Karma. This Is What It Looks Like.

Settle in, folks. I’m about to tell you a fantastic, juicy story filled with drama, sex, and intrigue.  If you’re a skimmer, don’t skim this.  You don’t want to miss a thing.  It’s too juicy.

If you’ve been a follower of the Chicks for a long time, you may remember waaaaaaaay back in 2012, when Daisy and I got into a tangle with a chick by the name of Susan Shannon, a self-described Christian conservative with a blog of her own.

The drama began when we posted this photo on our FB page:

That was right after we’d had some professional photos taken in order to revamp our growing website and give it a fresh look. Susan Shannon did not approve of our photo, and wanted us to know aaaall about it:

You can read the post we wrote about this waaaay back when it first happened right here.

And then, clever and competent readers, the fight took a super ugly turn.

Susan decided to write a diatribe on her Facebook page in response to my post.  You can read all the juicy details right here, but here’s a quick recap (full screenshots, quotes, etc. at the link – edited here for brevity).

Susan said:

“Wow, the Chicks on the Right have lost their minds because I questioned their bubble blowing, uber leg baring marketing strategy…I don’t think blowing pink bubbles and acting silly along with this leg obsessed photo (note the camera angle) are the right thing to represent ‘chicks on the right’…These guys (or chicks) owe me an apology…Cause I have had nothing but respect for them.”

Yeah.  We should’ve apologized to Susan because she called us prostitutes.  That makes all kinds of sense.

It got crazier.  She went on:

“I guess they think I should buy some bubble gum and grease my legs for a photo shoot too…these women are total FAKES and wanna-be’s.  Their interest is to GET FAMOUS and to get RICH…They could give a damn about this country.  They are peddlers of HATE….They just mimic the hard work that real bloggers like me do.  They use the same articles we post HOURS if not DAYS after we true, investigators are on it…I don’t need to ‘go there’ with my sexuality.  These bullies, oops, I mean Chicks, are only out for the fame and glory.  They take political pot shots, blow pink bubbles out of their lips while making teenage goofy faces and then have a photographer go down to crotch level to photograph them (in short, shorts, no less.)…They pretend that they, (intelligent women mind you), had NO IDEA  that their marketing strategy was to pose them as sexy little kittens in that photo.  They claim complete innocence and disbelief that anyone might find two blonds blowing pink bubbles from their lips as…sexual.  They say that they were ‘just two best friends cheezing it up for the camera (at crotch level)…Sex sells and they know it.”

Curious.  Would this be considered crotch level?  Because that was her family Thanksgiving photo.

I had a LOT to say about that back when this fight went down.  If you want to see all of that, including screenshots of all of the posts of ours that she shared on her own page (so much for us not being “real bloggers”), feel free to check it out right here.

She went on to write a gigantic diatribe on her own website about us, claiming that we hated men, and closed it by saying, “So, Chicks, you can keep your SNARK, your leg grease and your bubble gum.  Good luck to ya.  I will stay on the ‘road less taken’.  Not glammorous, but I believe in it.”

Yeah.  Leg grease.  I think she means moisturizer? I can’t be sure, because I don’t speak batsh*t.

ANYWAY.  Now you have a bit of the backstory.  You’re not going to believe where this story ends up, y’all.  JUST HANG ON TO YOUR HATS.

So, our lovely writer Hannah is visiting Indianapolis this week and staying with Kimber, and a few nights ago, they came over to visit.  We were talking about the upcoming photo shoot we were about to do, and since this was going to be our writers’ first professional photo shoot with us, I wanted to warn them about how mean people could potentially be once they put themselves out there with photos.  And even though I hadn’t so much as THOUGHT about Susan Shannon in the past 5 years, I remembered the prostitute comment, and gave it to our writers as an example of how mean CONSERVATIVES could be to fellow conservatives.  Hannah actually remembered the whole altercation with Susan.  We all giggled about the leg grease comment, and that was that.

The very next day, you guys, Daisy sent me a message with a link to this article, about Susan losing an $8.4 million dollar lawsuit filed against her for defamation.

I nearly died.  Especially since Daisy was all, “Hey, do you remember this chick?” not realizing that I had just mentioned her to our writers the NIGHT BEFORE.

The article, which was from the WaPo just a few days ago, tells the story about how Susan Shannon had decided to use her blog a few years ago to accuse Colonel David “Wil” Riggins of raping her back in 1986.

