The Soros-funded conspiracy to bring down Roy Moore is remarkably sophisticated:
This past weekend, I spoke or messaged with more than a dozen people—including a major political figure in the state—who told me that they had heard, over the years, that Moore had been banned from the mall because he repeatedly badgered teen-age girls. Some say that they heard this at the time, others in the years since. These people include five members of the local legal community, two cops who worked in the town, several people who hung out at the mall in the early eighties, and a number of former mall employees.
(h/t lamh)
Let’s keep raising money for Doug Jones.
Update. This local piece on Moore’s mall activities is much better sourced than the New Yorker article I linked to above.
Yarrow
All these songs about young girls or little girls are creeping me out.
Ian G.
I gave Jones money last week and now I’m getting carpet bombed with fundraising emails from his campaign.
Sorry Doug, I’d love to help more but I still have a mortgage to pay and other charities to donate to.
Ian G.
@Yarrow:
The first two lines of “I Saw Her Standing There” by the Beatles always creeped me out, and that’s such a good song otherwise.
Doug!
@Ian G.:
You’ve helped a lot already!
People have actually given 2K over the last two days without me even having any fundraising posts. I figured it was a time for a new one because people are clearly looking for this thermometer.
madmommy
All these people in the legal community and law enforcement either heard about or saw inappropriate behavior and did nothing, but the teen-aged girls it happened to were supposed to speak out? Does anyone believe any of these people would have backed these girls up if they had said something then?
Dupe70
The Soros knows All. The Soros Commands All. All bow before The Soros.
Kay
Count courts are really gossipy. It’s like 30% of the day in there. I know a ridiculous amount about people.
They ALL knew and many of them were horrified, but they still greeted him on the elevator and acted like he was a normal person.
Mike J
@Ian G.: When I listen to a song that mentions being in love/lusting after a teenager I just assume the character singing it is also a teenager, even if the singer is not.
For decades rock music was teen music, so it’s not surprising they’re the lyrical focus.
Yarrow
@Ian G.: Yeah, it’s the “just” in that first line. Why is she “just 17”? If the singer is a similar age they wouldn’t say that.
Betty Cracker
Donated to Mr. Jones yesterday, and I hope he wins.
It’s Alabama, so who knows. But regardless of the outcome of the election, I’m so thankful this all came out. Moore has been a lawless theocratic bigot forever. We knew he was a terrible person even before we found out he’s a child molester.
Well, now everyone knows what he did, not just in Alabama — everyone in the fucking WORLD knows what he did. He and his disgusting wife and revolting followers and the fraudulent pastors, etc., will pretend it’s “spiritual warfare” to save face, but they know. We all know.
mozzerb
@Mike J: Yeah. Also, AoC is 16 in the UK, so “just seventeen” doesn’t sound as shocking. Especially in 1962. (And especially given the Beatles own days in Hamburg when IIRC George was underage himself.)
My vote for one that sounds really creepy in retrospect is Neil Sedaka’s Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, although I guess in 1960 it sounded much more innocent?
Suzanne
@Ian G.: “Every Breath You Take” and “Hungry Like The Wolf” are the two that make my skin crawl.
And “Sweet Child o’ Mine”, considering that Erin Everly wasn’t Axl Rose’s child, and he beat the shit out of her.
hueyplong
It’s not only the “just 17.” How about the fact that the next line is “and you know what I mean.”
Roy knows.
Yarrow
I kind of feel like Doug Jones is invisible. I wonder if it’s different if you’re in AL. Are there ads running for him? Seems like all the energy is on the Roy Moore side and Jones gets mentioned as not-Moore. I know he prosecuted the KKK. Middle aged white guy, right? I could go look him up but I’m really commenting on how he’s almost invisible in the conversations about the race. How many articles have been about him and how great his is and what a good representative for Alabama he’d be? Have I just missed those?
Doug!
@Yarrow:
Trump won AL by 28 points. The only way Dems can win is by taking down the Republican candidate.
Woodrowfan
or Ringos’ “She’s 16, she’s beautiful, and she’s mine.” Or Sha Na Na “Young Blood.” When I sing along with the former in the car I change it to “She’s 54” which somehow does not work as well…
p.a.
