At a minimum, ridicule and humiliation. And that’s if there was no actual touching.
No way that dude gets out of this clean!
Bolding mine
No pass for* usually* doing the right thing
Are we to be similarly outraged by millions of photos taken by college students, like these?
ETA: Is this an “always wrong” thing? It’s never funny? It’s always unacceptable?
This sounds vaguely like some ancient religious law where multiple women are required to accuse a man before she is to be believed or taken seriously.
I disagree with this.
But beyond that, the situation is very different. As someone noted above, the Franken seat will be Democratic in any event. So it’s just a matter of one guy paying a personal price for his own actions. In the case of Moore - in a close race in a close Senate - it’s about the national balance of power potentially changing due to the actions of one bozo 35-40 years ago.
I don’t see that. He probably just thought it was funny.
Not to say she’s wrong to be offended. But I don’t see any reason to assume that was his intention. More like “look at me, Bad Boy that I am …”
I forgot to mention: God dammit Al Franken!!
He doesn’t need anyone here to defend or justify his behavior, even a little bit. And shame on anyone for trying.
If there’s some other explanation, it will come out. He’ll defend himself (and it looks like he’ll defend himself whether he did it or not). But it’s no more likely to be a lie or miscommunication here than for Moore or Trump or other accused abusers (at least for single accusations).
The Democrats need to be the party that gives the boot to abusers and harassers, now and going forward (even though they haven’t in the past), since the Republicans obviously aren’t.
This will go on and get worse, and we’ll “lose” more and more heroes, and GOOD. Our culture and society need a giant kick in the ass, on every political side, with regards to sexual mistreatment.
Fuck em all. Let the hammer fall where it may.
Occurs to me that from here on out there will be MANY men, who otherwise would, choose not to run for office due to harassment/assault skeletons in their closet.
Many of them will be older and established, which it seems to me will result in more younger people running for office on average than has previously been the case.
Or could result in less experienced and accomplished (and less rapey) older men running.
Drain the testosterone swamp!
You didn’t read your own link, then?
And the pic followed that.
Sure, he was being a funny bad boy, but he was doing so in an abusive, punching-down sort of way, aimed at this one woman. Assuming her overall story is true, there’s every reason to believe this photo was part of that.
I feel pretty comfortable saying that simulating a sexual assault on a non-responsive stranger is always unacceptable. Taking a picture of it seems to make it marginally worse. I didn’t look at your example pictures, so I don’t know if this is a common thing among college students. But there are a number of common practices by college students that are always unacceptable, so I’m not sure that sways me. Isn’t this a pretty clear example of the rape culture thing we keep talking about?
There are probably cases of people who know each other well enough to know that, between them, this is a funny thing to do.
But let’s get to the point where doing this to any arbitrary pretty girl within reach isn’t a common occurrence, and then we can start debating which instances are (possibly) acceptable.
Or shall I come to your house and fondle your ballsack?
“You didn’t read your own link” is sometimes appropriate if your claim is explicit in the link. In this case, it’s just your own speculative interpretation, and your “You didn’t read your own link” is just an attempt to pretend you have something more than that.
The picture is undoubtedly tasteless. I assume the allegations about the forced kiss are a politically motivated slander designed to draw attention away from Roy Moore. I’m not being hypocritical; if you can show me that Moore’s accusers have a history of appearing on the Rachel Maddow show supporting liberal feminist causes, I won’t believe them anymore either. Generally men don’t do this sort of thing only once; if more women, particularly ones without obvious ties to Franken’s political enemies, come forward with similar allegations, I will be much more inclined to take them seriously.
Based only on the photo, I think his Presidential aspirations are toast, and I would have a hard time reelecting him if I were a Minnesotan. Calling for his immediate resignation seems like a bit of an overreaction to me.
I don’t like Franken or his politics but it’s not as if he raped somebody or seriously sexually assaulted them. The kiss was wrong, the gag not funny, but if no other worse accusations come to light this should be dismissed and should have no impact at all on his political career. We need a little perspective in these things.
Consent is, as always, the key word.
Some of those pix clearly were taken with the gleeful cooperation of the persons in the pic. Many of them weren’t.
They’re college students, and Lord knows the capacity of college students to do dumb shit is great. You’re away from your parents for the first time, you don’t have to worry yet about paying the rent, and you’ve got more free time than you’ll have any time in the next 40 years.
Should those pix follow their takers around for the rest of their lives? No. Should their current friends think twice about being their friends? Yes. If they currently hold high office, should they get kicked out? Yes. If they hold high office 30 years from now? No.
But Franken wasn’t a dumb college student when he did those things. He did them as an adult. These things happened just two years before he ran for Senate.
(Yes, I know: you’re legally an adult at 18, which all but a few college students are. And if you commit a crime as a college student, you do the time. But if you commit morally reprehensible but non-criminal acts as a college student, I’m personally going to adjust for the reality that college is really a kind of limbo between childhood and adulthood, and consider whether you’ve grown up since then. Most of us eventually do.)
Dammit, Franken, you were my horse to ride in the 2020 presidential campaign.
For the record, I don’t think he is actually groping her - but joking about groping her isn’t acceptable either. And the story about the kiss is disturbing.
I’m not sure he should resign - I want to know if there was a pattern of harassing women (which, sadly, is probably likely) or just this one incident. But he’s never gonna be president now.
LOL!
Oh, wait … you’re serious?
:smack: