Recent Kardos Column Is A Shipwreck Of Reasoning

   Brewing storms, whipped by ebbing and flooding waters of public opinion when a political leader is arrested for unsavory crimes, make true headings tough to plot and navigate. Many well intended mariners, advising the best course of action for the HMS public opinion, founder on the rocks of logic, expertise and understanding of the darker depths of human nature. This is true with the column “Calls for Kardos' resignation are premature”.

   The column contends councilman Kardos is undergoing “public rape”, “(the only) legitimate reason” to withhold alleged victims names is “sexual abuse or rape” and cites as supportive evidence that murder victims names are released.

   We are asked if we “are still in America or “in some Taliban hellhole”. We are scolded that “even Saddam Hussein got a trial” and confidently told the accuser’s behavior is “strange.” With sleuth like snickering, we hear of social sightings of Kardos and his ex girlfriend to dispel the notion that there was anything but following winds and fair seas for the ill fated couple. It continues that any call for Kardos’ removal from public life is outrageous and offers the Duke fiasco as exemplary parallel evidence. We are challenged as to “what do we know about this case" and are finally reminded that all are innocent until proven guilty

   Hazzah on the last point, but we all realize that commission of misdeeds and guilty verdicts are not synonymous. Furthermore, while I sincerely acknowledge the need for columnists to set sail in the sea of opinion in this storm, this article resounds with the din of shipwrecked reasoning

   We know more relevant material than offered by the writer. The record of divorce court proceedings and testimonies from Mr. Kardos’s ex wife are also public record. Excerpts are the subject of an extensive investigative and interview piece by the Vallejo Times Herald. We know the alleged victim sought medical care first, not accusation. We know it was emergency physicians who called police. It was they who chose charging Mr. Kardos with violation of California Penal Code 245 (a) 1 (Google www.leginfo.ca.gov) and an emergency protective order.

   The clinical literature is overflowing regarding the nature, tortured mindset, and “hellhole” life for victims of domestic violence. Leaders know the compassionate, practical wisdom born from countless traumas and tragedies avoided by withholding names from mass media release and metaphorically ‘cordoning off the area’ to limit further damage. Experts know the emotional havoc visited on the many victims of domestic violence is not on some silly competitive scale with other transgressions.

   The column’s sense of proportionality in reasoning, its flagrant hyperbole and misguided analogies are unfortunate and not helpful. This in not the Duke case and in regimes such as those that the Taliban squired, individual opinions are anathema.

   So are we still America? You bet; a land where freedom of speech and questionable reasoning can set sail together and a land where we will see whether the HMS justice brings this to trial. So grab an oar, storms a brewing.

© Kevin Ryan 2007