OK, so anyway.
Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, among others, apparently wrote letters to the court in the rape trial of their former castmate Danny Masterson, to promote his good qualities and request leniency in sentencing. After the internet predictably whipped up an outrage storm, they then made a public video apology for their actions.
This caused me to think several thoughts, if you can imagine such a thing.
First and simplest, it reminded me that one should never ever apologise in response to internet outrage. For one thing, if you apologise after a demand for an apology, it calls into question the sincerity of the apology and it will never feel genuine. For another thing, you’re not actually going to placate anyone - it’ll just make your attackers attack more enthusiastically.
Going deeper, I think it’s worth making the point that this is something that happens routinely in courts all the time. When a person is convicted of a crime, people who know them are permitted to make submissions to the court testifying as to the person’s character and asking for this to be taken into account in sentencing. It’s normal, it’s not some special privilege extended to celebrities, and in my opinion, it’s not a bad thing.
It’s not a bad thing because - again, in my opinion - if the justice system is to allow for the possibility of redemption or rehabilitation, that requires taking into account the totality of a person. Even the worst of criminals - and make no mistake, the crimes Danny Masterson has been convicted of are very, very bad ones - is not just their crimes. When we’re considering what kind of punishment will be best for a person - not what they “deserve”, but what will actually be of the greatest benefit to society - it is entirely appropriate we consider what kind of person they are and have shown themselves to be, and that includes the impact they have had on the world for good AND bad.
And let’s remember: the judge is under no obligation to actually do what the criminal’s loved ones want. The judge can, and I’ve no doubt frequently does, say, “The hell with what you say, this guy is scum and nothing is going to mitigate what he did”. If that’s the judgment, fair enough. But there’s nothing inappropriate about the information simply being made available.
But even further to that, there’s a broader principle at play here, which I sum up as this: people have to be allowed to support their people.
You often see this happen in high-profile criminal cases.
A famous person is accused and/or charged and/or convicted of dreadful acts
That famous person’s friends or family fail to condemn or shun them.
The public howls with anger and denounces the family and friends as enablers of atrocity.
I hate this tendency. I hate the idea that supporting someone you love, even when they’ve done wrong, is a sin. I hate the idea that when a person is guilty of a crime, we should go after people who aren’t, because their response to that crime is not the same as ours. I hate the idea that anyone should be judged for standing by a friend or a family member.
In the Masterson case, his friends didn’t even deny that he was guilty: they simply said that they’d known him as a good man and that they wished to support him. In other cases, of course, people do live in denial. Bill Cosby’s wife believed him, as did some of his friends and former colleagues.
Now, I don’t think Bill Cosby is innocent. But I do not condemn his wife for thinking so. Because she is his wife. And because I know that if someone I’d loved for many years were accused of a crime, and they told me they were innocent, I would probably believe them.
And whatever Bill Cosby did, he did. His wife didn’t. His co-stars didn’t. Whatever Danny Masterson did, he did. Ashton Kutcher didn’t. Mila Kunis didn’t.
So go after the guys who do the crimes. Go after the bastards. Go after the guilty. Leave the innocent alone.
The supporters of high-profile offenders are people attached by bonds of love, family and friendship. Sometimes those bonds make people irrational and may make them act in ways they wouldn’t if those bonds weren’t there. But overall, I think the existence of those bonds between people is a good thing. It’s a good thing that people love each other and are loyal to each other, that they support and defend each other in times of difficulty. If the price for this great virtue of human nature is that occasionally someone refuses to cut loose a friend who turned out to be a scumbag, so be it. I can live with that.
Pulling focus out even further, I think this is yet another demonstration - there are a lot - of how it really is not a good thing when sexual assault cases are made public. I’m tempted to go further and say this applies to criminal cases in general, but I’m absolutely certain that the publicising of sexual assault trials is a net negative.
Obviously, a case like Danny Masterson’s always was going to be public, and I’m not sure there’s any workable way to prevent that happening. But even if it’s inevitable, it’s bad. Nobody, I would say, has gained any benefit from the trial being in the public eye.
