As Seen On The Bathroom Wall

Wow, two blogs in one day!

I was planning on ignoring that whole Tila Tequila/Shawne Merriman debacle because quite frankly, she's an attention whore and he was stupid enough to date her, and when you mix whores and stupidity together, you get a pretty noxious combination of karma. Well, unfortunately for Shawne Merriman, karma came by way of an assault allegation. Not just assault - attempted murder.

Why?

Because Tila Tequila, born Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen, is a damned bad liar, that's why.

See, when you put the two stories together, something just doesn't sound right. At first, it seems quite obvious who's telling the truth: He says he was restraining her from driving drunk, she says he assaulted her and choked her; he's a giant compared to her; she went to the hospital.

Lots of foreign terms were used, like "citizen's arrest" - which wouldn't mean much to anyone unless you're a fan of Police Academy 3 - but when people see the word "arrest", they automatically think police>cuffs>jail>guilty. It all goes hand in hand. In an instant, Shawne went from average NFL player to attempted murderer. Like being called a rapist, or a child molester, that's a label that gets tattooed onto your body with lasers. It doesn't come off, and it'll never fade, especially not with the internet so readily available to every bored googleologist in the world.

Women rallied to Tila's side, crying "abuse" and shouting for "justice!"

Trouble was, the only thing Tila seemed to care about was attention. She stopped tweeting for one day, and then quick as a flash - or as some people have deduced, a hangover recovery period - she was back, tweeting about woe is her, justice, pictures, witnesses, and DA meetings.

Trouble is, there has been no corroborative testimony, either public or otherwise, to confirm her side of the story. When Shawne explained his side, she lashed out on twitter to say that he's lying because she's "allergic to alcohol" which, if you're Asian like me, simply means your face gets red as a freaking beet and everyone knows you were completely tossed. Let's be honest here, the girl's been drunk on television more time than Paris Hilton's panties have been on TMZ. This isn't a secret, so for her to say something that ridiculously and patently false is one obvious sign that there are cracks in her story that are wider than...well, I won't go there. Add on to that the fact that paramedics stated that they saw no visible injuries to Tila when they arrived and took her to the hospital.

Now, I understand that some individuals will claim that bruises don't normally show up until twenty-four hours after an assault, but this simply isn't true. Bruising can be almost instantaneous, depending upon the person. Also, the skin around the neck is very delicate, and bruising there will become visible within minutes. Redness from the contact will be visible immediately. Add to that the damage that strangulation will do to the capillaries in the eyes, even if only slightly, and you've got very visible evidence that someone has been choked, whether by a hand, an arm, or an object. Paramedics are trained to spot signs of oxygen deprivation that can be caused by an attempted strangulation. Also, vocal chords can be damaged that would impair an individual's ability to speak. All of these things would have been noticed by EMTs/Paramedics/Police Officers/hospital staff. Any of these things would have been evidence enough to file charges against Shawne Merriman for assault and possibly attempted murder/manslaughter.

The recent photographs that Tila "released" to TMZ show bruising "one day" after the alleged incident. Anyone who has ever been choked or restrained violently knows that those bruises are far too faint to have been caused within a twenty-four hour time period. There's yellowing to the bruises on her arms, which implies healing. There appears to be no bruising to her throat, and as someone who knows what being choked feels like and looks like, I simply cannot take her at her word that she was, in fact, choked. Could she have been restrained? That's not in question. Shawne admitted to restraining her. The bruises on her arms make quite clear in that regard that someone was holding her tightly there, forcefully if you will, and his explanation seems more plausible given the nature of the supposed altercation. If what he says is true, then that makes even more egregious the claims that she's made.

Why?

Because thousands of women out there are afraid to come forward with their own tales of abuse because they fear they won't be believed, and women like Tila Tequila are, in part, greatly to blame for it. Whenever a woman falsely cries rape or abuse, it pushes back the advances that women have made to tell their stories, to get help, to seek justice. There was a stigma attached to rape and abuse, that the women either deserved it or were simply saying it because they were jealous, or angry at their husbands/lover, and often times a woman was punished for even trying to get help. The system would return her to her abuser, and she would suffer for the audacity to seek sanctuary from any source. From woman's suffrage to equal pay for equal work, it's been a struggle to gain any ground in this world if you happen to have been born with ovaries and a vagina, and women died fighting for rights that far too many of us take for granted today.

And so when someone like Tila Tequila comes along and starts calling for justice for her because no one believed her blatantly false tales, what she does is not point the light of scrutiny at herself, but at the female population in general. The next time a female is genuinely assaulted by a celebrity, the number of people who doubt her claim will be far, far larger than those that exist today, and I'd bet that a great deal will bring up this particular incident as justification for their skepticism.

Without a doubt, the most vulgar and tasteless thing that she's done has been to bring up abuse and homicide victim, Jasmine Fiore, into the equation which, while it doesn't surprise me given the levels of depravity to which she has already stooped, still disgusts me. She's attempting to compare herself to this poor girl because she's looking for sympathy that she's probably not going to receive now that the DA has opted to dismiss the case entirely due to insufficient evidence. She's taken to the internet airwaves, tweeting over and over again how she deserves justice for what happened to her, how she was almost killed, et al. She has hordes of loyal "followers" RT (repeat tweeting/relay tweeting) her every post, which means, of course, that a trending topic has been created. I don't really care about that - way to use the internet and people efficiently! - but I do have a problem with the fact that a woman who claims she was abused would repeatedly lie to the very people who tell her - in no uncertain terms - that they love her, respect her, support her. She should go into politics if that's her game!

Seriously, this is one of those moments in life where you have to wonder just how shallow our country is, when we've placed this tiny, insignificant person so high up on a pedestal for drinking, being promiscuous, and wearing minimal clothing that we'd look the other way while she ruins the reputation and potentially the career and life of an innocent man all because she couldn't hold her liquor and didn't want to admit it.

And yes, I'm saying that's what I think happened. I don't have the facts - no one has to tell me the obvious here, Captain - but when the "facts" as they have been given to both the public and the government officials who oversee the prosecuting of alleged criminals show no corroboration for her, and everything for him, and her lies keep piling up one on top of the other, there's little else anyone can deduce from this travesty.

I hope she gets some help, I do. And I hope she apologizes for what she's done. Her actions will bear repercussions for many generations to come that will affect far more than the two parties involved. She might not realize that now - nor care - but many men and women do, and they're the ones who have to live with the consequences of her actions, while she tweets...