeping with his teenaged step daughter and leave it at that?
We could, maybe, but he didn't. Not his stepdaughter, not his adopted daughter.
I guess I have a "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown" reaction to these sorts of revelations myself.
I well remember the reviews, and the conversation I had with my wife before seeing Sweet and Lowdown, which I liked. Everybody needed to come to terms with the elephant in the room before they could attend to the movie.
Ha, Apo, I was about to link to "Of course Woody did not molest my sister." If the people there that day can't agree on what happened...
I'm reading this thread while listening to Michael Jackson (at my son's request). Little boys just love Michael.
Not to derail or anything, but has anyone else been as gobsmacked as I am by Wendy Deng's mashnote to T Blair? He is so so charming and his clothes are so good. He has such good body and he has really really good legs Butt
And the even more astonishing claim that she did Eric Schmidt as well?
a world [...] in which people don't want to believe that men are sexual predators, and really don't want to believe that wealthy celebrities are sexual predators."
The repetition of this everywhere is making me crazy. If I am agnostic about what happened, it is not because I don't believe sexual predation happens and not because Allen is a wealthy celebrity. Nor, for the record, because I'm invested in him as some kind of a pure artiste or whatever.
171: I have a kneejerk uncomfortable response to that clarification whenever I see it. Sure, Mia and Woody could have gotten married and chose not to, but they were allowed to co-adopt several kids and it's only in the last few weeks that a New York court set precedent in allowing a set of two friends who aren't romantic partners to co-adopt as equal parents. They were holding themselves out as partners and as parents with whatever caveats within a family. It seems like "They never got married so he wasn't her stepfather" just sort of clangs against the kind of legal and definitional ambiguity that exists in a lot of families, including my kneejerky one.
And not that I care. I don't think taking up with a stepchild is usually a wise course of action or a way of escaping incest taboos, but it does seem legally and morally different from doing the same thing with a bio or adopted child.
174. Allow me to recommend the flash videogame Dancing Michael, at zanorg. I like it as well.
I guess by pointing it out I, in turn, am reacting to what I perceive as people wanting to state everything about Woody Allen's relations to anyone in the most accusatory terms. Not unfoggetarian in particular, mind you, but I keep reading, with little exaggeration, "well he married his daughter so I guess we know what kind of guy he is."
179 is fair too. I guess we know what kind of guy YOU are.
Has the 1992 VF article been linked in the thread yet? It purports to have multiple other adults corroborating inappropriate behavior by Allen toward Dylan, some quoted by name, and others referred to as 'sources'.
This is not conclusive proof of anything, but I think it's enough to make innocent confabulation really unlikely -- either the molestation happened, or it was a deliberate fabrication by Mia, who coached Dylan into it and suborned the other witnesses. I lean toward the first, but obviously there's no way to know for sure from our position.
1997 article from Connecticut Magazine, clearly strongly opinionated against Allen, but it gives some reasons to find the Yale psychologists unreliable.
Now the Wendi Deng story, that's just awesome. What the fuck is Tony "Hi Girls" Blair's story?
either the molestation happened, or it was a deliberate fabrication by Mia, who coached Dylan into it and suborned the other witnesses.
I think that's a fundamental point of disagreement. As I mentioned before, nobody is calling Dylan a liar - Allen certainly isn't - and I don't think the falsity of the charges depends on Mia lying either (Allen probably disagrees with me there).
I've seen videotapes of kids being coached by people who were entirely unaware that they were doing it. The process has two attributes: Leading questions (where did he touch you? Can you point on the doll? Okay, where else did he touch you? Where else?) and a gentle refusal to believe any answer other than the one you're looking for (I know this is difficult for you to talk about, but you must tell the truth.)
Once you become aware that a child might have been victimized, wouldn't it be wrong not to do everything necessary to get the clearest possible story from the victim? Children can't be expected to reveal these difficult details without help.
183: He is making no comment at all. The suspense has driven me to my first and possibly last act of vandalisation on wikipedia
Ha. I also mean his story more generally, in the "what is up with this man?" sense. The first hint (for me) was the Qaddafi story, and now this. There has to be more. No wonder he and Clinton were such buds.
Are you responsible for "Cherry?" Beautiful.
