The number falling, and the oddity of it all, seems to go on and on. Added to this list recently have been George Bush (tush pinching, apparently), Charlie Rose and Al Franken. And of course the Roy Moore saga just goes on and on (when will that election ever arrive?).
I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in my entry entitled Creeps; which started off:
Delia Kane, age 14. The Exchange Luncheon, Boston. January 31, 1917. Recent stories have been focused on recent creeps, but you have to wonder how bad the treatment somebody like this girl, employed at age 14 in 1917, was in her era. I hope not bad, but I'm not optimistic.When the news hit about Harvey Weinstein, my first reaction was, "who is Harvey Weinstein?"^
Maybe I should have started it off, Franken title style, with Creepiness, and the Creepy Creeps who act Creepy.
Anyhow, this past weekend on at least one of the two news shows (I haven't listened to the other yet) there were piles of discussion on whether this was a "watershed" moment and if so, what that meant. It may be, but the analysis (except for one commentator who managed to step on his words and accidentally say something really bigoted accidentally) is pretty far off the mark. We're not crying out for a new standard here. Rather, the abandonment of the old released the serpent that's out there now and caging it back up requires the old standard be reasserted. But the "progressives" amongst us can't quite seem to grasp that. Standards, even ones that were never perfectly applied, existed for a reason.
Even as that discussion is taking place, its' still interesting to see how the partisans from both sides, although with decreasing frequency, maintain that the cry doesn't really quite apply to them. Well, it most certainly does.
Let's consider Al Franken and Roy Moore.
Franken started off in the public world as a Saturday Night Live writer and its well known that at that time, like seemingly everyone else in SNL, he was a cocaine user. I know the two aren't linked, but for some reason, given that, I'm not hugely surprised. I thought it interesting on Franken that commentator Michael Reagan, in his column on Franken and Moore, stated confidently that more women would come out with accusations against Franken as a groper just doesn't commit a single act of groping, and sure enough, in today's paper, a second woman has surfaced accusing Franken of groping her butt at a public appearance.
Franken, so far, isn't accused of anything like Moore, who is accused of what amounts to some species of really creepy sexual assault (unless you consider boob groping sexual assault, which in my state it is, and which it probably is everywhere else, and you assume that the photograph of him with his hands covering the breasts of a sleeping Leeanne Tweeden shows contact, which isn't clear). Nonetheless, what Franken is accused of is icky.
Nonetheless, I'm not surprised that Franken drew left wing apologist right away, as in this Washington Times Op-ed:
As a feminist and the author of a book on rape culture, I could reasonably be expected to lead the calls for Al Franken to step down, following allegations that he forced his tongue down a woman’s throat, accompanied by a photo of him grinning as he moves in to grope her breasts while she sleeps. It’s disgusting. He treated a sleeping woman as a comedy prop, no more human than the contents of Carrot Top’s trunk, and I firmly believe he should suffer social and professional consequences for it.
But I don’t believe resigning from his position is the only possible consequence, or the one that’s best for American women.
Well of course the author doesn't. Franken's act get a pass as he's a man of the political left by at least some.
Just I suppose as Trump has on the political right.
Moore, perhaps more interestingly, has received a lot less right wing support, although there's some out there. It's not in official circles but quiet ones. I think it tends to be of the "we'll loose this seat if we don't support him", which they will (maybe), but Alabama, let alone the GOP, doesn't really need a reminder of the embarrassing nature of the line in Sweet Home Alabama about the governor.
In Birmingham they love the Gov'nor, boo-hoo-hoo
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you, tell the truth?
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, I'm coming home to you, here I come
We'll see what happens. Moore isn't going to back down, I think.
Anyhow, what to make of all of this? At first it seemed rather obvious. The lid was off on eons old male bad behavior. But with more and more of this out there, maybe we ought to ask a little bit more about it
Maybe we ought to start off where one of the female speakers on This Week stated this week. She stated the proposition that women have been coming forward with this sort of thing for a long time, and that everyone knew it about these guys, including the men. And she stated its time for the men to do something about it.
