Powerful men say the darnedest things, especially when it comes to systemic and rampant rape in the military.

I’d like to acknowledge their feats and award them for the lengths to which they’ve gone in order to distort the reality of the military’s rape problem. They have managed to avoid the obvious causes of and solutions to rape in the military. And they’ve shown remarkable creativity and imagination in the way they understand it. Coming in third, with the bronze, is General Mark A. Welsh III, a top Air Force commander. This was his insightful response to May’s Pentagon report showing that sexual assault had jumped from 19,000 cases in 2010 to 26,000 in 2012: sexual assault happens all the time [jazz hands] outside of the military. I mean everyone [jazz hands] is doing it. So get used to it! And we have hookup culture to blame. I, of course paraphrase, but barely. Here’s what he actually said when testifying at a Senate hearing on sexual assault in the military: 20% of women report they had been sexually assaulted, “before they came into the military … So they come in from a society where this occurs … Some of it is the hookup mentality of junior high even and high school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it.”

General, I’m sorry your children and their friends are frustrated with their love lives. They must feel just like the women (and men) who are raped by their fellow officers and superiors and then on top of that, face indifference at best and retaliation at worst, if they report the sexual assault.

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