As the Occupy manifestation of the “Global Peace and Justice Movement” begins to decay and break down into the predictable anarchy, violence and arrests, it is becoming clear that the protests pose special dangers for women.

Even the left has begun to admit it. The Nation tries to laud the role of women in Occupy Wall Street but can’t avoid the truth:

The dozen women I spoke to for this story—most of them queer-identified and/or women of color—have witnessed varying amounts of offensive behavior, such as unwanted touching or use of casually misogynist language, within the movement…

Ashwini Hardikar, one protest participant, recently wrote a powerful blog post about two such experiences that occurred within an hour: a male protester giving her an unwanted hug, who then expressed shock when she responded (loudly) that she found his hug unwelcome and intrusive, and a young man chanting “Lady Liberty is a whore” and defending himself when she questioned his language. This kind of explaining and educating can be exhausting for women.

Here are a just a few recent incidents:

• A 14-year-old runaway was allegedly sexually assaulted at Occupy Dallas.
• A 19-year-old student activist was allegedly raped at Occupy Cleveland.
• A man was arrested on charges of indecent exposure to children at Occupy Seattle.
• A female reporter was threatened by activists at Occupy Oakland.

And even more attacks are listed in John Nolte’s “rap sheet” on the Occupy protests. The threats to women are not confined to the periphery of the Occupy movement but exist at the heart of the main Occupy Wall Street protest in New York. (more…)

Earlier this week, Rene Balcer, the Executive Producer of “Law and Order,” had some obnoxious and demeaning things to say about one of the show’s former stars, Sen. Fred Thompson:

I wasn’t on the show when he was on the show. In fact, when they brought me back on the show I said I’m not coming back as long as that guy is on the show. I didn’t think much of his acting or the character.

Never mind the fact that a simple IMDB search shows that Balcer and Sen. Thompson share credit on a handful of “Law and Order” episodes, facts like this get in the way of a good, bitchy attack like that.

Sen. Thompson, for his part, has always maintained a level of discretion whenever discussing any behind-the-scenes conflicts with the notoriously left-leaning creative staff. He has never referred to any individuals by name and only that “one writer in particular” was always butting heads with him over storylines and bias injected into the show. But, now that Balcer has shown himself to be so classless and obnoxious, Thompson confirmed with me that indeed, Balcer was the writer.

“He was the guy who I busted on several different occasions and made him change his scriptm” he told me during our one-on0one interview this week in Los Angeles. “So, I think it’s fair to say he’s not very happy.” (more…)