Darkness on the eve of election.

The view from Memeorandum — where I've gone for many years to see an overview of the day's talked about headlines — is a non-view: 

 Jamison Foser / Finding Gravity:

The New York Times invents a Democratic scandal while ignoring a new Trump rape allegation  —  America is four days out from the end of an election in which America's deeply unpopular fascist ruling party is trying to retain control of Congress.  The week began with yet another new rape allegation … 

Discussion: The Nation, Fox News, The Wrap and New York Times

RELATED:

 Greg Sargent / New Republic:

Inside Trump's Dark Plot to Keep Senate in GOP Hands Even If Dems Win  —  On Thursday night, the Republican governor of Alaska refused to commit to certifying the outcome in the Senate race if Democrat Mary Peltola wins.  Which means that if she does triumph, refusing to seat Peltola … 

Discussion: Political.org, Anchorage Daily News, The Federalist, Politico, Axios and Washington Examiner

 New York Times:
Justice Dept. Confirms Alaska Inquiry Even as Its Focus Remains Unclear

Discussion: Associated Press, Newsweek, Political.org, Eurasia Review, WJBK-TV, Alaska Public Media, The Hill, Mediaite, Fox News, The Daily Wire and The Guardian

It's a story of woeful blindness: the focus is unclear, the plot is dark, things that do not exist are seen, and things that exist are unseen.

This gets my favorite tag: "seen and unseen."

And, yes, I know: What the hell is "Finding Gravity"? I'll just say the NYT did a big investigation before publishing its story on the dirty-trick name-game in Alaska. If there's a "new rape allegation," maybe the Times is at the stage of doing an investigation. You can't seriously believe that every allegation of rape should be published immediately... and on the eve of elections. 

"If sexual misconduct prevents a victim from taking full advantage of her education, then the institution has to address it."

"That responsibility is an awkward fit in some ways, but it reflects the reality that colleges are not just classrooms; they are a very particular kind of community in which all members have a duty of care toward one another. The Cornell case shows how hard it can be for universities to enforce Title IX well and also why they have to keep trying...."

Writes Emily Bazelon, in "This Is One of the Saddest Facts About the Cornell Rape Case" (NYT).

The sad fact in question is that Jane Doe dropped out, and she did not complete her degree elsewhere. Her education — her path to a career — was disrupted. 

"Recently, Liam and his wife accompanied the boys’ Little League team to a Major League Baseball game... and the team got rowdy and disruptive during the game."

"'Not violent, but that loud posturing, trying to assert dominance, that kids do,' Liam explains. 'The boys were in a group initiation to see how far they could push things. The coach wasn’t doing anything to stop it. Without boundaries, without anyone stepping up, it would have devolved.' Liam and his wife warned their sons that they needed to calm down, but they couldn’t control the whole group. 'On the way home, my wife asked the kids if they knew what hazing was,' says Liam. 'So we talked about that.'... [He] recalls that when he was applying to colleges, his parents had made a deal with him: They would pay his tuition in full on the condition that he not join a frat. 'My dad framed it as that whole culture was outside of the values I’d been raised with,' he says."

From an article in The Cut that has an unfortunate title: "What Are Fathers Telling Their Sons About Cornell?"

Are fathers supposed to talk about gang rape to little boys?! The photograph shows a man with 2 boys who look like they might be 3 and 4 years old. I'm seeing mockery on line.

But the article is making a good point that I think everyone basically agrees with: Parents should teach their children, from the earliest age, to respect others and not to be selfish monsters. The exact forms of monstrous behavior are not detailed. You don't tell the story of the Cornell orgy/rape. You read "Where the Wild Things Are" — things like that — and talk about what's going on there.

I prefer high-quality children's literature, but there are some really on-the-nose books that some people might choose: "C is for Consent," "Don’t Touch My Hair!," "Hands Off, Harry!" The list goes on and on:

"Well, she’s still trying to proceed as normal, and she’s trying to tell herself that she can just go on with her life as if this didn’t happen."

"And she’s very excited about the Halloween party at Chi Phi at the fraternity. And you can tell from the text messages that she wants to go to the party. She’s getting ready for it. And then just before the party, there’s another moment that moves her thinking in this new direction. She gets a phone call from the president of the fraternity.... And he tells her, you can’t come to the party. You’re not invited. And he adds that it’s for her own good, because there are so many rumors swirling about what happened by both women and men. And there’s so much judgment about her. She shouldn’t come to the party. She sends a text message to one of the seven guys.... And she says to him, 'I knew this was going to happen. The women will always get the short end of the stick... You all... 'are not my friends....' This anger continues in the text messages... her telling of the events [has] now really changed...."

From yesterday's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The Firestorm Over a Rape Allegation at Cornell/The New York Times has reviewed a trove of documents related to the case. Our reporter explains what we know."

