My mother is of similar age to Camille Paglia. She once remarked to a Feminist (who was acting as key worker to her autistic son), "I don't need Feminism. Women have already won". The Feminist looked ashamed. And, rightly so. Her failure to wield her femininity was her own and not the fault of the world, as Feminism would like to reassuringly have her believe. She wasn't a blameless, objectified, agency-less victim. She was complicit in believing the lies her Feminist overseers would have her believe. And, if she couldn't make 'Patriarchy work for her', it wasn't a grand biological conspiracy, it was self-delusion.
Female power is so subtle and pervasive, we look past it, as the old saying goes, 'You can't see the wood for the trees'. It doesn't need to brag and boast like male power, so, we think it doesn't exist. In truth, it's the air we breath. But, like marionettes, men are manipulated by the barely visible strings of female dominance. and, of course, to those who know how to harness it, women hold all the power right between their legs, in their capacity to bring or end life. The honey pot, as Nicki Minaj calls it.
Camille get's it! My mum get's it. And, as Camille rightly points out in an excellent Spiked Online interview, most women get it - because, it benefits them to do so. Most women don't want Feminism.
So, it happened again. Another invited guest speaker to a campus near you was 'disinvited' at the whim of an over sensitive kill-joy hidden somewhere in the seditious halls of a university this week, to the shock and awe of less people than the last time. It really is getting all too familiar.
Julie Bindel, an outspoken, some-say, inflammatory Feminist was 'no-platformed' from speaking at University of Manchester Student Union, due to her views on Transgenderism. The fact that a talk titled “From Liberation to Censorship: does Modern Feminism have a Problem with Free Speech?” could lead itself to quite a rich assortment of irony is not entirely lost on me.
What were these people thinking? Did they think they were the punchline to a bad joke?
But, to add insult to insult, the same unnamed group of malfeasant revolutionaries (I use that term loosely here) that blocked Julie have turned their cross-hairs to another speaker due to be at the same event: Milo Yiannopoulos.
This would not have been surprising had he been the first head to roll, given his right-of-centre politics, irreverent humour and all around dissonance with the Social Justice movement. But, trying to guess the actions of a mind-set that sees things to dissect and pathologise in the most mundane of things would give you very uneasy odds that Julie Bindel would come in first in that particular race. I don't bet, but, don't bet on which turn these people will take next. They eat their own. And they eat indiscriminate of political ideology, so it seems.
It's astonishing that the 'Free Speech Movement', born on a Berkeley, California campus in the 60's, that included cross-partisan support (Rep/Dem) pushing for civil rights and an extension of our right to vocalise criticisms towards social and political establishments of the day, is now being spiritually and literally cast aside in the name of so-called 'Progressivism'.
The political 'Left' won the culture wars in the 20th Century through student activist sacrifice, on campuses just like Manchester's, via the application of 'Free Speech'. The 'student movement' was built upon the foundation of being able to 'speak truth to power' FFS.
So it grates me hard to see now, campuses everywhere in the English speaking world, especially, are eroding this liberty at the edges to silence 'wrong think', to destroy debate and to coddle themselves in the warm blankets of an elitist echo chamber. Fuck this shit! I stand with Julie, Milo, Bahar Mustafa and anyone else who is given the 'Disinvitation' treatment or out-right censored, just to preserve the obscure vanities of a small group of child-like, pampered little babies.
How is it fair that a screeching minority get to dictate the buffet options at the market place of ideas with mere nit-picking and pedantic umbrage taking? How is it okay that lives are re-arranged into fantasies dreamed up between the wet-ears of coward-like invertebrates on Social Studies degrees?
Social Justice Warriors have learned that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. That's how. And in the age of outrage, the currency for gaining favour is to uncover every rock, stone or debris for any last remaining remnants of gold the civil rights movement of the 60's may have left behind.
A generation without a war, if ever there was one.
Here is a link to an online petition to reinstate Milo Yiannopoulos which is also a hyperlink to Julie Bindel's one too.
Books, documentaries
and films were made in the aftermath of the devastation, all prying
and probing to fill collumn inches and find answers to the private motivations and
meditations of this enigmatic genius, chief among them Nick
Bloomfields fascinating and revealing documentary 'Kurt and Courtney (1998) that showed a man by the name of El Duce claiming to have been offered $50,000 to murder Kurt Cobain (which almost single-handedly
created the 'Courtney killed Kurt' sub-culture found on the Internet
to this day). And though those that proselytize 'foul play' have been
hand waved away as 'conspiracy nuts' by the mainstream media ever
since, a new film has emerged that may change their tune.
The docudrama film 'Soaked In Bleach' was released two weeks ago in a bid to
shed new light and add urgency to the ongoing debate over the, some say,
shady circumstances of Kurt Cobains death.The film attempts to showcase new
evidence and testimonials from 'police chiefs' and 'forensic
pathologists' giving growing credence to the, once thought of, 'tin
foil hat', obsessive fan speculations on Courtney Love, and her
possible involvement in his death.
You may be asking these
questions about now...
“But, isn't this just
the latest in a long line of cynical, rehashed Kurt Cobain cash-in movies trying to milk the last remnants of milk from a dying media 'cash
cow' ?”