IIRC Van Morrison has denied Cypress Ave. is about a creep. Great song, but:
Woodrowfan
@Doug!: works for me
boatboy_srq
@Ian G.: @Mike J: There’s a thing that happens as the audience for a particular type of entertainment ages: the perception changes even though the POV stays constant. And it doesn’t help that rock music came of age with the Baby Boomers – who are now facing retirement and still singing the same songs as if they’re still applicable to them.
Nicole
“You’re Sixteen, You’re Beautiful (And Your Mine),” sung by 33-years-old-at-the-time Ringo Starr is the one that really creeps me out (sorry Ringo. You’re still one of the greatest rock drummers of all time).
It’d be super effective as an ironic soundtrack to an anti-Moore TV ad. Doug Jones’ people should reach out to Ringo. I bet he’d let them use it.
MJS
@Betty Cracker: Roy Moore’s wife = Dottie Sandusky at this point.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: I also think that the huge spotlight on Roy Moore’s pedophilia and how everyone covered for him because Jesus is pulling back the curtain on how corrupt and abusive evangelical Christianity is. We all know it is, but those involved don’t always admit it or justify it with more scripture. Events like this can be catalysts for change in that way. Discussions about how this happened, how it was covered up for so long are going on all over the country and not just in liberal circles.
Amir Khalid
@Ian G.:
In the Beatles’ defence, they themselves weren’t much older than that in 1963. (George, the youngest, turned 20 that year.) Plus, what Mike J said.
Nicole
@Woodrowfan: Great minds think alike! The video is particularly creepy. STAY AWAY FROM YOUNG CARRIE FISHER, RINGO!
https://www.vevo.com/watch/ringo-starr/youre-sixteen-youre-beautiful-(and-youre-mine)/USNPD0713957
Yarrow
@Doug!: I’m aware of that, but Doug Jones is a really good person and candidate. Highlighting those characteristics, which are in stark contrast to Moore, might also give people a reason to vote FOR him, not just against Moore. This election is going to be unpredictable in terms of who will show up to vote, who they’ll vote for, and even what will happen once the vote happens. Hell, if the vote happens, since they are talking about changing the election date.
MJS
@Nicole: Two more examples – Benny Mardones, Into the Night – “She’s just 16 years old, leave her alone, they said” and KISS, Christine 16, “I don’t normally say things like this to girls your age” (spoken, not sung, by Gene Simmons). Yeah, there’s a lot of creepy lyrics out there.
Amir Khalid
@Woodrowfan:
I’ve always assumed that the boy in Young Blood, written by 24-year-olds Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller and first recorded by The Coasters, was a teenager.
Woodrowfan
@Amir Khalid: me too, but it’s being sung by older guys now..
Yarrow
@Nicole: Oh, that would be hilarious. Not good politics but very funny. Maybe someone unaffiliated with the campaign should make a YouTube video of it. That would go viral. Leave Doug Jones out of it.
Suzanne
And then there are songs like “Sex Type Thing” by STP that are creepy and I love them for it.
Suzanne
@Yarrow:
Alabama. Bug, not feature.
Yarrow
Doug, sorry for turning your Doug Jones donation thread into a discussion of creeper songs. Unless you’re okay with it. If so, your’e welcome!
oatler.
We’ll probably see legislation banning songs that have underage girl references. I never forgave Al Gore for Tipper.
Doug!
I always thought “Are you old enough, will you be ready when I call your bluff?” from Hot Blooded was creepy.
Doug!
@Yarrow:
I think it’s fun. I mostly did this to get the thermometer up again because I think people have been looking for it, based on donations.
Elizabelle
@Yarrow: Yeah, Doug Jones is the invisible man. Would not hurt to get his name and story out more. But MSM won’t help much there. It’s all about the Republicans.
“Tonight’s the Night” has not aged well. Rod Stewart is not a convincing teenager.
NobodySpecial
No discussion of creeper songs is complete without adding in “Seventeen” by Winger.
She’s only seventeen
Daddy says she’s too young, but she’s old enough for me
Doug!
@oatler.:
You know…there’s an awful lot to dislike about Al Gore. The Joe Lieberman pick was truly disgraceful.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: Here’s an ad for Jones:
piratedan
well Moore is old enough to channel Gary Puckett and The Union Gap’s Young Girl with nary a blink, but he obviously chose to be the kind to succumb rather than be stalwart.
