Michael Crook: The Worst Atheist in the World.
It’s a difficult journey, this life o’ ours. Injustice, unfairness and bitter randomness nip at our every step. And sometimes, there’s not nearly enough pictures of pugs dressed up as British monarchy to ease the pain of life away.
As I’m sure most of you have heard, the Steubenville rape trial concluded earlier this Sunday. Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays of Steubenville, Ohio were found guilty of having raping a 16 year-old-girl throughout the night of last August 12th. The now-convicted rapists will face at least one year of juvenile detention (In Mays’ case, two) and they will be registered as sexual offenders for the entirety of their lives. Jane Doe, the formerly anonymous 16-year-old whose identity was partially and moronically revealed by the media, was raped and will never not be raped for the entirety of her life.
While I’d love to add something insightful and thought-provoking to the discussion surrounding the cultural fallout from the verdict, truth be told, much better people have already done so. Go check them out.
No, I suppose all I’m interested in is shining a light on quite possibly the most repulsive piece of writing I’ve come across in recent history. Sunlight being the best disinfectant and all.
Blogger, writer and all around wonderful chap Michael Crook took to his personal blog and penned out some of his thoughts in a piece called Travesty of Justice in Steubenville:
Two young men now have their lives forever ruined by a felony record because a 16-year-old girl went to a party and, according to testimony, didn’t loudly and clearly say “no” to sexual activity. Yet a judge elected to forever tarnish the lives of two young men who saw a seemingly willing participant. As I wrote in my latest book, “My Rules of Life,” I don’t believe for one second that “rape” exists.
For those who might not know, Crook is previously best known for the website Forsake The Troops, another brilliant look at why military soldiers are simply living way too cushy a life and deserve no medical or housing benefits. A website that earned him a guest appearance on Fox News where he was taken apart by Sean Hannity of all people. Since then, it’s been one surreal saga after saga. First trying to stage his death at the hands of military supporters, followed by attempts to sell variations of his Forsake site for the traffic it brought in. Then there was the time he posed as a 18-year-old girl on Craigslist in order to ensnare and expose married men by releasing their personal information online. He continues:
She was brave enough to drink, reportedly four vodka shots, two beers, and other alcoholic brew. This despite the fact that she had to have known that she wasn’t old enough. She was bold enough to dress as she did at a party full of boys who, by their very nature, were blamelessly driven by natural hormones.
At this point, it’s prudent to note that Crook is known for spouting off incredibly offensive streams of unlogic. From not believing in the Holocaust to attacking a young girl who committed suicide after releasing her account of sexual abuse online in 2011, Crook is nothing short of provocative. So much so that you wonder if it isn’t just the most elaborate work of performance art seen this decade. Yet, despite literally being the personification of ‘internet troll’, Crook’s hateful screeds are consistent with one another. He might be the most sorry excuse for an attention-grabbing sock puppet there is, but it doesn’t feel like an act. And of course, Crook is a ex-Mormon and calls himself an atheist. Some more:
Apparently, the vigilantes in Steubenville would rather victimize two young men who had some harmless fun, and it’s harmless fun because, absent any evidence to the contrary, this girl, who according to two former friends who testified, has an affinity for lying, was not forced to go to the party, and surely she had an inkling of what was going on before she consumed alcoholic beverages, something that was illegal for her anyway, as she wasn’t even 18, let alone 21.
I point all this out not to highlight the insanity of Crook, though I did enjoy the part where he basically admits to being the least emphatic person in the world.
I have witnessed a female being, shall we say, aggressively pursued by a male. She was crying and what not, and I walked on by. Call it the “bro code.” Bros before “ho’s” and all that.
But to emphasize that, living troll aside, Crook isn’t the outlier we’d all like to imagine he is. There are plenty of us who would agree with the basic arguments he lays out. For as much as a wingnut as he might be, you can recognize the base assumptions of his rant everywhere. The harmless fun of drunk men trying to get laid at whatever the cost, the natural hormones that blamelessly turn us into insatiable horny goats who must be turned away by responsible females, and the drunk slutty girl who deserves what she gets for putting herself in such a dangerous situation to begin with. But more than that, it’s the majority of us who hear those arguments and shrug it away that Crook represents.