I think she's right.
Indeed, the more and more I think about this, if I can think of instances I know about to some degree, the men did in fact have reputations as "players" or "playboys" or, if you go back far enough, as "wolves". At one time it was so highly tolerated it was even regarded as, I dare say, a bit cute in a way, even though at the same time the standards of personal conduct (and we'll get to that in a moment) were much higher.
Now, by men doing something about it, I'd include women as well, although they are doing something by coming out against it, but I think the opposition to this behavior needs to be grasped in context and the excuses quit.
If that's done, there's a lot of societal reform that needs to occur.
Let's start with the most obvious, which is also the most difficult. The behavior you observe at work, in the bar, in the boardroom, or more likely, in the lunchroom. Hitting on the women, particularly forcing or attempting to force them to do things of a sexual nature is wrong.
But why is it wrong?
That' may seem like an odd question, but so far, interestingly enough, people are operating off of the "Old Law".
You know what that is, even if you don't. It's the law that's ingrained in the hearts of humans everywhere in which you know some things are wrong. Treating women like sexual toys or prostitutes is wrong.
But if that's wrong, at the end of the day, what we get to is that the Old Law applies the way the old law applied. Things that operate to encourage women to be available are also wrong, including female behavior that encourages it, or societal behavior that demands it.
Now, it's easy to get the wrong message here. Even people who make their living plying their bodies for cash have an absolute right not to be violated. But a Heffnerized society in which the expectation is that all women are just aching to put out, is going to have that expectation.
Indeed, it's not too surprising that so many of these claims have come out of Hollywood. Hollywood has been a moral sewer since the first 35mm raw film went through a motion picture camera. That some women would sleep their way to career success in Hollywood, and that men would let them do it, has long been known. That doesn't mean every actress would by a long shot, but some would, and a general libertine moral culture existed there since day one. It's not a far step from actresses offering themselves to one in which Harvey Weinstein figures he can force himself on every female he takes a fancy too. That conduct is wrong, but it's the moral wrong tip of the iceberg, and that iceberg has been loose in the sea for a long time. My guess is that Weinstein is merely representative of a subset of the Hollywood culture, not a particularly remarkable example of it.
Of course, that sort of conduct wasn't approved of everywhere by any means. The silent treatment on it certainly has been widespread, however, and that needs to stop. And by stopping it, that does mean taking the band-aide off of old wounds. If Franken acted like a cad, well it appears fairly clear that Trump did as well, and Kennedy acted like an absolute pig. Why protects any of them?
But if we go that far, acting like a toy or a prostitute is wrong also, and we all know that as well. That brings us back to Leeanne Tweeden.
Her account of Franken, not yet a Senator but already the author of Lies and the Lieing Liars Who Tell Them, as as follows:
Franken had written some skits for the show and brought props and costumes to go along with them. Like many USO shows before and since, the skits were full of sexual innuendo geared toward a young, male audience.
And:
As a TV host and sports broadcaster, as well as a model familiar to the audience from the covers of FHM, Maxim and Playboy, I was only expecting to emcee and introduce the acts, but Franken said he had written a part for me that he thought would be funny, and I agreed to play along.
Okay, model? Give me a break. Tweeden's behavior in this fashion isn't much different that that of women who have slept their way to position. She prostituted her image in several venues that are simply imaginary sex vehicles for men. That's not the same as offering yourself in person, but it really isn't all that much different. And being a "sports broadcaster" "familiar to the audience" means one thing if you are Katie Nolan, and quite another if you are Leeanne Tweeden, which is why, whether we should think it or not, that a Franken assault on Nolan would be more shocking than one on Tweeden.
Tweeden goes on:
When I saw the script, Franken had written a moment when his character comes at me for a ‘kiss’. I suspected what he was after, but I figured I could turn my head at the last minute, or put my hand over his mouth, to get more laughs from the crowd.