I think this was made really clear by the - still ongoing - circus around the Bruce Lehrmann trial here in Australia. Who, besides news outlets given easy column filler, gained from the decision made by people on all sides to conduct that case partly through the media?
If Lehrmann was guilty, then the result of the press attention was to air personal details about the victim, allow her character and mental state to be called into question in a public arena, and force her to live with the stress of mass scrutiny on top of the stress of the crime and trial itself.
If Lehrmann was innocent, then the result was to have him permanently labelled a rapist and make it impossible for him to live a normal life no matter what the outcome of the trial.
And whether innocent or guilty, the media made a fair trial much harder to attain and in the end probably resulted in the prosecution being dropped and the legal process being unable to reach a proper resolution.
So who won? Again, apart from the press itself, I can’t see that anyone did. In the end what we have is a huge waste of time and money, a number of damaged lives, and one way or another, a grave miscarriage of justice: either a rapist has gone free, or an innocent man has been forever tarred.
I can’t see any way in which we would not all be better off if, in serious criminal matters, especially those involving sexual offences, all details were kept out of the public domain, at least until a conviction is secured. I feel like the alternative, which we currently have to experience, diminishes us all.
Oh, I’ve got more
Things are looking grim for the Voice to Parliament. This is a shame. But I don’t believe it’s a cataclysm. I do hope that those Yes advocates saying, “If this referendum fails, we’ll have missed the chance to improve things forever” are only doing so as a tactic to convince voters of the Voice’s importance. It’d suck if they really believe that.
Because yeah, if the Voice fails, that’ll be a blow. But it won’t be the end. The Voice is a good idea, but it’s not the only way to make things better for Aboriginal Australians. It certainly isn’t a terminal decision: if Australia votes No, surely we dust ourselves off and go again? Surely we don’t throw our hands up and say, well, guess that’s it?
I can’t believe that, win or lose, this referendum is the end of the line in terms of reconciliation or addressing the injustice and disadvantage inflicted on First Nations people. I hope Yes wins, but I don’t think all is lost if it doesn’t. Does anyone really think that? I really hope they don’t, because the work continues no matter what happens on October 14.
On another note, the Yes campaign has been, generally, disappointing. Some advocates have been doing fantastic work in spreading the message and, in particular, explaining the Voice: what it is, what it isn’t, and why it’s a good idea.
Others have just been terrible. Frankly, they’ve made it super easy for the No side to push their case.
Take the arguments you see that the Voice is no big deal because loads of other bodies provide advice to the government and nobody has a problem with them. This is laughably easy to knock down: if the Voice is no different to those other bodies, then why do we need a referendum for it? The others aren’t in the Constitution, why does the Voice need to be?
You have to make up your mind: either the Voice is a big deal that has to be put in the Constitution, or it’s just another advisory body like any other. It can’t be both.
And stop this “First Nations people should be recognised in the Constitution” stuff. Everyone knows that the proposal is for much more than simply recognition. And so it should be! It’s a GOOD thing that it goes further! Tell people why that is: when you pretend that it’s merely a matter of recognition, people know you’re lying. And more importantly, it is super easy for No pushers to TELL people that you’re lying. Given that anyone thinking of voting No is more likely to be suspicious of the government to begin with, this is just a free kick to your enemies.
In general, the Yes campaign has been far too focused on downplaying the significance of the Voice, insisting hard on what it isn’t instead of going in super hard on what it IS. Be bold. Be aggressive. Don’t react to No’s scaremongering with timid protestations of “no honestly it’s a tiny little thing”. Come out loud and proud and say, “Damn right this is a big change. It needs to be a big change, because this is a big problem”.
So much Yes messaging can be summed up as “Don’t worry about the Voice: it actually won’t be able to do much.” It’s selling powerlessness as a virtue.
I don’t think this will work, firstly because people will quite naturally think, “if it's going to have so little real impact, why bother?” and secondly because it feeds so perfectly into the No campaign’s message of “what are they not telling you?” I mean, they couldn’t be going to this much trouble for something that won’t affect anyone, can they? They’re lying to you! Don’t believe them!
