MooreandMe

To be honest, I’m not sure what to make of the #MooreandMe business.  Here’s a rundown:

If you’ve been on Twitter in the last week, it’s probably been hard to miss the Twitter protest against Michael Moore for dismissing and mischaracterizing the rape accusations against Julian Assange—first in a post announcing he was posting bail for Assange and then on Keith Olbermann’s show.

Launched by Sady Doyle and Jaclyn Friedman last Wednesday and waged under the hashtag #mooreandme, the campaign has called for Moore (and Olbermann) to correct the misinformation they spread, offer an apology for minimizing rape allegations and smearing the accusers, and preferably donate $20,000 to an anti-sexual assault organization.

Almost a week later, there’s still no response from Moore (although he has written a letter to the entire government of Sweden) but the protest is still going strong, has attracted the inevitable anti-feminist trolls, and even caused Keith Olbermann to quit Twitter for 3 days “until this frenzy is stopped.”

Here is Doyle’s latest post, which is long and heart-rending.  She’s been getting death threats and rape threats for what seems a fairly reasonable demand—that Olbermann and Moore apologize for revealing the name of Assange’s accuser and characterizing her as a potential CIA agent based on the unsubstantiated rantings of one of Assange’s aggregators, a known Holocaust denier.

There are three tangled issues going on here.  First, is the unsubstantiated accusation from within Assange’s organization that this woman is a CIA plant. I’m not sure why Moore is at the center of this.  It seems to me that Olbermann was at the center of this and Moore just repeated it.  Moore’s two blog posts on the subject have not repeated the claim.  As much as it pains me to say this, I think the mooreandme campaign, while having the right intentions, is focused on the wrong person.

However, having retweeted the name of the accuser and the unsubstantiated “blame the victim” accusations, I think an apology is the least Michael Moore can do. No?  That would make the controversy go away awfully fast. (Moore’s second post—a letter to the Swedish government—sideswipes an apology but doesn’t get there).

Second, is the accusation, which Moore continues to repeat, that Sweden has made this case a priority to get Assange (or something). That’s not unique to Moore, either, nor did it originate with him.  Many Wikileaks supporters are saying this, most notably Naomi Klein (once described by Lee, quite accurately, as a third-rate intellect).  Their basis of this is Naomi Wolf’s misleading analysis of Swedish rape statistics.

** Sweden has the HIGHEST per capita number of reported rapes in Europe.

** This number of rapes has quadrupled in the last 20 years.

** The conviction rates? They have steadily DECREASED.

The Amnesty International report specifically says that Sweden’s rates are difficult to compare to other countries because they charge for each incident (most countries charge once per victim) and Sweden has a much more expansive definition of rape than other countries.  So this is an apples-to-oranges comparison.  Of course, as we’ve shown many times, Michael Moore is no stranger when it comes to comparing apples to oranges and thinking he’s found lemonade.

Maybe there’s something here, but accusing the Swedish government of concocting these charges implicitly accuses the alleged victim as well. Instead of being a tool of the CIA, she’s a tool of the Swedish government.  I really can’t let him off the hook for this, although, again, it seems like focusing on Moore specifically, is a bit misguided.

The third issue is the nasty, brutal and personal attacks that Doyle has endured. We’ve seen this kind of behavior from Moore fans before, but I think this is more an issue of Julian Assange’s deranged fans than Michael Moore’s.  Still ... would it hurt Moore to ask people to knock it off?  Would it hurt him to say something along the lines of, “I think this #mooreandme stuff is crap, but lay off Doyle. It’s a free country.”?

In the end, my feeling about the rape charges against Assange is to let them play out in the courts.  What matter is if they are true or not.  I really don’t give a shit why these charges are being brought, but they do not seem trivial.  I don’t begrudge Moore posting bail money for him (although I’m curious as to why he needs it).  But it is detestable to make unsubstantiated accusations against a potential rape victim because you happen to like what her rapist does for a living. What Moore and his fellow travelers continue to do is no different from people who “blame the victim” whenever their favorite sports star is accused of rape, assault or domestic violence.  I don’t think they would put up with it if Lakers’ fans had accused Kobe Bryant’s victim of being a Celtics fan.  But their feminism and support for victims goes out the window when it’s their hero in the crosshairs.

Whatever their intentions, this came across as “blaming the victim” to a substantial number of people.  Whatever their intentions, they repeated unsubstantiated allegations against the alleged victims and revealed their names.  Moore is not the source of this, but he actively participated in the smear, passing it on to over 700,000 twitter viewers.  He may not deserve to be at the center of the storm.  But an apology seems the least he can do.