On the day of the show Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, “We need to rehearse the kiss.” I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL…we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’
I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time.
I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.
I felt disgusted and violated.
How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?
Nobody should. But, well, Ms. Tweeden, thousands of men had no doubt already imagined grabbing your breasts, and still do, and having sex with you, which is what you wanted when you prostituted your image. That Franken would regard you as somewhat available when you had already advertised that fact hasn't hugely surprising. It's wrong. It's creepy. But it wasn't an wholly uninvited thought. "Think of me as available and in bed" one moment, for the public, and then "don't think of me as a woman but a colleague" the next, is intellectually inconsistent.
Now, this doesn't mean that Franken's conduct is excusable. Rather, it means that Tweeden encouraged it, whether she realizes it or not, and that she encouraged every single woman in society to be viewed the same way. . . fully available. His conduct was boorish and creepy. Her's was dense and destructive.
And that's where the current culture differs from the old. In the old one, these things occurred, to be sure, but they were known to be wrong. So much so, in fact, that violent death would occasionally occur when an offended family member learned of the "shame" that had occurred. Now we're shameless.
And that gets back to where the various commentators don't want to go. When you start looking at this topic, you end back up at the old standard every time. That standard, as we know, wasn't adhered to fully by everyone by every means. But it was there, and it provided a standard that men, and women, were expected to live up to. Not being a sexual toy was part of that standard, and expecting that women would protect their virtue, and that real men would not violate it, was part of the standard as well. Indeed, that this was the standard, and remains the ingrained one of the Old Law, is why these things tend to be buried for so long. Men, with the rare exceptions of uber creeps like Hugh Hefner, don't want to be thought of as predatory wolves on the prowl. Women don't want people thinking that they didn't protect their virtue.
And that, dear reader, means that the Old Standard is the real one. Both in the past, and now.
Because, as I noted before, people who imagine themselves thinking that this is about power are wholly wrong. This is about sex.
Okay, a couple of additional minor thoughts.
Now that we all agree that this behavior is horrible and that the guilty must fall, let's not go berserk on the "no bullying" level that exists in schools today. No, we don't want people bullied, but we've gone to the point where even one kid looking cross eyed at another is a cause for a regional crisis.
By that I mean that there obviously exists plenty of genuine creepy behavior to be addressed adn we probably don't really need to go to the George Bush pinching butt level to root out evil. Even what Franken is accused of, while truly an assault in legal terms (maybe, depending upon what really happened) isn't hte same at all as what Cosby and Weinstein have been accused of. Not by a long shot. So I don't know that Franken's transgressions need to be career ending, although they should bring shame.
But in terms of career ending, or reputation ending, the ongoing protection of violation should also stop. We just learned this past week thath Congress has paid out $15,000,000 in settlements, some of which is from sexual assaults of some sort. These are confidential. The confidentiality should be stripped.
And speaking of stripped, you may have noticed that this phenomenon is uniquely American. European bad actors aren't being stripped of anything, even their freedom. Unless this is just going to be regarded as a freakish example of American puritanism, which is exactly how I think Europeans view this, we ought to do more to bring back in the creeps who have taken refuge in Europe. Roman Polanski. . . your jail cell is waiting . . .
On also on stripping protection, go back and strip it. We have, right now, a guy who would peg out on the current creep charts who has an "eternal flame" blazing away above him as if he's a national hero. John F. Kennedy deserves to be right up there in the current list of shame. Make it so. Unless we do, this is all just a little bit of a temporary flap, and it'll pass. After all, ole' Jack was just one of the boys, right?
But at the same time, gals. . . a little modesty. You can't be on the cover of Maxim one week and then complain people are looking at your boobs the next. That's why you were on the cover of Maxim. And when you do that, you hurt all women, not just yourself.
And Alabama. Just say no. And now. Don't let this go the ballot.
To be a woman is a great adventure;
To drive men mad is a heroic thing.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
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