8.06.2010

Give Me a Break Peter

Hello my dear friends, pro-exploitation stalkers and the like,

I'm on a small hiatus from my 'normal' activities. You can thank my sinus infection for that. I'm not keeping up with Twitter, YouTube, this blog, my feminist board, my Amplify and other real life stuff. However, I AM doing a lot of reading online.

I came across a story on A360 that I blogged about in this post. I returned to the video and story today and found a comment on the story that made my head hurt more, if that's possible. It was a comment by someone named Peter. The first thing I noticed was the fact that Peter didn't know how to use paragraphs so his post looked like word vomiting. I braved my way through it and discovered that this guy is so full of male privilege and prostitution apologetics it's not even funny.

Basically, Peter stated in so many words (oh so many words) that Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, is somehow not really responsible for screening adult ads on his site to make sure there's no child prostitution, adult prostitution and/or sex trafficking. Why isn't Craig responsible? Well, because he doesn't run the company technically. He just works in a part of the company. I don't know about you but that seems like a very apologetic stance. You think it would be really easy for Craig Newmark to ring up the runner of his own company and say 'Look. We really need to monitor the adult section like we claim to do, eh fellas?'

After all, Peter said, Craigslist doesn't have the staff to pour over these ads like they say they do. Yeah, Craigslist says they DO monitor these ads even though it's been clearly shown that  prostitution and trafficking is happening on the site.

Peter then gnashes his teeth at the reporters of A360 because they somehow FORCED Craig Newmark to talk to them on a public sidewalk.

Yes, there is a valid story and discussion about CL. But trapping Craig Newmark out on the sidewalk isn't the way to do it.

Really? What other way is there to do it Peter? I never knew that speaking to someone on a sidewalk constituted trapping. Craig could have easily told the reporter to schedule an appointment for an interview and decline it but he didn't and ultimately showed that his company isn't doing ANYTHING about the Adult section of the site. When reporters asked a local law enforcement authority if they've gotten a SINGLE report from Craigslist to check out an ad for prostitution and/or trafficking the answer was a very firm 'no.'

Peter thinks the cops should be the ones to screen all the ads. The hell with company responsibility right Peter? Oh, and I loved how you told us all how long the problems related to prostitution have been around. That's right, they've been with us FOREVER so why start doing anything about it. Hell, Peter, we can't even have reporters asking questions about it without you whining:
That would do us much more good than the one sided somewhat salacious sort of report I just saw on TV. I trust you guys (AC360 and CNN in general) to try and be fair and even handed and impartial to give us a true picture of the news. Please don't let me and others down.
 Wouldn't want to let you down Peter by exposing the severity of this problem AND by giving Craig an opportunity, which he TOOK, to respond to the reporters questions.

In Peter's mind, it's just not FAIR to question the sex industry and if or when you do it you must have everyone prepare a statement ahead of time so that nobody will feel trapped into giving an honest answer.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the interview with Craig was his achingly long silence when the reporter asked him 'What are you doing to protect these girls?'

Maybe Peter can answer that question?

1 comment:

Kristina said...

Why not make it Craigslist's responsibility...shit...we're in a bad place economically...ANY new jobs created would be fucking awesome...but I bet Craig doesn't want to put his money back into the system...just feed his wallet and watch the world self destruct!

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