This raises the disturbing question of why anyone in their right mind is influenced by such celebrities. Presumably it is mostly those who are even more limited intellectually than the celebrity in question, or, in this case, big fans of “Who’s the Boss?”
Milano’s guest column in Deadline explaining why the #MeToo shill still supports Joe Biden is signature significance for someone who desperately needed to get a better education, or at least read a lot more before trying to “explain” anything, much less hang out a virtual shingle as an opinion-maker.
She outs herself as a victim of the Dunning-Kruger Effect right off the bat (I miss baseball). There’s no need to read on after this becomes obvious, by the third paragraph of her essay:
“As an activist, it can be very easy to develop a black and white view of the world: things are clearly wrong or clearly right. Harvey Weinstein’s decades of rape were clearly wrong. Donald Trump’s alleged sexual assaults were clearly wrong. Brett Kavanaugh’s actions, told consistently over decades by his victim (and supported by her polygraph results), were clearly wrong. So were Matt Lauer’s, Bill Cosby’s and so many others. As we started holding politicians and business leaders and celebrities around the world accountable for their actions, it was easy to sort things into their respective buckets: this is wrong, this is right. Holding people accountable for their actions was not only right, it was just. Except it’s not always so easy, and living in the gray areas is something we’re trying to figure out in the world of social media. But here’s something social media doesn’t afford us–nuance. The world is gray. And as uncomfortable as that makes people, gray is where the real change happens. Black and white is easy… Gray is where the conversations which continue to swirl around powerful men get started…. It’s not up to women to admonish or absolve perpetrators, or be regarded as complicit when we don’t denounce them. Nothing makes this clearer than the women who are still supporting Joe Biden even with these accusations. Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Amy Klobuchar, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren have all endorsed Biden and like me, continue to support him…. This is the shitty position we are in as women…. Believing women was never about ‘Believe all women no matter what they say,’ it was about changing the culture of NOT believing women by default…. I hope you’ll meet me in the gray to talk and to help us both find the way out.”
Wait..what? Obviously—well, “obviously” if you know what the words you are using mean—“Donald Trump’s alleged sexual assaults” are not “clearly wrong,” because they are alleged and unproven, so we don’t know if they occurred. If they didn’t occur as claimed, they aren’t “clearly wrong.”
What is clearly wrong is to assume an accusation is fair and accurate because you don’t like the accused or find it convenient to believe the worst about him. That’s bias; that’s clearly wrong. “Brett Kavanaugh’s actions” are also alleged: stating that they occurred, like Milano has, is also clearly wrong for the same reason it is unethical to assume that the accusations against Trump were accurate.
There are two additional problems that an aspiring analyst who deserves to be taken seriously cannot make. Milano falsely states that Blasey- Ford’s account was “told consistently over decades.” What decades would those be? By Blasey-Ford’s own admission, she seems not to have talked about the alleged assault at all for decades until it was “uncovered” in sessions with a couples therapist in 2012. Even at that time, she didn’t name Kavanaugh—I’d call that a material variation with the story she told Congress—and the therapist’s notes from 2012 mentioned four attackers, not two. That was a mistake, the “survivor” said.
Oh. That clears things up.
This means that Milano is writing an opinion about an event she hasn’t researched, which is the watermark of both an amateur and a fool.
Her trusting reference to the polygraph is another tell. Polygraphs are not reliable, because people who are lying can beat them, and because at best they can only suggest whether the subject believes what they are saying, not that that what they are saying is accurate and true. There is also evidence that Blasey-Ford, as a psychologist, has coached others regarding how to take a polygraph, and the test she passed did not conform to the standards of practice. The lie detector test was never emphasized by Kavanaugh’s opponents in the Senate hearings because they realized doing so would make them look desperate and gullible—you know, like Milano.
Got it, Alyssa: you’re an idiot. You don’t know what alleged means, and your definition of gray is ‘accusations against people I Iike and don’t want to be guilty.’ Unproven accusations against people you don’t like and support, in contrast, prove wrongful conduct.