184: In general, accidental coaching is possible. In specific, if you read the contemporaneous VF article I linked in 181, it has allegations like this:
At that point Coates didn't know that, according to several sources, Woody, wearing just underwear, would take Dylan to bed with him and entwine his body around hers; or that he would have her suck his thumb; or that often when Dylan went over to his apartment he would head straight for the bedroom with her so that they could get into bed and play. He called Mia a "spoilsport" when she objected to what she referred to as "wooing." Mia has told people that he said that her concerns were her own sickness, and that he was just being warm. For a long time, Mia backed down.
and this,
One summer day in Connecticut, when Dylan was four and Woody was applying suntan lotion to her nude body, he alarmed Mia's mother, actress Maureen O'Sullivan, and sister Tisa Farrow when he began rubbing his finger in the crack between her buttocks. Mia grabbed the lotion out of his hand, and O'Sullivan asked, "How do you want to be remembered by your children?" "As a good father," Woody answered. "Well, that's interesting," O'Sullivan replied. "It only lasted a few seconds, but it was definitely weird," says Tisa Farrow.
and this
That day, August 5, Casey called Mia to report something the baby-sitter had told her. The day before, Casey's baby-sitter had been in the house looking for one of the three Pascal children and had been startled when she walked into the TV room. Dylan was on the sofa, wearing a dress, and Woody was kneeling on the floor holding her, with his face in her lap. The baby-sitter did not consider it "a fatherly pose," but more like something you'd say "Oops, excuse me" to if both had been adults. She told police later that she was shocked. "It just seemed very intimate. He seemed very comfortable."
as well as the report of the story Dylan told of the actual molestation. With that much corroboration of inappropriate behavior, accidental coaching seems unlikely -- it really looks like either Allen molested her, or that someone, and I can't see who but Mia, organized witnesses for a false story. The latter is perfectly possible, particularly in a nasty custody situation, but it looks like too much corroboration for just accidental coaching of a confused kid.
I didn't know any wrasse went to law school.
This son of an ichthyologist loved 26.
I know. Moby has just been spectacular recently.
or that someone, and I can't see who but Mia, organized witnesses for a false story
You're forgetting a third possibility. It's perfectly possible that Mia came sincerely to believe that the event occurred (when it hadn't) and thus isn't lying or consciously false, but that after the accusation had been made and in the middle of a custody battle, that her team of publicists, lawyers, friends, and those aligned with her organized and spoke to witnesses to produce the account that ultimately appeared in the Vanity Fair story. I have enough experience with these things to know that the story was organized by and carefully negotiated by her representatives (which, to be clear, doesn't mean that it's a false story or that Allen is innocent). But that doesn't mean that Mia Farrow was intentionally lying. Once you've gone down the road with an accusation like this you muster the confirming evidence you've got and use it in the way you think is best, including for publicity purposes.
Which, again, doesn't mean that we know that Mia Farrow's story is wrong, either. I really want to emphasize that the only thing I'm arguing for is that -- based only on what I've read -- there doesn't seem to be enough for an outsider to reasonably conclude on a "preponderance of the evidence" standard that this particular incident did or didn't happen. I think we have more than enough evidence to conclude that Allen was a creep and that the household was deeply fucked up.
187: I added some alternate history to groundhog day, lifted from a completely surreal blog maintained by a part-time vicar who does web development for one of the big departments stores. It won't last, though I suppose in the spirit of things I should go back and restore it ever 1st of February
Ok, I've just been reading the first comments and haven't read the whole thread, but why is everyone's go-to frame of reference for child sexual abuse the satanic preschools and not what happened within the Catholic church? Why is the made up abuse privileged over the true crimes? I wonder if it has something to do with age; by the time I heard about the supposed cases of satanic child abuse it was already acknowledged that most of the claims (all? I'm not sure) were false, whereas I grew up with the Catholic scandal being unveiled.
Oh, certainly, true or false the account in the VF article was thoughtfully crafted. But there are a number of clear statements of very disturbing behavior that don't depend on Dylan's direct testimony: Woody having Dylan suck his thumb, rubbing sunscreen in her butt-crack, being seen by a babysitter with his face buried in her lap. Those are true or false: if true, they seem like enough to swing the balance of probability well over toward Dylan's story being accurate; if false, I can't see how they can be anything but deliberately false.
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I think Jammies just got his hair permed!!! That was the most unexpected text I've ever gotten while teaching. It actually looks pretty good! How often do you get truly surprised by your spouse?!
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rubbing sunscreen in her butt-crack
That's completely normal celebrity behavior.
