Friends,
For Contact this week my plan was to write something about the Kavanaugh hearings and about Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has come forward with a story about how the nominee for the Supreme Court sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers. I was going to tie that story to a story about how the Dallas police department found a small amount of marijuana in the home of Botham Jean, a man murdered by a Dallas police officer. The officer, who lived a floor above her victim, walked into the wrong apartment and shot her downstairs neighbor, apparently because she thought he had invaded her house when, in fact, she had invaded his house.
And I’ll get to those news items, but first I have to acknowledge this: I am addicted to the news. News-addiction, by the way, is a thing; [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli], and it is a habit I need to kick. I’ve known this for some time, in fact, four years ago I even bought a book to help me deal with the problem. The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton is a wonderful book, that helps put the consumption of news into perspective.
While I didn’t learn to kick my news habit, I did learn that the problem with news-addiction is not being well-informed. The problem (at least for me) is that I read the news (or listen to it on the radio) and I want to do something in response to what I have heard. I want to offer an opinion or take an action, and those options usually aren’t available to me, at least not in a meaningful way. So I fill the void either by going on social media, there to give an opinion, or by consuming more news, which perpetuates the problem.
You may or may not share my news-addiction, but I want to offer you something concrete to do in response to the news stories I mentioned at the top of this page. Both stories—the story of Christine Blasey Ford and of Botham Jean—involve an attempt to defend a powerful person by attacking the character of a less-powerful victim.
In the case of Botham Jean, the victim was a black immigrant who was shot by a white officer. The Dallas Police department, while investigating the crime, found some pot in Jean’s house and decided to make that find public. Jean, of course, was not under investigation for possession of marijuana. In fact he wasn’t being investigated for anything. Jean was an accountant. He attended church regularly. He had a clean record, and the Dallas Police needed to find a reason to make Botham Jean look like a threat. So they publicized the fact that they had found dope in his house in the hope that it would make their officer seem less murderous.
We do not yet know what accusations against Christine Blasey Ford will surface as defenders of Judge Kaganaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court try to discredit her story, but those stories will emerge. Some will, no doubt, question her motives. Others will question her memory. Still others may say she was a willing participant in the irresponsible drunken sexual escapades that transpired so many years ago. Whatever happens, of this we can be sure: folks are going to try to make her look bad in an attempt to make Judge Kavanaugh look less bad, and they will try to make her look bad in ways that have nothing to do with Kavanaugh’s fitness to serve on the Supreme Court, just as Botham Jean’s possession and use of marijuana had nothing to do with his being shot in his own home.
Here’s what you and I can do in response to these stories: we can make sure we never participate in attempts to defend the powerful by maligning the less powerful. Most of us won’t testify in front of a senate committee that is vetting a potential Supreme Court Justice (though you never know). I am equally confident that every one of us has known bullies, and many of the bullies we have known have surrounded themselves with people willing to denigrate or malign the bully’s victims. This happens on school yards and in boardrooms, on soccer fields and in social gatherings, in homes and in churches.
The world is (unfortunately) filled with bullies who engage in everything from criminal sexual assault to mean-spirited social shunning. Sometimes—as in the case of Botham Jean—the results of bullying are deadly. Sometimes—as in the case of Christine Blasey Ford—the bullying causes lifelong pain. Anyone who has been bullied can tell you that bullying is never pleasant or fun for the victim. In the presence of bullying, we need to make sure we are on the side of the victims. We must never participate in attempts to minimalize the seriousness of bullying by blaming the victim or by otherwise deflecting attention from what the bullies have done.
Anyway, I am going to try to be less obsessive about my consumption of news, and what I do consume I hope will teach me lessons that I can apply in the regular comings and goings of my life. Today, to that end, I will re-commit myself to the work of making sure I am not defending bullies by speaking ill of those who are victims. I hope you will join me in this.
God’s Peace,
Ben