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 Recruiter Sexual Abuse: Friendly Fire at Home?

As more women are joining the military, they are becoming the victims of sexual assault before they even take their oath. A former Army specialist explains the growing problem with abuse by recruiters and how the military is turning a blind eye.

An Associated Press investigation revealed that in 2005 one in 200 frontline recruiters were punished for harassment and abuse. The Army alone had 722 recruiters accused of rape and sexual misconduct in the last decade and called for a recruitment stand down day in 2005. After widespread reports of rape, unwarranted jail threats, cheating drug tests and falsifying documents, thousands of recruiters were ordered to attend ethics training.

In ordinary times with decent civilian leadership the military can be a very rewarding learning experience, a good way to earn money for college or even as a career. Even if we tried to dismiss this with the usual few bad apples argument it is still too many and a tremendous betrayal of trust.

Is Tinseltown really about to disappear from our cultural radar screens? 

For here is the crux of Fischer’s argument. Film is a 19th-century medium, projected by a contraption that fires beams of light through a strip of perforated celluloid as it runs at a regulated speed from one reel to another. Despite the fact that this technology is antiquated, expensive, damaging and ungainly, it remains the operative form of distributing and exhibiting movies for the Hollywood-dominated commercial mainstream. And this for a simple, vaguely sinister reason: as long as the standard exhibition format for Hollywood movies remains 35mm film, the industry maintains its monopoly over the multiplexed middle. All other formats, no matter how much more cheaply produced and disseminated, are closed out and marketplace dominance is assured.

Hollywood is easy to slam and every other month someone proclaims it dead and offers up their reason why. The writer of this article doesn’t think that Hollywood is going to die, but it will change because of technology. Just my own take Hollywood isn’t going anywhere because of two things. One is development. Its one thing to sit around with friends and talk about making a cool movie its another thing to actually make it and make it in a way that doesn’t look like family vacation footage. The other is distribution. If you do invest in professional actors and production values you’re going to want some slight compensation to stay out of bankruptcy if nothing else so you’ll need to have your movie distributed. Youtube has not made a movie maker rent money yet much less a few million in production costs. So that means commercial distribution. Geoff Pevere, the reviewer is on to something when he suggests their might be more regional productions because technology allows you to skip Hollywood in that regard and more niche driven movies as their is now with music, but people for the foreseeable future will want to go someplace and do something on Friday and Saturday night and Hollywood is good at filling that need even as mediocre as the offerings might be.