Suzanne
“He was no more than a baby then
Well he seemed broken hearted
Something within him
But the moment that I first laid
Eyes on him all alone
On the edge of seventeen”
This feels mildly creepy, but this has always felt mildly creepy, and I think that’s the point, yes?
Barbara
@madmommy: I would not say that they did “nothing.” If he was banished from the mall, someone did something. The frustration with this kind of behavior is that you know that the guy is probably trawling a lot of places for girls but if no one comes forward and you don’t see anything overtly criminal, you don’t have that much power to “do something.” All in all, however, I think most people accept that he did something. They either just minimize what Moore did or deny that it makes a difference because it was so long ago, or did not cause any harm (or else they would have come forward or he would have been arrested).
mai naem mobile
There’s the Young Girl song by Gary Puckett.
Young girl, get out my mind
My love for you is way out of line
Better run girl
You’re much too young girl
So hurry home to your mama
I’m sure she wonders where you are
Get out of here
Before I have the time
To change my mind
‘Cause I’m afraid we’ll go too far
Now this song is creepy and his voice sounds like he’s an older guy.
Mike J
@Woodrowfan: You’re 16 perfectly fits what I was talking about with the character also being a teen, even if the singer isn’t. Ringo was covering a song from the end of the doo wop era. The very style of the song shows the singer moving back in time to when he was also a kid.
Humboldtblue
I just bit the inside of my lip. Ouch
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: Thank you! That’s a good ad. Like I said, I haven’t really looked very hard for much on him. I was just commenting on what seems to be coming through on the race generally. I would guess if you’re in AL it’s a bit different.
Gin & Tonic
@oatler.:
1. That’s a really awkward construction. Why was Tipper Al’s fault?
2. One of the benefits of Tipper and the PRMC was that it got Frank Zappa to testify before the Senate, which was classic.
2.a. Which ended up having the amusing effect of having Al Gore say he was actually a Zappa fan, which I doubt anyone believed.
Barbara
@Elizabelle: From what I read Jones has a lot of tv advertising up and a pretty robust pot of money at this point, whereas Moore’s finances are imploding. Moore doesn’t really need any advertising at this point. He is incredibly well-known and his name is appearing in the press just about every other minute. The question is, who will change their minds about him, and of those, who will vote for Jones, not vote, or write someone else’s name in.
Nicole
@piratedan: I was just about to give Gary Puckett a shout-out for at least understanding it was inappropriate.
Though, between “Young Girl,” “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” “This Girl Is a Woman Now,” and “Woman, Woman,” I’m seeing an interesting, and kinda creepy, theme in his work. Grooming there, Gary?
Suzanne
“But… fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls – everyone wants to fuck young girls!”
—Roman Polanski
Woodrowfan
Joan Jett
I saw him dancin’ there by the record machine
I knew he must a been about seventeen
The beat was goin’ strong
Playin’ my favorite song
An’ I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me,
An’ I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me, singin’
I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me
He smiled so I got up and’ asked for his name
That don’t matter, he said,
‘Cause it’s all the same
Said can I take you home where we can be alone
An’ next we were movin’ on
He was with me, yeah me
Next we were movin’ on
He was with me, yeah me singin’
Feathers
In1960, the average age for first marriage was 20 for women, 22 for men. So, yes, 16-17 was young, but in the dating pool. Lots of people got married right out of high school. It was a time of economic prosperity, and a hard worker didn’t need a college education.
So yes to Moore and others being hella pervy, but that is 100% about his behavior.
Elizabelle
@Barbara: That’s reassuring, re Jones up on the air, and Moore imploding.
SenyorDave
I always thought the male in “I Saw Her Standing There” would have been about a twenty year old, who was used to dating women his own age but saw a younger girl who took his breath away. A 20 year old might refer to a 17 year old as “just 17”. I never really saw it as a much older guy. I also assumed since they talk about dancing in the song that he saw her at a public dance (public social dances for young people were pretty prevalent in England in the 1950’s and 1960’s).
Eric S.
