She flagged me down from the side of the road.

It was early morning on a stretch of road that is rarely traveled on foot because there is no sidewalk. Sometimes people don’t have a choice. They walk because their car is in the shop or they simply can’t afford one. There are buses, but the schedules are intermittent.

I pulled over.

She was a teenager who appeared nervous as she looked through my open passenger side window. Before she could speak, an angry driver leaned on his horn and looked to be cursing as he swung his jeep around the fraction of my car that was still in the road.

I looked back at her and shrugged.

She thought that she was lost until I turned and pointed to the development that she was looking for. Sheepishly, she asked if she could make a call with my cell phone that I had placed on the seat.

“Sure.”

As she spoke with her cousin, a van pulled up alongside. The driver asked if we needed any help. I thanked him and said that she was just using my phone. He looked hard at me for a moment, then turned to her and waited for a confirming nod, before driving away.

She returned the phone, thanked me, and began to walk up the hill to meet her cousin who was now on the way.

As I continued my commute, I considered the stark difference between the two men with whom I had had those brief encounters.

The first seemed concerned only with getting to where he was going. The girl on the side of the road and I were nothing more than obstructions to him. He was inconvenienced – if one can classify the effort that it takes to make a quarter turn of the steering wheel an inconvenience – and he was upset about it.

The second driver witnessed an adult male and a young girl in an unusual place and decided to take a moment of his time to do something about it.

Maybe he was simply checking to see if we had car trouble.

Maybe he was suspicious of the scene.

The reason doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he stopped to assess the situation, and presumably, to help if he could.

As the father of daughters I am always worried about them. We cannot be with our children all of the time and we never know if or when they will find themselves in adverse situations.

Some people make an effort to help others.

Some people don’t.

To those that don’t I ask, “Do you know where your children are?”

Ever since Adam told Eve that he had mad skills as a snake charmer, men have been lying to women to get into their pants.

“Baby, I can rock your world.”

Earlier this week, I listened in horror to a Democracy Now podcast as the correspondent spoke of a trial that had just concluded in an Israeli court. A Palestinian man stood accused of lying to a woman.

The charge was rape by deception.

In 2008, a Palestinian man, Sabbar Kashur, met an Israeli woman and led her to believe that he was an Israeli bachelor. They had consensual relations that evening. Later, she learned that he had lied about both being single and being Israeli, so she filed a complaint.

Apparently, being coaxed into bed under false pretense is a very serious crime in Israel – especially if the accused is a Palestinian.

On Monday, he was sentenced to eighteen months in jail.

Those in agreement with the verdict don’t see Kashur’s offense as an indiscretion, rather they view his actions as an unambiguous example of a crime. One such person is Merav Mor, a director of resource development at the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel. During an interview on Al Jezeera, she summed it up this way:

“If a woman or a man feels that they were given wrong information, they were raped.”

I don’t buy that.

She was pissed off. I get it. No one wants to be lied to. What I don’t get is how a good idea – protecting women from abuse – can be contorted into this assault on sensibility. Were this to become the prevailing sentiment here in the America, our jails would be “standing room only” with men and women who have embellished, red lined, or completely fabricated their social resumes.

It is possible that this charge and verdict were not based on the respective nationalities of the complainant and defendant, as alleged by Ms. Mor, yet the overly expansive definition of rape that was used in this case strains credulity.

Where does it end?

He claims to be an executive, but he’s really a file clerk.

String ‘em up, it’ll teach him a lesson.

She’s uses Botox or wears a girdle.

String her up, it’ll teach her a lesson.

He tells her that he is the “best”.

Well, we can’t string him up for making that claim because, if we did, men would soon be extinct.

I’m not making light of real abuse. Victims ought to be protected. But this verdict is a clear overreach in that Kashur is now a sex offender, and will forever be viewed no differently than a child molester in the eyes of the law.

That can’t be right.

Some may think me misogynistic for taking this view, but followed to its logical conclusion, rapping would be outlawed and little white lies would morph into felonies.

So Players, beware.

When you step up to the pretty woman sitting at the bar, you may be doing so at your own risk.

——————–

What do you think of this verdict?

Being outraged, it seems, is very fashionable.

The Twitterspere was all aghast because Sarah Palin used a word that isn’t really a word – “refudiate”. To witness the instantaneous and sustained outrage over this minor gaffe was amazing to me.

I know what drives this kind of piling on – her detractors simply do not like or respect her. I’m no fan of Mrs. Palin either, but I’d feel extremely petty if I raked her over the coals for this type of thing. There are other, more substantive, reasons for my non-support.

The Mel Gibson saga is another example of an unhinged crowd mentality revving folks up in order to crush a person. Mel Gibson messed up. There’s no doubt about this. But as I tweeted the other day:

How can this be legal? Oksana Grigorieva was not about to lose her cool when she knew that she was recording these exchanges. He, on the other hand, was venting – believing that she was the only one listening. Of course he’s going to come off looking like a boob. And maybe he is one, but that’s beside the point.

If you’re reading this and you can say that you have never lost your temper and said something stupid, please raise your hand.

If you raised your hand, I’m going to call you a liar.

People are getting away with bad behavior all over:

• A mistress stores text messages from a married lover and releases them when the tryst is uncovered;
• A woebegone actress is offered $500,000.00 to tell her pre and post jail stories after a 2nd DUI conviction;
• A whistleblower is sentenced to more time in prison than the wealthy tax evaders on whom he blew the whistle;
• A grass roots organization that has helped the poor for years is driven out of business by a doctored video.

These behaviors have led to a distinct list of winners and losers:

There’s plenty of bad behavior going on by almost everyone involved, the accusers as well as the accused, so why are some wrongdoers profitting while others are being bashed?

People are getting away with bad behavior all over…

… and it’s a crying shame.