"... might have been acting out, in an attitude of aggressive contempt, his own shame and emasculation — if you tried to
understand his actions, without justifying them — you would be shouted down and vilified. Imagine the outcry if you went further and speculated about why Harvey Weinstein allegedly manipulated some actresses dependent on his power into watching him while he was naked. Could it be that Mr. Weinstein, who reportedly had often been mocked for his appearance, wanted to dehumanize these women as well, while at the same time turning himself into a person who is watched and admired, like a person of beauty?... [I]n the realm of the free operation of intellect and imagination that is culture, let there bloom the suspension of moral judgment for the sake of a better understanding of our moral natures. It’s not because we owe anything to the likes of Harvey Weinstein; it’s because of what we owe ourselves."
Writes Lee Siegel in the NYT in
"Whatever Happened to Moral Rigor?" — remembering the old days when James Baldwin, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer engaged in the "imaginative inhabiting" of evildoers.
ADDED: Siegel writes:
Closer to our own time and place, Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas accidentally kills a white woman in the novel “Native Son,” and then rapes and murders a black woman; Gore Vidal wrote with sympathy about Timothy McVeigh; and David Mamet composed “Oleanna,” a prescient play about sexual harassment, accusation, guilt and innocence that, famously, had no clear resolution.
But he seems to have missed the news (last February) that
David Mamet says he's written a play about Harvey Weinstein.
Posts
73 comments:
I believe it's called "reclaiming the tools of the oppressor."
I do like the idea of better understanding our moral natures. The morality of progressivism seems to be to bulldoze the idea that we have moral natures, and to enforce upon us whatever the current social justice goals are.
So, no trying to figure out what makes a Harvey Weinstein or a Louis CK masturbate in front of women. No considering whether women really want to have to give affirmative permission at each new physical step their lover takes. No considering whether men want to have to keep asking.
Don't look now, but the sudden asssault on sexual boundaries has become a tsunami aimed directly at sex with young children. That is the last target for the lawlessness that demands public approval of their evil as human. NXIVM anyone?
Today we still revere Baldwin, but by and large we no longer follow his lead as a thinker.
Always substitute "I" for "we."
"We" is a sign of bad philosophizing.
I like to know why people do messed up things so I can avoid the people with those indicators. We need to remove the denotation that understanding something means accepting or tolerating it. We don't try and understand the flu to accept or tolerate it.
If even a fraction of the charges against him are true, Mr. Weinstein should be banished to the distant reaches of society.
It's always necessary, in arguing for common sense, to deplore what you're arguing for. It's preemptive self-defense against the mob. "You can see I'm in agreement with the very mob you people are." He does not say what charges; and if one is true, the law will take care of it.
Adolf Guggenbulh Craig has similar passages in his analysis of child sexual abuse and its hysteria. His actual argument being that the hysteria is not good for the child, so cut it out. What he actually is trying to point out is child abuse by the mob.
Uh, sorry, men aren't that deep or complicated. He wanted to get off, and he wanted the image of a pretty young thing in his mind while doing it. It's not any more complicated than that.
I suspect Harvey just wanted sex and found a way to get women to give it to him. After awhile, he didn't understand why it didn't always work.
I should note, Bill and Harvey are good friends. Did Bill Clinton want to dehumanize Monica, Paula, and Juanita, because of some childhood neglect?
As for Harvey, he's immensely powerful in terms of what actresses want, a temptation that few men are subject to. He might be a perfectly ordinary male, for all we know.
For actresses, immensely powerful men are very handy, in turn. That's how the temptation got there.
The symmetry of the nude actress and the nude Weinstein is a nice theoretical exercise. I don't know that either is dehumanizing, any more than being an actor is dehumanizing.
"For actresses, immensely powerful men are very handy, in turn."
For reporters too.
Imagine the outcry if you went further and speculated about why Joe Biden allegedly manipulated some Secret Service agents dependent on his power into watching him while he was naked.
FIFY
Agree with Matthew Sablan. Read Cold Blood in my 20s and thought it was excellent. By the end Capote had humanized Hickock & Smith; you felt very sorry for them / understood how they had become what they were. At same time you wanted to see them executed with due haste. It was worthwhile to learn what had turned these men into things capable of murdering the Clutter family. Same with HW, would love to read a similar book that convincingly tried to explain what drove him to do what he did; sounds like at some level he really loathed and wanted to destroy himself, but had just chosen the wrong industry in which to get it done.