@Yarrow: I know he is persona non grata around here, and he is for me too, but years ago Sully had a post asking for songs related to underage girls. It was more than a little disturbing to see the list his readers accumulated.
Barbara
@Suzanne: Roman Polanski is a horrible human being and the people who excuse his behavior on artistic grounds are no better. He gave a 13 year old girl Valium and alcohol and quizzed her about her use of birth control and when he wasn’t sure he would be “safe” he decided to penetrate her anally. All without consent or even the possibility of consent. For that, he has been whining for more than 30 years that he might have to spend an extra 60 days in jail.
Eric S.
@madmommy: This is a point not being made nearly enough.
Yarrow
@Eric S.: What in the world was he collecting those songs for? Seems outside his usual area of interest.
Doug R
@Ian G.: Yeah, I gave Jones $25 a couple of months ago and got carpet bombed as well. Wasn’t too hard to unsubscribe.
PIGL
@Ian G.:they were in their early 20s whe they wrote it; I think your creepiness meter is oversensitive.
dmsilev
@Barbara: New ad from the Doug Jones campaign, aimed squarely at Republicans who are …uncomfortable with Moore.
MattF
Something to consider: We know now that the people who knew about Moore’s attempts at sexual predation were mostly teenaged mall rats. So, asking old-timers around the courthouse isn’t going to get you useful information.
Doug!
@Eric S.:
As much as I hate Sully I enjoyed that blog he had.
Scotian
*facepalms*
*looks up again at monitor at BJ post*
*bangs head repeatedly against maple desk*
Occam weeps thanks to you all American RWNJs of all flavours (and the comparatively far fewer equivalent nutjobs percentage and absolute numberwise on the left), preferring to believe anything this delusional, is nothing but hypothesis and assumption resting on more and more of the same to try to explain away the far simpler explanation that Moore was a predator pedobear abuser of office/power like so many before him that would cloak themselves in the mantle of light to hide their evil away. It is easy to spot the villains that twirl their pencil moustashios when acting, it is far harder to spot those that cloak themselves in virtuous behaviour, excessive public piety and the mantle of nobility, as Moore has been doing throughout his political/judicial career, especially as a leader in the culture wars the Right has waged on their fellow Americans as a political agenda for the last quarter century since the Contract On America really with Gingrich, Delay, and of course that lovable Speaker who represents the power and willingness to leave their own in power, Denny Hastert.
This is just sick stuff, even for the present reality and realities where the modern GOP has gone and what it has perverted itself into. I truly hope we can keep the worst of this out of our political culture, but judging by the emulators within the CPC and PM Harper’s successor heading the CPC being an Evangelical that believes not in the rule of law but the rule of God, who was a former Speaker of the House (which is not merely ceremonial in our system, there is a fair bit of real power that comes with the Office as well as the requirement of political neutrality, the only Speaker to EVER violate that was Scheer, the current leader of the CPC) is not an optimistic sign.
This is why I watch your political culture so closely and have since the 70s. The spillover effect can be bad enough when it is not being funded by your RWNJs and their financial backers because they hate having the Canadian social experiment proving their BS to be what it is in practice. When it is, as I have watched over that same quarter century and through Harper and now Scheer, it is a political survival skill IMHO.
MattF
@Ian G.: @Yarrow: My experience is that unsubscribing works. You may need to unsubscribe to a number of different sites.
Suzanne
@Barbara: He is disgusting.
My mom has wondered if being a Holocaust survivor and/or the murder of his pregnant wife broke him. I don’t know the answer to that, nor do I really care.
Emma
@Suzanne: IIRC, Sting said in an interview that he couldn’t figure out why people thought “Every Breath You Take” was romantic. He thought of it as a stalker song.
Feathers
@Ian G.: I remember when Tiffany covered it. There was a lot of joking how it was weird she was singing about an older guy. She was 16 at the time.
MattF
@Doug!: I think it got creepier over time– although, possibly, when you see the same not-very-well-hidden obsessions over and over again, it gets one to thinking.
Amaranthine RBG
Yeah all those songs are creepy
What normal adult thinks any 17 year old could be attractive?
