What Lies Beneath

Today's piece for the Daily Banter takes a look at the rape case which is coming slowly, piece by startling piece, to light in Steubenville, Ohio -- and what it says about kids, insular towns and what happens when you peel back the layers and expose the rot.

Here's the opening shot:

"One of the first stories of local intrigue that I covered extensively during the early part of my career was the murder of Bobby Kent. For those who don’t know details of the case — it was so chock full of shocking teen corruption and decadence that it actually did manage to gain publicity beyond the confines of South Florida, even eventually inspiring the 2001 Larry Clark film Bully — Bobby Kent was a teenager from the Broward County suburb of Hollywood who was killed by seven other kids in July of 1993. Kent had apparently been a raging sociopath, appearing thoroughly harmless and ingratiatingly charming to adults but ruling over his small group of friends with tyrannical cruelty. On a steamy summer night out on the edge of the Everglades, those friends took their revenge, stabbing and beating him over and over then leaving his body in shallow water, assuming the alligators would get rid of it for them. The problem, of course, is that none of these kids was a criminal mastermind — they were basically all bored suburban white trash with a lot of time to kill and parents who were practically non-existent — and the murder they committed wound up coming apart in short order. Once the layers of the crime began being pulled back, though, and the details of what led to the night of the fatal attack on Bobby Kent bubbled up for all to see, what police, journalists and community leaders were left with was a truly sordid and surprising tale of youth gone mad that involved sex, betrayal, bullying, gay porn, teen pregnancy and a hapless 20-year-old 'hit man.' It was honestly one hell of a story, one that startled simply because it revealed, David Lynch-style, the rot that often remains hidden just beneath the idyllic surface of suburbia.

While the kids of Steubenville, Ohio are a far cry, both in distance and general disposition, from the South Florida teens involved in the Bobby Kent murder — all seven of whom did or are still doing time for the incident — the story of what they’ve been up to and the adults that have apparently been ignoring or enabling their bad behavior immediately brings me back to the Kent case."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organisation spreads around the world."

-- Anonymous, via its Italian outlet, addressing the Catholic Church and claiming responsibility for the hacking attack that took down the Vatican's website yesterday

Scientology and now the Catholic Church -- what does that tell you?

By the way, I can see the t-shirts already: "Anonymous > God"

We Are Anonymous, We Are Legion, and We Will Penetrate Your Love Cave

So yesterday I posted an entirely throw-away item that made the rounds like wildfire over the weekend. It's a screenshot of a woman's public Facebook profile, on which she seems to have accidentally written a rather detailed messsage that was ostensibly supposed to have remained private, describing a particularly good sexual encounter (specifically, being mounted by a "strong and powerful man").

Well, like all good stories, there's a twist. Turns out the whole thing is the work of the merry pranksters at 4Chan.org -- many of whom were also responsible for the "Anonymous" internet attacks on Scientology back in February of last year -- and was aimed at embarrassing various fundamentalist Christian Facebook users.

From The Next Web:

"It seems as though some of message-board site 4Chan.org’s elite has managed to acquire a list of Christian Facebook users and quite possibly their passwords too. In doing so, they’ve hacked a number of accounts, posted a number of extremely embarrassing photos and messages to Facebook walls, and then continued to comment under the shares – pretending to be the actual account owner.

...

It has been confirmed that at least one Christian university has had their server hacked and usernames and passwords stolen. It’s quite likely that many of these passwords are the same passwords used on Facebook, making it very easy for hackers to access the site.

...

The list of leaked usernames and passwords is real and we have a copy. The list contains a list of email addresses and their passwords. Incidentally, the list appears to have originated from a Christian dating website.

...

We managed to get hold of a folder full of similar screenshots of not just Facebook profiles, but email accounts and other social network profiles too. 4Chan, or whoever is definitely responsible, really went to town here. Some of the images posted are incredibly graphic and the language used used awful. There’s definitely some elements of humor involved, it is 4Chan after all, but many people are going to have a lot of explaining to do."

A look at some more of what 4Chan's been doing with the information it swiped reveals that it included sending e-mails to the family members of its Christian victims, supposedly from the person targeted, declaring that he or she has turned gay and is abandoning God. Oh, and ordering sex toys.

See for yourself.

I'm never sure what to make of the 4Chan kids. On the one hand, I've so far loved almost every high-profile internet prank they've pulled and agree with who it's been aimed at.

But, man, would I ever want to get on their bad side?

Hell no.

Fault Lines

You probably noticed that I haven't bothered getting into the strange and sudden death of John Travolta's son, Jett. Needless to say, this is because there's no way for me to mention it and not in good conscience also bring up the role that the crackpot nonsense known as Scientology may have played in the whole thing -- and I may be heartless on occasion, but even I'm not gonna turn a kid's death into the opportunity to argue a political point, not without putting a little more distance between the event and my comments.

Of course the shadowy group "Anonymous" doesn't feel the Scientology angle is one that should be avoided, regardless of the timing.

So I'll turn this one over to them.

Consider it Intellectual Rendition.

