Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT I Am Not The Cheese
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.20.2011
It's hard for men to understand this, because 99% of the time they are the Cheese. But Diane was born knowing it, and she wouldn't be Diane without it: The system is already gamed -- like Jackie, like men and women, like dogs and red, like fish and water -- so the facts on the ground are this:
When you're a woman, you don't ever really win. You get best of three, because you started one down. So that means losses don't count as losses, until the game is over and the dust settles: It just means you double down. Something Eli is going to need to learn; something it may already be too late for Will Gardner to figure out. But it's something Diane knows, and Wendy Scott-Carr; it's something Alicia is learning.
COURT MARTIAL
Verdict: Twelve counts of murder, of course. Alicia takes out her thoughts and lays them down, one by one, sorting them out on a bench outside chambers. Judge Kuhn passes her by, they nod darkly; Kuhn rethinks and steps back. There's something in Alicia's mournful look that trips her up.
Kuhn: "You thought it was unjust. Why?"
Alicia, too emotional for this conversation: "She was scapegoated! She's being sent to prison because she was used as a scapegoat for an inaccurate drone program..."
Kuhn, shaking her head: "No. She was convicted because she did wrong."
Alicia: "She was a woman..."
Kuhn: "Oh, please. Do you know what that defense says about the thousands of women who serve honorably? We don't want that defense."
As a gay man raised in a stridently feminist household, it's something I hold very sacred. You can't be the girl who cried wolf, because it makes it harder for everybody else down the line. Including you. You are not holding the line when you bring feminism into situations where it isn't the main thing. You are making it about you, when you do that; you are making yourself the Cheese, and you can't hope to make a rational decision once you've done that. The other side of that, though, is that it's nearly impossible to tell on a case-by-case basis whether it's a valid complaint or not. It's a nuclear option but it's also a constant frontline battle, and telling the difference is a value decision all of us make every day. There may be plenty good reasons to kill individual cops on an individual basis, but nothing like the very good reasons we levy the harshest possible penalties against cop killers. This is the basis of law. And of the kill chain.
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