It is easy, when in an environment where something is common and accepted, to forget that it is wrong or illegal. Especially when you have few moral scruples. (And who has fewer scruples than a Hollywood producer?)
Every man would like sex with beautiful women on demand. We don't generally abuse women for it because we have integrity, self-control, and fear of punishment. Because of his environment, Weinstein had the opportunity and no fear of punishment, so all the was left to control him was his own moral framework.
Blogger rhhardin said...
For actresses, immensely powerful men are very handy, in turn. That's how the temptation got there...
The symmetry of the nude actress and the nude Weinstein is a nice theoretical exercise.
I like the broken symmetry of Harvey Weinstein, being both handy and handsy.
I see Kennedy and Clinton as HW-lites of sorts. Unlike HW they were handsome and had the charisma that only one in 10000 men have; unlike HW they could (and did) bed dozens of beautiful women with such women's enthusiastic consent. But like HW, they still needed to go out of their way to jeopardize their presidencies/power/reputation through incomprehensible humiliations of very young women (JFK telling 19-year intern Alford to give blowjob to Powers in WH pool). Clinton's worst deeds included both women 22-25 years in age and in their mid-30s. I truly do not comprehend either's actions; even if you consider both scoundrels, their actions were completely irrational unless driven by some desire to destroy themselves.
Harvey and Stormy should hook up now.
completely irrational unless driven by some desire to destroy themselves.
What's marriage?
"[I]n the realm of the free operation of intellect and imagination that is culture" Not anymore: progs have told us that we doubleplusungood deplorables must bow down before our overlords. It was very nice of Adam Smith to think imagination and sympathy fostered moral sentiments, but he didn't reckon with the leftist transvaluation of values. Culture is the realm of intellectual control.
"let there bloom the suspension of moral judgment for the sake of a better understanding of our moral natures" The point of progressivism is to create a New (Hu)Man. Understanding matters only in the pursuit of power.
"It’s not because we owe anything to the likes of Harvey Weinstein; it’s because of what we owe ourselves." Who dat we? See, progs can't shake the habit, even when they pretend to suspend judgment.
"Whatever Happened to Moral Rigor?" Whatever happened is two things: progs degraded the culture, hollowing out any sexual morality, and progs actively enabled the predations of other progs, including Weinstein.
But the two things are really one thing, as the Universal Theory of Progressive Instrumentalism tells us. Moral rigor once stood in the way of prog power, and constrained its full exercise by prog icons, hence it had to be derided. But once the protective cocoon of prog power broke down temporarily, with Hill's loss, the calculation changed: faking moral rigor in the form of #MeToo could be turned into a tool agains the scoundrel Trump, and as a fringe benefit it served a rising prog faction, against progs no longer protected by the Clinton machine.
Of course, moral rigor, like anything else, remains strictly a tool. Imagining the actual perspective of the deplorable Other has nothing to do with it, except insofar as it helps to crush him.
Unknown: Uh, sorry, men aren't that deep or complicated. He wanted to get off, and he wanted the image of a pretty young thing in his mind while doing it. It's not any more complicated than that.
I disagree. What you describe is achievable with pornography - I'd say it's explicitly what pornography is for.
Wanting a real live woman to be there watching you do it is indicative of something else.
the hysteria is not good for the child, so cut it out
They got more victims when it was swept under the rug. I don't know if Goop is an effective cure, but the effects seem to be lasting.
Wanting a real live woman to be there watching you do it is indicative of something else.
Porn no longer works, but power does.
As previously noted, Harvey Weinstein doesn't require a PhD in Philosophy to understand. Frankly, if I had a ready means of getting Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence to give me blowjobs, I can't say that I wouldn't use it.
Most women in this country have learned to fear the uncircumcised penis. They believe that infant boys' "ugly" penis needs cosmetic surgery to remove the hideous foreskin. They want ALL babies' penises operated on, so there is no surprise in the bedroom about what they're getting. Compulsory circumcision is a crime against male babies whose effects last a lifetime.
