11 February, 2007

The Jury of Orange County

Last month Salon had an interview with Chris Hedges as he has a new book out called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. At one point he says of the Christian right:

For me, the engine of the movement is deep economic and personal despair. A terrible distortion and deformation of American society, where tens of millions of people in this country feel completely disenfranchised, where their physical communities have been obliterated, whether that's in the Rust Belt in Ohio or these monstrous exurbs like Orange County, where there is no community. There are no community rituals, no community centers, often there are no sidewalks. People live in empty soulless houses and drive big empty cars on freeways to Los Angeles and sit in vast offices and then come home again.

I've never been to Orange County and have only heard things about it – things like what Mr. Hedges said. And now I read this:

No one disputes that an on-duty Irvine police officer got an erection and ejaculated on a motorist during an early-morning traffic stop in Laguna Beach. The female driver reported it, DNA testing confirmed it and officer David Alex Park finally admitted it.

A nude dancer gets stalked by a cop and then, one night in December 2004, the cop decided to get into the Christmas spirit of giving so he pulls her over and jacks off onto her. And the jurors of Orange County let him get away with it. Why? The defense attorney said that the woman was "one of those 'girls who have learned the art of the tease, getting what they want . . . they’ve learned to separate men from their money.'" In other words, the woman was a siren straight out of Greek mythology. The poor police officer heard her song and was immediately struck helpless. Under the spell of the evil, salacious stripper the hapless officer "fingered her vagina and fondled her breasts before he ejaculated on her."

Who the hell were these jurors? "A jury of one woman and 11 men—many white and in their 50s or 60s."

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