This one genuinely hurts... in the general torrent of sexual harassment accusations and revelations, Al Franken has been accused of non-consensual kissing and groping. I have long admired Franken for his outspoken support of liberal values and causes, and his progressive political career. To hear that he has been a creeper and an abuser is disheartening. I thought he was better than that. Looking at the photo of him creeping on Leeann Tweeden is infuriating... even if he wasn't actually touching her, this sort of smirking attempt at 'humor' makes light of sexual aggression.
I'm not the only one who's pissed off... Of course, the regressive Right will try to draw false equivalences between Franken and serial-pedophile Roy Moore. I also have a feeling that Bill O'Reilly, who has long hated Franken, will try to use this scandal to leverage a return to the airwaves.
Al fucked up, bigly, and this is a fuckup which will reverberate throughout the public discourse.
Meh.
ReplyDeleteLook - the rules are changing - probably have already changed. Men don't get a free pass to exploit power and wealth imbalances to take advantage of women any more. This is a very good thing.
But.
Stuff happened in the past. I'm not sure how perfect we will demand our legislators be, and we better be careful in figuring out what disqualifies someone from serving in public office.
Because Al Franken is NOT Roy Moore. He is a good man - obviously not a perfect one, he comes out of some fast & loose cultures - but someone who will contribute to humane, diverse and most importantly democratic outcomes. Roy Moore is an authoritarian thug, a theocratic bigot who refuses to live up to the oath of office he has wiped his ass with at least twice. A judge who denounces the rule of law? Nope, Al Franken is NOT Roy Moore.
We have to remember that the Republicans are willing to swallow any hypocrisy in exchange for power. While the Democrats tend not to be quite so rapacious, if we allow right-wing authoritarians to maintain or even expand power because we are meticulous about supporting a new, arbitrary demand for lifetime behavioral purity and they are not, we will have done millions a horrific disservice.
'Creeping' is bad, but hateful attempts to strip rights and dignity from millions of our fellow citizens is many, many times worse.
Leave Al Alone...
The problem is that a single lapse on the part of a liberal will be used by conservatives to justify all sorts of misdeeds, and the media will do nothing to challenge this narrative.
ReplyDeleteI think the long-term solution is to make sure that more women are put into positions of power in order to defuse the toxic masculinity bomb at the heart of our society.
In 2006, he was in the middle of his transformation from comedian to politician. He was probably still doing his Air America show.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, his transformation was seemingly so seamless that it's hard to believe he would have been stupid enough to do this sort of thing.
Granted, it's not like chasing teenaged girls all over the state for a decade, but... If the left is going to be serious about its efforts to change the culture in regard to harassment, then Senator Franken has to be treated like a conservative would be for doing the same thing... by his own "side".