Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, people, geez.
Women who have been harassed, accosted, molested, intimidated, etc, first- Should be believed. And next, they should be compensated appropriately. But I think that a ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ approach is a much better avenue than the knee jerk- ‘throw all the bums out, right now’!
That impulse is, frankly, lazy. And counterproductive. It lumps all prior bad behavior together in the ‘what-about-ism’ vein and muddies the water to prevent us from weighing all the factors properly. It attempts to avoid looking closely at the degrees of inappropriate and making reasonable decisions because it’s easier to call it all equally bad and be done.
The recent revelations have brought a lot of bad behavior into the light. Behavior that was ubiquitous for a very long time, and that has been falling, (s-l-o-w-l-y) into disfavor. And that’s very uncomfortable, on all sides. But we can’t just bail on confronting the past and the implications of those bad habits by tossing the whole mess out with a blanket condemnation, dust off our hands and call it good.
Franken’s actions towards his former USO colleague are not equivalent to Roy Moore’s. Or Weinstein’s. Does he owe her a sincere and public apology? Damned straight he does. Does he owe her compensation for counseling and the embarrassment and distress he caused with his juvenile, idiot actions? You damned bet‘cha! But should he throw away a promising career in public service, riding herd on Jeff Sessions and his ilk, because of that previous stupidity? I don’t think so, (I would seriously ask Ms. Tweeden if she would want him to resign or would rather accept his apology and compensation).
Make no mistake, the GOP is much worse on this subject than we are, (and always have been), but they will absolutely try to use this to muddy the water and draw false equivalences to drag us down to their level and hurt us as a whole, while covering and refusing to acknowledge their own egregious sins.
Franken’s actions are unacceptable now, they were wrong, juvenile and more than cringe-worthy at the time. But the world is changing. It was worse, we have to work at making it better. The question is how do we do that in the most effective manner, while losing the least amount of ground in the process.
‘Zero tolerance’ approaches have a history of serious unintended consequences, pretty much universally negative. There needs to be an off ramp to reconcile what was unfortunately common, (though disparaged as juvenile) at the time to what our currently raised consciousness finds acceptable now.
But it is not worth losing a good senator, who, if anything, will be going overboard to compensate for past sins from now on.
It would hurt us more to force him out than it would to let him do his penance and go on.
JMHO
Flame away.