Accused Molester Rep. Dan Johnson commits suicide on bridge in Mt. Washington
- Thread starter studyguy
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Better idea might be to just accept the 24-hour ban and move on.
speiky Please check your PMs.
To be clear, that poster was banned for the reason displayed; he advocated the rape of prisoners, and made extremely racist comments. We do not consider support of the death penalty, as a political opinion, to be inherently bannable, no.
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What an extraordinary story this is. Two things strike me (and I'm not in any way trying to diminish Johnson's own responsibility for his acts over the years or to downplay the sexual assault allegation here):
1) Journalism is a deadly weapon.
Kycir released their reporting on Monday, and by Wednesday a man is dead by his own hand. This is a stark reminder that journalism needs to be done responsibly and thoroughly and well. The reporting in this case seems to have been well-researched, properly presented, and with adequate opportunity for response and rebuttal. But it worries me greatly that similar things could happen, probably do happen, with less well-researched and even with utterly false reporting.
2) Was sexual assault really the most important thing here?
It seems odd to me that in the second-hand reporting it is the sexual assault allegation that takes top, and sometimes the only, billing. We've got a story of long-standing self-aggrandising outright lies, of serious breaches of charity regulations, of multiple arson, insurance fraud, criminal conspiracy, outright blatant racism, continual unlicensed alcohol sales, egregious electioneering and - according to some media outlets - it's all about one allegation of sexual assault? With all respect to the victim and due process and whatnot, this seems to seriously understate the nature of the story and the nature of the man at the heart of it - and to understate or brush over the failures of the institutions - legal, regulatory and political - that failed to out him sooner.
1) Journalism is a deadly weapon.
Kycir released their reporting on Monday, and by Wednesday a man is dead by his own hand. This is a stark reminder that journalism needs to be done responsibly and thoroughly and well. The reporting in this case seems to have been well-researched, properly presented, and with adequate opportunity for response and rebuttal. But it worries me greatly that similar things could happen, probably do happen, with less well-researched and even with utterly false reporting.
2) Was sexual assault really the most important thing here?
It seems odd to me that in the second-hand reporting it is the sexual assault allegation that takes top, and sometimes the only, billing. We've got a story of long-standing self-aggrandising outright lies, of serious breaches of charity regulations, of multiple arson, insurance fraud, criminal conspiracy, outright blatant racism, continual unlicensed alcohol sales, egregious electioneering and - according to some media outlets - it's all about one allegation of sexual assault? With all respect to the victim and due process and whatnot, this seems to seriously understate the nature of the story and the nature of the man at the heart of it - and to understate or brush over the failures of the institutions - legal, regulatory and political - that failed to out him sooner.
As for point number one, I think it'd be more fair to say that journalism is a tool; it's purpose is to inform: good information sends you in one direction, and bad information sends you another. We, today in the US, have a President who believes journalism is phony -- good journalism -- and it has never been more important for regular people to stand up for it when it is executed well, and to demand better from those that execute it poorly. While there may be a salient point to make about the flow of information possibly playing a role in other cases, I don't necessarily think it's a helpful tone to take *right now* as the very notion of facts being malleable is in debate.
On point number two, I guess I'd let that be a thing up to the reader rather than trying to reduce it to some objective quality. Currently, crimes of a sexual nature are gripping peoples' attention in a very important and hopefully long-lasting way, and so I think it would only be natural that it becomes the focal point in discussion of an odious man. I would give the other topics time to resurface if or when that becomes necessary, but I don't think it best to really start qualifying things at this point as more or less important, considering the event.
I don't mean this to sound like an attack, like, at all, but the opening of your post basically sounds like "Hey, not trying to reduce Johnson's responsibility in his own suicide but... [enter argument that as a thesis probably attempts to reduce his responsibility in his own suicide]" and the same for the sexual allegation. If you're not trying to do this, I feel like the statements you've made are not at all in support of your intentions here.
Oh heavens, that doesn't come across as an attack at all. Perfectly sane points. I'd written the post first and only stuck that parenthetical bit in afterwards as I thought it might come across as diminishing either his own responsibility and/or the importance of sexual assault. It looks like it might have made it look worse - sorry about that.
Off to work now, but I'll respond substantially later.
Thank you for clarifying. I was drinking last night and probably should have refrained from posting altogether, as I was overly-agitated about life when writing it.
Just want to reiterate how amazing of a job the mods are doing here. It's a night and day difference compared to what this community is used to, and I sincerely appreciate the team's patience and hard work. Sorry if I came across as accusatory or otherwise unkind in my post <3
From all accounts this guy was a horrid piece of shit, from being almost assuredly a rapist to an open racist. I wouldn't exactly go dancing on his grave, that's disrespectful to his family and friends, but i will never subscribe to the notion that we shouldn't talk ill of the dead. Fuck that. Let's not wash away the terrible shit he did just because he's dead. His legacy is in his actions, if he wanted a better one, he should have been a better person.
The journalists haven't done anything wrong. They reported on accusations against a public official. They're not responsible for his mental state. To my knowledge, there wasn't any harassment or other paparazzi nonsense going on.
Entirely depends on how much you weight accusations.
Entirely depends on how much you weight accusations.
If anything more guilt will be felt by the victim for speaking out. Terrible for all concerned.
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It's hard (actually, impossible) to feel sorry for this guy. There's no excuse for rape. I don't give a shit about his life or his traumas, he raped a girl and he had to pay for it.