I think Halford is saying maybe it was the publicists and lawyers who suborned the witnesses, not necessarily Farrow herself?
193: Because some people seem to think it's inconceivable that a kid could make a false allegation without intentionally lying.
How often do you get truly surprised by your spouse?!
Of all the threads...
188: It's odd stuff, and if it really did amount to molestation, then it wouldn't be the first time a caregiver failed to report a child's abuse. Woody certainly held a position of power over Mia, and there would certainly be extenuating circumstances if she and her family members looked the other way.
It's also possible that these incidents were primarily alarming in retrospect, once they discovered that he was a molester. And then you get back to the question of how they found this out.
The VF article linked in 181 was highly Mia-partisan, and the one in 182 was a sympathetic profile of the prosecutor. Doesn't make them wrong in their emphasis. It's certainly possible that they are victims as they suggest. But there are other credible narratives.
Well, my better half confessed on Monday night he'd been hornswoggled into buying 4 pound of white carrots. But not that much of a surprise actually as this is the same man who recently brought into the house a half pound of chervil, so his propensity to immoderate vegetable purchases is a known quantity.
There was that time I was peacefully chatting with friends at the market and he wheeled up cheerfully announcing he'd just bought a half of a pig's head ...
if false, I can't see how they can be anything but deliberately false.
A fundamental area of disagreement, I think. My belief is that people, especially people under unusual stress, are capable of fantastic feats of confabulation.
And then you get back to the question of how they found this out.
According to the article, they found out by asking her after the face-in-lap incident. (And going back way back to the beginning of the thread, I do think that whatever the limitations of memory, asking a seven-year-old about something that happened in the last few days is generally going to be pretty reliable.) A three or four year old, you can't get anything coherent out of without a lot of leading, which makes inadvertent coaching very plausible. Seven, on the other hand, a kid is capable of telling a story. It doesn't mean that you couldn't lead them into a false memory, but the chances of doing so accidentally seem much lower to me.
I know both the articles I linked are very much on the Farrow side of the controversy; my point was just that the Farrow side of the controversy seems to me to be strongly enough stated and supported that it's unlikely to be the result of innocent error.
Maybe because she agrees with me, I think Dahlia Lithwick has the definitive take on this.
Also, Slate's homepage is now all tiles. Fuck you, interface designers.
This, from DL, is very good:
Recognize that dressing your personal opinions up in fancy talk of "burdens of proof" and "presumptions of innocence" helps clarify almost nothing and confuses a great deal.
Legal standards are often irrational enough in the contexts where we have to use them. Once you're out of the legal context, they're just pointless and irritating.
206: Amen. Also this:
the Court of Public Opinion is usually more about us than them.
That's what I was going for back in 9.
Is man-perm a thing again? Is it because of American Hustle?
Recognize that dressing your personal opinions up in fancy talk of "burdens of proof" and "presumptions of innocence" helps clarify almost nothing and confuses a great deal.
A substantial portion of what I do when I teach critical thinking is get students to think about their own opinions using terms like "burden of proof." We have exercises about deciding where the burden of proof should be in all sorts of ordinary cases.
A lot of the objections to Marcotte's article seem to me to be objections to the whole idea of reasoning in public. It's like people want public debates to be all name-calling and crazed shouting matches.
Bah to depressing molestation threads. This is way more awesome.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/man-underwear-sleepwalker-statue-wellesley
210: What if it had been a statue of Woody Allen in his underwear?
210: helpy-chalk and I (and like 8 other people) contributed to a Wellesley friend getting a month's worth of bells (posh women's college punishment) for subjecting her dorm mates to men sleeping in their underwear.
How the men got to the underwear, we'll never know.
A substantial portion of what I do when I teach critical thinking is get students to think about their own opinions using terms like "burden of proof." We have exercises about deciding where the burden of proof should be in all sorts of ordinary cases.
I'd be interested in hearing you talk about this, because mostly, when I hear people using "burden of proof" in an non-literally legal context, I think it's either empty verbiage or actively confusing. You're probably doing something useful with it, but I don't think I've seen that happen.
And in case this all wasn't awful enough, Moses weighs in.
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Do the airlines inflict any penalty if you miss the last leg of a multi-city flight? 'Cause it's way cheaper to do that than the alternative.
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216: In practice no, because you're allowed to miss it on accident. Technically it's against the rules to miss it on purpose, but if you don't go out of your way to tell them then there's no way for them to know.