Mnemosyne
@Ian G.:
That specific song doesn’t creep me out because it seems to be written from the perspective of a fellow teenager, not an adult hitting on a 17-year-old. It’s the whole thing about looking across the floor at a dance and spotting her that makes me think that, but I could be wrong.
Now, if we want to talk about Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Soxteen” …
Amaranthine RBG
@Doug!:
Meh, Sullivan was often right about things. Plus you never would have heard of this blog without him.
There’s a certain purity pony obsession among some posters that is tiresome. All newspapers except maybe the Fuardian are fascist tools, John Stewart dared to ridicule idiotic things democrats did, snoooooore.
Aleta
@Ian G.: Gary Puckett and the Union Gap
Lizzy L
Written by Sonny Boy Williamson, sung by Muddy Waters circa 1950. Covered famously by The Grateful Dead in 1967.
Barbara
@Suzanne: I can believe that his fear of prison relates to his experience. Why that alone engenders sympathy among so many is a mystery. In the pantheon of disgusting behavior towards women, a la Weinstein, only a few people seem to have been accused of using drugs to sedate their victims (Cosby) or intentionally hitting on underage girls, and Polanski is the only one I can think of who stands accused of doing both those things.
Aleta
@Aleta:
(Different song)
schrodingers_cat
I always found, My Fair Lady, the movie pretty creepy because of the age difference between Eliza and Prof. Higgins.
Chip Daniels
To tie the twin threads of this post together, it is obvious that as a society we have conflicted views of sexuality.
On one hand moral panic over teen sexuality and on the other, holding the 18 year old girl as the very pinnacle of erotic desirability.
NorthLeft12
There must be something in the constitution that if you are banned from a mall, then you are not eligible to become an elected federal official.
Supreme Court and cabinet member are okay.
Aleta
@NorthLeft12: ha
(Those amazingly prescient founding fathers.)
StringOnAStick
That sound you hear is a bunch of 60′-80’s cover bands thinking they need to redo their song lineup as we marinate in this current climate, at least I hope so.
What struck me yesterday while sitting in traffic listening to NPR was the recording of the last woman to come forward: how Moore told her after he groped her in his car that no one would believe her since she’s just some girl and he’s an Assistant DA. Just that part of the story made the whole thing much more real and personal for me, and I in no way doubted the women who previously came forward. Maybe that’s because I lived that experience as a teen, and I’m sure I’m not the only woman who had a gut punch reaction to this new revelation.
Watching the evangelicals go out of their way to normalize this behavior as “old news” and “he’s since been forgiven” makes me boil. There’s just as much kid diddling in their churches as there was with the Catholic priests scandal, the only difference is it is/was mostly girls being molested.
chopper
moore’s theme song is more ted nugent than anyone else.
Juju
I noticed that Roy Moore’s wife appeared to be in the same age group as the victims who have come forward so far. I looked it up and she was born in 1961. That makes her the same age as the woman who gave the press conference yesterday. Moore and his wife were married in 1985. That means he was 38 or 39 and she was 24. She’s part of his pattern.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Juju: I used to have to go to Memphis for work. We had to work on the weekends and during NFL season we would head over to a local sports bar for a beer or two. The age differential you see with Moore and his wife was quite prevalent with MANY couples at said bar. It was so prevalent that many of us actually said hmm.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, yeah, but that was a class barrier thing, not an age thing. Like rich educated dudes could take advantage of a working girl trying to make a living in a retail store of some sort.
Upper crust titled fools, too, in England. Always despised “British Aristocracy” as inbred idiots, the source of so many stupid and evil decisions out in the colonies.
The “empire” didn’t sent the best and the brightest out to the tropics to be governors of the colonies, they sent troublemakers, second and third sons, people one could count on to do the wrong, authoritarian, evil thing, make the worst decisions, every time.
Suzanne
@StringOnAStick: Shit, a good chunk of the evangelicals think it is GREAT for young girls be married off to older men. It’s disgusting.
Nicole
@schrodingers_cat: And if you’ve ever read George Bernard Shaw’s writings about Pygmalion, he was really, really clear that Eliza and Doolittle did not fall in love- he said she probably eventually married (age-appropriate) Freddy. He would not have been cool with the end of My Fair Lady.
