A comedian’s Twitter joke about Brock Turner speaking at the Republican National Convention went viral Tuesday, but it was slammed by a Stanford University law professor and other advocates for sexual assault survivors for being insensitive and “triggering” to survivors.
Turner is the former Stanford student who was convicted in 2016 of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman long known as “Emily Doe.” But his crime apparently became material for political satire by Jena Friedman, a standup comedian, writer and actress known for “Palm Springs” and “The Daily Show.”
Friedman took aim at the party of President Donald Trump by tweeting early Tuesday, “BREAKING NEWS: Brock Turner, Stanford Student Athlete Who Assaulted Unconscious Woman, Will Speak At RNC.”
BREAKING NEWS: Brock Turner, Stanford Student Athlete Who Assaulted Unconscious Woman, Will Speak At RNC.
— Jena Friedman (@JenaFriedman) August 18, 2020
By Tuesday, Turner’s name was a top trending topic on Twitter, with a number of people thinking the tweet might be true and retweeting it.
But as it became apparent it was a joke, users on one side of the political divide saw it as a reference to the multiple sexual harassment and assault allegations against Trump. Meanwhile, those on the other side of the divide pointed out the former President Bill Clinton was speaking Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton was impeached following his affair with intern Monica Lewinksy. Both he and Trump have been in the news over the past year for their respective friendships with the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Another group expressed concern that any joke about Turner’s crime is in poor taste. That includes Stanford professor Michele Dauber, who was the driving force behind the controversial and ultimately successful campaign to recall Aaron Persky, the judge who handed down what many felt was a disturbingly soft sentence of six months in jail to Turner.
Dauber replied to Friedman’s joke: “That is not funny if it’s a joke.”
Someone with the handle @AVALANCHE_Girls replied to Dauber: “Thank you. This ‘joke’ is really triggering to survivors.”
“This isn’t okay — as a joke or otherwise,” added Adrienne Lawrence, an attorney and author. “As a woman of color, this post is (expletive) gross. Bye, Jena.”
“This is… deplorable,” added a user named Holly Marie Gibbs. “Imagine being the victim of this horrific assault & having to relive your trauma publicly (again) because some ass on Twitter decided to reduce your experience to a ‘joke’ to get likes. No, seriously, imagine it. You clearly didn’t before tweeting this.”
It’s not known if Chanel Miller was offended. She’s the woman Turner sexually assaulted on the Stanford campus in 2015. The powerful victim impact statement Miller wrote for Turner’s sentencing went viral in 2016 and helped fuel the modern iteration of the Me Too movement. The UC-Santa Barbara graduate came forward and identified herself in her 2019 memoir, “Know My Name.” Dauber was among those who praised her decision to come forward, saying it would shine new light on campus rape and how powerful institutions handle such cases.
Dauber’s criticism of Friedman’s tweet, and similar comments from others, provoked yet another subset of views that basically said people shouldn’t be so offended by what was intended to be “benign” political humor.
“Ok. At some point people need to take accountability for themselves,” tweeted @IngloriousBaxter. “If a tweet as benign as this can destroy someone they need to step off the internet and invest in some serious self care.”
Around the time Friedman posted her Brock Turner tweet, she also caustically joked about “the Bat Who Gave The World Covid” speaking at the RNC, and wondered “which mass shooter” would be speaking.
By Tuesday afternoon, Friedman stepped in to defend the “satire” of her Brock Turner tweet.
I don’t want to get kicked off twitter for other people not understanding satire.
— Jena Friedman (@JenaFriedman) August 18, 2020
In another tweet, she addressed criticism from people on the right, saying that some Republicans are “more upset with my tweet” than with Trump being president after he was accused of rape by author E. Jean Carroll. She also took aim at Democrats for giving Clinton a platform after he, too, has been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct.
Friedman ended her string of tweets late Tuesday afternoon with the comment, “You’ve all lost your minds.”
The Link LonkYou've all lost your minds.
— Jena Friedman (@JenaFriedman) August 18, 2020
August 19, 2020 at 06:55AM
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Comedian’s tweet about Brock Turner and the RNC ‘not funny,’ Stanford professor says - The Mercury News
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Funny
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