If it's the last leg of the flying I think you're fine, because all they can do is cancel the rest of your trip. If it's the last leg of the flight there and you've got a linked return flight, they might cancel the rest of your ticket.
216: I've done it. In theory, they can penalize you, but in practice, how do they keep you from getting off a plane?
210: Not working. The comment thread to the petition is depressing me:
"Matelli's statue does not speak to the power of art to inspire dialogue but rather to the power of the nearly nude, white, male body to disturb and discomfit. Even unconscious and vulnerable, he is threatening. "Arms outstretched, eyes closed," he lumbers forward, quite literally unable to acknowledge the presence of his (in this context) largely female spectators. What a perfect representation of the world outside of Wellesley, where women and people identifying as women are often subject to a similar ambivalence. "I'm not even conscious that I'm wandering through your lady landscape," the statue says. "I do not have to experience you. I feel about you the same way I feel about the snow. But you have to experience me, and I don't care."
What does this statue do if not remind us of the fact of male privilege every single time we pass it, every single time we think about it, every single time we are forced to acknowledge its presence. As if we need any more reminders."
Oh, but it's worth keeping in mind that if a leg gets cancelled you could be in trouble because they might rebook you through a different airport.
Okay, that accords with what the rest of the net says. This is a multi-city flight with days in between each flight, so it looks like, as long as one does not print a boarding pass for the last flight, you're not even actually screwing them over that badly.
Oh boy. I decided to bow out of this on FB b/c my opinion was clearly offensive to people I care about who are going through fragile times right now, and I should probably stay out of it here, but basically I could have totally written the Weide article before he wrote it, having never heard of him, except for the bit about Moses Farrow--that was news to me. I read pretty much all the contemporaneous coverage while it was happening ( I have no idea why---that was, literally, my introduction to both Farrow and Allen) and started out thinking Allen was a total and absolute creep, but as the years went by I read up on it, and reread up on it, I became convinced that it was a case of misplaced memory either consciously or unconsciously coached by Farrow. It was actually only after I had redug out a lot of these articles (and we're talking about actually going to the library and paging old copies of magazines here, and Mia's really bizarre memoirs, and similar items) and had decided that I pretty strongly believed in Allen's innocence that I agreed to watch Annie Hall when I was about 21. I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan, but I've enjoyed a few of his movies since then, though I don't think I've seen anything newer than Manhattan Murder Mystery.
Obviously it's none of my business and I'm not any kind of authority, but I *am* kind of galled about how an opinion that I've had for years, and formed rather carefully (and checked and rechecked a few times when people bring it up) is now suddenly an unfeminist , pro-rape culture opinion, and declared so by people who have only just now started paying attention. I just don't even feel safe stating my opinion any more b/c it so well coincides with Weide, even if my tone wouldn't, and at this point no one believes that I arrived at it long before he published that piece. As a former fact checker, I'm highly skeptical of both Vanity Fair pieces---they seem very artfully constructed to pass the technical slander test but not a true spirit of smear test. There are no disinterested adults who are quoted on the record supporting the image the article paints. Weide's rhetoric is slimy, and he's clearly pissed (I think b/c of the thing with the clip reel) but when he hits on the actual facts that make his case, he doesn't exxagerate them.
The other thing is the whole question of power is kind of weird. Now, 25 years after he was, essentially, exonerated by the state, his record of films and filmmaking and Mia's record of non-film making certainly makes it obvious who has power and who doesn't. But in 1993 Mia Farrow was still the beautiful second generation Hollywood starlet whose admiration and collaboration annointed Woody's neurotic Jewish schtick as truly maintream. There was a strong narrative about how the innocent pale rich Catholic redhead had mistrusted this gross, scheming Jew and been betrayed by him, and he really was as gross and weird as anyone had ever thought he must be. And the stuff that she clearly planted in all the articles about Soon-Yi having a low IQ and "not knowing what those words even mean"--which seems simply repudiated by the test of time--strikes me as beneath the pale for a mother, even a very hurt mother.
Anyway, at some point someone pointed there was a gender divide, and I just thought I'd pipe up that I am a contradiction to that.
221: I don't think that would apply here, esp. since the penultimate country is one without very many international airports.
Yeah, it depends on what your itinerary looks like. If they're actually separate legs then you don't run that risk.
25 years after he was, essentially, exonerated by the state
The only thing I want to quibble about is this. The state didn't exonerate him. The state didn't prosecute, but that's not an affirmative statement that nothing happened. The prosecutor thought there was probable cause, and a psychiatrist thought nothing happened. That doesn't net out to an exoneration by the state.
