You say it’s a small subset. But I don’t think that is right. In every case I can think of where its in the media spotlight it was brought there by women and the accused men fought to keep it out of that spotlight.
Like I said you saying it’s better to keep the volume down is not what they would want.
That’s because the bar is really high on those cases, FYI.
Right, so if the prosecutor doesn’t think he can make the case that she perjured herself, it seems reasonable to not describe what she did as perjury.
No, I don’t believe that is what is going on here. The prosecutor can prove she perjured herself, but in the criminal context (I believe) they have to basically prove that but for her lies the verdict would have gone the other way. It’s an insanely high bar.
I dunno, man? Why’d you put it on your list in the first place? As far as details, if the details don’t matter, then why put the speculative details about how wealthy she was and her motivations? And it’s not a matter of going into more detail, it’s that you clearly mischaracterized the nature of her lying to downplay the seriousness of it, which might be why Trolly missed it in your list.
I hadn’t remembered the LaCasse detail but what I remembered came from this Vox article from Laura McGann about why they hadn’t run with the story.
This was the story Reade told in April 2019:
Reade told me that a senior aide told her Biden liked her legs and that he wanted her to serve cocktails at a fundraiser for him, a request she found demeaning and declined. When she later complained to others in the office that Biden would put his hands on her shoulder, neck, and hair during meetings in ways that made her uncomfortable, she says she was blamed and told to dress more conservatively. Within a few months, she said, her responsibilities had been stripped and she felt she was being pushed out of the job. She went back home to California deflated.
Reade told me that she wanted me to think of this story as being about abuse of power, “but not sexual misconduct.” Her emphasis was on how she was treated in Biden’s office by Senate aides, who she said retaliated against her for complaining about how Biden touched her in meetings. “I don’t know if [Biden] knew why I left,” she said. “He barely knew us by name.”
A friend who counselled Reade through this period corroborated this account, also saying the story was not about sexual assault:
Last year, Reade encouraged me to speak with a friend of hers who counseled her through her time in Biden’s office in 1992 and 1993. The friend was clear about what had happened, and what hadn’t.
“On the scale of other things we heard, and I feel ashamed, but it wasn’t that bad. [Biden] never tried to kiss her directly. He never went for one of those touches. It was one of those, ‘sorry you took it that way.’ I know that is very hard to explain,” the friend told me. She went on: “What was creepy was that it was always in front of people.”
Then in March 2020, Reade changed her story and said that it was, after all, a story about sexual assault. She then produced new friends - ones she had not produced in support of the original story - to support this new story. LaCasse is someone she spoke to two years after the alleged incident. The friend that McGann had spoken to in 2019 also changed her story to support Reade’s new story. On the Katie Halper show Reade blamed the media:
Well, I was going to tell the whole thing … the whole history with Biden. … But the way I was being questioned, it made me so uncomfortable that I didn’t trust it. And no offense to the reporters out there, it’s just maybe that’s something that can be learned, how to talk to somebody who got. … Because I just really got shut down. … And the narrative [they] really wanted it to be was that it wasn’t a sexual thing. Like don’t say it’s sexual. And so I was like, okay, I guess I can’t really say the whole story. …
This is a total fabrication. Reade was very clear in 2019 with both McGann and The Union, who published the original story, that this wasn’t a sexual assault allegation. McGann says both she and other reporters Reade spoke to were completely open to a sexual assault story. This was the height of MeToo; a reporter publishing that kind of story about a major political figure could be up for a Pulitzer. It makes no sense to suggest the media aren’t interested in those sort of stories.
So to recap, Reade told an original story about Biden in 2019 that was extremely plausible, in which both her and her friend emphasised that sexual assault had not occurred. A year later, she’s telling an entirely new story, producing entirely new friends to support it. When asked why she didn’t tell this story in the first place, her answer is a self-serving fabrication, offloading blame onto the media. There are huge issues here before we even get to her lying about her qualifications in court.
“Believe women” means “give women the benefit of the doubt” not “totally ignore any and all glaring credibility problems”.
She attended Antioch for only three quarters, then claimed to have attained a degree. When questioned about this, she claimed to have graduated under a special arrangement with then-chancellor Toni Murdock, except that:
However, university officials conferred with Murdock, an Antioch official told POLITICO, and confirmed that no special arrangement existed.
She also claimed to have worked as a professor there and didn’t. She used this fake degree to gain entry to Seattle’s School of Law, from which she did actually graduate. At trial she vastly exaggerated her work in Biden’s office:
Reade also appears to have embellished her role in Biden’s office. Reade served in his Senate office from December 1992 to July 1993 as a staff assistant, a relatively junior position. Reade has said she managed interns for a time. But when queried about her job experience at the trial, Reade referred to herself as a legislative assistant, a more senior job classification that conveyed more responsibility, according to the transcript.
