So, in the early half of Sunday the 10th, doctor and Rep. Rick Becker posted a meme on Facebook. Memes are evidently photos that convey what you’re thinking but could never find the words, or ever thought of one. Like a greeting card that punches you in the balls. Or provides a message of affirmation, whether you want one or …
Heidi Heitkamp has had better weeks. She’s probably had better train wrecks. “Nobody told me there’d be days like these,” John Lennon sang. “Strange days, indeed.” Last week, her campaign, scrambling for momentum, included in a newspaper ad the names of 127 women purported to be sexual abuse victims. The ad called out Kevin Cramer for his insensitivity to the …
Based on his related comments, it’s hard not to imagine a Kevin Cramer conversation with a sexual assault survivor that doesn’t go something like this. A Cramer-related female rushes in the front door, and yells, “Father, er, sir, I’ve been attacked.” Cramer doesn’t look up. “Who are you?” He continues smiling down on a photo of him trying to give …
I am a survivor. That is what I always call myself. I am not a victim of sexual assault. I am a survivor. One of the titles for the many talks I’ve given over the years about my sexual assault is “From Victim to Victor: Finding Healing and Strength in the Face of Violence.” In it, I address the so called …
My first memory was playing in the dirt with a hand trowel just inside a wooded area near my home. I was digging deeply into the tan soil, pulling up chunks to later break down in search of “gold” — all of the good stuff was going into my dump truck, which was nearby. I was really into the moment. …
The regular Kevin Cramer hijinks and loathsome burbs is required writing because the belligerent stupidity is such great fun to opine. After the stomach stops churning. I mean his last gullet convulsing diatribe, on the attempted illegal something versus the completion of an illegal something equals Q was brilliant in it’s combative contempt for women, girls and sanity. I assume …
I spent more time on my fantasy football picks than the Senate has on Brett Kavanaugh. No matter how it turns out, I’ll have another chance next year. But the Supreme Court is for keeps. If the 53-year-old nominee serves to the age of 90 like Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. did, he’ll reign until 2055. Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be …
This has been a tough week for survivors of sexual assault. And today, it just got worse. Donald Trump, who prior to this morning had used uncharacteristic restraint, tweeted, “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her …
I began blogging a couple of years ago, in the aftermath of the Brock Turner sentence. Turner was the 19-year-old Stanford student who drunkenly raped a fellow student and received a ridiculously short jail sentence. I wrote about my own experience as a rape survivor and talked about how there is not a “type” of victim, but there is only …
I get so tired of the Sally Hemings story. At almost every public presentation I give in the costume and character of Thomas Jefferson, someone sashays up to the microphone in the aisle and says, “Tell us about Sally Henning” or some other slight botching of her name. “Or tell us about your family, and I mean all of your …
I was 23 when I was raped in 1987. I was also serving as a hospital chaplain as part of my clinical pastoral education for seminary. I remember — as the police responded and as the hospital staff tended to my bruised and battered body — how everyone kept saying, “And she’s a chaplain,” as if there was a “type” to be raped …