THE BLAME GAME or TWO DRAMATIC EXAMPLES OF
FAMOUS BLAME SHIFTING
“If
you blame others for your failures, do you credit them with your success?”
This anonymous quote certainly seems to fit
the events of the past two weeks, during which we have seen almost child-like
demonstrations of “buck passing” and blame shifting for very public figures
and failures. Last week gave us two of the most dramatic and public
examples of how the “blame game” works, with the arrest of 76 year old Oscar
winning Director Roman Polanski in Switzerland, and with Chicago finishing
fourth out of four in the Olympic bid for 2016.
Thirty-two years ago, in 1977, when he was
44 years old, Roman Polanski was arrested in LA and pleaded guilty to
unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, a 13-year-old girl. He
was released after a 42-day psychiatric evaluation, and then immediately
boarded a plane to France. He has been under a U.S. arrest warrant
since 1978, and an international arrest warrant since 2005.
In
actuality, Mr. Polanski was guilty and admitted to raping 13 year old Samantha
Geimer, who visited with him for the purpose of having a “photo session”
at the home of actor Jack Nicholson. During this “photo session”, Polanski
gave Ms Geimer champagne and combined it with the sedative Quaaludes. Legally,
ethically and morally, just this act was heinous since Ms Geimer was 13 and
Quaaludes combined with alcohol increase the sedative
effects to the nervous system and can result in serious illness, coma or
death.
In
a 2003 interview, Ms Geimer, who is now married and has four children, said
this;"we did photos with me drinking champagne, and toward the end it
got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was
not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of
there."
She
then related how Polanski forced her to lie on down on a bed and how she
attempted to resist, saying; “No, no. I don't want to go in there. No,
I don't want to do this. No!” “I didn't know what else to do…we were
alone and I didn’t know what else would happen if I made a scene. So I was
just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured well, I guess I’ll
get to come home after this". Despite her protests, Geimer testified
that Polanski performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy on her despite being
told no and being asked to “stop”.
In this same 2003 interview, Samantha Geimer
said, "Straight up, what he did to me was wrong. But I wish he would return
to America so the whole ordeal can be put to rest for both of us." Furthermore, "I'm
sure if he could go back, he wouldn't do it again. He made a terrible mistake
but he's paid for it."
In a 2008 interview Geimer said, "I think
he's sorry, I think he knows it was wrong. I don't think he's a danger
to society. I don't think he needs to be locked up forever and no one has
ever come out ever — besides me — and accused him of anything. It was 30
years ago now. It's an unpleasant memory ... (but) I can live with it."
What was the “slant” put on the news about
Polanski and his arrest for all of America to see and hear? In just
one small example of that was replicated over and over on many network and
cable outlets, the hosts and reporters on Good Morning America excitedly
reported the arrest of Roman Polanski for child rape three decades ago. Co-anchor
Diane Sawyer said the detention of the director accused of child rape has
created a "true international incident." Co-host Robin Roberts talked
about the “complexity of situation”, referring to the event as an "international
chess game."
The GMA reporter Nick Watt said; "When
Polanski, who is a French citizen, walked into a police trap here at Zurich
Airport, he sparked an international row." And
he also wanted us to know, "This morning, another French minister said, ‘There
is a scary America that has just shown its face.’"
“Scary America”? What is being reported here? Are
we blaming America for arresting a child rapist? Let’s all remember this,
Polanski is an admitted felon for drugging and raping a 13 year old
girl and has been a fugitive for over 30 years. But suddenly it was the
United States who was the villain, detaining a man and angering the French
because as GMA’s Sawyer described "His films are revered in Europe. It's a
true international incident this morning. The French cultural minister called
it absolutely horrifying."
Au contraire my dear French cultural minister…here
is what is “absolutely horrifying”, this young woman was drugged,
and raped orally, vaginally and rectally, by a man 31 years her senior. Amazingly,
and with great credit to her, Ms Geimer, for her own personal sanity and
well-being she has forgiven Polanski and moved on with her life, but the
real question is, what has the reaction been of far too many people, including
many in Hollywood?