"Whatever happened to moral rigor?"
Ask the progressives. They've been working hard to undermine morality for the last 60 years.
"a man who materbated in front of a woman..."
You're doing it wrong.
No Trumpit, the Jews and Muslims are taking over the world.
Don't be cheesy, get clipped (not you in particular).
Before I weigh Siegel's views on "moral rigor" in sexual matters, I'd like to know whether he has deigned to pay back his student loans yet. Seems as if he could afford it.
https://www.businessinsider.com/lee-siegel-suggests-you-default-on-student-loans-but-is-different-from-many-loan-borrowers-2015-6
"a man who materbated in front of a woman..."
The Oedipus complex returns.
Wanting a real live woman to be there watching you do it is indicative of something else.
Sure it does, the power to make that happen, but it still doesn't need to be as complicated as including some tangential desires to dehumanize women. That's just a ploy to allow others an excuse to dehumanize Harvey as some monster rather than a person perfectly acceptable to Bill and Hillary Clinton. If he's monster, than he may have the ability to fool the Clintons.
Oso Negro said...
"As previously noted, Harvey Weinstein doesn't require a PhD in Philosophy to understand. Frankly, if I had a ready means of getting Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence to give me blowjobs, I can't say that I wouldn't use it."
I have a hard time understanding this. To me, a major part of sexual satisfaction is the affirmation of my sexual desirability. I don't think I could take pleasure in forcing a woman who found me repulsive to have sex.
"... might have been acting out, in an attitude of aggressive contempt, his own shame and emasculation ..."
What is that supposed to mean? "shame" and "emasculation" are two perfectly good words, they have meanings, and meaningful sentences can be constructed using them. But what logic connects them with Harvey Weinstein?
Wait, is this idiot writing in the NYT? OK, I get it.
Circumcision is highly un-Spanish.
For the same reason that pork is the Spanish favorite meat.
Because both were signs that one wasn't a Jew or a Muslim. This stuff was very important for nearly a thousand years.
Interestingly in the Philippines circumcision is a uniform native custom entirely unrelated to Islam. They are all circumcized, and have been so, probably, for thousands of years. But pork is also the favorite meat.
Suspend moral vigor? The Left pursued and accomplished that a long time ago. That's how you get Harvey Weinstein, et al. In the world they constructed he wasn't doing anything wrong.
-sw
How strange to see the term “moral rigor” in a piece discussing Harvey, formerly a crown prince of the Hollywood sex cult and sometime seducer of soft core porn queens.
So, why do I call Lee Siegel an idiot? "idiot" has a meaning, and it clearly does not apply to Siegel, who tosses around phrases like "imaginative inquiry". Might I be acting out, in an attitude of aggressive contempt, my own stupidity and dementia?
Sure. You betcha.
Some of this stuff, such as what Weinstein got up to, is simply a bad habit.
Someone with a powerful personality, who hasn't learned self-discipline or been indoctrinated with a purpose in life, some higher loyalty, such as the honor and reputation of his family.
Its not complicated. Weinstein mastrubated in front of women without their consent because he got off on having the power to do so.
Was Weinstein's support of Hillary part of his pathology? Was that support causal coincidental to his increasingly vile behavior? Didn't all this malicious wanking happen at about the same time he became active in Democratic politics?......I can to some extent sympathize with someone who wishes to masturbate in front of Jennifer Lawrence, but his wish to actively campaign for Hillary indicates some dark depth of twisted libidinal energy that is difficult for the ordinary man to fathom.
If
suggest
might have been
if
would be
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if
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If I imagined a shitty article, I might suggest that one could speculate that that article might have been it.
[I]n the realm of the free operation of intellect and imagination that is culture, let there bloom the suspension of moral judgment for the sake of a better understanding of our moral natures. It’s not because we owe anything to the likes of Harvey Weinstein; it’s because of what we owe ourselves.
Uh duh I'm uh trying to understand some uh pretty uh trivial human behavior but duh I'm so uh duh inherently uh judgmental that duh it's a new uh experience derp duh dorp.
"Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deemed
Not by our feeling but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own;
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad, and in their badness reign."