Basically, the situation is: Need to get someone from Europe to US to Central America, and the return trip Central America - Europe already got booked. It's significantly cheaper (~$400) to go full round-trip, versus ending in Central America. And as I say, there's multiple days in between each leg. So it seems like there really shouldn't be a problem of just missing that Central America - Europe leg.
220: Boxer shorts might be a good compromise.
256--agreed. I guess what I meant by that was--25 years after the state let him off the hook enough to allow him to rebuild his power base/reputation/friends, etc. So now he seems very powerful, but during the months that the state was investigating, he did not have the same power he has now.
Yeah, you're not likely to get in any trouble there. Of course one could also just cancel the return trip that was already booked and use the new return leg.
The prosecutor thought there was probable cause, and a psychiatrist thought nothing happened.
If this was a murder case and the detectives and the forensics people didn't think the suspect did it but the prosecutor declared there was probable cause, would you similarly think the suspect hadn't been exonerated?
In the spirit of complete irrelevancy, I thought Deconstructing Harry was a remarkable movie to make directly in the wake of such a scandal, and in a rather non-intuitive fashion, I thought it was clever PR on Allen's part to portray himself as a sociopathic pervert.
Further to 231, I'm not particularly informed about the case in question or anything, but from experience am leery of prosecutor's opinions on cases that run counter to the other parties who were tasked with building the case.
231: I wouldn't say he'd been exonerated by the state. The state's generally not in the business of exonerating people. What I believed about the facts of the case would depend on the particulars of what they were saying.
230: Well, then we get into negotiating with 3rd parties in different countries. Not impossible, but perhaps more hassle than I need, on top of everything else.
233: The prosecutor is, after all, more of a political position.
You're just saying that because Columbus.
232: I didn't know that. I should have said "portrayed a character" rather than "portrayed himself," but for better or worse, I think anybody who watches a Woody Allen movie thinks he's portraying himself.
232: see I don't think that's totally irrelevant. Admittedly I have not seen Deconstructing Harry. From the few movies I've seen--Annie Hall, Sleeper, Midsummer Night's Sex Story, Manhattan Murder Mystery, What's Up Tiger Lily, is, I'm pretty sure is it--and what I've read about him, he *always* portrayed himself as a sociopathic pervert--but one within his rights, and not, fundamentally an exploiter. He invites the audience to dislike him, and his take on culture, *intensely*--but makes a point of still trying (squeamishly, unbravely, whinily) to do the right thing--i.e. a repulsive gross pervert but a legally repulsive gross pervert, who has right to his space and voice in society and isn't actually hurting anyone. So a society that was still repelled by him and his shtick, and still not convinced that being repulsive gross pervert shouldn't be punishable for its mere grossness, despite any lack of actual wrongness, was a society in which I think he had a lot less power than the same man, after 25 more years of filmmaking with a much more balanced repertoire in a society which has gone a long way to accepting consensual perversion, probably has. And I think a big part of people's perceptions of the strength of the State of Connecticut's decision not to prosecute has to do with the idea that *today's* Woody Allen would be in a much more powerful position to resist that State, and today's Mia Farrow and Dylan Farrow, then 1993's Woody Allen actually was.
Funny, I would have thought of him as much more famous and powerful in 1993 than now. I'm not sure I'm right -- I really do not have my finger on the pulse of Hollywood or pop culture generally -- but I would think that the high point of his career, in terms of broad importance and fame, was well before 1993.
for better or worse, I think anybody who watches a Woody Allen movie thinks he's portraying himself.
This is also part of the whole picture, for me. People seem to feel they know exactly who Woody Allen is in a very circular way: they've seen his films which are clearly all about him because the characters he plays are just like the man they know him to be. From his films. There are certainly some correspondences. Tracy in Manhattan is transparently based on Stacey Nelkin, but even there I haven't read anything that's led me to believe that any of the details of the film beyond "older man dates inappropriately young girl" are autobiographical. But the guy is hardly a public figure and gives very few interviews and I think people are forgetting that it isn't Isaac Davis that Dylan Farrow is accusing.
