Incredibly Credulous: Kenneth Turan's Embarrassing Review of "The Hunting Ground"

Kenneth Turan's breathless review of The Hunting Ground, a just-released documentary on the "epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses," is breathtaking in its absence of scrutiny and its profusion of credulity. 

The review is filled with sensational descriptors: 

"documentary on college rape chills with statistics" 

“Hunting Ground bristles with unnerving statistics"  

"powerful factors are arrayed against students"   

"wrenching first person stories"

(All that's missing are the exclamation marks!!)

Turan seems utterly seduced by the film's statistics, yet it's those damn statistics that are so, well, damning. Start with the "unnerving" statistic first cited, that "one in five college women, and one in 33 college men, will be sexually assaulted during their time on campus."

One in five? Did Mr. Turan pause long enough from his Thesaurus-browsing to think about what this statistic means in a practical sense? My two daughters each graduated from a four-year institution; nearly all of my daughters' friends graduated from a four-year institution; my son graduated from a four-year institution, as did nearly all of his friends. I have nieces and nephews who have graduated from four-year institutions. Let's say, conservatively, that this represents about 20 college grads in my circle of family and friends. You'd think, if the 1 in 5 number were true, there would be four instances of rape or assault in my little circle of family and friends. I have yet to hear of any of these young people being sexually assaulted. Are we just lucky? Were the odds ever in our favor?

Come to think of it, practically speaking, what parent in his or her right mind would send a kid anywhere with crime numbers like these? It would be tantamount to negligence. You may as well drop your kid off at the corner of Sodom and Gomorrah. "Bye, darling! We love you! See you at Christmas! Watch your back!"

The statistic is simply not credible.

Mr. Turan gives lip service to "skeptics" who have challenged the data, but he doesn't say whether those skeptics were consulted, let alone featured, in the film, so I'm guessing they weren't. Which would mean Christina Hoff Sommers was neither mentioned nor interviewed. That's a shame. Sommers is a former philosophy professor and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who, according to her bio at AEI, is "best known for her critique of late twentieth-century feminism." For years Sommers has been debunking myth after feminist myth that most people take at face value (the 77 cent to the dollar gender gap discrepancy, Super Bowl Sunday domestic violence, the rule of thumb, to name a few).

Most recently, in her Factual Feminist video blog, Sommers refutes the 1 in 5 claim with newly-released statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Justice that suggest the real number is closer to 1 in 53 ("too many," Sommers agrees, "but a long way from one in five").

Of course one assault is one too many. No one is saying sexual assault isn't an important issue. But the idea of taking the misleading claims of a documentary at face value and presenting them as ground-breaking and important once again demonstrates the disdain people in the media (and politics, for that matter) have for average viewers.


That's what bothers me most about Kenneth Turan's uncritical and embarrassingly effusive review of The Hunting Ground: the film-going public will similarly accept without question these misleading claims. And next year at the Oscars, when the film wins its little award, the acceptance speech will, like Turan's review, be breathless and important. The celebs in the audience will rise to their feet and cheer and pump their fists in solidarity the way Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez did when Patricia Arquette called for pay equity (based on misleading data) in her acceptance speech at this year's ceremony. 

As Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Russian Communist Party, once said, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." 

Yes. Who needs truth when you've got . . . unnerving statistics? 

Meanwhile, for an honest discussion on sexual assault and rape, here are two segments of The Factual Feminist. You can read her bio here.

Sexual Assault Myths (Parts 1 and 2): 

"Without the Jews of France..."

Here's an article published in The Algemeiner ("'We Haven't Shown Enough Outrage': French PM Issues Blistering Denunciation of Anti-Semitism," by Ben Cohen).

Here are excerpts from the speech (retrieved from the Anti-Defamation League website):

Ladies and gentlemen deputies, the tragic ordeals we've just been through have left their mark on us — on our country and on our conscience.

However, we must also be capable, each time, of making a swift diagnosis of the state of our society and of its urgent needs.

We'll clearly have the opportunity to hold these discussions.

I’m going to say a few words and please excuse me for taking more time than planned.

The first subject we must deal with, clearly, is the fight against anti-Semitism.

History has shown us that a reawakening of anti-Semitism is the symptom of a crisis of democracy, a crisis of the Republic.

That's why we must address it powerfully.