Swiss filmmaker Otto Weisser called Polanski's
admitted 1977rape “a
little mistake.” Polanski’s former sister-in-law, Debra Tate,
says, “there’s
rape and then there’s rape.” Whoopi Goldberg,
an outspoken advocate for women’s rights and pro-choice infamously professed
on THE VIEW the exact same judicial theory: "I
don't believe it was rape - rape," and even said she
wouldn’t say she wouldn’t necessarily like her 13 year old daughter to participate
in sex. How nice for her daughter! Actress
Melissa Gilbert said the difference with Polanski’s rape
was the “Mom was in the building.” So if a parent it in the
building when a rape of the child is taking place, even though they cannot
see what is happening that it must be ok?
A
petition signed at last count by more than 100 movie and TV stars including
American and European film luminaries, including Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen
(A paragon of morals having slept with and married his adopted daughter),
and Pedro Almovodar have signed a petition calling for the director's release
from a Swiss house arrest and exportation to the United States to be prosecuted
for his admitted crime. Others who signed the free Polanski petition,
backed by France's Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers, include David
Lynch, Michael Mann, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Harvey Weinstein, Tilda
Swinton and Monica Bellucci and the list goes on and on and is continuing
to grow.
What
happened to the facts? Rape-rape…Samantha Geimer might have forgiven
Polanski after 32 years, and that is a credit to her personal character,
but she also testified she told him “NO”. As a man, I thought “NO
meant NO”? Don’t forget, to get Gaimer to the point of being able
to repeatedly rape (including sodomize), her as a 13 year old child, Polanski
gave her a combo of drugs and alcohol, the act of which removes 100% of his
credibility, no matter how good his movies are!
Finally,
in what does not seem to be troubling to all those defending him, court documents
which have now been released show in October 1993 there was a confidential
deal reached between Mr Polanski and the victim, Samantha Geimer. In
this agreement Roman Polanski agreed to pay Ms Geimer, his victim of sexual
assault, $500,000, but he fled the US, failing to comply with this agreement,
according to court documents released to the media. The last
court filing in August 1996 stated that he owed Ms Geimer $604,416.22, including
interest but according to the Associated Press the court records did not
reveal whether the 76-year-old director had ever paid his debt.
So, who is to blame for arresting Polanski
for his admitted odious crime against a young girl for which he plead guilty? Even
if we put aside the
alleged judicial misconduct which led Polanski to flee the U.S.
after his lawyer had worked out a deal in which he would not serve jail time
for statutory rape and remember, his victim, now 45, has
publicly asked that the charges be dropped, not because Polanski
is not guilty, but because she does not want all the attending publicity
to overwhelm her family. Where does that leave us?
There is no statute of limitations on sentencing;
Polanski pled guilty and then fled sentencing because he thought the judge
would "renege". He also promised to pay the victim in a settlement
made 16 years ago and there is no evidence he lived up to that agreement. If
Polanski had stayed and completed his sentence, he would long ago been free
and clear. It is Polanski who prolonged this case with his unnecessary actions
and refusal to take his justified punishment for his admitted actions.
The fact is it is a sad commentary that anyone
would be blaming anyone other than the criminal for the crime he committed
and has now spent 32 years avoiding. So Polanski was finally arrested
after 32 years and is now being asked to pay for his crimes.
But before anyone but Polanski is blamed perhaps
this is the final question we should ask; if you were a parent of a 13 year
old girl, would you think it is acceptable for a 44 year old man, who is
also a creative, brilliant and famous film director to repeatedly rape and
sodomize your daughter while she cried and said “NO”? To whom
would you assign blame?