There's a difference between fame and relevance and *power*. Perhaps he was at his peak of fame and edginess then--I suspect he perhaps was. That means he was just beginning to become really powerful---so the rate of his growth of power was high, but his actual reservoir was not yet high. And that's actually when someone is most vulnerable, b/c other institutions and people are more invested in keeping them down. Mia Farrow was probably in the opposite situation. She had quite a reservoir of capital and connections, but she was no longer building it--and she did, indeed, pretty much spend it down in the 90s. So now she seems like a very minor player, an underdog.
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Off topic: was closing Vanity fair tab and noticed this in the margin---HOLY SHIT, I had no idea. Perhaps there's nothing to it but it sounds TERRIFYING.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2014/01/nuvaring-lethal-contraceptive-trial
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At this point, I'm just generating offhanded opinions because I don't want to write this brief. My real opinion on this is that I'm not close enough to the facts to know anything -- if I had to bet, I'd bet it happened, but I wouldn't give much in the way of odds, and I'm glad I'm not in a position where I have to have a real opinion.
That said, an opinion with very little basis that I haven't yet expressed is that from what I've read, I don't like the Yale team's opinion. As far as I can tell, they gave a strong opinion that nothing happened because Dylan was inconsistent in how she told the story across different interviews and they thought her demeanor seemed rehearsed, although they wouldn't go far enough to say that she had been coached, just that she might have been. And that kind of thing sounds to me like possibly enough in good faith to say "We don't recommend prosecution based on this kid's story -- it's not solid enough that we're sure what happened." Saying "We're convinced this kid wasn't molested because of the inconsistent manner in which she says she was," seems really off to me somehow. I might feel differently if I were looking at their actual report, but as it, I don't like it. (This opinion is worth exactly what you paid to read it.)
What's remarkable about the Connecticut report is that it wasn't just an "eh, not enough to prosecute" but does seem to have been, particularly for a report of that kind, close to an affirmative exoneration. Which, again, doesn't mean that the investigation is the word of God or couldn't have been incompetent or corrupt. But, absent reason to believe otherwise, I'd trust the Yale-New Haven investigators more than a Vanity Fair article largely written from sources entirely controlled by one side of the dispute.
236 is kind of a joke, and also may be true. It occurred to me as a possibility when I saw the movie, and then I read an article that argued that, so I guess those two facts combined are almost proof.
I disagree with 240, maybe, in that I think that the protagonist of Deconstructing Harry was very unusual for a Woody Allen role, in being so unsympathetic -- essentially a bad guy, while Alvy Singer etc. are basically good guys.
That article about the NuvaRing is atrocious. Here's a response.
245 -- I believe the report went beyond just inconsistencies, to include the total absence of physical evidence, the nature of the main "confession" (a videotape taken by Mia with lots of pausing and restarting as the story went on) and, fairly persuasively to me at least, the testimony of the nannies. Also the weakness of the criticisms of the report seems to suggest that it wasn't actually that weak. But I'd have to actually read the report to have a better opinion -- as I said, until about a week ago I'd forgotten or never knew about all this, and then assumed he was a molester until reading up on it a little yesterday.
214: Oh, I don't do anything fancy. I just talk about things like the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. Here is the little discussion of it in the free online textbook I use by Cathal Woods. (Support free textbooks!)
Talking about illegitimate burden shifting is a simple thing, but it can cut short a lot of paranormal theorizing. A lot of the crazy stuff on, say, the History Channel, is devoted to trying to make you prove that the Mayans didn't invent television.
Leaving aside the specifics of the Allen case, a prosecutor making a public announcement to the press that he has "probable cause" to bring a case he isn't going to bring is sufficiently wrong that it feels like it should count as an afffirmative reason to believe the defendant is innocent. But technically, logically, I suppose it doesn't. It's only a reason to think poorly of the prosecutor.
From the Weide article:
But if Mia's account is true, it means that in the middle of custody and support negotiations, during which Woody needed to be on his best behavior, in a house belonging to his furious ex-girlfriend, and filled with people seething mad at him, Woody, who is a well-known claustrophobic, decided this would be the ideal time and place to take his daughter into an attic and molest her, quickly, before a house full of children and nannies noticed they were both missing.
Who defends an accused child molester by referring to claustrophobia? This paragraph by itself made me sure that this guy whose professional identity is closely tied to Woody Allen's reputation is perfectly well aware that Woody Allen is a degenerate sexual predator.
It appears from reading this thread that there are legitimate reasons to not be convinced of Allen's guilt, however.
and, fairly persuasively to me at least, the testimony of the nannies.