Riggins, a highly decorated Colonel, did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was about to be promoted to brigadier general in July of 2013 when he was told by the Pentagon that Susan Shannon was accusing him of raping her 30 years ago when they were both cadets at West Point, and that an investigation was underway.

Riggins denied the accusations completely, and cooperated as much as he possibly could with the investigation, but in the spring of 2014, he was removed from consideration for promotion because of Susan’s claims.  He then retired from the military.  He now works as a pilot for the FAA.

And then he decided to fight back, and sued Susan for defamation.  The trial took place earlier this month, and a jury heard testimony from him and from Susan.  It took less than three hours for the jury to not only side with Riggins, but “emphatically” side with him, awarding him $8.4 million in damages. Specifically, Susan has been ordered to pay $3.4 million in compensatory damages for ruining his reputation and causing him to lose wages, and another $5 million in punitive damages.

So, will she pay that?  Probably not.  According to the WaPo, more than likely the final judgment will end up being around $2.3 million.  She and her lawyer plan to appeal the ruling, so it’s not over completely.  Shannon said she “feels like a financial slave for the rest of her life.”

So you’re probably wondering why Susan decided to accuse a guy of raping her nearly 30 years after it happened.

She claimed that she resigned from the military academy in the spring of ’86, after she was allegedly raped by Riggins.   She didn’t talk much about the rape until naming Riggins in her blog post about it a few years ago, writing that she was, “out cold from stupidly drinking myself unconscious at Eisenhower Hall.”  About 8 days later, she wrote a follow up blog post in which she announced that she’d been contacted by the Army to investigate her claims.

Riggins claimed that their sexual encounter was consensual, occurred after a Halloween party in 1983, and after they’d had a short relationship with an amicable parting of ways.  He said there had been no real contact with her in ’86.  Susan claims that in 1986, Riggins saw her stumbling out of a pedestrian tunnel and offered her a ride, and that she had no memory of the actual assault, but that he later “smugly admitted he raped her.”

But nothing she said held up in court:

“Everything in that blog post was provably false,” said Stephen Horvath, Riggins’s lawyer, “and could not have happened.” He said no free beer was provided on the West Point campus, that drinking was prohibited by cadets, that Riggins did not have a car in 1986, would not have been allowed to drive it on campus, and that anyone emerging from the pedestrian tunnel couldn’t have been seen from the road. Shannon’s claims that her grades plunged after the event and that she returned her class ring were also untrue, Horvath said.

One juror said, “Honestly, we thought who was telling the truth was too obvious to be discussing. We held a vote, and everybody believed the colonel. The only argument was how big the damages were going to be.”

It should be noted that four of the jurors were women, and three were men.

Support for the punitive damages of $5 million was unanimous by the jury,  because they wanted to make sure that “nothing like this will ever happen again.”

A week after the verdict, according to the WaPo, Shannon deleted her 2013 posts about Riggins.

I’m not going to lie, I couldn’t have less sympathy for her, and I’m happy that she got what she deserved.   I hope her appeal is a massive failure (and given how certain the jurors were that she falsely accused him, I’m hopeful it will be), and I hope she spends the rest of her days paying Riggins heaps of money for dragging his name through the mud.

The WaPo article also says that Susan is one of those weirdos who believes Newtown was a “planned event” and she even wrote that “the government shot those kids and teachers and used Adam Lanza and his family to pull it off.”

Wow.

According to her own website, testimony that was allowed in the trial included that of her own sister, who testified about her strained relationship with Susan.  Susan doesn’t speak to her sister OR her brother, and seems amazed that character witnesses in her OWN FAMILY would be used against her.

Here’s a thought. If members of your own family are testifying in a way that damages you in a trial, maybe – JUST MAYBE, SUSAN – you should start to look in the mirror and think about why that is.  Maybe they find you as insufferable as we did back in 2012 when you viciously compared us to prostitutes because I wore shorts and hugged my best friend in a photo.  Maybe they, like Colonel Riggins, just don’t want to put up with your sh*t anymore.

