The Year of Moving Forward

The Year of Moving Forward
At our 4 person wedding reception in DC

Friday, October 2, 2009

BessOps: The Sex Issue

I get a lot of email (in addition to the comments posted on this blog) about the subjects I cover. My readers seem to be obsessed with sex...I guess most Americans are. I mean, even Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms talked about gay sex so much that one begins to wonder. Oh, but that creates bad mental images.

So, I know people want to know what I think about David Letterman. Kevin Jennings. Roman Polanski.

David Letterman admitted to having sex with women who worked on his show, after an extortion attempt regarding the relationships was uncovered.






It is no surprise that people in workplaces develop relationships and that sometimes these become sexual. We don't know what the circumstances were...if the relationships were mutually respectful, if coercion or harassment was involved, or what. So it's too soon to judge Letterman.

But I do wonder about the audience that laughed and applauded at the admission.

Kevin Jennings is the assistant deputy secretary of Safe and Drug Free Schools in the Department of Education.




He wants to prevent bullying and harassment and that kind of thing. He's come under fire, first because he is gay (right wing groups began targeting him before the current controversy began), then because he counseled a high school student who had sex with an older man and didn't report it.

Jennings says that was 21 years ago and that back then teachers had little training on how to handle those situations. But here is something that has been left out of the story. The student was of legal age when it happened. In Massachusetts, the legal age was, and still is, 16 years of age, and that is how old the kid was. So, there was nothing to report. Jennings is fine. Let him do his job.



Roman Polanski made good movies. Roman Polanski appears to have been a predator, I don't know all the facts. But there are certain legal proceedings that one subjects themselves to when they do illegal things, and he ran from these proceedings and has "served his time" in the South of France.

I don't think justice has been served. But, apparently the victim does not want the issue brought up again. So where do they go from here? I don't know. And France, to me, would not be a punishment. But to conservatives in this country, I guess France is a punishment, so there you go.

And I do know that Roman Polanski made great movies. Remember this scene from Rosemary's Baby? Don't watch if you haven't seen the movie. Rent it!



2 comments:

Ben Mason said...

Faux News? They must be doing something right because for every CNN viewer Faux has 3.5 times more. In fact, Faux is close to replacing at least two network news outlets -- CBS and ABC.

Joe said...

Ben, just because they have good ratings does not mean they are telling the truth. What it means is that they are saying what their like minded viewers want to hear.