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GEORGE HOOK PUBLICLY RAPED — 4 Comments

  1. The first sensible commentary I’ve read on both George Hooks views and the whole mythical belief that now that we all accept that men and women are equal they, women, should be allowed to put themselves in a potentially dangerous situation and some how their “equalness” will grant them immunity from harm. I’m seventy, and in all my travels around the world I have always been aware that there are “no-go” areas in every micro cosmic and macro cosmic parts of society, for men and for women. You can’t just walk into a dodgy situation, and I can’t imagine a much dodgier one than the one in this story and expect that by divine right you will emerge unscathed. The real world doesn’t work like that. The real world is populated with predators, predominantly but not exclusively male, and bad things happen all too often when you make unwise decisions.I should just add that I’m the father of three daughters so I have a vested interest in this subject.

  2. Paul,
    I welcome your comments. I grew up in a house with a Mother and four sisters, my Father having passed away and my older brother was overseas. To this day I adore all four sisters, but I view them as equal yet different to me. As the second youngest, rape was never discussed in front of me and indeed I was seventeen before I ever heard of it. But what I do remember vividly was my Mother checking up on my sisters before they went out on dates. Skirt lengths were the issue and I can still hear the woman say, “You’re asking for trouble going out dressed like a street walker.”
    Somehow today, you imagine if a Mother said that to her daughter, social services would show up to put the Mother on some course or other. Even worse, if her daughter were then raped, she would appear on Joe Duffy and celebrity status would be conferred on her. It’s all become very sad and stupid so the best we can do is look after our own.

  3. Well thought out and well written John, not easy for a difficult subject.

    George’s use of the word “blame” was what really did him in I’m afraid. If he’d talked about “responsibility” instead, and also about the responsibility of the team member who brought her back and put her in that situation and the responsibility of any friends she might have been with that evening to have either gone with her for protection in numbers or dissuaded her… if George had done any or all of those things he might have avoided some of the result.

    In terms of the response to his words though, I think I’d agree with you in the larger sense of what we’re seeing in terms of “politically correct” censorship of speech out there. There’s a big difference between going off on a long rant about how great it is to rape or murder or even drink, smoke, or do drugs; or giving an address to a crowd that encourages racism or religious intolerance and leading a chant full of trigger words/phrases …

    … and simply considering in a thoughtful way such actions and their repercussions and harms without fear that straying in hypothetical thought from the “Approved Party Line” will be met with a vicious attack on one’s life, career, and reputation. I went to Catholic School for 16 years, and while I remember some parents angrily calling the principle in high school to complain about how our Religion teachers (almost always Christian Brothers) were “questioning” the Bible, there was never a concern that they would be fired or cast out of the order or anything for simply leading class discussions where “improper” thoughts might be expressed for discussion.

    Freedom of speech is an extremely important value. The times it should be limited ought to be very rare, and such limitations should be used only in cases of extreme abuse of such freedom or total disregard of the harm that exercising such freedom could have (e.g., the classic “Yelling ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded theater.”)

    From your description it sounds like Hooks should have been called in to a meeting with management and asked to apologize on air for his choice of words, but nothing to the extent described beyond that seemed justified from your story.

    It’d be interesting to see what would happen in our media if the same “Cloak Of Protection” were extended to shield smokers from on-air aspersions of various types. There’d certainly be a helluva lotta folks looking for new jobs.

    – MJM

    • Thanks Michael,

      You are so right about free speech. There can be no debate ever if only one side of the argument is permitted to be voiced. In the case of Hook, the odious establishment has closed ranks with the so-called liberal left so Georgie-Boy is finished. Like the old wild west saying, “First we gonna try ya, then we gonna hang ya.” I have little time for the stupidity of modern behavior. The nonsense around gender-free toilets and such like, leaves me cold. But even common sense seems gone and in its place is group-think, propaganda and selfish greed. People like Hook are just modern human sacrifices to the God of self-righteousness.

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