I went back to the original post that Susan wrote about us on her website as I was preparing to write this, and you guys, she has never stopped talking about us in response to comments she’s received on the post, even years later, and even as recently as a few weeks ago.  Here’s a sample of the things she’s said about us since (truncated for brevity, but you can see the full posts at the sourcelink):

Here’s the most recent one – in response to someone who felt her comments toward us were unfair:

If you saw anything in the photo above OTHER than two best friends cheesing for the camera in the middle of summer (hence, the shorts, and short-sleeved dress), then YOU are the one with the issue.  If you thought that photo was objectifying, and that it was suggestive because of our “activities and postures” you need to check yourself.  Daisy and I are best friends.  We hug.  Sometimes we even hug in the summer when we’re wearing summer clothing.  OMG, right?

Other choice things she’s said about us include these doozies:

May 8th, 2017

“The Bullies on the Right aren’t Christians. And they certainly don’t have any original thoughts concerning politics. They have always relied upon other, better people’s thoughts. They sold themselves as sex objects from the beginning, which is how they lost my respect…What the world needs to see is that women can bring forward INTELLIGENT conversation with strength of character, honesty and endurance. These two lack all those things…Their mannerisms have been utterly shameful toward men on their site. “

July 27, 2017

“They dress like prostitutes- isn’t that what the godless do…They are mean, low down, and certainly carry themselves like tawdry tarts of the street. They encourage the sexual admiration of sweaty men of any standard- men who have no interest whatsoever in politics! I have never seen them rebuke a single man for their scandalous comments…Those two love to say, “Hey, we can’t control what our readers say!” I say, “What nonsense! Of course you can. I do.” They know they are cheap. Their readers are cheap. That is fine with me…The readers who like that kind of cheap thrill on are on the wide road to hell. And those two harlots are leading the way.”

June of 2015

“And they have the intelligence of Q-tips. They most certainly are not conservatives- they never speak of Christ and I believe they are pro-homosexual agenda. The only thing they are interested in is themselves- they are shameless promoters out to make a buck…These two make a mockery of women everywhere- they are especially embarrassing to conservative women whom they claim to represent. I have never seen an intelligent article from them- they simply repeat what is written by others. They have never researched a single issue or broken a single story of their own. They are like aging parrots with too much make up. They screech and accept the lascivious grins and saliva from gross men- they love it when men say things about their looks and bodies. Oh, and I don’t show myself in tiny skirts. After all, I am 50. Those gals have to be pushing 50 too. And let’s face it, no one past 25 should be wearing a mini- even if you can. It’s just tasteless and well, desperate.”

“I don’t show myself in tiny skirts.”  Oh really?

January of 2015

“When I saw them, I nearly died. If THAT is the conservative make over, then count me out. Pink bubble gum and giving a bunch of hillbillies lesbian sex fantasies? no. I don’t think so. That photo of the two of them with the lipstick particularly bothered me. How can they believe that they represent the conservative female…Also, they are ignorant in general. I have never seen them actually write an intelligent commentary or a thoughtful article…It made me laugh heartily to hear that they got a radio show. That is one project that is destined to failure. Those two have nothing to say. I looked at their site during the whole fiasco with me and all I saw were slobbering men. Gross, truly gross… That is why radio, minute imagery, will fail for these two.

 

Ah well, the Chicks may come or go as they please. I am not concerned with them in any way. I don’t know what has happened with them since I wrote my article. I don’t know if they got their radio show or if it failed or succeeded. I only hope that no one believes that they represent conservative women. Because if they do, THAT would be the biggest embarrassment of our time!”

April 2014

I don’t ever visit their site, that is for sure. They couldn’t analyze their way out of a paper bag. And they never write anything thoughtful. Just stuff like, “I want to slap that guy”. I take offense at pretty much everything they offer up. But the thing that offends me most is that they are saying that a ‘true conservative’ should now look like two bimbos with bad makeup and skimpy skirts. Talk about taking women back to the kitchen. I love when women can show they are beautiful, feminine and SMART. But those two are the antithesis of everything truly feminine. Both of them are vicious harpies.

There was also an update to the bottom of the post that she wrote in November of 2016:

FYI – I wore shorts again for our most recent photo shoot this past weekend.  I used moisturizer on my legs.  And there was lots of hugging.  And if Susan’s looking for blog hits, I’m quite certain that the WaPo article about her falsely accusing a colonel of rape has helped out a ton.  WAY TO GO, SUSAN!

There’s a lot to refute in her insulting comments (not the least of which is the fact that we just re-upped our contract at the radio station) but this has gone on long enough, and clearly, karma is at work, y’all.  A whole lot of karma.

$8.4 million worth, to be exact.