There’s no reason to finish your opinion piece, because you are incapable of critical thought. You are biased and don’t recognize your bias; you are making a clearly illogical argument that a precocious child could deconstruct (and a half-competent lawyer could shred like facial tissue) and don’t realize it. You are so incapable of recognizing your own limitations that you allow your junk to be published, not realizing that it disqualifies you as the persuasive activist you claim to be.
There is enough evidence of nascent intelligence in the article to hint of what might have been, if the actress hadn’t grown up on a set convinced, like most child-stars are, of their magnificence, and had at least acquainted herself with the thought processes of scholars, philosophers, and history’s sages. Unfortunately, Alyssa Milano has spent far more time pondering the words of Aaron Spelling than those of, for instance, Swedish statistician and physician Hans Rosling, at least by listening to his TED talks.
Yes, it’s all very sad. It is still no excuse for social media hacks polluting serious national discussion involving the trustworthiness of our next President.
Ethics Alarms 
Blame her parents.
They put her in show business which put her in a Hollywood bubble where nearly everyone believes the same thing, where values and ethics are skewed and where nearly every kid who grows up in that environment has an education that had to be wedged in between rehearsals and filming.
Blame them up to a point. Milano is an adult now and free to make her own choices. She has all the time in the world, and has for a long time, to realize that she needs to backfill sketchy education. She can read books that might have been assigned in classes she did not take, do math problems under the guidance of all kinds of internet gurus… its all there. So she, at this point, needs to take responsibility.
This, like so many people and organizations claiming to advocate for a particular side of an issue, has little or nothing to do with their supposed issue advocacy, but instead is just a front for creating a coalition of constituencies intended on undermining the US Constitution. If it diminishes or destroys America’s founding document, regardless if it runs afoul of their claimed issue advocacy, they justify it and support it.
The ACLU is a good example; even when it took the odd conservative fig leaf case.
I think you give Alyssa Milano way too much credit. She wouldn’t know what the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or any other important document from or about this nation says about anything – she clearly has no idea what burdens of proof are, that causes of action are made up of elements, and that those elements are required for proper adjudication of the claim*. To her, it is a great platform to reignite her on-life-support career. We talk about her, we think about her, we analyze her musings as if they are worthy of such analysis, and we gripe about her attendance mugging for cameras at the Kavanaugh hearings. Her agent is excellent, though, probably sitting back waiting for those roles to come rolling in.
jvb
*Ed. Note: The author of this comment is a jerk but he understands that we are not talking about a court of law but the court of public opinion where just about anything goes. He even knows that Joe Biden’s interview with Mika Brzezinski this morning was an absolute disaster from a public relations standpoint even though Mika Brzezinski did her dead level best to help him. The comment’s author gets that we like to watch car wrecks but that was painful.
Think you may have missed my point. The indoctrinated via their indoctrination do this reflexively. Little or no thought is required. Circle the wagons around their allies to further their cause pretty much instinctively.
It is, no question.
But what’s even more inexcusable are people allowing themselves to believe this transparent hackery. Whether that speaks more to the corruption of our education system or the intellectual laziness to which many have not only become accustomed, but display like a badge of honor, I can’t say for certain.
What I can say is that, to quote and old commercial, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Clearly, Milano is an intelligent woman who has wasted her mind on emotional gobbledegook, and now seeks to disqualify herself as capable of a single rational thought that isn’t informed by her bias, preconceptions, and narcissism.
Good job, Alyssa. If throwing away your brain was your objective, you are a spectacular and unqualified success. And in your paroxysm of uninformed commentary, you are helping to turn the brains of others down a similar path.
In other words, you’ve become a virus of the mind.
I have to agree that Alyssa is a twit but I did find it interesting to observe her thought process as she tried to climb out of the hole she dug. As usual, rather than just quit digging she found a bigger shovel.
I totally agree with your statement regarding the unreliability of polygraphs but I do have a quibble with “There is also evidence that Blasey-Ford, as a psychiatrist, has coached others regarding how to beat polygraphs, “. Blasey-Ford is not a psychiatrist, she is a psychologist. This doesn’t change the fact that she would have the requisite knowledge to coach someone. Psychiatrist hate being confused with psychologists and I’m sure the feeling is mutual.