Sonnet 121 William Shake-Speare (pseudonym of disgraced nobleman.)
In sonnet 121, he addresses his disgrace
"a better understanding of our moral natures"
Listen, you POS, it wasn't a group, an 'our' in your phrasing, that jacked off in front of people without their consent. Maybe you did, but I didn't and I'm pretty sure most of the people reading your article didn't either. I understand my moral nature quite well already, I don't need to suspend judgement to do so.
-sw
Interesting article and “I believe it's called "reclaiming the tools of the oppressor."” Is the perfect response.
I think we can all agree that the true victim here is Harvey Weinpig.
And of course, the men who masturbate in public.
I see Althouse has a Mailer tag. If Norman was still alive, he would've written 20 pages of lyrical bullshit about how public masturbation is a blow for Freedom and Macho self sufficiency.
Not as macho as stabbing your wife, but up there.
So now that the New York Times thinks we should understand Harvey Weinpig - without 'judging him', maybe they can move on and try to understand Donald Trump.
Me: "Hey, NYT, all this sympathy for Weinstein is fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of justice, but how about a little sympathy for people in small towns who never hurt anybody but voted for Trump because they are suffering?"
NYT: "No, they are stupid evil racist Nazi homophobic misogynist Islamophobes and beyond understanding. They need to go off and die."
BTW, I love the "Without her consent".
Why would any man want to masturbate in front of a woman?
Excuse me Miss, do you mind while I pull out my Dick and give it a few strokes, while you look on?
Thanks in advance.
I'll admit I've lead a sheltered life. Its like the Dick Pics that celebrities send to women fans on social media.
I guess some women like it, or they wouldn't do it.
But it makes no sense to me.
Robert Burton - Theory of Mind Myth:
...Show us any human behaviour, and we’ll drum up half a dozen seemingly common-sense explanations. The underlying assumption: we can know with a reasonable degree of accuracy what is going on in another’s mind.
Labelled by psychologists as theory of mind (abbreviated as ToM), this ability to understand that others have separate minds containing potentially different beliefs, desires and intentions is often said to be one of our pre-eminent cognitive skills distinguishing us from other creatures.
The fate of democracy depends on our ability to grasp and accept differing mindsets – yet the seemingly near-universal absence of reasonable public discourse suggests that this rarely occurs. We accuse those with conflicting opinions of having character defects, subliminal prejudices, faulty education, cultural brainwashing and a myriad of other ‘if only they knew better’ flaws of reasoning.
But there’s a more basic and frightening possibility. What if we really aren’t capable of a sophisticated reading of other minds?
https://aeon.co/amp/essays/think-you-can-tell-what-others-are-thinking-think-again?__twitter_impression=true
From the Chicago Tribune article about Mamet:
"Mamet does not use a computer. He has no website. No email. Twitter is out of the question. He does not text."
Wow. Jealous.
He writes longhand, then types it into a manual typewriter, and his assistant types it into a computer.
Moral outrage is I think a tool used not to condemn our enemies, rather to pardon ourselves.
@jwl:
"Show us any human behaviour, and we’ll drum up half a dozen seemingly common-sense explanations. The underlying assumption: we can know with a reasonable degree of accuracy what is going on in another’s mind."
It just depends on what you mean by "reasonable degree of accuracy." The article consider possibilities a pragmatist might consider unreasonable. A more pragmatic assumption would be that the common-sense explanations only need to be sufficiently common to coordinate actual behavior.
"this ability to understand that others have separate minds containing potentially different beliefs, desires and intentions is often said to be one of our pre-eminent cognitive skills distinguishing us from other creatures." Nothing the article contradicts this basic idea.
"The fate of democracy depends on our ability to grasp and accept differing mindsets" That involves a big leap. Fate is big and fuzzy. Why should we accept, and what does it mean to "accept," differing mindsets? All different mindsets?
"yet the seemingly near-universal absence of reasonable public discourse suggests that this rarely occurs." Well ,of course. No one grasps and accepts differing mindsets across a society as big as the U.S.
"We accuse those with conflicting opinions of having character defects, subliminal prejudices, faulty education, cultural brainwashing and a myriad of other ‘if only they knew better’ flaws of reasoning." There's that we again.