Why We Protest: What Scientology Will Probably Do About the Tragic Death of Jett Travolta/1.3.09

Related: The Huffington Post: "Be Wary, Be Wary, the 10th of February" by Chez Pazienza/2.1.08

The "A" Team

Since the elusive internet vigilante group known only as "Anonymous" has chosen to once again make its presence known, I thought I'd revisit something I wrote back in February of this year. This piece was never published here; it was exclusive to the Huffington Post. It deals with Anonymous's strange and somewhat gratifying war on Scientology.

Let me start off by paraphrasing a popular disclaimer: I'm not "Anonymous," nor am I affiliated with the mysterious internet group in any way.

That said, as a fan of The X Files I love a good conspiracy theory, which means that the recent antics of the shadowy entity known only as "Anonymous" have admittedly piqued my interest. In deference to those who just stepped out of a bathysphere, Anonymous is the name that's been adopted by a self-proclaimed collective of hackers and supposedly pissed-off average folks for the purpose of meting out justice via the internet -- and it's now declared war on Scientology. Two weeks ago, the group launched the first salvo in what it says will be an extended campaign to bring down the controversial "church"; it released an eerie video message attacking Scientology's tactics and promising retaliation for what it claims is a history of lies and generally sinister behavior on the part of the organization. To its credit I guess, Anonymous didn't keep anyone waiting: It launched a series of coordinated denial-of-service attacks on the official Scientology website almost immediately, effectively shutting it down. This was supposedly followed by prank phone calls and "black fax" transmissions to Scientology offices across the country.

At least two more videos have been released by Anonymous since its initial declaration of hostilities, one promising a global protest at Scientology centers on February 10th.

Needless to say, the normally confident Scientology big shots, who've raised damage control through vindictive litigation to an art form, suddenly find themselves in an amusing PR bind: If they dismiss Anonymous as a bunch of pathetic computer geeks -- which they already have, word for word -- they appear hopelessly arrogant; If they take the group seriously, they give it power; if they just ignore it altogether, they look stupid.

In other words, for all their supposed higher-brain functions, compliments of L. Ron Hubbard's questionable teachings, they can't win this one.

A group of internet savvy kid vigilantes has, to some extent, already beaten them.

The question some are asking though is whether Anonymous has crossed the line -- whether, in its battle to expose Scientology, it's engaging in the same kind of underhanded tactics it accuses the church of. The founder of one popular anti-Scientology website, Operation Clambake, has already criticized the group's supposed skulduggery, claiming that it'll only put Scientologists in a position to play the religious persecution card.

Maybe, but honestly -- who cares?

Almost since its inception as an organization, Scientology has been involved in one unscrupulous scheme or another -- at various points guilty of fraud, exploitation of its adherents for financial gain, and the illegal infiltration of government agencies. It's upheld the basic edict of its paranoid narcissist founder and set out to destroy its critics through intimidation, innuendo and impossibly dirty tricks. It was once called the "most lucrative cult the country has ever seen" by the Cult Awareness Network, a watchdog group which was eventually taken over by associates of the Church of Scientology. The whole thing, including the silly cosmology that serves as the basis for Scientology's belief system -- the kind of nonsense only a hack sci-fi writer could dream up -- would be laughable if it weren't so damn scary.

Anonymous claims that it was the Church of Scientology's efforts to suppress the recently leaked and utterly surreal video tribute to Tom Cruise which led to its decision to take action. Admittedly, watching Cruise -- looking not simply crazy but dangerously crazy -- spouting Hubbard's official-sounding acronymic lingo and making ex cathedra declarations of "no mercy" for psychiatrists is as mesmerizing as it is frightening. He almost seems like he's channeling his Frank T.J. Mackey character from Magnolia, demanding that we all "respect the crock."

The problem of course is that if you say any of this too loudly, the church will have no compunction about removing the choke collar from its legal pit bulls, which is what makes the mischievous guerilla attacks of Anonymous tough not to enjoy a little -- provided they never cross the line into the realm of genuine terrorism.

The bottom line: It's kind of satisfying to watch someone turn the tables on Scientology, using the same brand of furtive cloak-and-dagger absurdity to publicly shame an adversary that the church has used for decades.

If the Scientology people knew who to file a lawsuit against, you can bet it would've already happened.

That's why it's so much fun that they're left chasing shadows.

You Know the Difference Between "Anonymous" and a Pit Bull? Broadband.

I'm sure I'll have something more substantial to say about this tomorrow morning (when I'm not juggling my laptop and a crying baby), but for now I just need to get the basics out there:

There apparently is a God and he really, really does love me.

Why do I say this?

Because just when I thought the whole Sarah Palin fiasco couldn't get any more entertaining or personally all-consuming, my second favorite subject of 2008 just became a part of it.

For yours truly, this is the journalistic equivalent of adding peanut butter to chocolate -- like having OJ suddenly die by shark attack.

It's the goddamned Voltron of news stories.

"Anonymous" has hacked Sarah Palin's personal e-mail.

(Gawker: Anonymous Declares War on Sarah Palin/9.17.08)

(The Hill: McCain Camp Rips "Shocking Invasion" of Palin's Privacy/9.17.08)