And, no. It’s not because we may be in Franken’s ‘tribe’. It’s because if we are to avoid descending into either witch hunts on the one hand, or being victims of propaganda techniques on the other (as described below), we must never forget that each case is different. For example, I was never on board with the Republican Senator prostitution sex panic bandwagon.
(Senator David Vitter)
As the following article details, there is a long history of documented and sophisticated far-right disinformation campaigns in the background of this accuser. This, while it absolutely does not dispose of the matter, is vital information.
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/20/1716849/-I-Unapologetically-Stand-With-Senator-Franken-Do-NOT-Believe-Either-Accuser
In any case:
Statutory rape and indecent assault on a minor
(Roy Moore)
Is not
Simple Lewd Behavior/Disorderly Conduct
(Louie CK)
Which is not
Indecent assault and battery on a minor
(Kevin Spacey – 80’s party))
Which is not
Simple indecent battery on an adult (MAYBE)
(Kevin Spacey – Nantucket)
The propagandist sitting in the Oval Office wants us all to lump them all together and say “they’re all” corrupt”, so disregard our tribe’s – and my – assaults.
Don’t do it.
Why? This sexual aspect is merely part of a broader – and typically-used – technique of intelligence services to obfuscate via clutter. It is the identical technique used regarding money corruption: if people come to believe “they’re all corrupt and on the take”, I get away with my corrupt practices.
The linked article is passionate, but there is a lot of important information within it of which we should be aware.
How many accusers are there?
What were the circumstances?
How is the accused responding toward the accusers?
How is the accused responding in general?
What do the accusers say today?
These things matter. Always.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister
I’m Standing With the Truth, Whatever That Turns Out to Be
It’s up to Minnesotan voters to stand by Al Franken, not me. I’m open to new information, whether it’s damning or exculpatory. However, these accusations should trouble all of us. The Tweeden accusation is, in my opinion is forgivable. She forgives him. The Menz accusation is more problematic. Unlike the others you list, Al Franken is not a predator.
Of the top of my I head, the number of women I know who have been sexually assaulted is shocking. I’m talking assault, not harassment. Rape and attempted rape. I know of two egregious instances of sexual harassment that took place in the 1990s in my school workplace. FWIW, I also know a man who was pushed for sex by a female boss.
Yes, there is the threat of a moral panic, but I don’t think we’re there yet. Yes, the GOP and Friends will use this to distract from Trump and Moore. Neither of these things means that events aren’t happening.
Terry, I would love to learn that there is nothing further. I can certainly forgive everything we know at the moment.
But I find the argument in your post really depressing. There’s a photo; the Senator made a pretty definitive statement, taking responsibility. Why do we want to disbelieve accusers after the fact? Why are you bringing up intelligence services?
As to your litany of questions, sorry, they sound dubious to me. If I rob a bank and there’s only one witness, I still robbed the bank. Also, the notion that the accusers might have partisan motives is incredibly corrosive,. It doesn’t matter at all.
You may have still robbed a bank, but your job is much easier as a defendant the fewer witnesses there are. I do think partisan motives need to be taken into account – goes to credibility.
I hear what you’re saying, but that;s a slippery slope. It encourages a thorough background check, for one thing. If you accused me of robbing the bank, they wouldn’t check your background. My lawyer might, but a major political party with access to major media would not. Partisanship is therefore serving as a barrier to credible accusers.
Given that I lived through the political brouhaha of Paula Jones, whose press conference was staged by the Arkansas Project and promised to describe in detail for the whole country what the President’s genitalia looked like, and which ultimately led to impeachment over an irrelevant affair, I remain 20 years later extremely sensitive about going down this path.
My point exactly. Doubt about Jones was used to malign Juanita Broaddrick. At the time I refused to believe he did that, but now I wonder.
(Also, I believe Jones. And Kathleen Willey.)
http://www.nationalmemo.com/believe-juanita-maybe-maybe-not/
I hear you about not wanting to re-litigate the charges brought by Kenneth Starr, Newt Gingrich, Denny Hastert, Bob Barr, and Bob Livingston in the 90s.
I gotta say, though, I recall in 2016, about 11 days before the election, the New York Times devoted the top half of the front page to “Hillary’s Emailz” and it turned out to be nothing. We should treat accusations against the Clintons, made in the NYT, with demands for sufficient evidence.
Adding … I don’t really want to relitigate the Clinton accusations. But we agree that partisanship muddied the waters. We shouldn’t allow that.
JimC, there’s a couple of persuasive pieces I’ve read, which, while written in strident tones, make key points. I encourage you to give five minutes to read these:
https://medium.com/@SIIPCampaigns/a-survivors-defense-of-al-franken-ea994c5bbc9a
https://democracyguardian.com/al-franken-the-obvious-setup-and-liberals-took-the-bait-5f3515d379a0
And another feminist blogger, Echidne of the Snakes, makes a key point about where the phrase “Believe the woman” originates.
https://tinyurl.com/yaz6axl6
Sorry Joel, I don’t find “Liberals took the bait” a persuasive argument, especially when Senator Franken himself responded quickly.
