When Our Allies Are Accused of Harassment

[justme]

I don't mean to keep on this topic as if none else exists, but I'd like you guys to read this. It's a very honest soul searching that I think is very important for everyone to do.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/opin ... 20Goldberg

Last Thursday, after a photograph emerged of Senator Al Franken either groping or pretending to grope a sleeping woman, Leeann Tweeden, with whom he’d been traveling on a 2006 U.S.O. tour, I wrote that he should resign. Almost as soon as it was published I started having second thoughts. I spent all weekend feeling guilty that I’d called for the sacrifice of an otherwise decent man to make a political point.

Then I saw the news that a woman named Lindsay Menz accused Franken of grabbing her butt while they posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010, when he was a senator, and I read Franken’s lame non-denial: “I feel badly that Ms. Menz came away from our interaction feeling disrespected.”

Yet I am still not sure I made the right call. My thinking last week, when the first accusation emerged, was: cauterize the wound. It doesn’t matter that Franken’s transgression wasn’t on the same level as the abuses that the Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore or Donald Trump have been accused of. That photo — the unconscious woman, the leering grin — is a weight Democrats shouldn’t have to carry, given that they’ve lately been insisting that it’s disqualifying for a candidate to grab a woman sexually against her will. It seemed cruel to expect Democratic women to make Jesuitical arguments that the shadows under Franken’s hands meant he wasn’t really touching Tweeden’s chest. Especially since, with a Democratic governor in Minnesota, the party would maintain control of Franken’s seat.

[Roo St. Gallus]

Well, I've kind of been through it before.

We had a very progressive and assertive young mayor here in my city when I was a young man and just out of college. He was a darling of all the 'with-it' liberals. He was so impressive, he was tempted to leave his position as mayor of the city to become President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Transportation.

When he returned from Washington, masquerading as a Nike executive, he parlayed his popularity and influence to get elected, as a Democrat, to a term as governor, but did he not run for a second term. He was appointed to the board of the state system of higher education and was having his name bandied about as a possible state supreme court nominee...But, he resigned his public positions and resigned from the practice of law when it came out that he had, during his tenure as mayor of the city, repeatedly sexually abused his child's teenage babysitter. He had used money and influence with her and his associates to keep his crimes quiet until after the statute of limitations had expired and his victim had committed suicide.

So, this leading Democrat in this state, a HUGE shaker and mover, was actually a sleazy rapist of children who used his influence to escape justice. And that was kind of aside from his being an arrogant dickhead to begin with (IMHO). Last I heard, he had retired to some vineyard he'd purchased with his influence peddling revenues.

He is one major reason I am no longer a member of the Democratic Party.

So...Al will have to face the music. I respect his intelligence and his politics, but it seems he fell in to the same exceptionalist mindset that so many still have and still demonstrate all too frequently. I hope he weathers it.

I imagine Mike Pence thinks he was pretty crafty, huh?

[justme]

Agreed. It's not politics to me. It's character. As for Pence, I couldn't care less. He's a want-to-be working under a nobody.

If Elizabeth Warren would have ran under Joe Bidden I would be thankfully and wholely ignorant up who Pence is and I'll lay $100.00 on that.

[Tharmas]

Here's a thoughtful response to the above referenced article from Masha Gessen in The New Yorker.

She argues that retribution, in this case at least, is less important than the revelations themselves. Whether Franken resigns or not doesn't matter.

[justme]

[quote=""Tharmas""]Here's a thoughtful response to the above referenced article from Masha Gessen in The New Yorker.

She argues that retribution, in this case at least, is less important than the revelations themselves. Whether Franken resigns or not doesn't matter.[/quote]

Do i have to subscribe to this paper in order to read it. All I can see is this.

Should Senator Al Franken resign following revelations of sexual harassment? Michelle Goldberg, writing in the Times, says yes, in order to preserve the momentum of “the current movement toward unprecedented accountability for sexual harassers.” Writing in the Washington Post, Kate Harding says no: as a legislator, Franken has done good things for women, and, as a repentant sexual harasser

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Masha Gessen, a staff writer, has written several books, including, most recently, “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017.Read more »

More:Al FrankenHarvey WeinsteinSexual AssaultSexismResignation

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I'd like to read it, but I'm not going to pay to do it.

My opinion in all of this is that character should be the judge of these people and not just if they got caught or not. What matters is the intention behind all of this. A person without a camera on them will show their true nature. So I think Frankin was just acting out of a warped sense of humor. That's not an excuse for him, but a logical evaluation, since he did it in front of a camera. I don't think any sexual predator wants to have their exploits documented. I do think the women he did this to should slap the crap out of him and let that sink in.

Ultimately, it is up to everyone to make their own desitions about him, but it shouldn't be on how much anyone has done for you, since you never know if what that person has done for you is out of conviction or out of a need to bring moe victims closer to them, so they can do what they did again.

If a person just screws up, they should hold themselves accountable for what they did and make amends. If they are truly out there for women, then he will not repeat this action and the current environment it would be suicidal to do so. If he does it again, then we will know his true nature and he will go the way of Anthony Wiener.

[Tharmas]

No, don't pay. Sorry about that. If I have time I'll go through and quote more substantial sections.

[Roo St. Gallus]

[quote=""justme""]Agreed. It's not politics to me. It's character. As for Pence, I couldn't care less. He's a want-to-be working under a nobody.

[/quote]

Yeah, but right about now he's probably thinking that his whole approach of not spend time alone in spaces with women other than his wife has paid off.

What he doesn't realize is that a good portion of his audience is waiting to see if he'll run the Haggard Option.