As I said earlier, another public example of
assigning blame came when Chicago, when one of the two favorites to win the
2016 Olympic Bid, ended up dead last. When the votes on the first Olympic
ballot were counted and Chicago only
got 18 votes out
of 94 for the 2016 games people started to ask, “how could this happen”? “How
could only 19% of the voters be persuaded to vote for Chicago?” Only
18 votes after Chicago spent 4 years, $50M dollars in bid preparation and
even had what Katie Couric of the CBS Evening News called, “the “Dream
Team” pushing Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic summer games?
As all of us know, the “Dream Team” so excitedly
described by Ms. Couric, was First Lady Michelle Obama with Oprah Winfrey
(even Nadia Comaneci), and as detailed by Couric in her Thursday night (10/1)
broadcast “The team captain, President Obama, arrives Friday ahead
of the final vote”.
In the week before the Olympic bid results,
the majority of the media were united with Katie Couric’s fait
accompli assessment of an Olympic bid led by President Obama,
his wife and the most powerful women in the world, Oprah.
Talking
about the Olympic “pitch” Good Morning America reported that Valerie
Jarrett, a top White House adviser, said first lady Michelle Obama was planning
to make a dramatic presentation “There won’t be a dry eye in the room,”
“I’m sure that it will touch the hearts of each of the IOC members”.
Here is an example of
Mrs. Obama’s “dramatic” presentation: "Sports were a gift I shared
with my dad, especially the
Olympic Games," "But
I never dreamed that the Olympic flame might one day light up lives in
my neighborhood," she said. "But today, I can dream, and I am dreaming
of an Olympic and Paralympics Games in Chicago that will light up lives
in neighborhoods all across America and all across the world." “Having
the Olympics in Chicago would be important to let people know that we understand
that sports saves lives, that it makes dreams come true, that it creates
visions in kids’ heads to make them think they can be the next David Robinson,
the next Barack Obama, the next Nadia Comaneci, the next Oprah Winfrey,"
President Obama said this about his wife’s
presentation when he got up to speak; "I'm
sure you'd all agree that she's a pretty big selling point."
Among his many comments he said; "There
is nothing I would like more than to step just a few blocks from my family's
home and with Michelle and our two girls welcome the world back to our
neighborhood" "At the beginning of this new century, the nation that has
been shaped by people from around the world wants a chance to inspire it
once more."
It
seems obvious that Ms. Jarrett and the President misjudged Mrs. Obama’s oratory
persuasion power. Without a doubt the majority of the media misjudged
the persuasive power of the Dream Team, even though immediately after their
speeches ABC, NBC, CBS and blogs such as Huffington Post fell over themselves
describing the “deeply personal, passionate and moving speeches” by
the Obama’s.
As
an example, CNN's lead story immediately after the pitch was this; "Michelle
Obama steals the show in Copenhagen." Unfortunately,
none of this was true. The fact is our 18 votes and first round
knock-out was a worse defeat for Chicago than our last defeat, when New York
received 19 votes in the 2nd round of the 2012 Olympic
vote.
Perhaps
it was just my personal perception and I admit it was colored by being late
at night after working a 14 hour day, but I did stay up and watched the pitch
for the Olympics by our Dream Team, During those presentations, I was
struck by a message that seemed very loud and clear.
Unlike
the pitches from Madrid, Brazil and Japan, the American pitch sure seemed
to have a lot of “ME, ME, ME”; There was “my dad”,
“my family”, “my wife”, “my girls”, “my backyard” and of course, "The
next Barack Obama" the Dream Team “captain”.
The
next day, several analysts actually said they believed some of the IOC members
resented the fact that President Obama came into Copenhagen for five hours,
jetting back down the runway toward Washington hours before the result was
even announced. "It can be that some IOC members see it as a lack
of respect," said former IOC member Kai Holm.
So
what happened? No one really know for sure, although it seems the real
question is why didn’t Chicago finish closer to their expected top two finish
and did the Dream Team actually hurt more than help our quest for the Olympics? It
is important to remember that Brazil was representing South America’s first
Olympic games and despite not having a Dream Team, they did have compelling
and emotional story to tell. Everyone loves the “underdog” and
the “first time”.