"But there’s a more basic and frightening possibility. What if we really aren’t capable of a sophisticated reading of other minds?" Again lots of weasel words: "really," "sophisticated." There is a more comforting possibility, though less fun to write about: that we really are pretty capable of a minimally sufficient reading of of other minds, including the ability to make up stories about them that serve our joint purposes.
Like the Siegel piece, the article is strangely apolitical. The problem today is not some general inability to read other minds. The problem isn't some failure of psychology or neurology. The problem is the continual prog effort to obliterate deplorable minds.
You can think about this all you want. It shouldn't change the fact that he committed a crime and should be punished.
Feel sorry for Harvey when he's dangling at the end of a rope.
(Note: Emotions exaggerated for effect only.)
Ah, yes, I remember the "imaginative inhabiting" of Jack Abbott. Unfortunately, Richard Adan does not, because he was murdered by Mailer's and Styron's pet criminal:
"Jack Henry Abbott (January 21, 1944 – February 10, 2002) was an American criminal and author. He was released from prison in 1981, while serving sentences for forgery, manslaughter and bank robbery, after gaining praise for his writing and being lauded by a number of high-profile literary critics, including author Norman Mailer. Six weeks after being paroled from prison, Abbott and two women, Veronique de St. Andre and Susan Roxas, went to a small cafe called the Binibon, located at 79 Second Avenue in Manhattan. Richard Adan, a 22-year-old actor and playwright, was there working as a waiter in his father-in-law's restaurant. Abbott got up from his table and asked Adan to direct him to the toilet. Adan explained that the toilet could be reached only through the kitchen, and because the restaurant did not have accident insurance for customers, only employees could use the bathroom. Abbott argued with him. They took their dispute outside, where Abbott stabbed Adan to death, was convicted of manslaughter, and returned to prison, where he committed suicide in 2002."
Did any of those celebrity fans of Abbott learn anything from that episode? Nah, they went on to champion Mumia the cop killer. These distinguished authors were, morally, no different from the idiot girls who sent love letters to Manson and Bundy.
David Mamet also wrote a play specifically blaming Mary Phagan, a raped and murdered child factory worker, of killing Frank, who was lynched for her murder. The dead child, whose death was as vile and brutal amd lonely as Frank's, became "the real killer" in Mamet's sickening imagination and that of many others. Mamet described the murdered child as an evil gynecological smell from beyond the grave, urging the false accusations against Frank.
Such projections, as well as those of Baldwin, Mailer, et. al. are the foundational justification for the transhistorical, identity-based guilt imposed on ordinary Americans by social justice warriors every day. They are the intellectual evil of our age.
"I'm ugly. I'm fat. My face is pockmarked and scarred. In an industry that values beauty, I'm a disgusting creature. A beast. Still I persisted within it. I used my brain and ability to see the truth in stories that could entertain, even enhance - in a small way - the human condition. I began to gain attention, then interest, then respect. This was the only kind of beauty available to a person like me. And with it I realized, for the first time in my life, I could taste the fruit that had always been forbidden. So I tasted it. And therein lies my fall from grace. It's the oldest of stories, perhaps the most predictable, and now, sadly, it's mine." - Closing argument.
In Santa Monica this winter, there were almost daily reports, and sometimes thrice-daily reports of a man who cruised around town pulling out his peter for display to anonymous women and sometimes their children as well. One person, a 68yo homeless guy, was briefly jailed for such an offense and may have been responsible for most or even all the incidents.
The authorities didn't seem to know what to do with the guy, and so he was back on the street "in a flash."
Do we understand why they commit the crime or do we only understand why they commit the crime they do commit? Aren't there hundreds and thousands and maybe millions who have any sort of bad time you want to imagine in their lives and yet they don't commit the type of crime that their lives point toward in the liberal imagination. Many, many live in bad neighborhoods but don't sell drugs. Many, many are poor but they don't rob and beat their neighbors. So wouldn't it be an exercise of empathy to imagine one person refusing to act badly and another person doing it? Why does that happen? Suppose there was a Hollywood director who didn't assault starlets. Why? Or perhaps that's too much of a stretch. Or suppose you came from wealthy family and while drunk ran your car off a bridge into a pond and escaped and ran for help for your passenger and saved her but lost a promising career? Why would someone do that? Suppose you were a reporter ordered to produce at least one attack story on a certain deplorable social group at least once week or lose your job but after a while you wanted to walk away and did. What made you do it? What made you not do it?