No, I believe it’d be much better to get on the front foot and say, yes, this Voice will be strong, it will be loud. It will have a lot to say, and if all goes well the government WILL listen, and the government will take action based on the Voice’s advice. And the reason this is a good thing is that in certain places in YOUR country, YOUR fellow Australians are suffering horribly. This Voice is a new and revolutionary idea to stop that suffering. Here is what is wrong. Here is how we want to fix it. We want big, bold action and we are asking you to come along with us. We won’t pretend this isn’t a big deal. It is a big deal. It should be a big deal. We need it to be a big deal.
Once again, I’m not talking of all Yes advocates: I’m noting what I’ve observed, which is that while many on the Yes side have done brilliantly, too many just haven’t.
And yeah, that includes the John Farnham ad. Because that’s not an ad designed to convince people who would not otherwise have voted Yes. That’s an ad designed to make people who were voting Yes already puff out their chests and congratulate themselves. Hell, most of the talk from Yes people when news of the ad broke was about how awesome it was to get Farnham to agree to let us have his song.
Well, who gives a shit about that? Anyone wavering about the vote would’ve seen the hoopla around You’re The Voice as exactly what it was: people who are certain of their own righteousness and of their opponents’ depravity slapping each other on the back.
There’s too much back-slapping going on. There’s too much of a sense that a solid majority of Yes voters see the referendum less as a chance to make positive change for our country than it is a chance to declare to the world “I am right, I am pure, I am holy”.
And the thing is, if your endgame is to affirm your own rightness, then the result of the vote is irrelevant. A hell of a lot of Yes supporters, frankly, have already got what they wanted out of this referendum: a chance to wallow in the fragrant mud of superiority. They’ve already won. Congratulations to them.
I hope the Yes campaign will turn it around. I hope that in the end, we’ll see victory for those who would rather make the world better than reassure themselves that they are better than the world.
But if we don’t…we go again. Right?
Ok, so my thoughts on the Voice. Agree that the Yes campaign has been terrible but I think I disagree on what they’re doing wrong and what they should be doing.
- I agree a ‘No’ is not the end of reconciliation or improving lives of First Australians. But I think it sets back the constitutional processes 20+ years. If this loses there’ll be no revisiting constitutional recognition, a constitutional voice or certainly no Treaty for a generation. The ‘No’ campaign knows this which is why they fight so hard against this largely symbolic change.
- Which leads to my next point. I don’t think the Voice is that important practically. It’s great symbolically and can make changes on the edges but it’s just a small step. I think ‘Yes’ is right to highlight that it’s a small, non-radical change that won’t impact our system of government. Any more will scare voters off too much. There are many people who support improving lives of First Australians plus symbolic changes as long as it doesn’t ‘cost’ anything - it’s these people you need in a referendum.
- so how do you win them over and what has Yes done wrong? Well, Yes has sat on their arse assuming logic would win out and let No just dominate the narrative and sway the ‘vibe’ voters who are the bulk of swing voters in any election - and once that vibe is set it’s hard to sway. A lot of preaching to the choir too. It’s important to provide information for those who care to seek it out, but that’s not most people and is not what sways most people. And, yeah, many Yes voices are condescending twats who turn swing voters off.
- what should/should’ve yes do? I actually think the Farnham ad is the right thing but should have been harder and earlier - make the Voice about a spirit rather than a practical thing, and leverage all the institutional support you get from things like AFL, corporations etc who are all 100% behind it but have done nothing to help. Have a few people demolish the No case but mostly just drown it out.
- can Yes win? I doubt it and they’ve left it way too late but they need to bloody try. And they need to recognise the people they need to convince - those who aren’t really connected to politics, who don’t think indigenous Australians should get handouts or more than ‘regular’ Aussies, but would consider themselves someone who does the ‘right thing’.
One other point, I actually think pushing for constitutional recognition was a bad move. It could have been legislated and, once shown it didn’t cause the sky to fall, could look to entrench constitutionally. But I understand that couldn’t go down that path after the Uluṟu statement.