The News Director Vlae Kershner at the San Francisco Chronicle thought it would be a good idea to compare Trent Mays, one of the teens who raped a girl in Steubenville last summer, to lovable scamp Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver.
Fans of classic TV will remember Eddie Haskell from “Leave It To Beaver”. Making mischief, getting his friends in trouble, sucking up to their parents as if he were the nicest boy who ever lived.
If the writers had cast Eddie as the bad guy in a crime show instead of a sitcom, he might have resembled Trent Mays. He’s one of two teenagers convicted in juvenile court Sunday of digital penetration (which in Ohio constitutes rape) of an intoxicated 16-year-old girl in Steubenville last August.
So a helpful way to understand how this boy raped a girl, we should consider a late-50s fictional television personality who modeled mischievous boyhood?
And Happy Birthday to the Affordable Care Act! According to Michelle Bachmann, it’s old enough to kill all the women, children, and old people.
On today’s #TWiBRadio, we discuss how Republicans continue their #SayAnything2012 campaign, the legacy of Steubenville, and we take our listener feedback.
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And this morning on #amTWiB, #TheMorningCrew Elon and Aaron troll the show with their jukeboxing, the price to act like a slave, and the dangers of bikini waxing.
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ShadeTail
You missed a close-italics tag in the first paragraph.
ranchandsyrup
Italitastic!
MomSense
So happy to see that you posted at a time when I can actually listen. I’m either at work or on homework duty with the kids. Ok–going to listen now!
PS. Sooooo sick of Bachmann. Maybe we should start a campaign to get sane people to move there so we can vote that loony tunes out of office. She is an embarrassment!
chopper
i feel like everything i say is being emphasized!
Keith G
Eddie Haskell has his own tag?
Shortstop
DEATH PANELS!
So much better in itals.
OzarkHillbilly
I love how they continually point out that “digital penetration is rape in Ohio”…
Like in a real man’s state, “like Wyoming or Montana, we digitally penetrate our sheep on a regular basis and they never complain..”
What is it in Virginia? Oh yeah, I remember, it’s a “transvaginal ultrasound.” Riiiggghhhhttttt.
These people are sick.
Bobby Thomson
Eddie Haskell was lovable? Who knew?
Elon James White
You didn’t know, I emphasize everything I say!
John Cole
When rape and Leave it to Beaver are in the same post, it makes my whole body seize because there are so many things I want to say but just think not saying anything is the best course of action.
PurpleGirl
@Bobby Thomson: Loveable? In that “he’s such a scamp” way. Of course, I remember that I always, always considered him a slime bucket
Blue Raja
My mom’s a copy editor at the SF Chronicle. I just texted her at work about this and she says their website automatically picks up columns from the Houston Chronicle and she’s innocent, I tell you!
PurpleGirl
Re: always mentioning that digital penetration is rape in Ohio…
I would hope that digital penetration of either a woman or a man, without their consent, would be against the law and constitute sexual assault in ANY jurisdiction.
Dacia
@John Cole: I think the only appropriate action is vomit in your mouth.
Baud
@Elon James White:
You should consider all caps.
SEE, DON’T I SEEM MUCH MORE SERIOUS WHEN I WRITE THIS WAY?
1badbaba3
Okay, so it’s not just me, whew.
Ms. One ‘l’ seems to be giving her all in this GOP Race To The Top of Batshit Crazy Mountain. Of course it’s understandable given the fierce competition. You gotta wake up awful early to outdo big gulp fellation, a filibuster about nothing, the ‘Nuge on the Hill, Commies (Commies, I tell you!) at Harvard, and the man who would be Savior. Those guys chew up a lot of scenery. But Mikki B has been at this a while, and she’s got a craze-on that just won’t quit. While I cannot say that she is my favorite wingnut, she’s deffo top rankin’.
Blue Raja
My mom’s a copy editor at the Chronicle and I texted her at work about this. She says their website automatically published content from a certain affiliated source that she can’t legally name and they’re innocent, I tell ya!
sparky
I can think of one woman I’d like to see the ACA kill.