As
you would expect, after landing in Washington D.C. (he learned of the Chicago
loss while on Air Force 1) President Obama called Brazilian President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva to congratulate him on the IOC's decision to award the
games to Rio de Janeiro. President Obama said while he was disappointed
by the committee’s decision, he also had "no doubt that [Chicago's] was
the strongest bid possible." "One of the things that I think
is most valuable about sports is that you can play a great game and still
not win," Obama said.
However,
from that point on, everyone else supporting the President and the Chicago
bid started into a massive and unrelenting blame game including Robert Ctvrtlik,
the U.S.O.C. vice president for international relations who said; “The
United States, within the Olympic movement, hasn’t engaged as well as we
could have for a long time,” there’s a lot of politics going on. This isn’t
just on the merits. I don’t think it’s anti-American. Maybe we still don’t
have the horsepower to do some of the politicking within the movement.”
Frankly
this excuse does not sound too gracious and is actually perilously close
to being an “ugly American” diatribe. But the sad fact is, other
than President Obama’s brief comments of disappointment, Mr Otvertlik was
the high point for the blame game of those representing the President
and the failure of the Chicago Olympic bid.
David
Axelrod, the chief strategist for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and
Senior Advisor to President Obama blamed “dishonest backroom politics
for rigging the decision. “We thought it was all set. There’s
no way we would’ve let the President and First Lady expose themselves to
such an overtly public show if we didn’t think it was already a done deal.
We’ve been double-crossed. We won’t forget.”
Wow, that is pretty tough language from the
President Obama’s #1 advisor. He said the loss of Chicago Olympic bid
was a “rigged decision” and the President was “double-crossed”, and
the administration said “we won’t forget”? I am not sure how this blame
attack will help the United States image abroad, and it calls into question
the sincerity of President Obama’s gracious statements of disappointment.
Hubert Humphrey, a U.S. Senator and the 38th Vice
President of the United States (with Lyndon Johnson) once said; “We
believe that to err is human. To blame it on someone else is politics.”
There was also a different kind of blame hitting
coming out about the Olympic defeat since conservative bloggers and most
Republicans (and may Independent voters) are accusing President Obama of
wasting his time and skirting his executive responsibilities to be the first
U.S. President to go pitch an Olympics when the U.S. jobless rate was hitting
close to 10% when the President promised his stimulus package would prevent
it from hitting 8%.
According to conservatives, economics should
be the President’s #1 concern, especially with consumer confidence hitting
all-time lows. Republican congress people immediately asked why President
Obama, who has met with his Afghan commander ONE time in 70 days, would
continue to waste his time with publicity grabbing Olympic pitches and spending
more time with Oprah and David Letterman, than he has with McChrystal in the
last 70 days. In addition,
they blame President Obama for spending another $1M (some say $10M) to fly
over to Denmark for no other reason than to back up his big-moneyed donors
from Chicago.
Instantaneously, another type of blame started
up as well, put in place to shift the focus of our Olympic defeat since anyone
who is anyone has to know there must be another reason that our President,
first lady and Oprah lost to a city that needed to spend $16B on police protection
just to host the games. In fact, some of the Chicago officials started
saying “anti-American resentments” likely played a role in Chicago’s
Olympic bid dying so quickly and embarrassingly in the first round of the
voting.
“There
must be” resentment
against America, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, near the stage where he had
hoped to give a victory speech in Daley Plaza. “The way we [refused
to sign] the Kyoto Treaty, we mislead the world into Iraq. The world had
a very bad taste in its mouth about us. But there was such a turnaround
after last November. The world now feels better about America and about
Americans. That’s why I thought the president’s going was the deal-maker.”
This
blame attack was quickly followed by assigning blame to a familiar villain
who continues to be used for any problem or failure, constantly targeted
by the majority of the media. According to his political supporters, “President
Obama could not undo in one year the resentment against America that President
Bush and others built up for decades before”.