Taken together, Crook sounds unhinged and evil in his reasoning, but really he’s just taken the bits many of us take for granted and smushed them together into the worst five-to-ten minutes of writing I’ve personally had the pleasure of reading.
I have to say I kinda agree with some of his points though. In rape cases people always assume that the female is telling the truth every time, when a lot of the time they aren’t, and therefore their story should be looked into just as much as the guys.
I’m sure our Reddit friend above, Miasmata, is referring to a different reality in which a report conducted by the Crown Persecution Service of England and Wales DIDN’T recently come out and find, “…that while false allegations must be taken seriously they are relatively rare and are often complex cases.”
For the bizarre ending to this story, Michael Crook’s blog and post as of today has been wiped completely off the face of the earth. No Google cache, no archival snapshots. Every attempt made to find the post or his website has been met with a blank white screen and no explanation. It’s only through memory and a few forums who quoted Crook extensively that I was able to find his original quotes. At this point, I might be the first person to discover Crook’s disappearing act, seeing as of 6:30pm EST yesterday, his page was up and running. So there’s that.
Like I said before though, it’s not about Crook. Even if the site was alive and well, I wouldn’t link to him, lest he get exactly what he wants, attention. The only thing that needs attention is the fact that Crook doesn’t fall as far from the tree as we’d like him to. Or need him to.
Update: It appears Crook’s disappearance has come at the hands of an Anonymous faction called Report-A-Pedo.
Known normally for exposing the real-life identities of suspected child predators online, the self-proclaimed vigilante group decided to set their sights on Crook as a direct result of his last piece. And boy, was it not pretty, with his entire internet presence scrubbed and taken control of by the group. Ethics aside, the so-called dox-drop of Crook reveals virtually every accessible detail of his life, including his birth weight. The group also alleges he once statutorily raped a 15-year-old girl who became pregnant as a result. All I can really say is…jeez.
Crook is one of the most bizarre internet phenomena I have seen. I follow his pages every few weeks, and it’s such an amazingly nutty evolution. Back, say a year and a half or so ago, he had a book out about rejoining the LDS church, and was quoting LDS writings (I’m an ExMormon, so that insane bent on Mormonism was fascinating, as horrible as he was.) Then late last year he went full ex mormon, wrote another book about LEAVING the LDS Church again, and was writing screed after screed that was anti the church. he removed almost everything he’d ever written, and had up a page that linked to his anti-mormon stuff, but other than that his page was about how people make mistakes, and he’s trying to move on, and every time he would apply for a job they would google him and basically screaming for the waahmbulance on being “forgiven” for his past “sins.” (Which was ironic, since he’s a pretty ardent critic of ever forgiving anyone)
He never “apologized” per se, but just wanted to be able to move on.
And slowly over the last month or so he’s been amping it up. He started getting attention again when he started posting blog posts and twitter posts absolutely happy about Chris Kyle being shot, and it reached a tipping point yesterday, of course, with the Steubenville article.
But you know, there are trolls out there, and this guy is absolutely the most brilliant troll I’ve seen, for all the reasons you’ve laid out. He’s pretty consistent, he revels in his tortured logic, but is smart enough to write it in a way that makes it readable. He almost makes a point (albeit an evil one) and that “almost” I think is enough of a thorn in the reader’s side to invoke true anger and disgust. But I’m fairly well convinced it’s all a shtick, and he’s always just looking for the next way of irritating people. I am sure this has limited his options in life, in terms of work, etc, but I think he loves the ride so much, he can’t get off the train.
Michael Crook is a sad, sad case. The guy had some burgeoning internet skills “back in the day” and he was a fairly decent writer, but instead of finding ways to make himself useful he opted instead to spend the last ten years lying, trolling, drooling on people’s graves, harassing the families and friends of accident and crime victims and generally being a disgusting basement-dwelling weirdo. Whenever he pretends to be “moving on” from his sleazy and sordid past it means he’s under pressure from the wife (yes, wife) and in-laws again, usually re: getting a job instead of lying around all day mooching. Then the job invariably fails and he runs back home to start hate-blogging again. Same pattern, over and over again.
