Following up yesterday's post, "Witch Hunts, Trinities of Sin and Triple Goddesses," we see more language evoking witch trials in the reaction to Missouri candidate Todd Akin's asinine remarks about "legitimate rape."
Writes The Nation in "The Danger of Laughing At Todd Akin" (emphasis mine):
"In his world view, the rape victim's body will be the ultimate judge of whether a crime has taken place. If she gets pregnant, by Akin's standard, her reproductive organs consented to the pregnancy, so she must have consented to the sex. This bizarre standard of innocence is reminiscent of medieval Europe, where the men in authority held the similarly scientific view that women guilty of witchcraft floated in water while innocent women would drown. Being cleared of witchcraft was of course not much consolation to the drowned women, though they at least got to skip being burned at the stake."
People also made the "witch trial" connection on Twitter:
"You guuuuys, chill. Todd Akin misspoke. He just meant to say pile stones on her chest and if she dies then she wasn't a witch after all!"
"This just in from Rep. Akin: if a woman is legitimately not a witch, her body won't allow her to float when tied to a rock."
"Todd Akin says the best home remedy for the common cold is to now do anything bad that would cause a witch to curse you."
The whole Akin thing reminds me of the old, "Throw her in the river. If she survives, she's a witch. If she drowns, she's innocent," trick.
And so on and on.
On the heels of Julian Assange asking the U.S. to stop their "witch hunt" yesterday, and the virtual witch trial of Pussy Riot, all this talk of witches is quite significant.
And let's not forget Geraldo Rivera a few days ago referring to the Department of Homeland Security as a "lesbian cabal" -- "cabal" from the word Kabbalah meaning occult doctrine or secret.
Oh, and that whole recent "eBay bans items of witchcraft thing."
And so on and so on.
If I had to guess, expect another "witch-related" (if only metaphorically) story dominating the media soon.
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