According
to MSNBC host Ed Schultz the real culprit for the Olympic loss; “right-wing
talkers”. Schultz insisted this was a failure not only for
Obama, but “society as a whole”. "This is not a failure of President
Obama," Schultz continued. "This is a failure of the Republican Party.
The right-wing talkers in this country that openly, openly campaigned against
the Olympics by denigrating our president again”.
Rep.
Janet Schakowsky, D-Ill., went after conservative talkers as well - "You're
right, the Republicans are just naysayers," Schakowsky said. "How
dare Rush Limbaugh. How dare he say that this president goes around talking
about how bad our country is. He has finally been able to establish us as
real participants in the world community and if anything would have stopped
us from getting it is the last eight years where we have turned off the rest
of the world”.
Michael
Froomkin, Professor at the University Of Miami School Of Law, is convinced that
in spite of President Obama’s lobbying efforts, the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) may have chosen to reject hosting the 2016 summer Olympic
games in Chicago due to the post-9/11 visa tourist policies established by
his predecessor, George W. Bush. Professor Froomkin said the “the
same stupid anti-visitor policy that is destroying
American higher education” also sunk Chicago’s Olympic bid.
Senator Rowland Burris of Illinois, the Senator
who was appointed by a corrupt Governor under question of ethics to fill
President Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, also blamed George
Bush for Chicago not getting the Olympics in 2016. Just
after the announcement, in an interview on the streets of Chicago, Burris
said “the image of the U. S. has been so tarnished in the last 8 years
that, even Barack
Obama making an unprecedented pitch for the games could not overcome
the hatred the world has for us as a result of George Bush”.
The rule of liberal thought is to use the same
approach that started after Bush won his first election, no matter what, “Blame
Bush”…Senator Burris went on to say that this is just another way Bush
is now hurting Chicago. Yes, without a doubt, Bush is in Texas
plotting how to hurt Chicago…and he is the reason Chicago lost the Olympic
vote. Senator Burris should pay more attention to how to help Chicago
remove its moniker of political corruption and being home to a high rate
of domestic crime and stop worrying about a man who is no longer President.
Excuse my frustration, but for goodness sake,
President Bush has been out of office for almost 10 months and there has been
100% democratic control of congress for over four years, but “blame Bush” is
still the #1 method of attack for anything that goes wrong in the world. If
swine flu becomes a pandemic, “blame Bush” will be the cry. I
am sure this outlandish blame game attack will soon be part of Saturday Night
Live skit. Interestingly, tonight (10/3) when the SNL opened it
did so with an opening skit (before “Live from New York”) making fun of Obama
not just for Olympics, but for other failures to accomplish what he promised
in his campaign for President.
Wouldn’t it be great if instead of blaming
everyone else, we simply had the ethics and personal integrity to do as Livestrong.com suggests
and “dare to change your life”. When it comes to blame,
wouldn’t it be great to follow the advice posted on this website to promote
personal improvement and recognize the following truths about accepting personal
responsibility?
· Acknowledging
that you are solely responsible for the choices in your life.
· Accepting
that you are responsible for what you choose to feel or think.
· Accepting
that you choose the direction for your life.
· Accepting
that you cannot blame others for the choices you have made.
· Tearing
down the mask of defense or rationale for why others are responsible for
who you are, what has happened to you and what you are bound to become.
· The
rational belief that you are responsible for determining who you are, and
how your choices affect your life.
· Pointing
the finger of responsibility back to yourself and away from others when you
are discussing the consequences of your actions
Years ago I read a quote
by Dave Checkett, who at 28 became the GM Utah Jazz, the youngest chief executive
of a sports team in history. He said; “success
builds character, failure reveals it”.
We need to always remember
that it is often in the trial of adversity
we learn those critical lessons that will form our character and affect our
destiny and blaming others only degrades and cheapens those who point the
finger in the blame game. When that happens, regardless of our political
position or social outlook, we will all be better off.
