Would you be nervous if your son were dating a girl who reads so much of this?
Karen Read Did It. "What I want to do in this last post is explain, comprehensively and for posterity, why Karen Read is one of those lucky 10 guilty people who gets to go free." It is long and very thorough. The interesting question is why so many originally uninvolved middle-aged women supported her vehemently, frequently mentioning how pretty she is.
The Hit Job The NYT covers Skrmetti and gender transitioning clinics for children.
Orwell on Gandhi I must have seen parts of this, as a few sentences seemed familiar. But I am quite certain I had not seen the whole thing.
4 comments:
Yes, I would be worried.
And yes, why the support for her? Is this some sort of dark fantasy that she played out and others wished they could? A demographic breakdown of support might be enlightening.
I think I can see why Read got hung juries, and I think AnonyMassLawyer is making the same mistake the prosecution likely did in the trials, and over blaming pro-defense media coverage though that likely did affect general public support for Read.
He and his readers are people of above average intelligence, and more over are probably well acquainted with the processes of resolving ambiguous data sources into a coherent narrative. Of course the timeline looks like a slam-dunk to them but put a couple of people with average intelligence, a bias to linear thinking, and some sympathy for Read on the jury and it's going to sound like mumbo-jumbo, a deliberate alignment of random events followed by shady excuses for why you are presenting one set of phone data as accurate and another set from the same phone as inaccurate. I think this is probably a bigger reason for the general public support for Read rather than any dark fantasies, as well.
Following it closely up here, I think you are largely right. There has been one juror who has already revealed that she misrepresented herself as having no knowledge of the first trial. There are always people who believe that the official story is never true, the real story is always hidden and secret, requiring people of suspicious minds to see through. The pattern of attractive women being believed innocent while men in authority are guilty is quite common in these causes. In NH we had the Pame Smart case years ago that attracted a similar demographic of protestors and true believers.
Excellent comments here. Living at the epicenter of the Read saga, it’s been hard to come by thoughtful yet dispassionate takes.
I think one thing to note here (that James comment made me think of) is there’s probably really 4 distinct groups of people when it comes to this case, at least here in Norfolk County.
There the true believers, those who gave money, stood in front of courthouses, and viciously harassed the witnesses and anyone else involved in the case. I’ve seen their handiwork myself for the last 2 years: threats, vandalism, public mobs screaming at people, stalking, etc. They took the case out of the courtroom, and were a force to be reckoned with. This was all pro-Karen activity for about a year or so, though it eventually inspired some activity in the opposite direction. This is the bulk of what police had to contain.
Next group is those who paid attention but didn’t do anything in real life. This group was also interesting because if you wanted to follow the trial at all online, the major spaces to watch/discuss were all run by people in the first group. Either way, this group is more evenly divided between pro and anti Karen, because a lot of people noted that what was promised by the defense never materialized. I actually think that may have been a strength in the first trial, because the contrast was hard for people to ignore.
The third group is those who sort of followed it. These people are almost all pro Karen, because the media has been slanted. After the first hung jury I had several people ask me for more information because they were under the impression this was an open and shut case. A lot believe things happen that never did.
Finally, you have the people who don’t care and are sick of it. This is a larger group than many people want to believe. Kind of like in hard fought presidential elections where you realize 40% of people don’t vote at all.
Anyway, I think the prosecution had a tough time figuring out who to aim their case at. The first time they went with “debunk the conspiracy” and the second time they went with “ignore the conspiracy, press hard on the evidence”. Neither was fully effective. I do wonder if a closing about how to resolve conflicting evidence would have helped, but there’s only so much time for that sort of education during a trial. The state is rightly limited in the stories they can spin, the press less so. With the new true crime media ecosystem, I don’t know how you address everything at once.
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