NorthLeft12
@Scotian: Nice to hear from a fellow Canadian. While I would never ever vote for a Conservative [being born and raised in Windsor, Ontario will do that to you], they have been on the whole far more reasonable than what I am seeing down south. I can still discuss issues with Conadian Cons without getting a headache or vomiting.
Mr. Harper was a dangerous turn to the right that I was afraid was going to become the new Con normal.
Just for the record…..Jason Kenney does make me physically ill, and I hope fervently that he goes crashing down to defeat in the next Alberta election.
Juju
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: I’ve seen a lot of that as well in NC. I don’t know if it’s a creepy some southern man thing, or just a creepy some men thing. But if the woman is over 21 she at least has some inkling about what’s in her future.
NorthLeft12
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: My dear departed mother always made comments about May-September relationships. SHE.DID.NOT.APPROVE. She was always a bit of a prude.
But back then [sixties and seventies] the relationships were always marriages.
I googled May-September just to make sure I had my terminology right and found this on Oprah.com.
“Women marrying men a quarter of a century older or a dozen years younger. … A generation gap makes both people ask hard questions about love, aging, permanence, sacrifice, and family.”
So, even in Oprah world the “acceptable” age gap favours the man. Really?
Vidya Pradhan
@Yarrow: for the meter?
Emma
You know, we start talking about age differences and we sometimes forget the real fact here: a fourteen year old girl (or boy, for that matter) is a minor and therefore cannot consent. PERIOD.That’s what so skeevy about those fundamentalists sects. They use their minor female children as property.
Two consenting adults (or more, if that is your bent): enjoy. A twenty-three year old woman can fall in love with, or decide to marry, an older, wealthier man for other reasons. We can snicker but as a society we don’t have a say.
(added) a 23 year old man can do the same with a woman.
(added more) and in these days of gay marriage, well, the same.
Karen Potter
I was a young teen aged girl when Beatles hit the US, and the songs they wrote appealed to me and friends so we bought their records, talked our parents into buying us tickets. By the time I hit high school I had decided that boys my age were walking d*icks with no brains the only males that appealed to most girls my age were college aged or older.
My grandfather once said that he enjoyed watching teen aged girls they were fresh and strongly appealing; but he said older men can look but should never touch. It bothered him every time he heard of some woman marrying an older man; but he admitted that for years it was the norm if you wanted a wife to survive child birth she had to be younger. He had the diary from a ancestor, each time he married he married a woman the same age as the first time he married; he buried five wives nearly everyone of them died in childbirth. In the 40’s and 50’s this attitude was still strong marry “them” young and hope that you have a years with them. Many girls and women had no idea about birth control or believe that god created women to have babies.
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne:
I always assumed that “I’ll be watching you” was meant to be disturbing and was written from the point of view of a stalker. That is, I never thought the listener was supposed to empathize with the singer, just as we weren’t supposed to empathize with the singer from “don’t stand too close to me” who is actually grappling with pedophiliac impulses.
The lyrics to Hungry Like the Wolf on the other hand are so damn incoherent but I never saw them as creepy so much as ridiculous.
2liberal
@oatler.:
tipper gore just needed something to talk about to those southern biddies , she couldn’t have cared less about this topic (is my take). When she was in high school she played in a girl band called “the wildcats” according to her wikipedia entry.
jimmiraybob
@Suzanne:
A letter of support by up to 50 clergy in August contained this statement, “Roy Moore has been an immovable rock in the culture wars.”
That is all it takes. A bargain to fight the culture wars on their behalf and in the name of Christ and your golden – God’s appointed. Wipes out all past and current atrocious behavior. I wonder if the pastors sealed their pact at the crossroads over in Mississippi – a classic location for selling souls – or somewhere in Alabama closer to a mall.
And, just a technical point, Moore did not marry his underage victims. Well, maybe one.
Yarrow
@Juju: Didn’t it come out that Moore’s wife was in the same school and same year/class as the woman who spoke yesterday? Creepy.
gvg
@jimmiraybob: I read yesterday that 50 clergyman letter was written and signed before the the stories came out. I haven’t confirmed either way yet but it’s more believable to me. I’m sure he will get some to defend him, but 50?
Origuy
@Juju: I read somewhere that Kayla Moore actually was in the same high school graduating class as Beverly Nelson, the girl at the restaurant. I can’t find a reference right now, though.