“Is this defamation
by a vocal, fanatical minority looking for someone to blame after a
tragedy?”
“Why do I even give a
fuck about a dead, self-loathing beta man and his gorgon-esque junkie
wife?”
Or, as I would tempt you...
..is it a genuine and
thought provoking documentary, spurred by the unrelenting vigilance
of a private investigators obsession with justice, buoyed by the surprisingly overwhelming body of
evidence that he found which cannot help but cast real doubt over the official account?
After watching this revealing film, it's pretty damn hard to refute.
Well, let's just say
this - Courtney feels moved enough - nay, threatened enough - to have
issued a cease and desist order to every theatre attempting to show
this film, no doubt in an effort to intimidate and silence this
narrative from re-emerging in the media.
Evidence of a guilty
conscience? Let's see.
The film has some
pretty good game to back up it's claims and most of those claims are
centered around the work of one Tom Grant, a former county sheriff
turned PI (Private Investigator) hired by Courtney Love, in the
preceding days leading up to Kurts death to track him down and expose
his whereabouts (after Kurt fled a rehab facility and went off the
radar). Only things didn't pan out how he expected a typical
track-down to pan out.
Tom Grant, as he appears in 'Soaked In Bleach'.
Sent on a trail of
misdirection and incongruous, sometimes bizarre red herrings, Tom
soon realised that Courtney was not being quite as open and honest as a
wife looking for her 'suicidal' husband might be. It seemed like he
was deliberately being sent on a wild goose chase, to locations
counter-intuitive to logic, and in his vacillation decided to
document every single minute of conversation he had with Courtney,
over the phone, to tape. Those conversations are the backbone of the
film, with talking heads, dramatisation, hired actors and actresses
to flesh out those telephone liaisons and private meetings for the
viewer. It has to be said, the direction, acting and cinematography
really hold this film together as a compelling piece of cinema in its
own right.
The film soon delves
deep into the twisted, seedy noir-esque minutiae of the case from the
outset, tying together the complexities and inconsistencies (and
there are a lot) of the crime scene, the accounts of Seattle Police
Department members and the chronology of events leading up to the
bodies discovery by an electrician on 8th April 1994, and
after.
It also challenges the
media disseminated perception of Kurt’s mental state and
psychological profile, as a manic depressive man-child, walking
around in a perpetual state of self-loathing, a general malaise
brought about by chronic stomach ailments and constantly balancing on
the verge of suicide.
Childhood friends
testimonial, close friends who knew him best at the time, interviews
from TV archives showing Kurt express how happy he was with his new
medication (to quell his stomach pain) and his recent fatherhood, all
contradict this media generated tragic personae. It even goes deep
enough to question myths surrounding the, oft repeated, Cobain
familial history of suicide (Courtney called the 'suicide gene') in
bolstering this claim of a man tied to a biological pre-destiny to
kill himself.
It turns out his three
uncles that died were better candidates for the Darwin Awards, dying
from drunken mishaps and freak accidents involving dropping a loaded
gun in a public bar rather than being the victims of a natural
proclivity to end their own lives (unless you count a combination of
stupidity and bad luck as being pre-determining factors). But, none the less, Courtney perpetuated this myth in interviews ceaselessly in
interviews following the tragedy.
Here are 10 questions I'd like answered after watching this film:
1) Was she involved in some way?
2) Did she hire someone to kill her husband and stage it as suicide?
3) Did she have motive in killing Kurt due to his filing for divorce (which, due to a less than favourable pre-nuptial, would have cost Courtney potential millions)?
4) Why were there no legible fingerprints on the weapon and why did it take 4 weeks for the murder weapons prints to come back and be examined?
5) How could he have lifted the shotgun when toxicology says he was 3-4 times over the overdose limit of a hardened heroin user (and therefore would have been too incapacitated to pull the trigger)?
6) Why was the verdict of 'suicide' given on the day of discovery (only 54 minutes after they found him)?
8) Does it even read like a suicide note or was he just quitting the music business for a while, as supporting accounts suggest?
9) Why did she consistently send Tom Grant in the opposite direction to Kurt, conceal information, lie and fail to mention the room above the garage during the search to find him?
10) Why is the case not being re-opened with an independent enquiry in place of and in light of possible police corruption?
The questions this case offers are ceaseless and the circumstantial evidence seems to never end. So much so, that, it all feels like the makings of a sensational true 'Hollywood Murder Mystery' (add more drugs and less glamour) spliced with the tailor made headlines of The National Inquirer and mixed in with the 'Cluster-B' character profiles and deception of 'Gone Girl'. You couldn't make it up if you were Elmore Leonard. And though there is no direct evidence to implicate anyone in a conspiracy, the official, lacklustre account of what transpired in April 1994 has lead enough people to draw other, more nefarious conclusions about what transpired.
You've probably guessed by now, it's a really deep complicated rabbit hole of artefacts to smoosh into one post. All I can say is, go watch the film, go to Tom Grants website or read Tom Grants PDF 138 page case file. Ultimately, decide for yourself.
It's up to you how crazy you are for detail, but if the growing number of people on social media are availed for their efforts, the Seattle Police Department will be pushed to re-opening this case a third time (or ceded by an independent enquiry) and, eventually, get their day in court.