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: @PurpleGirl: It needs to be mentioned every time because there are idiots who suggest digital or bottle or pool cue or whatever penetration don’t count.
West of the Rockies
@MomSense: I was going to suggest the same thing! Should she be the primary focus of Democratic efforts in 2014? Does anyone spread as much misinformation and gobble up as much facetime on the networks? (Yeah, I know McCain gets loads of press, but is he a bit less dangerous than Bachmann? I don’t see Rand or Rubio losing their seats anytime soon, but Bachmann seems vulnerable and worth the effort to unseat. (She’s certainly unhinged.)
kc
Eddie Haskell was a weaselly suck-up to adults in authority, so I understand what the author was getting at. He specifically referred to this text from Mays to the victim’s father: Sir, this is Trent Mays. This is all a misunderstanding. I just took care of your daughter when she was drunk and made sure she was safe.
ShadeTail
Having now actually read the article linked above, I’ve decided the Eddie Haskell comparison is actually a good one. Haskell was an ingratiating slimeball, and so was this rapist kid. The only difference is that Haskell was sanitized for 1950’s TV.
Less Popular Tim
Without taking a position on the quality of the column as a whole, if you are familiar with the show Leave it to Beaver, Eddie Haskell is portrayed as a two-faced supercilious complete asshole. Beaver and his brother Wally are the “[models of] mischievous boyhood.” So the quoted portion conveys to me that Trent Mays is a complete asshole who acts ultra-polite to adults in an effort to cover it up. Unsucessfully, if true to the show.
dance around in your bones
Oh please oh please oh please put Crazy Eyes in front of a Death Panel. I’d volunteer my time.
(not intended to be a factual statement).
Suffern ACE
@Less Popular Tim: yeah. There was that time Eddie got hollered at by his dad for urinating on an unconscious girl and telling mrs cleaver that he liked her dress didn’t help.
MomSense
@West of the Rockies:
Her only real competition for slinger of as much BS is Gohmert. They are the dumb and dumber of the US House of Representatives.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I’m so glad we’ve reached the point where we don’t treat women as furniture any more. Poor Eddie.
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: Indeed.
jl
I only remember the reruns, but I don’t remember one where Eddie drugged and raped an underage neighbor girl. Or where he horded guns and ammo and went berserk and shot up the place. Or where he worked part time as an enforcer for some sketchy employment agency that was slaving out domestics.
I bet those episodes were real hoots.
Joel
@OzarkHillbilly: Maybe he thought they were giving her a prostate exam?
daveNYC
Fuck humanity.
Less Popular Tim
@Suffern ACE: Hmmm, I don’t remember the show doing a lot of “ripped from the headlines” stuff ala Law & Order. But I’ve only seen it in syndication, I can’t say I’ve seen every episode. I’m pretty sure Eddie’s dad was never portrayed in person or voice, however.
jl
From Wiki article on Eddie.
” One of his most infamous pranks with the Cleaver boys involved fastening a chain around the rear axle of their friend Clarence “Lumpy” Rutherford’s car, causing unplanned damage as the entire third member and wheels became detached when he tried to move the car. ”
Almost the same, right?
Edit: and comes to mind I totally forgot about Lumpy. How come no one remembers Lumpy?
dance around in your bones
@jl:
You just made me remember Lumpy. And I watched the show in real time. I always thought Eddie Haskell was a slimy dude, but frankly Beaver and his brother were kinda insufferable as well. It was like they were way too fucking good to be true.
Not to mention June and her pearls and her starched apron. I never knew ANY family like that.
Hmm…somehow this makes me think of Goofus and Gallant in that Highlights magazine they handed out free (imagine that!) in grade school back in the day. However, I do not remember any digital penetration taking place. Gallant would never have approved, and Goofus would be too dumb to even think about it.
Less Popular Tim
@jl: Don’t say “third member,” John’s body has been stressed enough by this thread
Thoughtcrime
Stay tuned for Vlae Kershner’s next update, where he reminds us that Ward was also unfairly accused of being too hard on the Beaver.