I blogged about that podcast yesterday, but didn't have a transcript to excerpt. Today, I'm giving you the excerpt I wanted verbatim. 

Someone who styles himself ExHedgeFundGuy makes a TikTok clip out of a classic Camille Paglia interview and fails to include her name.

I'm not going to link to it because I don't want to reward this. TikTok is full of unidentified speakers taken out of context.

I'll link to this presentation at Real Clear Politics: "Camille Paglia on Frat Parties and Consent: 'He Is Right to Think You Have Consented.'" That went up on October 1st.

 

Camille Paglia, essentially, has the last word on the Cornell 7.

Don’t dive into the sea and act surprised when you get wet. pic.twitter.com/Poe3jpxvAZ

— Akhenaten 🇺🇦🏴‍☠️ (@SplendorEternal) September 30, 2026

RCP has the clip I'm seeing at TikTok plus the full interview, and we can see that it is from a BBC interview in 2017. But Paglia has made this point since the early 90s.

It's a good idea to talk about the Cornell case in light of the strong challenge presented by Paglia, and she deserves to be cited by name. There's a lot of material from 35 years ago, from various authors, that could enrich the present-day discussion. For example: "Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus."

This is a very old topic! Let's not act as though people are just noticing this problem. 

"There was really no escape... I don’t remember the very end of the event where I was raped... I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped... I will never know who all touched me. I will not know."

I'm reading "Cornell Police Report Omitted Student’s Claim She Was Raped/Documents obtained by The New York Times show that the campus police at Cornell University sent a condensed statement to a prosecutor, who then declined to bring charges" in the NYT.

The woman spoke for hours with [a campus police department] officer;... The officer then condensed the interview into a six-page “voluntary statement” written from her perspective.... The student, after leaving about 20 handwritten corrections on a draft, signed a final version the next day. While the shorter statement explained that she felt some of that night’s events were a crime, it omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used. And it was missing her unequivocal statement that she had been raped....

More detail — better detail —  in today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily": "The Firestorm Over a Rape Allegation at Cornell." I wish I had a transcript so I could quote some things.

This is a complex story, and the news media seem to want us to look into it right now, for whatever reasons. The news media and key political actors: New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed the state attorney general, Letitia James, as a special prosecutor in this case. There's a press conference going on right now:

Hochul said she was concerned to learn what information was taken from Jane Doe’s interview with police and passed to the district attorney. “In what world would the police learn from the victim that she had been literally been gang raped” and that she believed “100 percent” she had been raped and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney, Ms. Hochul asked.

"Headlines like 'Are Shirt Buttons Sexist?' are why the New York Times has lost credibility with the broad center of American politics."

"To we [sic] moderates, it sounds like something that would be mocked on the satirical website, 'The Babylon Bee.'"

That's the 3rd-highest-rated comment at the NYT article "Are Shirt Buttons Sexist?/A reader questions the point of having men’s and women’s shirt buttons on different sides." 

The highest-rated comment is "Sometimes I really do wonder what life is like for people who are constantly scanning the world in search of something to gripe about."

I didn't pick that for the post title because it's too gripe-y — it gripes about griping — and I don't think the article is griping. It's puzzling over a quirk of clothing construction.

The author of the article, Vanessa Friedman, is addressing a question from a reader. She goes through the various theories of how this right/left difference might have happened — one is most common and perhaps you're sure it is the explanation — and observes that none of those reasons apply today. Tradition has its hold. We could change but we don't.

Only the headline writer uses the word "sexist" — and only to ask a question.

But the commenters — NYT commenters! — come for Friedman. They don't say what an amusing light-hearted jaunt through history, thanks for the fun. She's not perceived as having fun at all. She's seen as a grim, angry feminist. Things are changing.

Writing that made me think of this video clip I saw yesterday:

"The View" host Sunny Hostin stands up for accused Cornell gang rape defendants.

🎥: ABC pic.twitter.com/4wo46PXsQU

— TMZ (@TMZ) September 29, 2026

"Decades ago, the world of fashion was smaller and feistier, dominated by eccentric, visionary designers trying to express themselves...."

"In 2000, John Galliano showed his infamous 'homeless chic' couture collection. Alexander McQueen’s 'Highland Rape' show of torn dresses shocked the industry in 1995. Rei Kawakubo’s spring 1997 line, known as 'lumps and bumps,' remains one of the most significant collections of the century because it rejected traditional sex appeal, distorting and reimagining a woman’s form. It would be impossible to defend 'homeless chic' or 'Highland Rape.' Or Mr. Lagerfeld's disdain for fat bodies, a part of his personal brand, or Mr. Galliano’s antisemitic tirades.... But as fashion becomes more consolidated and homogenized... it hasn’t seemed to figure out how to provoke and shake up aesthetics and culture, creating crazes that people open their wallets to be part of...."

