So Pantastic, zero tolerance? Okay. Once Trump resigns for admitted pussy grabbing Franken should resign for a single unwanted sloppy kiss and for making crude jokes that were sexually exploitive and offensive while he was a professional comic. Zero tolerance applies equally to all or it does not apply.
Eight former staffers come to Al’s defense.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/5030073/al-franken-female-staffers-defend
I don’t know what situations you are talking about with the fake apologies. Is it Trump and the pussy grabbing statements? If we dismiss all apologies then there won’t be any more of them, or any admissions either.
If more actual incidents of a sexual nature turn up that will have an effect. What you cite is not only not sexual in nature and I don’t see as scary or criminal harassment based on the article, quite the opposite, it sounds like piling on from a wannabe victim. And this kind of thing is likely to turn into a backlash where actual victims are dismissed. Life is complicated, lots of people, most people I think, have made a somewhat serious mistake in their life that requires no more than an apology to resolve. We don’t execute people for a speeding ticket, proportion has to be considered, and if not then we will end up with either persecution or the most heinous violators avoiding the consequences of their actions.
Exactly.
Since I explicitly did not endorse zero tolerance, I’m not why you’re acting like I did. I also don’t think that a stance of “Democrats will sexually assault women until Trump resigns” is a moral or defensible one to take. It’s also not a practical one to take, since in the future Republicans will be able to point to the fact that Democrats have been saying ‘it’s OK if a Democrat does it’ since the Bill Clinton days to demolish any complaints Democrats have about treatment of women. Using Trump to justify shitty behavior, then expecting people to vote for you because you’re not Trump doesn’t work.
Also, your minimization is pretty gross. If Al franken was a college kid, or this was a long time ago it might be different, but he was over 50 and we’re only talking about 2006 when he decided it was cool to shove his tongue in a resisting woman’s mouth. The idea that you need to have consent before placing a part of your body in another person’s orifice was well-established by the turn of the millennium, and he’s certainly old enough to know better.
No, did you actually read the post you’re responding to? I’m referring to Al Franken and his statement in print that he made about his own apologies. I direct quoted the NYT article discussing the book where he admits to it. This thread is about what Al Franken did, the more that Democrats take an attitude of “I can do whatever I want and blame it on Trump” the harder time they’ll have in elections.
So your statement is that you feel that someone physically harassing a smaller person in what’s supposed to be a safe area, then using his position as part of the show to get her private number and harass her there, and to continue doing so until she threatens to call the police is not scary or criminal harassment, but “quite the opposite”? You think it’s safe and perfectly fine to do what she claims he did? If he did this to Hillary Clinton instead of a conservative guest, it would be cool, and the Secret Service wouldn’t be at all worried?
Shoving part of your body into an orifice of an unwilling victim’s body is not a ‘prank’.
Al Franken disagrees with you on that count. So are we supposed to only believe parts of his apology?
I’m confused; what part of his body did Al Franken shove into which orifice of Leeann Tweeden’s body?
His tongue into her mouth. According to her, although he claims to not remember.
Actually, I didn’t look at the quote at the end, I thought that was a response to another poster. The link isn’t working, the part you quoted doesn’t tell me much, there’s no context there, just something about how he says “I’m sorry”. If there is a working link I’d like to see the rest of the article before I continue looking at that.
Here is the significant quote:
“He wouldn’t leave me alone, he kept following me. As a woman, his presence and proximity to me felt very threatening and intimidating.”
Even though there’s no allegation of a physical threat she thinks as a woman she’s able to dismiss anyone she doesn’t like using her gender as a special privilege. She also calls him stalker although there’s no evidence of such a thing. She has created a drama here short of facts. If she doesn’t like being confronted about public statements she makes then she shouldn’t make them. Still, it was bad behavior on his part to call her more than once if she indicated she didn’t want to talk to him again, but hardly on the scale of the forced kiss that he has admitted to, and once again, the woman involved accepted his apology and was willing to chalk it up as a mistake. If Franken has engaged in other cases of sexual assault or harassment then bring it up.
As part of a skit. Her own statement says, “Like many USO shows before and since, the skits were full of sexual innuendo geared toward a young, male audience.”
