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Update to prior CW topic, in another round of America's favorite game Everyone Has a Sex Scandal Eventually: Vice reports that Tim Ballard’s Departure From Operation Underground Railroad Followed Sexual Misconduct Investigation
From Vice's reporting:
OUR states only that:
The Mormon church meanwhile chips in to scold Ballard as well:
Prior thread on Ballard's film here; My own prior comment here
My read on all this is that it is a human psychological tragedy, Ballard got lost in his own masculine heroic fantasy. Good men nearly all carry the fantasy of, as they say, wishin' a nigga would. We want a reason to give our World of Cardboard Speech. We have the urge to engage in violence and adventure, but we want justified violence, righteous adventure. We want to fight, but fight for the right. Ballard found it in child trafficking investigations. He got to play James Bond in real life!
And what does James Bond do? He sleeps with every woman he sees, "as part of the mission." One can see the logic, if these OUR operatives were in an undercover role pretending to be a couple, that making love would be important. Blowing their cover could cost their lives, could endanger the children they are there to rescue, so whether they want to is irrelevant, they have to! But that was also part of the fantasy for him: he wanted to have to, he wanted an environment where he just had to sleep with these women, which he would then enjoy. No doubt, in his mind, the women involved shared the same fantasy. After all, while else would they join OUR and put themselves in these operations?
Ballard never meant any harm to anyone, he never meant to take advantage, he just thought he had found a moral loophole, an opportunity to enter a morals-free zone for a good cause. Apparently the women involved, the rest of the organization, and the Mormon church disagreed.
We should be wary of our fantasies of righteousness, as men. Engage in self-criticism, when we want to have a reason to use righteous violence, sometimes we just want violence. Which itself isn't necessarily a fatal flaw, there is value in harnessing masculine urges in positive ways, that can be seen as the basis for all social function. But we can't let our fantasies obscure our real mission, or harm those around us.
I have no dog in this fight. Ballard could be the hero he is made out to be or a grifter. I have no idea and don't really care, but there is nothing in the world that I loathe more than:
My heuristic with Vice and most other "progressive" news outlets is that when it comes to reporting on non-progressive topics, I'm more likely to be closer to the truth by believing the opposite of what is reported. I view every part of the article as presenting the available evidence in the least charitable and most misleading light possible.
So, let's look at who the authors of this piece are, Tim Marchman, a "sports journalist" formerly of Deadspin with a lot of articles about Q-Anon and Anna Merlan, author of Republic of Lies, a book about Q-Anon. So we have two Q-Anon obsessed progressives focusing their little part of the eye of Sauron on an organization that works against child human trafficking. They have written 12 articles critical of OUR since December of 2020. The linked article is pretty much a rehash of their last article on the subject in July. It's surprising there is any axe left here after all that grinding.
So, let's check on the sourcing here:
So, presumably there was a public statement that is no longer available online, was withdrawn without comment by the Mormon church, and what we have left is some citogenesis where the Salt Lake media sources cite Vice citing the Salt Lake media sources. I'll chalk this up as having existed at some point, but perhaps no longer representing the official position of the Mormon church.
So, out of 9 sources, only one partially confirmable source even sort of supports the allegations and even that is now offline less than a week after it was created.
Now let's look at the nature of the allegations:
So, a bunch of anonymous sources saying that a guy may have inappropriately conducted himself in ways that did not lead to actually having sex with women, but with maximum innuendo of massive misconduct and multiple cover-ups in ways that can't clearly be proven as actual malice in a defamation case. Also known as a Tuesday in Vice-land. If anything in this article turns out to be true, it will be in spite of the reporting on it.
The church statement was confirmed by Deseret News, and KUTV. It originated from an employee named Doug Anderson, and at least I'm tapped into rumors in LDS-land that yeah, it's bad and the Church is pissed at Ballard. If the Church would like to make a statement disavowing the Vice article, they have had 5 days to do so and have not.
Do they have a history of making statements disavowing tabloid hit pieces against laypeople of the church? Also they are pissed at him about what? His alleged sexual misconduct, which makes up the majority of the piece, or his inappropriately using the name of an elder? They aren't even in the same ball park crime wise, but they are listed together so the legitimacy of the church rebuke can be tied to the allegations of sexual misconduct.
This is certainly somewhat unprecendented (hence why it's sticking around), but there's no reason to assume malfeasance here, a rogue PR agent. It's been out long enough that someone would have corrected the record by now. Usually the Church responds to things through its newsroom portal, in this case they just responded to a request for comment. Not sure why, but also not sure why it matters.
we don't know specifically why the Church viewed his actions as morally unacceptable, but it is true that he has repeatedly invoked Elder Ballards name and the Church is trying very hard to tamp down on various forms of affinity fraud that sadly take in many of our more guileless members. If the sexual allegations are true it's even worse - but for now it's all based on anonymous accounts so idk. But at minimum, using an apostles name to make money is, to me, bad enough.
I don't think the statement was falsified, I think it's unlikely the church will say anything about the vice article. I thought you were falling for a false dichotomy - 'they commented on the elder stolen valor thing, so not commenting on the vice article implies they agree with it'. It kind of looks like you are falling for it again here -
Because it's true we don't know exactly why the church rebuked him, because they took down the statement they made (which implies they don't fully support it imo, but let's assume they do support it for this argument regardless), but we can be pretty damn sure they were rebuking him for claiming he was good friends with elder Ballard and not the allegations of sexual misconduct, because they speak at length about the elder thing and never say anything about allegations of sexual misconduct. Based on the evidence in this article, there is zero reason to think the church were rebuking him for the sexual misconduct.
To be clear, I don't think anyone in the church has done anything shady at all (except younger Ballard). But I trust vice about as far as I can kick them, and this article only reinforces that.
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