Point me at what you're looking at on the testimony of the nannies? I haven't seen anything mentioning that the report considered anything beyond their interviews with Dylan.
to include the total absence of physical evidence, the nature of the main "confession" (a videotape taken by Mia with lots of pausing and restarting as the story went on)
These seem like not much in terms of positively exonerating Woody -- the nature of the accusation isn't such as would generate physical injury, and stopping and starting the videotape might make it less persuasive (in that there could have been offscreen coaching), but doesn't show that there was offscreen coaching.
245: The Yale folks, from what I've seen, have barely been portrayed at all outside the articles you cite.
Was Allen literally paying people on the Yale team, as those articles suggest, or did they interview his psychiatrists, as the Daily Beast article suggests? I thought it was interesting that Vanity Fair both tried to contend that the Yalies over-interviewed Dylan - nine times! - and that the author of the Yale report didn't interview her at all.
It read to me like a prosecutor's brief against the Yale defendants.
Certainly, though, if the prosecutor is presenting an unbiased opinion, the Yale folks are unprofessional.
My real opinion on this is that I'm not close enough to the facts to know anything
Right. Put this disclaimer on everything I've said, too.
the protagonist of Deconstructing Harry was very unusual for a Woody Allen role, in being so unsympathetic -- essentially a bad guy
Yeah. That struck me as a remarkable choice, given the context.
Alvy Singer was supposed to be sympathetic?
248: Thanks, that's a nice clear debunkment. The line that freaked me out in my initial skim was this one: "Court documents filed against Merck state that since the mid-1990s there have been more than 10 studies suggesting that third-generation progestins, including the one used in NuvaRing, are approximately twice as likely to cause blood clots as those used in other birth-control devices that have an earlier form of progestin. " which makes it sound like we're talking a rise to from 5.5/10K to 12/10K for normal women, instead of to 7/10K, and and 1/250 vs. 1/500 for women with a prediscposition. That doesn't seem to be the borne out by the much clearer the NIH quotes. (See! Vanity Fair is super tricksy sometimes!)
The thing I've always found frustrating is that it's very hard to know if you're predisposed to clotting without actually getting a full panel test for all the identified snps and really doing a full workup of your family history, which can be hard, and really, we still don't understand how to figure out if someone is so predisposed. I have some reason to suspect that blood clotting has been a problem for the women in my family, but no way of really knowing for sure. To me the tradeoff between having hormonal birth control and possibly being one of those people who has a 1/1000 to 1/500 chance of getting a painful or debilitating blood clot is enough to give pause---my horror of clottings's particular complications is enough that I'm not just factoring in the risk of *death*--but how to judge if we've really hit that kind of probability? Sigh.
If it's really something that worries you, let me put in my usual pitch for the copper IUD. No hormones, good for ten years, and I'm a year into my second with no complaints at all.
I think the Yale report was commissioned by the court, and the court selected the doctors. I actually don't know if that report was right or not, or if Allen was guilty or not, but I'm pretty sure that the people who wrote it had a better idea than I could ever possibly have as to whether Allen really did it or not. I don't see how the internet can possibly relitigate this thing twenty years later.
I can barely remember anything coherent from when I was seven -- I remember images, flashes, routines. No narrative. The narrative memories I do have from early elementary school and before are memories of memories -- they were built up and reinforced by selective citation by my friends or family during later years. I don't have direct access to whether they are true. They certainly would have been enormously influenced by the interpretations of the adults I was closest to as to what happened, the meaning of it, etc.
I don't remember any narratives *now* from when I was 7, but I'm pretty sure that at 7 I had no trouble recalling ongoing narratives from age 6.5-6.99.
I do have memories I trust from when I was seven, but they are like routine backdrops to my life -- I remember my route to school, the feel and look of the snow in my upstate NY town when I struggled through it walking home, the sounds from downstairs when my parents were having a party. What I don't remember is a particular person doing a particular thing on a particular day, or indeed any one-off specific event of one particular day at all.
260: yes, I wouldn't question that the right kind of interview 20 years ago could have gotten at real knowledge that the girl had then. (Although of course the suggestibility / please the adults issue is huge with kids). But the witness we have now is the adult talking about her childhood experience, after growing up with adults who hated Allen.
260: That's definitely true -- childhood amnesia is a description of the vagueness or absence of years-later memories of childhood, not that young children don't have memories of prior months and years.
