Al Franken should retract his resignation and fight his accusers till the bitter fucking end. He deserves a chance to tell his side of the story and defend himself, because everyone is owed due process. And his fellow Senators should be ashamed of selling him out just for the sake of political expediency. If anything, Franken should turn his wrath on them for putting unsubstantiated accusations and Twitter brownie points over what is right.
Let me make things clear so that there is no misunderstanding on where I stand. No, I DO NOT condone sexual harassment or sexual assault in any way, shape or form. And no, I’m not calling on us all to give Franken a mulligan on the whole affair. I make it a point that we should not protect our own if they are guilty of such heinous acts. But there is a MASSIVE FUCKING DIFFERENCE between the cases of Franken and John Conyers. With Conyers, the reports of his misdeeds came out in a torrential downpour, fast and unrelenting. The details clearly corroborated each other, and showed a massive pattern of behavior. Conyers had to step aside, and he reluctantly ended up doing so. With Franken, all we have is the initial claim that started it all, the later accounts from people who identified themselves, and four others that only went by anonymity, but also didn’t provide any actual evidence, any photos, any independently vetted witnesses, or any kind of trail. In saying things like how Politico says “she is a lifelong Democrat and voted for Franken,” and “a Franken staffer,” we don’t have any proof that is the case. Hell, these specific women may not even exist and could’ve been invented out of thin air by the authors of the articles.
Which brings me to another point that I must clarify before we continue. I AM NOT victim-blaming, slut-shaming, or moving to silence anyone in any way. I abhor this considerably, and I will call anyone out for doing so, regardless of who the accused is, be they liberal or conservative. And I do not suckle at Franken’s teat and just defend him no matter what. If he is indeed a predator, he has not place in the Senate or in government in any manner. But we simply don’t know the facts of the matter. Why? Because there will now be no investigation going forward, and Franken will not meet his accusers face to face, as he should. The only kind of “evidence” we have are the photos, and they can easily mean different things in different contexts. And given that half of the accusers didn’t even provide that really shows how threadbare the case against Franken is at present. You can speak all you want about how “innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t apply outside of the legal system, and that it has been thrown around too loosely to matter anymore. But what happened to simply waiting to pass judgment until all the facts are known, all the evidence is presented, and being given a chance to simply think it over?
Make no mistake, since the fall of Harvey Weinstein, 90 percent of those who have come forward with their stories are all too real, and some ugly truths have been exposed. But there are still those who simply want to join the bandwagon, are hungry for money and fame, or want to settle old scores, and are taking advantage of our decency to trip us up. Automatically disbelieving women is insidious and wrong, but so is automatically believing them. Everything must be on a case-by-case basis, where we wait until we know all the information, and then make our judgment known. You don’t have to be a neo-Nazi, MRA, “anti-PC” shitlord to be worried about these (thankfully quite rare) false accusations. It is not victim blaming or slut shaming when a woman’s story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and her actions and behavior are suspect, because we are only talking about THIS PARTICULAR WOMAN, not even remotely women as a whole. So, no, saying that Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick’s stories about Bill Clinton are false is not moving to silence female accusers or feminists hypocritically protecting a predator because the accused is on their side, it is simply reporting the truth of the matter and making it clear that things don’t hold up under scrutiny. (And BTW, they (and Hillary) also were not shaming Monica Lewinsky or blaming her the sordid affair by saying things like “narcissistic Looney Tune.” The stalker stories did not come from Sidney Blumenthal (who was unfairly saddled with a lot of the actions James Carville did) or from Hillary, they came from the likes of Michael Isikoff, Lucianne Goldberg et al when people who knew Lewinsky told stories about her past for these articles. And Hillary’s statement, in full, was remarking how her husband struggled initially to end the affair with an incredibly needy and under the hopeless delusion that President Clinton was romantically attached to her.)
But wait, some of you remark. Why are you making a distinction between Conyers and Franken, or differentiating him from Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Louis CK, Kevin Spacey and so on? After all, many of them made initial statements similar to Franken, and later accusers came out afterwards! Because many of the accounts in those other cases came with a massively fast rate (take tips from victims from Spacey’s time managing the Old Vic Theatre), quite detailed recollections, were thoroughly consistent with each other in ways that left no room for interpretation, had lots of people that could vouch for their accounts, and in certain cases had saved evidence of these moments. With Franken, we have a couple of photos of where the events leading up to them being taken have not been fully verified or checked into, and during which there have been no full, solid witnesses (except possibly for the Tweeden case, and there it was to say that she and Franken were never alone and Tweeden gave no warning signs), and during which time it is quite possible that words are either being put in their friends’ and families’ mouths, they could easily be replying in the affirmative over events they don’t fully understand and are just saying it to give the public appearance of support in the press, or could simply be lying.