“Why would any man want to masturbate in front of a woman?
Excuse me Miss, do you mind while I pull out my Dick and give it a few strokes, while you look on?”
Reminds me of two sisters I know. Back in the early 1970s they were hitch hiking through France. The driver who picked the up started to beat himself off. The younger sister in the backseat, who had probably never seen a male sex organ personally before that, started screaming and hitting him. He promptly pulled over, let them out, and then probably went to finish his business elsewhere, with his dirty thoughts of the two of them locked into his memory. The older one was less offended, having spent the previous year there, explaining that most of the French men she had met there were perverts.
Leo Frank. Another one of those stories that you get completely wrong, until you dig into the facts.
The guy was found guilty, and quite rightly, of rape/murder. Was sentenced to hang, and then it looked like his powerful Yankee friends were going to get his death sentence commuted to the life, so the he was lynched.
Its still being used as some big act of antisemitism. Which is wasn't.
But you have to plow through a lot of crap, to get to the truth.
"
“Why would any man want to masturbate in front of a woman?"
There is a video around called "Best woman driver" in which the woman (in Britain) is driving and jerks the guy off at the same time.
Doesn't miss a trick, so to speak.
I agree almost completely with what Siegel wrote, but it took a second reading to get there for a few reasons.
First is the literary name-dropping. I find it off-putting but I suppose it's an expected ego boost for Times readers.
Second is his use of phrases that could mean several things without clearly defining them. Moral rigor is one. But another, and one that I think is causing some mis-reading of his point, is "suspension of moral judgement." By this he doesn't mean that we should not make moral judgements but that we should suspend or delay those judgements until we have fully evaluated the situation. Seems like common sense to me.
Third is that I realized that he wasn't writing for me, but for the readers and writers at the Times and their ilk. And what he's saying obliquely to those people is that their rush to judgement on Weinstein is due to the fact that if they take a close look at his motivation and mentality they will find that they are looking at themselves and their own destruction of societal norms.
He's saying "You can't handle the truth" and thus you refuse to face it.
Or, I could be wrong.
I wonder if Mamet, or any dramatist, speaks the lines to himself, to hear how they sound.
The reason that I don't fully agree with Siegel is that much of what he calls for has happened. Some of it right here on the Althouse blog and in it's comments.
@Jupiter - being sexually desirable in the eyes of the beholder is one means of gaining access. Offering them parts in a film is another, and apparently an old tradition in Hollywood
Has the writer read Oleanna? Hardly in the same vein.
Oleanna is more like The Trial specific to sexual harassment.
driving and jerks the guy off at the same time.
With practice, anyone can drive a stick.
@Rabel:
"what he's saying obliquely to those people is that their rush to judgement on Weinstein is due to the fact that if they take a close look at his motivation and mentality they will find that they are looking at themselves and their own destruction of societal norms."
Interesting take. But it requires a closer look at how they went about destroying norms. It could be meant generically--we are all sinners, particularly we toxically masculine men, and by our sinful actions we destroy societal norms, particularly the norm that tells us to be nice to women. Or it could be meant historically--in the 60s, progressives destroyed bourgeois-Christian heteronormative sexual morality, after which anything went. Or it could be meant politically--progressives have in fact suspended moral judgment unless it can be used politically, and in fellow progressives have specifically enabled what once was considered bad behavior.
The middle one, Sebastian.
Read, if you wish, Siegel's answer to the first question in this interview. It influenced my opinion of the man. He knows his audience.
@rcocean: Leo Frank was innocent...I say this with a good bit of research in the archives.
The killer was a black male rapist who worked in maintenance in the factory. He lived in Reynoldstown, next to Cabbagetown, where I lived 80 years later.
The point is this: Mamet and company have sought special attention to Leo Frank for decades. They are happy to persecute and smear the memory of other loved and murdered
people to achieve the goal of attention while avoiding the,crime,tself...Shame on them.
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