262: And the contemporaneous reports of what she said when she was seven. There might have been coaching, the Yale team didn't believe her, and all that, but this isn't an accusation first made long after the fact.
I'm not even two weeks past the trial that terminated Nia's parents' rights, but if it had been a more contentious case she might have been called upon to testify at some point and I'm so grateful she didn't have to go through that as a 7-year-old. She vividly remembers some bad things that happened to her at, say, ages 3-5 and I suspect some of those memories of fear and emotional pain will stick with her in adulthood, even some of the ones she won't or can't talk about fully now. As her day-to-day parent, I'm also pretty good at telling when she's telling the truth and when she isn't, which isn't meant to lend credence to either side of the Farrow story since parental opinions clearly differ. But seven is definitely a person with opinions and a seven-year-old with a trauma history should be able to tell you that by her words and behaviors, even if you can't extract all the details.
posh women's college punishment
I've told you several times to keep your nose out of my dream journal.
I knew this would get here eventually. And now it's gone and killed the blog.
Seriously. Someone, find something else, anything, to anchor a front page post. Maybe Tom Slee's latest on the 'sharing economy'?
Or perhaps Mark Zuckerberg's theory of privacy.
Today's the one-year anniversary of something weird that happened to me, but that's probably not a good subject for a front-page post.
I guess I'm agnostic on the Dylan question. I have to say, though, that I find the argument that an adult male's sexual attraction to a 19 year old female as probative in any way shape or form concerning the adult male's sexual attraction to a 7 year old female to be completely ridiculous, to the point where the good faith of the arguer comes into question. It's obviously not exclusive -- people who are sexually attracted to 7 year olds can be attracted to 19 year olds as well, but surely it's the fringe of the fringe that goes the other way.
And wrt Soon Yi, while we can all agree that all decent people observe the half plus seven rule, 20+ years into a relationship including 15 years of marriage, with Soon Yi now in her forties, isn't it pretty much time for all of us not directly involved to get over ourselves?
I'm not much of a fan of his films.
And I support the notion that a new topic ought to introduced (even if I plan to be away from the computer all day).
I suggest that Woody Allen be locked in a room for a week with Amanda Knox. Only one will come out.
269:
Probably linked here before, but this infographic is a nice complement to your article on Zuckerberg's changing rhetoric over the years - although it only goes to 2010.
Moses Farrow speaks out -- see this article , and this one .
A quote directly from him:
She loved him and looked forward to seeing him when he would visit. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him. The day in question, there were six or seven of us in the house. We were all in public rooms and no one, not my father or sister, was off in any private spaces. My mother was conveniently out shopping. I don't know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother. Pleasing my mother was very powerful motivation because to be on her wrong side was horrible.
I suppose it's good to know what he thinks, but in the absence of a claim that he was in the room with both of them all day, it's not testimony to first-hand knowledge of anything.
He has plenty of first hand knowledge of the dynamics of the family, which sound totally toxic all around.
My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister," Moses Farrow, 36, told People. "And I hated him for her for years. I see now that this was a vengeful way to pay him back for falling in love with Soon-Yi."
Sure, but the unsurprising toxicity of the family dynamic all around isn't evidence one way or the other.
Great piece in Slate by Dahlia Lithwick -- We Can't Try Woody Allen In The Court of Public Opinion . From the piece --
while I agree with my Slate colleague Amanda Marcotte on most things, when she suggests dropping to a preponderance of the evidence standard in the "court of public opinion," all I can think is: What evidence? What standard? What court? We haven't seen most of the evidence. Evidence in this case has been destroyed. Experts were never cross-examined. Different judges came to different conclusions. What evidence are we weighing? What "court" are we convening here, and what are the rules of the road? Do we even take conflicting evidence into consideration? What kind of evidence is "admissible"? Calling Mia Farrow a "whore"? Calling Dylan Farrow a "bitch"? Closely reading Allen's movies? Do we consider that some of the advocates on each side are cretins? I have no idea. In the Court of Public Opinion, the one-eyed man with the most Twitter followers is king.
(Yeah I know I'm keeping this crappy thread on life support, but at least I haven't posted any of this stuff in any other threads).
This reminded me that I keep meaning to tell heebie that I was agnostic about the idea of Lady Gaga trolling feminists from the lyrics but if I'd realized that it was a song featuring R. Kelly, which takes it to a whole new level!
Whoops! Reviving a justly dying thread to trumpet an article that everyone else saw 70 comments ago...that's a bad pwn.