Juju
@Yarrow: Did it? I hadn’t heard that but I’m not surprised. He just filled his creepy need later in his life in a way that society finds acceptable. His wife didn’t look happy Saturday morning at the political event they both attended.
Suzanne
@jimmiraybob: These people have zero morality. None. It’s gone, if it ever existed.
boatboy_srq
Here’s a bit of an antidote.
boatboy_srq
@Emma:
They use their adult female children the same way, and they don’t see any distinction. Which of course only makes it worse.
Scotian
@NorthLeft12:
I have in the past voted progressive conservative, rarely, but it once was a viable choice for me. That died federally the day Traitor MacKay sold out his “no-merger” leadership win three weeks in secret/three months publicly to Harper. Provincially, it depends on the Province we are talking about. I have though been watching a clear corruption of our conservative beliefs in this nation, and that corruption is coming directly from the insanity that infected the GOP in the 70s and became the normal political template for them by the mid 90s onward through to today. It was because I watched it that I saw Harper for what he was as early as the later 80s while he was in Reform.
I remember when being conservative politically meant you governed in a conservative manner, but you believed in governing as a positive force and core element of the concept of the social contract. Modern NA conservativism has become inherently about anti-governing, and the insanity of electing to govern responsibly a nation of several hundred million those that inherently do not believe governing is ever a positive thing seems rather self evident to me. Yet here we are, after all this time.
Reagan made one of the key actions in this development when he made it his mantra that government can never be the solution, on a problem, and of course Grover Norquist’s starving the government so as to kill social programs while giving unpaid tax breaks to the most well off being fused with it gave rise to the myth of tax breaks being always good for the economy.
I can do chapter and verse along these lines. You cannot begin to know my level of disgust at what I have watched over the past half century in this regard.
jimmiraybob
@gvg: Sure, some will back out. But I imagine that more will rationalize acceptance. Much like the court Evangelicals that still surround His Highness the Donald (also God anointed).
Ian G.
Maybe being an infant when John Lennon was murdered, and only knowing members of the Beatles as elder statesmen of rock has clouded my view of “I Saw Her Standing There”, because you’re all making good points about how young they were when that song was written.
And songs like “Every Breath You Take” are supposed to be creepy. Many songs are written from a stalker or sexual predator’s point of view.
jimmiraybob
@Suzanne: I think that the Divine Command system leaves a lot of wiggle room for the imaginative mind and means never having to develop a rational and consistent ethical and moral system. It becomes all about fellow soldiers and enemies and how to vanquish them.
dww44
@Yarrow: I agree and I agree with George Will, who opined on the LOD show last evening, that the GOP should allow the election to go forward and give the voters in Alabama the right and the opportunity to make their voice heard. As he’d just come back from Alabama himself, he thought this was important for voters there, a chance for them to stand up for decency and what’s right.
He mentioned that the prejudice against the “redneck” South was still very real. As a lifelong Southerner myself, I ‘vet frequently encountered that myopic view of Southerners, for all of us to get lumped into the same ignorant, racist, and red neck category.
Will himself endorsed Doug Jones and said he was worthy of being a U.S. Senator. I disagree with Will on most things, but he is a principled conservative and by publicly endorsing Jones he’s trying to get conservatives past the “All Democrats are evil and worse than any GOP candidate” meme that seems to guide their political lives.
jimmiraybob
For full disclosure, I used to hang out at the mall and scope out and chat up 14-year old girls too….when I was 14. It’s how I learned to handle rejection. New fangled malls were all the rage when I was young in the 60s.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
All this shows that poor Jeff Sessions has been suffering years of harassment for being a Republican in the liberal state like Alabama.
wenchacha
Hey there little Red Riding Hood,
You sure are looking good
You’re everything
A Big Bad Wolf could want
Owwwwoooooooh
Villago Delenda Est
@Emma: Sting recounted that some woman approached him and said that “Every Breath You Take” was played at her wedding. Sting’s reaction was “Well, good luck with that!”
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Andrew Sullivan is a gay man who thinks he should decide whether or not women are allowed to get abortions based on how icky he finds them.