For the record I have never called for Al’ s resignation. I’m too fond of him as a Senator to really weigh this objectively.
Some weird stuff happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, concerning belief, namely the recovered memory movement and the satanic ritual abuse. Both were responsible for a a moral panic about the sexual abuse of children (which is now approved by some segments of the GOP). One of the more notorious purveyors of recovered memory was Ellen Bass, whose book The Courage to Heal contained the instruction:
“To heal from child sexual abuse you must believe that you were a victim, that the abuse really did take place. This is often difficult for survivors. When you’ve spent your life denying the reality of your abuse, when you don’t want it to be true, or when your family repeatedly calls you crazy or a liar, it can be hard to remain firm in the knowledge that you were abused.”
The idea of unquestioned belief in allegations was established during this time. The sad part is, there was plenty of sexual abuse of women and children happening, but the willing suspension of disbelief was distracting from it.
Can’t we both believe the alleged victim enough to investigate while maintaining a presumption of innocence until proven guilty?
Republicans are standing with a child rapist, and he’s probably going to win. Democrats need to learn from that instead of eating our own over their sins.
We’ve all done things we shouldn’t have that have hurt other people. Franken is better than most people in that he’s willing to acknowledge that and learn from the experience.
Republicans are standing with a man who they believe to have been the victim of lies. They don’t believe this because of anything to do with Roy Moore. They believe this as a form of ‘turnabout’ and is, as near as no never mind, an admission that the accusations told against Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton (and others) were, in fact, nearly total and bald faced lies and that they were wholly complicit in this. They have wholly internalized the tactics of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove. They think they are playing a strategic game and that the ‘other side’ has adopted a tactic of rank calumny…. and they believe this because they invented the tactic. (Although, in fact, Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove would likely say that the left first used it against Nixon.)
From WhiteWater to Swift Boats to Hillary Clintons emails, the Right have long, simply, made shit up. Now their “defense” is that they know made up shit when they see it, having made up enough of it themselves….
As Gandhi said: “In the end, the deceiver deceives only himself.”
He should resign. Conyers, too. The reckoning is long overdue and punishment needs to happen for these activities and it needs to be swift. The culture needs to change and standing by our guys when they do it is not going to change the culture.
So where is the room for differentiation of the severity of these acts? I for one do not want a mass purge of Congress for the whole range of accusations and how they were handled. For the ones already in, let the voters decide their fates.
I believe all rise to the level of causing a person to lose their current position of power. Someone like Roy Moore, on the other hand, should spend some time in prison before spending the remainder of his life in financial ruin and getting spit on by passersby on the street and then spending a very very long time in hell. He is someone that must be expelled from the Senate if elected. For Franken or Conyers (or the others likely to come out soon), they should resign and do so as part of their penance.
Also, Franken has two more accusations today.
I’m not just talking about a mass purge from Congress. There should be a mass purge across the ranks of power across all facets of our culture.
OK, but I strongly disagree.
A few observations.
I think the Democratic Party is bungling it’s post-Weinstein moment by continuing to defend creeps within it’s own ranks. Their creepiness does not rise to the rank criminality of a Weinstein or Moore, but it’s closer to the garden variety Louis CK and Charlie Rose creepiness than we would like to admit. This isn’t about policing politicians sex lives-it’s about making sure we have a party that only supports elected officials who stand with women and doesn’t support elected officials who vote feminist but act like misogynists behind closed doors.
If we are the party that answers the question: ‘do women have agency over their own bodies?’ in the affirmative, than we must be a party quick to expel anyone who isn’t on board with this. Nancy Pelosi has made it very clear anti-choice candidates are not welcome in her caucus, why does she insist that other anti-woman actors get a free pass? And a free bailout at taxpayer expense?
It is time we say no. This post, written by a white man, commented on exclusively by white men, reeks of the very male privilege we have to root out of our society in order for it to be truly equal. The fact that Democrats have closed ranks around their own creeps exposes how hypocritical they really are when it comes to standing for women. They made this same mistake in the 1990’s discrediting the Clinton accusers and defending multiple Kennedys from rape allegations, including one guilty of the same crime Roy Moore is accused of. It is time we move on from this hypocrisy and embrace transparency.
Some concrete steps:
1) Creating an independent third party agency to investigate sexual harassment allegations of elected officials
2) Stopping the tax payer bailouts of the accused
3) Removing the accused from any position of leadership
4) Removing the accused from any partisan funding sources
Ultimately it will be up to the will of the voters in all of these cases to adjudicate responsibility. But we cannot credibly condemn Trump or Moore while coddling the creeps in our own ranks. Not anymore.
Agree.
I haven’t read it, but bills have been filed. The media needs to start covering attempts at a solution as well as pointing out perpetrators.
I’m starting to feel that the whole “Should he resign?” question is causing more problems than it resolves. The television media is more than happy to ask people whether Franken should resign. They should also ask, how can we make it stop.
In a strange way, I think all the other scandals are helping Franken. His is one of the lesser ones. But he’s still in trouble if more comes out.