You might want to look up what the word “innuendo” means. Hint: It does not mean tongue in someone else’s mouth.
Anyway, you said you were confused. Not sure why you are still acting confused after having been educated on the source of your confusion.
Anyway, according to her statement it was during a rehearsal, at his insistence and over her objections, of a skit that he had written himself.
At that point the fact that it’s part of a skit means very little. It’s not like this was Act V of opening night of their production of Much Ado about Nothing.
I’m not really sure how people can be confused about something this cut and dried that was clearly stated in the initial story. In any case, I’ve quoted the statement that people commenting here really should have read, and bolded the answer to your question. If you have a hard time with the pronoun, Tweeden is the one making the statement so the “my” refers to her and the statement is about Franken so the “his” refers to him.
And the thing is, none of us has seen the script, if there even was one. Maybe it says “they kiss passionately” or maybe it just says “they kiss”. Maybe Al thought it was understood there would be tongue and she understood there would not be. Or maybe Al used it as an excuse to get some action. We really don’t know. But making it out like she simply has nothing to complain about, as some people seem to be doing, is just… mind blowing.
…a skit with sexual innuendo is not an excuse to stick your tongue into someone elses mouth without permission. With consent open mouth kissing is normal for a skit on stage. French kissing is not. Basic production etiquette. An audience: especially at something like a USO show isn’t going to be able to tell the difference between a kiss with tongue and a kiss without. This is especially egregious because he wrote the kiss for himself.
The link broke when I pasted it, but if you cut and paste the link it works. I quoted more than just him saying “I’m sorry”, so feel free to either read the quote or go to the full article. Screw it, here’s a link. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/books/review/al-franken-giant-of-the-senate.html
That’s a direct allegation of a physical threat. Pursuing someone smaller into a private area and getting into their personal space is a physical threat, however much you want to deny it. And I seriously doubt that if a larger guy cornered you in the dressing room of a gym and berated you for something that you said that you would think there was no physical threat.
Even PBS is piling on. Editors hard at work.
I certainly feel safer now that any controversy won’t reach my tv.
The article doesn’t tell me any more. The accusation is that Franken engaged in the same kind of minor hypocrisy that every single politician does. I hold politicians in general low regard but it’s no reason to single out Franken. As for your other article, because it’s not sexual harassment being charged then how the alleged victim feels is irrelevant. There was no physical threat, he did not touch this woman, and the context is an argument over a political issue regarding some numbers, hardly the kind of thing that engenders fear.
Now I’m not here to defend Franken, I’m pointing out the problem with a lack of proportion in your argument, all things are not equal, bad acts come in degrees, and so far Franken does not rise to the level of Roy Moore or Weiner or Weinstean or Cosby. A lack of proportion supports the deniers who will never admit to anything, and if you consider all apologies to be insincere then no one will apologize either.
OTOH, there is this out today, Franken accused of inappropriate touching. If there is more to his behavior that needs to come to light then just be patient and you’ll find out about it.
The article is not “an accusation”, it’s a discussion of Franken’s own words in his own book, and when written was actually an entirely positive discussion of his book. Whether you wish to deny it or not, Franken has admitted in writing that he has issued fake apologies for similar issues in the past, and didn’t feel bad about telling a “little white lie” like that.
A larger person following a smaller person into a private area and getting into their personal space is a physical threat. I’m not sure why you think that physical threats can only occur when there is sexual harassment involved, but it’s not the case. If Franken disagreed with Hillary on a point and decided to follow her back into her dressing room to harangue her about it while getting in her personal space, I don’t think the Secret Service would just say ‘nah, that’s cool, there’s clearly no physical threat from a guy following her around and looming over her, let’s just chill’.
And I’m not sure what planet you’re on, but on the planet Earth a person physically threatening someone (especially a man threatening a woman given the cultural background) and repeatedly calling them on a private number despite being told to stop most certainly DOES engender fear, especially if the person is acting that aggressive over a difference in opinion over some numbers.
Then why is that EXACTLY what you’re doing? Stop defending his atrocious actions if that’s not what you’re here to do.