Fuck him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amaranthine RBG: Fuck you just can’t help but be a piece of shit all the time, can you?
Mnemosyne
@StringOnAStick:
There were a LOT of girls who got molested by priests, but the RCC decided to try and make it all about gay priests and not pedophile priests, so the girls’ stories got swept under the rug.
schrodingers_cat
@J R in WV: I just finished watching Michael Woods’, Story of China, A six part quick run through the history of China, and even there we can blame Vicky and her merry band for fucking things up. On the global scale has any other country been responsible for as much damage as the British have in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. We are still paying the price for their actions well into the twenty first century.
And unlike Germany they still get to preen about how righteous they are/were.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Again everyone misses the point – Moore was an assistant DA when he was stalking these girls. It was illegal and he was an officer of court – it’s not just he’s creepy, it’s he’s corrupt. Those girls could have been the biggest sluty, slut, sluts who were the town bicycle and proud of it, were awarded “Underage Slut of Year who wants to tell the nation she wants it” by Time Magazine and it doesn’t change a thing because Moore was an officer of the court. Moore knew the law and was obligated to uphold it.
This is a point that the Evangelicals have to deal with because it breaks “Render on to Caesar” in scripture AND says Moore has no respect for any law, including God’s. So they can stuff it with all the “why didn’t she come out sooner?” and all the other nonsense.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow: prosecuting the KKK in Alabama is considered a mark against the candidate by the locals there.
Gravenstone
@chopper: Specifically “Jailbait”.
Jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Ian G.:
I was under 17 at the time, so I never got a creepy vibe at all.
And since The Beatles were marketed
to adolescents, I don’t see anything objectionable.
Frank Sinatra singing it would be creepy. And it is not “Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl”.
Jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
“Render unto Caesar” is often viewed as an acceptable obfuscation by Evangelicals. As the Creator, everything is God’s.
dww44
@TenguPhule: I’m not sure that this is fair to the majority of voters in Alabama. The majority is probably conditioned, from the outset, to vote for the guy with the R after his name and are willing to make excuses for him. I honestly don’t think that voters there are predisposed to be anti Doug Jones because he tried and convicted two of the KKK for the Birmingham church bombing. They are anti Doug Jones specifically because he’s a Democrat. Just my opinion, of course.
dww44
@dww44: So here’s a contrary view to mine above:
This is what will happen to every Republican when Roy Moore is a senator
and from an Alabamian journalist and citizen.
NorthLeft12
@Scotian: I agree with you about Reagan’s famous quote regarding how governments always screw everything up. That is the single most harmful statement that western democracies have to deal with, and has poisoned US society for decades.
It was just so mind blowing to me at the time that you have a Governor and President basically dumping on everything that US governments have done over the years, and could do in the future, and all the millions of people who have dedicated their lives to public service in such a manner. All that negativity and pessimism wrapped up in a single sound bite.
And they always said that Reagan was this sunny optimist? FFS
Mary G
I can’t help thinking about the girls whose families were falling apart and met this nice man outside the courthouse only to be forced into sex in a car or his house in the woods because they weren’t able to say no. There muśt be some out women there with that experience. They stayed silent for all these years due to his very effective threats, and are probably traumatized all over again, blaming themselves for not saying no like these five women. He is beneath scum.
Karen Potter
@Mary G: That is the power of these men, they would have been and are still being believed over women. I know a number of women were told that it is his word against yours and he is an (fill in blank) and you are just wanting to ruin his life, to get attention, you were probably asking for it.
It has always been the word of female against attacker, if she reports it one of the first things asked is “what were you wearing?” or “what were you doing?”
r€nato
Moore stopped going to the mall when a Forever 21 store opened there; he’s not into cougars.
r€nato
@jimmiraybob: Moore’s wife doctored that letter – issued during the primary – to make it look like a statement of support post-pedophilia-scandal.
The tragedy is that only three of those 53 pastors have asked that their names be removed from the altered document.
Jess
When I was 33, I had a lover who had just turned 19. Does it make a difference that he was the young one, and that I, a women, was the older? I was not really comfortable with the age difference, in part b/c I worried that I would “corrupt” him, but he was the one who initiated the step from friendship into a sexual relationship. If our genders were reversed, would it be creepy or wrong?