Well, I owe NewsChannel 5 an apology, because I had thought that their interview with a rapist in which they failed to ask the rapist any pertinent questions, but gave him a platform to share his judgmental feelings about his victim, had to have been the lowest possible moment of the media's response to the Vanderbilt rape trial.
NewsChannel 5, I was wrong. You did not stoop so low that there's room for nothing beneath you but pond scum and rat shit. It turns out that Dr. Phil managed to squeeze in between you and rock bottom. I am sorry I insinuated that you were the worst. Clearly, you are only the second worst.
On Wednesday, Stacey Barchenger at the Tennessean had the story of how Dr. Phil was in town on Tuesday to interview Cory Batey:
One week after he was convicted of raping an unconscious student, former Vanderbilt University football player Cory Batey sat down for an interview with Dr. Phil. Daytime television personality Dr. Phil McGraw met with Batey, 21, at Nashville's Criminal Justice Center for about an hour Tuesday. "His niche seems to be helping heal families, and this interview was not about Cory, it was about helping the healing to begin for everyone," said Worrick Robinson, Batey's attorney. "It was about, I think, a bigger picture in all of this ... the alcohol abuse going on, the culture argument."[...]
Robinson argued at trial that Batey was pressured by a culture of promiscuity, partying and peer pressure before the rape. It did not work as a legal defense — a jury found Batey guilty in the rape — but Robinson said there is still work to be done to raise awareness of those issues.
"It's not going to happen overnight. I know that, and Cory knows that," Robinson said. "Hopefully the message from this is people can begin to heal, and it's a national problem that needs to be addressed and needs light shined on it."
I am... wow... just utterly blown away.
People can begin to heal? People? What people? Did Batey sprain his wrist when slapping the victim? Is Vandenburg's throat still sore from giving directions and laughing? Is Mack Prioleau suffering some wound to his psyche because everyone knows that, when he saw a rape happening, he just left the room? What the fuck kind of healing does "everyone" need? It seems to me some people need to sit and stew in their own bad feelings for a little while longer, frankly.
Listen, I do feel some sympathy for Batey — and by some, I mean, on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being what I feel for Batey's victim, I feel about a 7 for Batey. It's quite clear that Batey believes he's a good person. And I imagine it is very, very difficult to reconcile the need to believe you're a good person with the fact that you got really drunk and raped a woman. Because I'm sure Batey realizes that a lot of people get really, really drunk all the time and never rape anyone. I'm sure that it sucks to think you are a good person and to know that you're a rapist.
I'm sure that causes a lot of cognitive dissonance and I'm sure, then, that a person would flounder around for some way to make sense of it, to make both things true. So how, in his own mind, can Batey be a good person and the kind of person who would rape someone? He must have been lead astray in some way, some outside forces beyond his control caused him to do this. So, if he warns others of these outside forces that could tempt even a good person such as himself into doing this evil thing, he can see himself as a good person again, someone who is trying to do the right thing, who's trying to make it right.
The trouble with this approach — and the reason I think many of us are so deeply grossed out by it — is that it turns Batey into a kind of victim himself. He was the victim of this "culture of promiscuity, partying and peer pressure." That culture did things to him against his will and made him into a person he doesn't recognize when he looks in the mirror. It so neatly parallels the language survivors of rape use to talk about their experiences that it makes it seem like something as bad as what Batey did happened to him to turn him into the kind of person who could do this terrible thing.
Batey has not been victimized by a party culture.
If Batey is feeling wounded, it's because he broke his own heart. He had to learn in a horrific way that he's not a good man. That sucks.
It does not suck nearly as much as it sucked for his victim to learn that he wasn't a good man. It really doesn't even compare.
But I understand why it's necessary for Batey to do things to make him feel like a good person again. I get that compulsion.
And I also feel a tiny bit bad for Batey because whoever's giving him advice about talking to motherfucking Dr. Phil does not have his best interests at heart. The only thing Dr. Phil can do is turn Batey's situation into entertainment. Batey's lawyer's assurances that Dr. Phil asked Batey tough questions doesn't diminish the entertainment value. It practically guarantees that Dr. Phil's audience will turn in for the sordid details and the catharsis.
Batey doesn't need to perform some kind of penance on TV. He needs to serve his time and be a changed man.
The thing about rape is that the rapist doesn't give a shit what his victim wants. That's the thrill of it — that you do whatever you want to do to this person and you don't care if she wants to or if it hurts her or how it's going to affect her for the rest of her life.
If Batey wants to prove that he's genuinely remorseful, he needs to show that he's not normally the kind of person who doesn't give a shit about how his actions affect others. Going on Dr. Phil and aiding in the entertainment-ification of the rape he committed doesn't really show a great deal of consideration for his victim.
She's remained anonymous. She's stayed off TV. Obviously Batey has not talked to her (nor should he!), but every signal she's sent has been one in which she wants some level of privacy and for rape victims to be centered in the further discussions about campus rape.
Dr. Phil devoting a show to the scandal of Batey's behavior and the evil temptations of campus culture doesn't show a lot of consideration for Batey's victim.
Batey's participation doesn't show that he's learned to consider how his actions will affect others who might be hurt by them.
Quite the opposite.