OzarkHillbilly
@Joel:
No, they thought she was a slut…. or a whore. I had sisters…. and a mother. And my mother was a bitch (in the best of all terms) My father got called back to the service when the Korean war started up (after WWII which he served in as well)…. My father did the honorable thing and offered to forego the wedding until he came back…
My Mother said,
“FUCK YOU!!!! You marry me now, or you don’t marry me at all!”
My old man was smart enuf to know when he had met his match.
To Mary Eileen Page… My mother.
Less Popular Tim
@dance around in your bones: wow, I kinda thought Highlights was a publication of the American Dental Association, since I only ever saw it at the dentist’s office
cmorenc
@MomSense:
Virginia Foxx, R-NC (5th) is just as stupid, malicious, and ignorant as Bachmann and Gohmert, just less telegenic and infamous. She’s like a character out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales who superfically comes across initially like a kindly grandmother, but who soon reveals herself as a malevolently evil witch in disguise.
Just Some Fuckhead
You finally came up with a cultural reference these elderly white shut-ins can understand and then you just up and diss it?
dance around in your bones
@Less Popular Tim: Ha!
I remember getting the mag in grade school. Maybe I just confused grade school with the dentist’s office. Often painful.
The 5 Depressing Lessons We Learned From Highlights Magazine
NotMax
Nonsense.
Paul Ryan = Eddie Haskell.
ShadeTail
A few people in this thread seem to have forgotten what the word “analogy” means, when it comes to this Eddie Haskell comparison. “Analogy” doesn’t mean that the two things being compared are exactly the same. Haskell didn’t rape anybody in the course of the show, as far as I know, but that’s not what the author of the article was saying.
NotMax
@dance around in your bones
The utilitarian story behind the pearls is kind of an interesting piece of trivia.
Supposedly, the actress naturally had a deep enough indentation on her throat that she was very difficult to light for TV without having a dark contrasting shadow show up there. So the producers came up with the character’s habit of wearing the pearls, which covered the throat at that spot and also reflected enough light to dissipate shadow.
cmorenc
TRIVIA QUESTION: What alternate career did the actor who played Eddie Haskell on “Leave it to Beaver” go into after the series ended?
ANSWER: Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell, went on to become a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, working in vice, narcotics, and as a motorcycle traffic cop. In 1983, he got hit by three bullets while on a foot-chase for a suspect, but fortunately he was wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time. He retired from the LAPD in 1988. While working as a traffic cop, some of the motorists he stopped would occasionally recognize him and experience a startled double-take; can you imagine being ticketed by Eddie Haskell?
dance around in your bones
@NotMax:
Well, that is interesting. I just thought it was supposed to about how graceful and put together she was, even while baking cookies.
Never a snot slimed dress for June!
NotMax
@dance around in your bones
Heard the story told by one of the cast members (it may even have been Ms. Billingsley herself, don’t precisely recall) during an free-wheeling radio interview.
She seemed quite amused at how people latched onto the pearls as some sort of statement.
Suffern ACE
@ShadeTail: no. I think they have it about right. Based on one tweet when he was trying to avoid charges, the writer has decided to introduce Eddie as a character in the drama. We’re saying that doesn’t work. Eddie would not actually get in this much trouble. And if he did, my guess is that he would try to either find someone else to blame or leave town.
Plus, complimenting mrs. Cleavers dress so that she wouldn’t notice that you’re a bit of a cad, isn’t the same as outright lying to save your ass. Which in this example, is what young mr. Mays was doing. Besides, even if Eddie didn’t think so, mrs. Cleaver actually did wear nice dresses.
gbear
Of course there was the Leave It To Beaver episode where Eddie gets his comeuppance…
I work with a guy who is the living, breathing personification of Eddie Haskell. He even looks like him.
jl
@ShadeTail:
But the two situations are so different, the point of the analogy escapes me. The analogy seems either senseless and inappropriate or it reveals an offensive attitude about serious crimes.
