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E.J. Graff

Sandusky's Victim One Bullied out of School

E.J. GraffNov 22, 2011

According to Sara Ganim at the Patriot-News, the reporter who first broke the Penn State sexual-abuse story back in March, Sandusky's Victim One has had to leave school because he's being bullied:

Officials at Central Mountain High School in Clinton County weren’t providing guidance for fellow students, who were reacting badly about Joe Paterno’s firing and blaming the 17-year-old, said Mike Gillum, the psychologist helping his family. Those officials were unavailable for comment this weekend.

The name-calling and verbal threats were just too much, he said.

Department of Follow-Up: How Do You Make Better Parents?

E.J. GraffNov 21, 2011

Like a lot of nerds, my jaw dropped this weekend when, on the NYT's opinion page, Tom Friedman concluded that what our education system needs to help children perform better is ... drum roll ... better parents.

Well gosh, no one ever thought that before. Um, could you follow that up with a policy Rx, please?

Fortunately, Dana Goldstein has indeed done that, right here. Her column is a nice guide to school-reform thinking on precisely this question, with great links.

The Internet Miniskirt

E.J. GraffNov 21, 2011
Flickr/Ed Yourdon

I've been lucky. There was no Internet back in the 1990s when I was one of the few women writing in the mainstream media about LGBT issues. Hate mail, then, was actual, physical mail, usually sent to a newspaper and forwarded, although one or two writers somehow found my home address. But even those were pretty mild. The usual theme was that I was going to hell; sometimes I got conversion pamphlets, with handy cartoon illustrations of people on fire. I got a couple of letters with disgustingly graphic ideas about my sex life, but those were overshadowed by the religious pamphlets and the psychotics' letters—which you learned to recognize by the tiny handwriting on the envelope, and which ran six to ten pages, and almost always mentioned alien life forms somehow.

DNA, Massachusetts, and the Question: Why Exonerate the Innocent?

E.J. GraffNov 21, 2011

Why exonerate the innocent? For some of us, the answer is obvious: justice. It's immoral to keep a person behind bars for someone else's crime. But not everyone believes that's enough of a reason. Here's how they think: Is it really worth overwhelming the underfunded criminal justice system (in Massachusetts, the vast majority of assistant district attorneys, the workhorses of the system, make between $40,000 and $80,000 a year, plus death threats) to process DNA requests for the few outliers who think they're innocent?

Unemployment and Underemployment Over Time

E.J. GraffNov 18, 2011

I'm not the only nerd here in the room, right? Phew. Check out Remapping Debate's new graph of Bureau of Labor Statistics data of unemployment and underemployment, by state, over time. Don't miss the widget that lets you examine how the data differs by year.

In brief: It looks grim. Do use the data for good.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Adoption

E.J. GraffNov 17, 2011

Over the past two months, I’ve posted a few items about fraud and corruption in international adoption, a subject I’ve reported on extensively. Of the many articles I wrote on the topic, one story in particular broke my heart—and illuminated how such frauds occur. I’ve just heard, again, from one of the principals in the situation, and I’d like to post his letter. Before I do so, here’s a summary of—and links to—the articles that offer background.

Prop. 8 Challengers Have Standing

E.J. GraffNov 17, 2011

The California Supreme Court has ruled that, in its view, the people who brought Proposition 8 to the ballot -- the initiative that halted California's same-sex marriages -- have the "standing" to back that law in court. Exactly what does that mean? It's complicated. Learn more from Chris Geidner, here.

DOMA, DOMA, DOMA: 2, Executive & Legislative Challenges

E.J. GraffNov 16, 2011
  1. Executive. There’s a campaign under way to get President Obama to say he supports marriage equality; he hasn’t gone that far, claiming instead that his position “continues to evolve.” He has said that he opposes DOMA—which means little, in practice, for all the reasons we know from middle-school civics classes. Because it’s Congress’s job to make laws and the executive branch’s job to enforce them, the president can’t just stop enforcing DOMA: Same-sex couples still have to file taxes as single, and so forth. However, the executive branch does have some discretion. To wit:

DOMA, DOMA, DOMA: 1, Judicial challenges

E.J. GraffNov 15, 2011

Last week, while men in power were getting called out for behaving badly (see under: Cain, Herman; Penn State football), the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) behaved well—by voting out of commmittee a bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. As I mentioned last week, no one expects the repeal bill, called the Respect for Marriage Act, to actually come to the Senate floor this year.

But that’s not really the point of the SJC’s action.

A Reading Assortment for 11/11/11

E.J. GraffNov 11, 2011
  • Occupy Harvard's signs say "We want a university for the 99 percent!"  Umm, where I come from, we call those "state schools." #justsaying 
  • The U.S. Census reports that half of working women have no paid maternity leave. And guess whose jobs are least likely to offer paid leave? The 50 percent who need it most. Hope Yen's article for the AP includes this:

Penn State, Sexual Assault, and the Abuse of Power

E.J. GraffNov 11, 2011

A lot has confused me about the outrage about Penn State's apparent cover-up of its former assistant coach's serial molestation and assault of children. Football is lousy with entitled rapists. No, I'm not saying that all football players rape. But I am saying that we hear football-rapist stories regularly. Most women know someone who was (or were themselves) groped, date-raped, or sexually assaulted by a high school or college football player who thought he owned whatever walked by. Consider what commentator Michele Weldon wrote in the Chicago Tribune:

In Which DOMA Crumbles Just a Little Bit More

E.J. GraffNov 10, 2011

Has anyone been trying to keep score at home on the many attacks on the Defense of Marriage Act? There are so many different ways it could fall. Today’s news came from the Senate, where the Judiciary Committee voted in favor of Sen. Feinstein’s Respect for Marriage Act, referring it to the full body. The RMA would repeal DOMA, thereby enabling same-sex couples who are legally married in their home states would be treated as married by the federal government as well. (Six U.S.

God's Calling Again

E.J. GraffNov 10, 2011

Need some diversion, besides “oops”? Check this out: God calls Katha Pollitt and tries to talk her into running for president. With Perry and Cain self-destructing, each in his own special way, might she have a shot?

Sexual Assault Versus Harassment

E.J. GraffNov 09, 2011

So now there's a fifth allegation against Herman Cain—and we can see exactly why women have been loath to come forward and be dragged through the mud. I don't know what Cain did or did not in fact do to Sharon Bialek, or Karen Kraushaar, or to the other three women who've decided to protect their sanity and jobs by keeping their names private.

Are They Orphans?

ejgraffNov 08, 2011

Beware of overseas orphanages seeking donations. If you're not careful, you may become the victim of an orphanage scam—in which a savvy entrepreneur in a poor country hustles up some children so that he or she can ask developed-world humanitarians for money for the children's support. In some of the notorious cases, the orphanage director pockets the money while the children are left to starve or sold for sex. Few people know that they may be underwriting kidnapping or other modes of defrauding local families out of their children.

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