Another issue is that according to the letter from her ex-boyfriend she didn’t specifically coach someone to beat the polygraph but explained in detail what to expect, how polygraphs work, and helped the person she coached, Monica McLean, become less nervous about the exam. I’ve taken polygraphs twice, once when applying for a job at NSA and again in a legal proceeding. On both occasions I was provided the same type coaching before the exam by the examiners and in the legal situation by my attorney also.
The more disturbing point to me is that when questioned by prosecutor Mitchell as to whether she had ever given tips or advice to someone who was looking to take a polygraph test, Blasey-Ford replied “never”. McLean, who was one of the signers of the open letter supporting Blasey-Ford, denied that Blasey-Ford had ever coached her. Maybe we need another round of polygraph exams or possibly just have Monica and the ex lick red-hot metal as the Bedouin tribes did to detect a liar.
Talk about rabbit holes. Polygraphs are acknowledged to be unreliable, but we argue over whether knowing how to compose oneself so you don’t get read as lying is “coaching.” Her ex-boyfriend’s letter was, as they say, “credible,” and I’d call what he described coaching.
Thanks for the psychiatrist/psychologist correction, not that I have much trust in either profession.
Upon re-reading the section, I also softened the description of what her coaching was aimed at. My professional postion is that having someone coach you before a polygraph is like being tutored before the SATs: it undermines whatever integrity the test is supposed to have.
Monica McLean, California lawyer, was supposedly coached by Blasey-Ford about the mechanics of lie detector tests, or so they say. But, Monica McLean worked with Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Bruce Ohr in the United States Justice Department. All three of them were instrumental in advancing the DOJ/FBI probes into Trump, Flynn, and Carter Page. How deep does this shadow state even run?
jvb
The post does a great job dismantling her opening observations but I find her garbled conclusions truly problematic:
“Gray is where the conversations which continue to swirl around powerful men get started….”
So is it black and white or gray? When things get nuanced is when these problems can be addressed?
“It’s not up to women to admonish or absolve perpetrators, or be regarded as complicit when we don’t denounce them.”
How so, exactly? If women aren’t supposed to do these things, who is? Men? I guess this means victims have no role in this?
“Nothing makes this clearer than the women who are still supporting Joe Biden even with these accusations. Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Amy Klobuchar, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren have all endorsed Biden and like me, continue to support him….”
So, if you support Joe Biden even though he’s a pig like Weinstein, it’s men’s fault? But not Joe’s?
“This is the shitty position we are in as women….”
Ahah! Men misbehave but they are in power so women have to let it pass if it’s one of OUR guys who’s a miscreant. Those damned men!
“Believing women was never about ‘Believe all women no matter what they say,’ it was about changing the culture of NOT believing women by default….”
Okay, at least we’re getting down to the nub here. Believing all women merely means believing all women we want people to believer or whom we believe are believable. It’s just kind of an opening bid.”
“I hope you’ll meet me in the gray to talk and to help us both find the way out.”
Sorry Alyssa, you lost me there. That’s just Authentic Frontier Gibberish. We’re to meet you metaphorically somewhere where men have placed us and we have to figure some way out? What might that be? We have to believe some women and not believer others? According to what criteria? We believe them depending on whom they’re accusing and the accused’s position on abortion or whether the accused purports to believe all women, even if there are certain women we are not to believe? And it’s piggish men who put us in the position where we can’t just believe all women? We need to undo millennia of Western thought, centuries of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence? Tarot cards might help us. Dunking? Sticking a hot sword on people’s tongues?
This is the part I find terrifying.
OB quotes Milano’s nonsense:
“Nothing makes this clearer than the women who are still supporting Joe Biden even with these accusations. Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Amy Klobuchar, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren have all endorsed Biden and like me, continue to support him….”
You know that the group of women included in Milano’s piece had to winced when she called them out. Maybe Milano is smarted than I thought but she basically said, “they, like me, are hypocrites and hacks because they, like me, want Biden to win so we aren’t gonna talk about his Read problem.” That had to sting.
jvb