Writes Amy Odell, in "The Rise of Fashion Slop" (NYT).

"Rape claim against Democrat has party asking: Why did we ignore 'red flags'?"

That's the headline at the London Times, a question that assumes a proposition I don't accept as true. Democrats didn't ignore red flags. They saw them and went forward anyway.

The question should be why did they do that, and we know why. It's not hard to figure out. I don't for one minute believe that Democrats are deeply contemplating why they backed Platner despite what they knew. They wanted to win the Senate seat, and they imagined he was their best hope. Now, they are trying to act as though they were blindsided by this rape accusation, and it suddenly disqualifies Platner in a new way.

By the way, what's Platner's motivation to withdraw? He won the primary. It's his nomination. What's good is there for him in withdrawing? If he hangs on for a few more days, past the July 13th deadline for replacing him as the candidate, won't the heat die down? He will have weathered the storm, and he can present himself as a rebellious survivor.

Yes, he may lose, and that loss may be the one Senate seat that denies Democrats the majority they covet, but so what? I mean: "So what?" from his point of view. Should he shrink back into oyster-ridden obscurity because of a rape he says he did not commit? Because of a tattoo everyone knew about when he won the primary? 

"What is clear is that the majority today forecloses future reliance on Sosa and shuts the courthouse doors to almost any claimed violation of international law under the [Alien Tort Statute]."

"That includes torture. See, e.g., Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F. 2d 876, 878 (CA2 1980) (ATS suit brought by plaintiff alleging that his son had been kidnapped and tortured to death in retaliation for the plaintiff’s political beliefs). It includes forced labor. See, e.g., Licea v. Curacao Drydock Co., 584 F. Supp. 2d 1355, 1359 (SD Fla. 2008) (ATS suit alleging that the defendant trafficked Cubans to Curacao, held them in captivity, and forced them to work repairing ships and oil platforms). It also includes perhaps the most universally condemned crime in the modern era: genocide. See, e.g., Kadic v. Karadzic, 70 F. 3d 232, 236–237 (CA2 1995) (ATS suit alleging 'brutal acts of rape, forced prostitution, forced impregnation, torture, and summary execution, carried out by Bosnian-Serb military forces as part of a genocidal campaign'). 'Like the pirates of the 18th century,' whose conduct so concerned Blackstone and the First Congress, 'today’s torturers, slave traders, and perpetrators of genocide are "hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind."' Nestlé, 593 U. S., at 647 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). As to each of these offenses, as to each of these enemies of mankind, the majority decides that there is simply no way that a suit could possibly proceed without offending Congress. Noticeably absent from the majority’s analysis is any evidence that Congress would be offended by these suits. Of course, there may be reasons why allowing an individual ATS suit to proceed would be unwise. That possibility, however, should be addressed on a case-by-case basis...."

Writes Justice Ketanji-Brown Jackson, dissenting in Cisco Systems v. Doe, announced this morning.

"Holy f---, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f---ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?"

So wrote Graham Platner, the man who's leading in the polls to become the Democratic Party candidate to run against Susan Collins for the Senate seat for Maine.

I'm reading "Janet Mills and Graham Platner battle for female voters in Maine's key Senate race" (NBC News).

Platner’s online Reddit posts, which resurfaced last fall, included a slew of controversial comments, including calling himself a communist; saying white, rural Americans were racist and stupid; and writing that “all” police officers are “bastards” after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in 2020.

"This is not about providing deterrence. A blind 88-year-old man can’t leave his house."

Said the lawyer for Bill Cosby, arguing against punitive damages, in "Bill Cosby Loses Sex Assault Lawsuit and Faces a $59 Million Judgment A California jury found that Mr. Cosby had abused Donna Motsinger in 1972 after inviting her to attend one of his comedy shows" (NYT).

The jury awarded $19.25 million in compensatory damages and $40 million in punitive damages.

Motsinger testified that Cosby gave her "a pill that had left her incapacitated." Cosby did not testify.

"After the incident... she abandoned a career as a flight attendant... She moved home... She fears the dark, she said, because it takes her back to the seat of the car in the dark parking lot..."

"... where the rape occurred. She sleeps with the lights on, sometimes in her parents’ bed, she said. Uber’s lawyers said the driver had no criminal history, had received top ratings from passengers, had completed training and had acknowledged that he was aware of Uber’s rule that bans sex between drivers and passengers. They said the company was the industry leader in safety, developing a machine-learning tool to assess the risk of potential rides as well as other safety features and releasing public reports documenting assaults and other safety incidents on the platform. Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer, pushed back against claims that the company 'dragged its feet' on safety features like dashcams. However, 'I’ll be the first one to say we have not done enough,' he said. 'There’s a lot more that we have to do.'"

From "Uber Found Liable in Rape by Driver, Setting Stage for Thousands of Cases/In a federal bellwether case, the jury ordered the ride-hailing giant to pay $8.5 million to Jaylynn Dean, who said one of its drivers assaulted her in 2023" (NYT).

