Also on CounterSpin this week: With a name like the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, you'd expect such a group is going to upset some big corporations. And they have, including launching a very successful campaign against media giant Disney. Well, maybe a little too successful; the group found itself evicted from its headquarters after Disney complained. We'll talk to Dr. Susan Linn from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood about that story.

Click to play to listen:

The choice of terms makes a crucial difference in the way the issue of violence against women's health clinics is discussed. Take an AP piece that ran after Roeder was convicted, which ran under the headline "Conviction Angers Anti-Abortion Militants" (1/30/10):

Testifying in his own defense, a remorseless and resolute Roeder insisted he had committed a justified act for the defense of unborn children by killing Dr. George Tiller, one of the country's few physicians to offer late-term abortions. It was a bold legal strategy that, if successful, had the potential to radically alter the debate over abortion by reducing the price for committing such an act of violence.

When it failed, those who share Roeder's passionate, militant belief against abortion were outraged: One said they are getting tired of being treated as a "piece of dirt" unable to express the reasons for such acts in court. So while relieved at the outcome, abortion-rights advocates worry a verdict that should be a deterrent will instead further embolden those prone to violence.

It's hard to imagine AP publishing an article that treated the claim that "terrorism" was justifiable as a "bold legal strategy" with the "potential to radically alter the debate," or suggest that handing out a lesser sentence to a "terrorist" might avoid "emboldening" others in his movement.  That's because the word "terrorist" comes with an assumption that killing people to promote your cause is inherently illegitimate.  When the issue is abortion, however, it seems like the corporate media thinks the jury is still out.

Were you a victim? Yes.

First, you were a victim of your own awful judgment.

Hess points out Dickinson's disparate treatment of victim and perpetrator:

You don’t say whether the guy was also drunk. If so, his judgment was also impaired.

Or as Hess translates: "Your judgment was 'awful'; your rapist's judgment was merely 'impaired.'"

The most stunning part of the advice column, though, was when Dickinson urged the letter-writer to give the man who raped her a call:

You must involve the guy in question in order to determine what happened and because he absolutely must take responsibility and face the consequences for his actions, just as you are prepared to do.

Hess responds to this "destructive, dangerous, and negligent" advice:

Obviously, rapists should not be consulted on questions of consent. As this column makes clear, we should all probably refrain from consulting Ask Amy as well.

UPDATE: Those interested in asking Amy Dickinson to retract the advice in her November 27 column can sign a petition that does so here.

After an informative look at the real biological meaning of the test findings that "led some media outlets to call her a 'hermaphrodite' (and some even more inaccurately calling her 'a woman … and a man')," Rogers writes that, to him,

Caster's story, however, is particularly poignant. She's only 18 years old. She only recently asserted her girly side on the cover of a magazine. More tragically, though, it's likely she had no idea about her sexual condition before today. Many intersex people don't learn about their biological history until well into their life, and the discovery can be predictably traumatic if not destructive. To make things worse, in Semenya's case, her discovery is being played out on an international stage, under the microscope of an ill-informed and often predatory press, while she's being faced with the knowledge that her career is likely to end.

If there’s an upside to the story, it’s that it’s likely to put intersex issues into the spotlight in a way that they’ve rarely been before. Unlike transgendered people (who benefited from films like Transamerica), intersex people haven’t had many great breakthroughs into mainstream culture.

But that's a pretty big if, considering corporate media's record of unenlightened gender reporting; see the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Transforming Coverage: Transgender Issues Get Greater Respect—but Anatomy Remains Destiny" (11–12/07) by Julie Hollar.