As opposed to Eddie fake ‘helping’ the Beav with homework and tricking poor Beav into turning in nonsense. Or some oldster relative of the Beav gaming a grocery store return policy on canned peas. (only two plots I can remember now).
So, that is why I made a joke, yes, a joke I say, about the episodes where Eddie cooked up a super flu strain in his biology lab and let it loose on Centerville, or whatever the town was named, for a fun and hoots.
dance around in your bones
@Suffern ACE:
They always looked darn uncomfortable to me – the pinched waist and etc.
I was always a fan of the flapper look (loose dresses!) and the 30’s through 40’s stuff. I was also attracted to the wildly embroidered peasant costumes and tribal stuff I saw in some book we had when I was a kid.
I guess that’s part of why I became a hippie back in the day – you got to make up your own costumes! Often wildly embroidered.
Ted & Hellen
@OzarkHillbilly:
Agreed. Damn them for pointing out factual details regarding the case.
Ted & Hellen
@John Cole:
The fact that you regard rape as fodder for your comedy, Mr. Cole, reveals that ABL was indeed correct when she denounced BJ as a “rape-friendly” blog.
Ted & Hellen
@jl:
It was never established during the trial that the victim was in fact drugged, or that either of the two boys did any drugging, but don’t let that stop you.
Unless you are including alcohol in the definition of “drug,” in which case it’s pretty clear the young woman drugged herself.
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
Well as long as they didn’t drug her first, everything’s cool.
Ted & Hellen
@A Humble Lurker:
Have no idea why you’d think that. Don’t you take rape seriously?
dance around in your bones
@Ted & Hellen: Don’t you take snark seriously?
Jeez, once in a while you can make some good points but you are a serious buzzkill in a kind of “holier than thou” sorta way.
Cacti
@Ted & Hellen:
The little trollop practically begged for that non-consensual sexual encounter.
Ted & Hellen
@Cacti:
Wow. Why do you think that?
Ted & Hellen
@dance around in your bones:
Oops. Sorry. Thought you were slamming me.
Cacti
@A Humble Lurker:
How dare you defame those rapists.
jl
@Ted & Hellen:
The Eddie Haskell examples were counter analogies. Not meant to be taken as factual accounts of the events or persons involved. I thought that should be obvious.
There is also no evidence that defendants were stockpiling weapons and ammo, assisting employment agencies in abusive labor practices, or brewing deadly flu strains for release into the general population. Just to be clear.
Ted & Hellen
@jl:
So you’re saying that your comment to which I replied had nothing to do with Steubenville and had no meaning whatsoever. Just random.
Got it.
jl
@Ted & Hellen: No, I neither said nor implied that.
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
I actually almost put a /sarcasm at the end, but then I thought ‘Nah, it’s easy enough to tell that was snark’. I stand corrected.
ShadeTail
@jl:
Except that the author of the article quite explicitly explains the point. The Stubbenville rapist kid was a jerk trying to ingratiate himself into other people’s good graces. And you might recall, since it was noted on this very blog, that he actually succeeded to some small degree. Remember the CNN anchors complaining about how his life was ruined by his conviction?
So it’s rather important to note that, no, he wasn’t the nice guy he and some others portrayed him to be. His actions were much worse than the sanitized 1950s TV pranking Eddie Haskell got up to, but the analogy is still perfectly valid.
Ted & Hellen
@ShadeTail:
Jesus. So much bullshit pulled straight out of your ass. YOu have no idea what you’re babbling about.
ricky
@ShadeTail:
No. I don’t remember. But then I don’t remember when Rahm called liberals f***ing retards, either. But many do.
jak
Until local home-town media starts to report on the antics of people like Bachmann (check for stories on her latest outburst in the Star-Tribune) we will have to put up with them for a long time.
MomSense
@cmorenc:
Should we start praying that a house will fall on her?
markmac
@Ted & Hellen:
Hey, aren’t you the guy who said that 10 year old boy at Penn State might’ve been enjoying the sodomy??