As to what I personally believe about Franken, to the best of my knowledge it is this: some of the accounts are purely bogus, some accounts have kernels of truth that are then embroidered upon for maximum effect in the press or are just pure misunderstandings because the women’s memories are playing tricks on them, making them genuinely believe things happened that didn’t. Of those kernels of truth, Franken did some very juvenile and boorish behavior that was undoubtedly quite wrong, but of which simply didn’t seem that way in the social climate of the time. None of this, however, is any reason for removal from his seat. All that is a realization that his past behavior was wrong, pledge to be better, and not run for reelection in 2020. That is all that is needed for Franken to be truly penitent. But let’s face it, no matter what Franken does or did, there would always be someone complaining that he’s “not sorry enough.” If Bill and Hillary Clinton had prostrate themselves naked before Kenneth Starr and/or Roger Stone, flagellating themselves with a cat-o’-nine-tails for the rest of their lives, many on both the left and the right would always say they were “not sorry enough” and did not deserve a chance at redemption.
What Franken’s fellow Senators did in the past 36 hours is nothing short of abject cowardice and bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. I understand their intentions are noble, and that they want to be on the right side of this movement and of history, to make it clear that sexual predators are not acceptable. But just as every relapse doesn’t automatically mean another trip to rehab, holding accusations as just as good as convictions is a stupid and absurdly high standard to hold people towards. Make no mistake, with Franken resigning, this will become the new normal. Soon the GOP will turn their sights on another Democratic official, and another, and another, and another, and the mere whispers of impropriety will be enough to have them ejected from office without a chance to defend themselves. On top of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the unfair conservative advantage in media, weaponized allegations will ensure a longstanding, possibly permanent GOP takeover. The idea that the public will automatically see throwing out our own for misconduct will lead to more victories is foolish and absurd. Flushing out William Jefferson (“bribe money in the fridge” guy), John Edwards, Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and Gary Condit did not encourage the same to happen to Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, Dennis Hastert, David Vitter, Larry Craig or Blake Farenthold. Many of them went down, sure, but not because the public just woke up to their hypocrisy and faults, or because the Republican Party cleaned house. Our moral high ground is very important, yes, but it does not translate into votes gained. If Doug Jones does win in Alabama, it is not because people looked at Franken, and could see the difference between him and Roy Moore. Our sacrifice simply doesn’t move the needle in any meaningful way, let alone away from Moore. And let’s stop with the fantasy that President Clinton should’ve resigned, because all of us defending him were wrong, and that Al Gore would’ve kept on his policies and easily won in 2000. This is a complete misreading of history. Saying that Republicans went after the wrong argument against him is utterly misleading, because if they had used the “taking advantage of your power for sexual favor is unacceptable” line, the Republicans still would no moral authority because of their blatant hypocrisy in this area. If Clinton had resigned, they and the media hungry for their pound of flesh would’ve turned their fire on Gore with relish, making the “phony exaggerator” attacks of the actual 2000 campaign look civil in comparison. They would have run wild with lurid statements calling him complicit in the Lewinsky matter, no matter how much he moved to distance himself from Clinton (which he would’ve done ever harder in this outcome), and fearmongered about Gore pardoning Clinton. Never mind that he never would’ve done so, it would’ve been just as widespread as the “Obama and Hillary are coming to take our guns away” meme. Simply put, Gore would’ve been battered to a point that he would not have authority to govern, and we still would end up with George W. Bush in the White House come 2001. In fact, that’s assuming Gore lasted that long, and they didn’t try to drive him out of office and install a Republican President before the 2000 election. Simply put, we were not wrong to defend President Clinton, Kenneth Starr was not in any way right, the pre-Lewinsky scandals are not any more believable, and the road to victory in 2000 would’ve been bumpier, not smoother, in fact it basically would’ve been marked with land mines and sinkholes.
Al Franken is likely aware of all of this, and that is why he must retract his resignation, and push for the investigation he himself called for. He must stay in the Senate, continue to press hard against Trump and his agenda and his defenses regarding Russia, and ask that while he is under investigation, they must do likewise with Trump and Moore, should he win. He must serve out his term and not run for reelection in 2020. And he must take no quarter against his fellow Senators that moved to stick the shiv in his back, calling them our for their utter dereliction of duty and pandering to the social media activists that automatically call for believing women no matter what and cried out for him to step down and muzzle himself. There is no more time for decorum, for trying to stay above the fray. This is a street fight now, and we have to throw the old rulebook out, and admit at last that the Republicans did that decades ago, and never will use it again. We have to get down in the trenches and fight them hand to hand. And we have to do what we can to stop ratfuckers from poking their ugly little heads out ever again. Remember, they went after George Takei because they wanted to make something stick and to discredit the movement. When that didn’t work, they went after Richard Dreyfuss for vouching for his son’s account of being accosted by Spacey, even though Dreyfuss is hardly liberal. They chose Franken because those attempts failed, and now they have a template to use for the future. We can still head this off, but only if we change course. Because no matter what we give up while we plead “Please don’t hurt me!”, they will never stand by their agreements, and continue to attack us.
It just never fails. Every time Trump and the GOP as a whole is on the ropes, the referee comes over and sucker punches us in order to allow them to recover while we’re debilitated. How long until the rest of us realize that?