“I worked with domestic violence prevention for over 20-some years in different capacities. I started working for U.S. Senator Joseph Biden. I was a legislative assistant. He worked on the Violence Against Women Act, the federal act,” Reade testified.
Her degree at Antioch was whatever it needs to be at any given time:
She was later asked whether her degree from Antioch University was in political science.
“Liberal arts, yeah,” Reade responded.
“But your résumé says liberal,” the attorney followed up.
“Yeah. The focus was political science. I worked for Leon Panetta and Joe Biden and then moved on to King County prosecutor’s office,” she said.
She’s a fabulist. The pattern is not complicated. When she needs a degree to get into Seattle Law, she invents one. When confronted about this invention, we get more invention of some kind of special arrangement with the chancellor. When she’s asked about her role in Biden’s office, she says she has legal experience in the field in question at trial. When her BA needs to be Political Science instead of liberal arts, it is. When she’s questioned about the conflict between her 2019 and 2020 stories, someone who was really determined to come clean would say “look I know it makes my story harder to believe, but I just wasn’t ready to tell the whole truth back in 2019, I realise that’s on me, but I’m not lying now”. Instead of which we get this story where she was a victim of media pressure.
I know people with this sort of capacity to promote what they would like to be true into the status of real truth. It’s not actually a fun way to live. I don’t have any ill will towards her, but I am definitely not trusting a single thing she says.
I think #me2 was a dud. They got few rapists and they got some woman to open up but in the end I assume that the most powerful who did similar stuff remained in power. I got the feeling me2 lead woman into a state of satisfaction. It seemed they achieved what they wanted but in the end I think thats the wrong thinking. Not much has changed; hell until this thread I couldnt remember when I last heard about something me2 related. Woman have to realize you only change things when you have power and not enough are pursuing power through various means. They can do better than men but first you have to get to this point where it actually matters.
I agree it’s been out of the news cycle for a while, but it’s pretty hard to cop a feel in a Zoom Conference.
I think like with most social movements like this, the pace feels frenetic at first, then it dies down as people adjust their behavior. The ultimate win of #MeToo isn’t that every man who has ever sexually harassed a woman at work gets publicly fired. The win is when workplace culture changes enough that it isn’t an ordinary occurrence that women feel threatened when just trying to do their job.
I hear what you’re saying but this feels like an insanely high bar. No rights movement is going to conclusively eradicate a social problem in a year or two. Was the Civil Rights movement a “dud” just because black lives continue to not matter enough? I don’t know, it seems like if you want to be in the fight for justice you’ve got to accept that its a fight that never ends.
I didnt expect them to eradicate that problem in 2 years. I am just not sure how much woman understand what it takes to make significant changes. Its not just opening up and speaking up. They have to change their whole approach. I sincerly believe that for a better world we need woman to take over more and more but I see no signs that this happens. Ofc you have some like Merkel, Ardem or the Scandi premiers but even Merkel cant do shit without the approval of all the men that are below her. I dont count the republican woman who go for power because they prefer women to be “good” wives and mothers.
A lot of power comes from money because you cant rely on voters. A lot of men would feel threatened quickly and vote for everyone else but a woman. So I think they have to find ways to be the next Zuckerberg, Gates or Koch brothers they just have to have a different endgame for it to work. History showed that woman can be as cruel as men but overall I believe that the majority would have a better approach to govern this world and keep the planet habitable for more than just few selected white people.
Weinstein going to jail seems like a solid win for the movement.
They only got him because he was so obviously a fat disgusting weirdo. Also he wasn’t smart enough to run for some local role as a dem. If he’d used his hillary connections to become a (D) politician he might have gotten the army of Karen’s behind him.
This is an incredibly terrible take. They got him because of the incredibly brave and difficult work of many women who choose to enter the media circus, and disrupt their own lives, to help prevent future abuse. Not to mention a group of journalists who put in decades of work.
Sure, but if he’d looked like Brad Pitt or was a (D) County commissioner or some bullshit all of that work and sacrifice would’ve been wasted.
Please read the books about the case. You are simply factually wrong. He did wield his immense power, including his connections to dems. This is how he got away with it for years. He got caught because of hard working journalists and many brave and scared women.
You are belittling the work they did by suggesting it was easy because he wasn’t a politician.
Legit not sure what level you’re on here, but this is a pretty ridiculous take.
I’m not suggesting it was easy. I’m saying bringing down powerful men is basically impossible. You need to hit the parley of an insanely dedicated amount of hard work and sacrifice from tons of people with everything to lose and the man in question being a clearly gross freak with no positive features.
look I understand this desire to think everything is always terrible. I have it too. But #metoo didn’t fail. There was nothing inevitable about its success. It’s didn’t target easy wins. It succeeded, and is still having an effect globally, because of the hard work of a lot of people. It’s a 21st century civil rights success story. Let’s not find ways to belittle or denigrate its success. And let’s not hold it to impossible standards when measuring its success.