After Ilan Halimi in 2006, after the crimes of Toulouse, there has been an intolerable rise in acts of anti-Semitism in France.

There are words, insults, gestures, foul attacks, as in Créteil a few weeks ago, which — as I recalled in this house – have not aroused the outrage expected by our Jewish compatriots.

There's the huge worry, the palpable fear we felt on Saturday, in the crowd, outside that kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes, and at the Synagogue de la Victoire on Sunday evening.

How can we accept that in France — the Jews' land of emancipation two centuries ago but also, 70 years ago, one of the lands of their agony — how can we accept that shouts of “Death to the Jews!” can be heard in our streets?

How can we accept the acts I've just recalled?

How can we accept that French people can be murdered because they are Jewish?

How can we accept that a Tunisian citizen sent to France by his father to be protected can be killed while going to buy his bread for the Sabbath — because he is a Jew? It's not acceptable.

I say to the national community, whose reaction has perhaps been insufficient, and I say to our French Jewish compatriots that this time we can't accept it, that we must also rebel.

We must make the true diagnosis: there's an anti-Semitism people call historical, going back many centuries, but above all there's this new anti-Semitism born in our neighborhoods against the backdrop of the Internet, satellite dishes, abject poverty and hatred of the State of Israel, advocating hatred of the Jew and of all Jews.

We must say this! We must utter the words to combat this unacceptable anti-Semitism.

As I've had the opportunity to say, as Minister Ségolène Royal said in Jerusalem this morning, as Claude Lanzmann wrote in a magnificent article in Le Monde, yes, let's say it directly to the world: without France's Jews, France would no longer be France!

It's up to us to proclaim this message loud and clear. We haven't said it; we're not outraged enough!

How can we accept that in certain institutions, middle schools and high schools, we can't teach what the Holocaust was?

How can we accept that a kid aged seven or eight, when asked by his teacher, “Who is your enemy?” can answer “It's the Jews”?

When the Jews of France are attacked, France is attacked and the universal conscience is attacked; let's never forget that!

Somebody Please Tell Obama the Shadow Has Returned?

"The shadow of crisis has passed. 

The state of the union is strong." 

(Barack Obama, State of the Union address, January 21, 2015).

"We're not at a time of war" 

(Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking at the National Press Club, February 17, 2015)

The shadow of crisis has passed? We're not at war? 

Tell that to the parents of James Foley and Kayla Mueller and Steven Sotloff. 

Tell that to the families of the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded simultaneously on a beach in Libya. 

Tell that to the 45 souls who were burned to death in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi today. 

Tell that to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, who says Iran is busy "speeding up" its nuclear program.

Tell that to the countless men, women, and teenagers, and children of Nigeria, Libya, Iraq, who have been kidnapped, sold into slavery, flogged, beheaded, beaten, crucified, etc. at the hands of Boko Haram. 

Tell that to Islamic State which is currently on a religious crusade for worldwide dominion (see article in this month's Atlantic, below). 

Tell it to Barack Obama, who to this day refuses to acknowledge that these savages are on a mission dictated by yes, Mr. Obama, by their religion (Islam). While you're at it, tell him that the state of the union is not strong, that the shadow of crisis is back. 

If you can find him, that is. Look for him on the links, or at a photo op, maybe a fund-raiser, or writing an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. 

Actually, I take that back. Today he's heading up a "symposium" on radical extremism, a symposium complete with break-out sessions and planning groups. 

Meanwhile, Islamic State continues its scorched-earth campaign of murder and terror, all in the name of their god.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article in The Atlantic, by Graeme Wood (it's pretty long!): 

What is the Islamic State? 

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing.

(Read the rest at What ISIS Really Wants here). 

What Are These Brownies Selling? Hint: They're Not Cookies

Wholesome childhood experience or insidious form of child abuse? Discuss!




So besides the obvious, here's what else bothers me about this story: 

Taking the name "Brownies": Even if the Girls Scouts of America Association doesn't sue them for using their name (which they should), isn't it sort of strange to be referring to a group by their skin color? Redskins, anyone?  

The lies these kids are being told And they're repeating them like little puppets! This is not OK! Who (or what) will they be 10 years from now? Hint: back away slowly...

These are 8 to 10 year old kids!  

 

Welcome to the new world. All I can say (again), is, Pity the Left and their children.