Of the sexual assault? Highly unlikely to have been anyone but him. There's positive identification from the victim, who was a member of his church and a friend of his daughter, and the assault took place in his house in the same room where his daughter was asleep.
Of the 2xarson, 2xinsurance fraud, criminal conspiracy, email forgery, illicit alcohol sales, abuse of charity regulations etc etc? Nobody else stood to benefit but him and possibly his wife, but there is no evidence to directly implicate her.
It is all on him.
Firmly believe he didn't kill himself because of the assault, it's because he was outed as the fraud he was. If only the assault had become public he'd be cool with that. It's revealing that he wasn't in the UN or 911 or whatever what humiliated him.
So the wife really is going to run for his seat, huh?
This sounds like a nasty, hurtful campaign for everyone involved. Since I don't believe the wife is innocent here, I'll hope for her kids that she loses quickly or never gets in. Barring that, I hope she is publicly humiliated and sent back to the bed she shared with a rapist.
This sounds like a nasty, hurtful campaign for everyone involved. Since I don't believe the wife is innocent here, I'll hope for her kids that she loses quickly or never gets in. Barring that, I hope she is publicly humiliated and sent back to the bed she shared with a rapist.
That's partly it of course. I think another aspect is that the other revelations took away what would have been his defence against the sexual assault allegations. He would have been planning on doing what everyone else always does - traduce the victim, attack her credibility as a witness, stand on his record as an upstanding man of god without a blemish on his character. That wouldn't work anymore, not now everything is out.
Trying to cast no judgements, I'm absolutely shocked that this kind of writing/rhetoric:
came from an elected representative.
In the UK if an MP posted even half of a text like that anywhere they're be immediately fired.
Sorry to hear about this guy, nobody deserves death.
came from an elected representative.
In the UK if an MP posted even half of a text like that anywhere they're be immediately fired.
Sorry to hear about this guy, nobody deserves death.
I don't think he was too worried about being fired honestly. And I don't know if that should be the takeaway from a suicide note
Spoo, picking up from earlier today (points in reverse order)
Well, it can only be up to the reader if the reader is presented with it. And at least CNN here and the Guardian here have made it only about the sexual assault - which brushes a hell of a lot under the carpet, makes the suicide harder to comprehend, and completely misses all the other things that had already been out in the open and should have made him unfit for public office far far earlier.
That's the point I was trying (unsuccessfully) to make, that the focus on the sexual assault in this case misses out pretty well all of the important context, that it makes it look very much like all the other sexual assault cases where the credibility of the victim is questioned whereas here the credibility of the accused is what is really in issue.
Fair enough. I was pushing the point for effect. My fear is that one of these days we'll have a fake-news-created suicide, and there will be concerns about how potential criminal liability there might rebound on the actual real journalists.
Well, it can only be up to the reader if the reader is presented with it. And at least CNN here and the Guardian here have made it only about the sexual assault - which brushes a hell of a lot under the carpet, makes the suicide harder to comprehend, and completely misses all the other things that had already been out in the open and should have made him unfit for public office far far earlier.
That's the point I was trying (unsuccessfully) to make, that the focus on the sexual assault in this case misses out pretty well all of the important context, that it makes it look very much like all the other sexual assault cases where the credibility of the victim is questioned whereas here the credibility of the accused is what is really in issue.
Fair enough. I was pushing the point for effect. My fear is that one of these days we'll have a fake-news-created suicide, and there will be concerns about how potential criminal liability there might rebound on the actual real journalists.
I literally distanced what i was saying from the suicide note angle - I've seen similar things, if not as extreme, from other representatives. It's just a very different political landscape. God and religion enters into the rhetoric very, very rarely.
I suppose it's somewhat natural to react in a kind of cause and effect way here, where some agencies will look toward the straw that broke the camel's back, rather than the load already there. We can't really derive much from his final note other than the guy was either severely disturbed, ashamed, or a mix of the two, but even then it's sort of incoherent. That he was not fit for office will now be seen as something of an afterthought now, while the sexual assault -- because of the current climate -- will be more discussed and possibly more relevant to his immediate death, which is the focus of these articles.
Something like that is possible -- and whether or not the information is true or false actually prompting it would not make the suicide itself less of an issue, only that the the one may be avoidable. In a vacuum, it might be worth a discussion, but I feel like right now with current attacks on truth and journalism, debating it would only serve the purpose of those who maliciously spread false information (or attempt to) anyway, like the Veritas people, rather than the people working to serve the truth in an eager fashion. For what it's worth I don't disagree with you out of hand, I'm just not sure 1) if it's likely to happen in the case of someone who is innocent and accused (innocent people may have more reason to go on living than non-innocent people, for example), 2) if it did happen, how we would be able to know without a very careful explanation by those involved, and 3) if we could tie it, 100% to the media, would it *actually* be their fault (this last point may be entirely conditional on the truth). In other words, if I accuse someone of being a rapist and they commit suicide, but it turns out they are a rapist, am I involved in the same way as if I had accused someone of the same and it turned out to be false?
I would hope ultimately that respectable news agencies consider the impact of their words, even and especially the 100% verified ones. Certainly, if it were the case that a fake accusation led to the death of an innocent person, and that could be shown in the immediate, then probably there would be hell to pay for such a thing -- however, if the climate continues to be one extremely combative to *all* forms of journalism, then yes, there's the possibility of a rebound on the "good guys and gals" of journalism. But that's to entertain, briefly, the thought, rather than loiter on it.
