Jim (Con't): Consider this the Tara Reade roundtable. Tara has stated Joe Biden assaulted her in 1993. A Patsy e-mails to say we've walked away from Tara Reade and don't believe her.
Ava: Garbage. I'm not in the mood for that nonsense. We did not walk away. And let's be clear, we don't owe anyone s**t. We defended her and will continue to do so. But no one did more than C.I. and while Tara would retweet this person or that person. I'm sorry but C.I. covered her every day for two months. There wasn't a day that went by that she didn't cover Tara. Tara never retweeted C.I. So this idea that anyone's owed anything really ticks me off. And I'm really getting pissed at people who think they are owed something. We're in the midst of a pandemic, get a damn grip already. We are doing all we can.
C.I.: I agree with Ava but let me add for anyone not clear on this, I have vision issues and will have surgery on my eyes in November. Due to underlying issues, we can't do it sooner. I also have to not have a flare up in the meantime or be under too much stress -- yeah, that'll happen. In addition, I'm back on the chemo. Point being, we've done all we can, stop demanding that we do this or that. I'm not in the mood to even be online these days but I'm here every damn day. If I'm not giving you everything you, oh well, too bad. I'm not in the mood. I've given everything and then some. And it's not my job to call anyone who happens to read something I wrote. It's certainly not my job to call someone I know who has their assistant contact me. I'm not in the mood. You want to read, read. You want to criticize, have at it. But that's it. I'm not here to make phone calls to you, I'm not here to give you an interview. I'm not interested. THE COMMON ILLS is a website, as is THIRD. We write what we write, read it, criticize it, whatever. But I do not owe you a phone call, an interview or anything else. Everything I've said is already up here. I'm dealing with my own issues how about little respect for that by not trying to impose further on me? I don't have anything else to give and I'm really tired especially of the press inquiries.
Dona: I would agree with Ava, I would strongly agree with Ava. I'm glad C.I. said what she just did. We know about what's going on but it's not our place to disclose it. C.I. truly has put everything she can into covering Tara, covering Iraq, covering whatever. And we've noted Tara here repeatedly. Counting right now, she's been in every edition since the last Sunday in March. I know everyone participating has covered her -- even Stan who tries to stick to entertainment. After C.I., I would especially note Ann who has covered Tara and shared her own survival story in doing so. No one has walked away from Tara. I can tell you that the first thing C.I. does on the day of a snapshot is see if there's any Tara news. If there is, she'll note Tara, if not, probably not.
Jess: I'd point out that we are talking about Tara right now. And I would point out that Katie Halper, Krystal Ball, Rich McHugh, Ryan Grim and others are not. You want to talk about someone walking away, talk about them. We didn't make money off Tara. We didn't get publicity by covering Tara --
Ty: We got and we get threatening e-mails.
Jess: Exactly. Hey, Elaine, can you grab this topic? In terms of projection, etc.
Elaine: Sure. Everyone participating believes Tara's accusations are credible. We do understand that a lot of people believe her -- especially survivors and young adults -- those groups are more in tune with what assault is and with how Tara's responded.
Ann: Back up there, Elaine. You are a psychologist, so back up there and explain that in case anyone reading doesn't understand.
Elaine: Sure. There is no one type of survivor. There is no one type of response to assault. A survivor of a trauma can start out sharing sparse details and, as they grow comfortable, revealing more. The non-medically trained Michael Tracey --
Rebecca: Non-trained Michael Tracey. He doesn't appear to have any training -- not in journalism, not in anything.
Betty: Except how to be a pig.
Rebecca: Okay, I stand corrected. He was the valedictorian at PIG BOY HIGH.
Elaine: He has acted as though he has destroyed Tara's credibility. He has not. Her finances do not have a damn thing to do with whether or not she assaulted someone. Her ex-'friends' -- in air quotes -- do not have to do with the assault. Oh, she didn't pay someone back after they helped her with her electric bill -- boohoo! That has nothing to do with the assault. Michael Pig Boy thinks she's a lousy person. I haven't seen that established but that's what he thinks. So what? Lousy people don't get assaulted? Projection? That I've lost my thread on. I think we're talking about -- Jess?
Jess: No, you covered something more important, so thank you.
Mike: I want to talk substantiation. Tara has made a credible accusation. By the standards we have set for survivors who come forward after the fact -- and in any civil court, for that matter -- Tara is credible and would win. Michael Tracey keeps trying to play lawyer. He does not know the law. He did not study the law. I did. C.I. did. Jess did. Michael Tracey, if he has a degree, was probably a general studies major or, worse, a journalism major. He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything.