He’ll be back with another hate blog, phony “business”, pretend “lawsuit”, very short-lived job or whatever very soon, guaranteed. Then something will happen and it’ll all vanish, like it does every single time.
http://never-ending-cycle-of-pain.tumblr.com/post/45638393996/travesty-of-justice-in-steubenville-by-michael-crook
This, supposedly, is the full text.
I find it appalling that you repeated allegations of statutory rape just because you read it somewhere. This rumor has been hashed out before. I went to church with him, and we’ve been down this road. He has no felony record, nor is he a sex offender. And, as much as it disgusts me, on his Twitter page, he even says he has no kids but paid for abortions.
Seriously now, if anyone committed statutory rape, they’d be in a sex offender database, and the guy used to work at a school district with special ed kids. Did you do any research, or do you believe everything just because someone else wrote it? Your lack of verifying such a serious charge loses any credibility you could have had with me.
I’d point out committing statutory rape and getting the victim pregnant doesn’t need to end up with:
A. The rapist being charged with a crime.
B. The live birth of a child.
But that might be too snarky to win back my treasured credibility with you. What I will say is that I’m trying to confirm what the group alleged and I’ll amend my update to point out that it is strictly their allegation and not something independently verified at this time.
Thank you for that. Make no mistake..I am not defending him or what he wrote, but false accusations like that are wrong. I know from my time in going to church with him that these allegations were looked into, as any responsible church would to ensure the safety of its members.
It boils down to an interview on some internet show over a decade ago where he grossly exxagerated a relationship with a girl. That relationship produced no child, and was legal, chastity issues aside. We were able to verify all this, as the girl in question was also a member of the church.
That said, he also did quite a bit of work alerting local church leaders to a member in the area who was arrested for child porn. He also approached the state police with information he obtained as this person’s home teacher. In essence, I’ve seen him work against the things you previously stated as fact, and that others accuse him of.
Now having said all that, I think what he wrote about that poor girl was just disgusting and I cannot and will not defend it, and I can’t possibly think what would possess him to write such vile things. He deserves to be berated for that, and not for things which are false. So by all means, rip him to shreds by virtue of his horrid screed on rape.
Here’s the thing though–the day of his post he made various references on his twitter account to his two daughters (even specifically pointing out that one was from a “baby mama”). And now he says he has no children. He also has said he’s Mormon at times, and then later says he’s an athiest. He’ll say anything if it benefits him. The guy is a liar in every way, and I wouldn’t put anything past him. I wouldn’t defend him in anyway or pretend that you might know what is or isn’t true just because you “went to church” with him.
Here’s the thing though…he worked for a local school district, which was confirmed. In NY state, teacher aides get a background check, which of course includes sex offender databases and so forth. I’ve known this guy for several years, so I feel confident that background checks, which go up to the FBI level, are safe.
I thought I made it clear I wasn’t defending him. Methinks you’re just looking to stir up contention, when in reality, we went through a lot of steps to contact the girl in question–easy to do since she’s also a member of the church–and find out what really happened: nothing, and even if it had happened, everything was legal, which is the only point I wanted to get cleared up.
I think what you misunderstood, Keegan, or perhaps intentionally ignored, is that he left the church. He’s an EX-Mormon, but was a member for a long time. He is NOW an atheist. Hopefully spelling it out for you will clarify it for you. You can put things past or not put things past, but a background check and a meeting with the girl herself confirmed that nothing illegal happened. End of story.
Good old Mikey. Some things never change. Expect a new blog or website very, very soon, either a hate-filled screed against whomever he feels “wronged” him THIS time around or, barring that, some sort of make-believe “business” he’ll waste more time on than real business owners do on actual businesses. Then, as usual, he’ll get bored with it and take it all down…again. Britanee Drexel, Nightshadow Productions, the Michael Crook Gazette, the internet radio station, grief-trolling and slut-shaming, Mormonism, 2 Unlimited, his “books”, the big “harassment” lawsuit…all within the last few years (and I’m no doubt forgetting a lot of it, too). He’s constantly trying to re-invent himself but he always reverts back to what he does best, which is deliberately annoying people.