"And yet the grammar of institutions is that of the subjunctive, the 'as if': as if arresting and incarcerating someone could change them..."

"... as if arresting and incarcerating someone could change what they did to you. Without such fantasies, we are left with stark reality, with the realization that this did happen to you, hurt you, and change you irreparably. That means that to counter such insidious, impossible fantasies, I’ve found my only refuge is to return relentlessly to the reality of what happened to me and to accept the daily heartbreak that there is no form of repair, institutional or otherwise, that exists that will ever change what happened, as much as I might wish otherwise...."

Writes Anna Krauthamer, in "Why I Didn’t Report My Rape/In 2021, six men sexually assaulted me in a Las Vegas hotel room. Something more than abolitionism prevented me from reporting the crime" (The Nation).

"Abolitionism" refers to "the complete dismantling (not reform) of the prison system."

Elon Musk laughs at a prison rape joke.

Shameful.

"One day last year, when she was hungry, a woman came up to her and offered what sounded like a dream proposition..."

"... would she like to work in a studio, performing on camera and earning good money, in safety, without anyone touching her? She went to the studio: a block of flats where an administrator registered her. She soon realised everything she had been told was a lie.... For the clients who watched her she was a fantasy: a young Colombian woman in her bedroom they paid handsomely to act out their desires. In reality she was a prisoner. For three months Victoria was held captive with five other women on the eighth floor of a block of flats, forced into violent sexual exploitation, on camera, for at least ten hours a day. Her earnings were stolen by the men who controlled her.... Every time she asked for the money she’d been promised, they told her she had debts that she had to work off first: food she’d eaten, paper towels they’d given her. If she cried and refused to perform, they fined her.... "

From "Inside the world sex-cam capital" (London Times)(describing conditions in Cúcuta, Colombia).

"'I love Hitler': Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat/Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape."

Politico reports.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old. “Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued....

Read the whole thing. Politico takes the position "The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening."

ADDED: I asked Grok, "Is the Politico report accurate or should we be suspicious? Many people think Politico is slanted." What follows is Grok's answer:

"And so this judge just now denied him bail — on what ground? This guy's not going to run anywhere. It's absurd."

"[Sean Combs] has one of the nicest houses. I pass it by all the time. It's right near, not far from my little tiny condo in in Miami, Florida. He lives on Star Island. His  property is probably worth 40 or 50 million. I think he has two properties on the most expensive island, one of the most expensive islands in in the world. He's one of the most recognizable people. This decision by this judge was just vindictive. He didn't like the verdict. He thought there should be a conviction. And so, he's going to probably sentence him to a little bit of time in prison. He can't sentence him to a lot of time, but he'll probably sentence him to a little bit of time in prison in excess of the year he's already spent for having had bail denied.... He's going to come up with some pretense...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, on his podcast last night. 

"[Combs] was acquitted of anything involving violence, anything involving racketeering, anything involving, you know, sexual trafficking, all of that. He was acquitted!...  People don't go to jail for transactional sex for voluntary consensual sex based on the hope of getting an advantage. There is no such law.... Adult women should not be treated like children.

"The jury has found Sean Combs guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution but acquitted him on the most serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering."

"Combs covered his eyes and appeared to exhale in relief as the not-guilty announcement came in. After the verdict was read, he quickly touched hands with his lawyers and turned and smiled at his family...."

WaPo reports.

Defense counsel Marc Agnifilo has asked the court to release Sean Combs back to his home in the millionaire enclave of Star Island in Miami. “This is his first conviction, and it’s a prostitution offense,” Agnifilo said. The attorney noted that the charge he was found guilty of was significantly less serious than the ones that kept him detained in a Brooklyn jail for the past nine months....

ADDED: From the NYT reporting: "Sean Combs is on his knees, his elbows on the chair where he was sitting, his head buried. He appeared to be praying. He started a round of applause, which was echoed by his family, who are jubilant." 

AND: "With a touch of levity, the judge said he assumed that Sean Combs would not want to return to the Brooklyn jail where he has been held. Mr. Combs shook his head vigorously and put his hands together in prayer." It's hard to believe, then, that the judge would send Combs back to the jail. He should go free today. 

"'Believe her,' Agnifilo beseeched the jurors in his closing arguments for Combs’s defense. 'When she says to you that domestic violence is the issue, I’m asking you to believe her.'"

"This has been a pillar of the defense’s strategy: that Combs has taken responsibility for domestic violence but is not guilty of the charges he faces."

From "Diddy and Cassie a ‘modern love story,’ defense says in closing arguments/Sean 'Diddy' Combs’s defense team called the sex-trafficking case against him 'badly, badly exaggerated' as the trial nears its conclusion" (WaPo).