Dona: For any general studies majors who are offended by Mike's remark, please note that Jim, Ty and I have our degrees in journalism. Ava double majored, so the insult doesn't include her. Jess went on to law school, so it doesn't include him.
Mike: Back to my point, I said, ignoring everything else, Tara told her mother. Her mother called into LARRY KING LIVE. Her mother's dead but we do have the call. She told her brother. He backs her up. She told her boyfriend who later became his husband. He refers to this in their divorce papers. She told a friend in law school. The friend remembers it. She told a neighbor years later, the neighbor remembers it. In all she has at least 8 witnesses who state she told them about this and did so years and years and years ago. That's credible. Those are supporting witnesses. Michael Tracey is a piece of trash.
Jess: He really is. He doesn't know the law at all. As Mike pointed out, a civil court would absolutely be a slam dunk for Tara. Maybe she should sue him. I'm not joking. She might not want to and that's fine. But if she were to sue him, she'd have ample support to win.
Ava: She could win with just a YOUTUBE montage of Joe's public groping.
Ty: Yeah, Joe Biden's not a sympathetic character. Get a bunch of peace activists on the jury and he'll be the first person sentenced to prison by in a civil court case.
Rebecca: I love how his very public harassment of women is ignored by so many. Like Katha The Whore Toilet -- not Pollitt, let's call her what she is, Katha Toilet. I want a list of all the people who attacked Tara Reade. I want that list to be preserved as a historical document so that we know who to blame. Call it, "Those Who Should Never Be Trusted."
Marcia: Put Alyssa Milano on that list along with Katha Pollitt, Michael Tracey, Joan Walsh and Michelle Goldberg. I'm sure I could think of many more.
Cedric: I'm sorry but I want to talk Michael Tracey for a minute. He keeps insisting that he's shut down Tara and he's proved something. He hasn't proven anything. Now he doesn't understand the law or survivors but does he not understand his own stupid brain? He insisted that Tara hasn't proven anything. But now when he has not disproven her, he pretends he has. Do we get that? How stupid is he? Does he have a brain injury?
Marcia: Yes. Every time he farts, he gets a concussion because his head is so far up his ass.
Cedric: It must be. It really must be. He started off arguing that nothing had been proven. Then he writes his bad little article -- with passages that appear lifted from the two con artist brothers -- and he wants to pretend he's proven something. He didn't prove a damn thing.
Betty: All Michael and the others did was do what Team Clinton did to the women who came forward in the 90s. They attacked them and smeared them. They couldn't disprove the allegations so they attacked the women. Then they pretended that was proof of something.
Ruth: They bully. That is what they do. That is what the Clinton team did. They bully and they bully people into silence.
Stan: C.I. explained it long ago, they make someone toxic and then no one will say anything. They did it, for example, with Cynthia McKinney. If you stand up or if you threaten the power structure, they go after you. They made Tara toxic with their non-stop smears and then the cowards like Krystal Ball, Ryan Grim and others backed off.
Ruth: We have not backed off.
Stan: And we won't.
Ruth: I really hate Katha Toilet. Joe Biden's campaign ran an entire operation against a woman, Tara Reade. And Katha, who claims to be a feminist, would rather side with Joe Biden than with a woman who has already has been assaulted by Mr. Biden and now has been assaulted by the press. Instead of standing up for Tara Reade, Katha Toilet joined in the public stoning. She is despicable. I'm with Rebecca, we need a list.
Jim: This is a lively roundtable. I was worried, when Ava spoke at the top, that we might be done with it in about two seconds but it got going.
Ava: Which is Jim's way of saying that me and my sour mood almost tanked his precious roundtable.
Trina: Which would have been no great loss. If Tara's in the news, we cover her. We all find her to be credible. We have not walked away from the story. We are not Krystal Ball acting like the allegation never happened. But we have done our part. And if you're upset you need to be asking the Krystal Balls why they aren't covering the story.
Jim: Why aren't they?
C.I.: The allegation has not been disproven. All the Michael Traceys did was smear Tara. Nothing they have offered says her allegation isn't accurate. They're jerks who lie. Michael pretends that Tara's not credible based on his garbage. Those smears weren't about Tara. Who they exposed were the people like Michael Tracey who want to shut up a woman who's trying to talk about being raped. As for why aren't others who used to cover it covering it now? Michael's made Tara toxic and they're too scared to speak up for her. That's not the case with feminism. You'll find a growing support for Tara because this is putting her on trial and feminists know that's not how rape charges work.
Jim: Okay, this is a rush transcript. Write us at common_ills@yahoo.com because we'll see it faster. Thank you.