As was pointed out, Susan Fowler coming forward about Uber.
Sexual harassment is something that simmers, comes to a boil, boils over, then we forget about it again. Tailhook anyone? Mitsubishi?
Every time it does get a little better, but anyone who thinks this is going to fix it probably also thinks that we can reach a point in the next ten years where we don’t profile black men as criminals…these things are deeply imbued in our culture. Not that it isn’t worth fighting the good fight, but we need to set SMART goals here.
Is that a joke? It seems like a joke. It starts off sounding great: “Senate Dems Leave No Room For Ambiguity In Denouncing Al Franken” and then it continues: “Democratic senators were unequivocal on Thursday in their calls …” that all sounds great so far, exactly the sort of strong response you’d like to see from the party that will give no quarter to sexual abuse. But then it all kind of falls apart: “… for an investigation into sexual assault allegations against Sen. Al Franken” An investigation? Really? That’s the Senate Dems version of “Leave No Room for Ambiguity In Denouncing” and “unequivocal”. ‘We unequivocally agree he should get a slap on the wrist’. Well, alrighty then. Would you feel better if the Republicans agreed to censure a theoretical Senator Moore?
I read, “The Senate should immediately begin an ethics investigation into Senator Franken’s conduct." What I didn’t read was, *“‘We unequivocally agree he should get a slap on the wrist’.”
*
Would you kindly provide a link? Thanks ever so much.
It was a mocking paraphrase, in case that wasn’t clear. I try to use double quotes (") to denote actual quotes and single quotes (') to denote paraphrases. I said this in another thread:
I’m quite confident Senators Harris and Baldwin understand that, but apparently not everyone else does.
Oh, the mocking was loud and clear, but entirely unsupported by what was reported in that article. Also, ‘Something I posted before is my cite’, is not exculpatory.
You seemed to be the one having trouble with the concept.
‘We unequivocally agree he should get a slap on the wrist’ is, I still think, a pretty good summary of Senate Dems response so far. Now, maybe his actions were trivial enough that Franken only deserves a slap on the wrist, but writing an article lionizing Senate Dems for their response is, well, laughable.
I’m having trouble with the concept because every single person quoted in that article is supporting an ethics inquiry into Franken’s conduct. Everything else I’ve read recently suggests that Senate Dems support the ethics investigation. Franken said he welcomes the investigation. So you show me where a Senate Dems say, Franken deserves ‘a slap on the wrist’.
I don’t believe I’ve taken a zero-tolerance position in any of these ongoing discussions about sexual harassment. I actually thought RTFirefly’s suggestion would be an elegant resolution for Franken:
In the post that started this discussion, I wasn’t so much urging a zero-tolerance policy as poking fun at the idea that “the Dems ARE doing the right thing” by calling for an investigation by the ethics committee. They’re not, or at least, they’re not taking any sort of a tough stance against sexual abusers by doing it. They know, and you probably know, that the Senate ethics investigations is a dead end. It would amount to a slap on the wrist for Franken at most.
It’s not at all clear to me that the decision is entirely up to Senate Dems. Don’t Senate GOP have a say?
I don’t see RTFirefly’s suggestion as consistent. On the one hand, he doesn’t want to punish Minnesota voters by forcing censure on Franken to limit his role in the senate, while on the other RTFirefly argues that suspension for a year would be appropriate until the voters make a decision in the 2018 election.
That aside, I’m trying to reconcile the logic which suggests that resignation would be the right course of action for Franken while anything short of that is, in your words, ‘a slap on the wrist’, with, your claim that you are not taking a zero tolerance position.
So if Franken does not resign, per your wish, then a benching suspension imposed by the senate would be the next best thing. But that punishes the voters and you (per RTFirefly) would not want to do that. So, what’s left is, ‘a slap on the wrist’, which you don’t support either.
So your position is either self imposed resignation or some other outcome you would not be happy with. How is that not zero tolerance?
It’s not an argument; it’s a rant that represents a bad attempt at false equivalency.
I would agree that, in retrospect, the Democratic party and Bill Clinton’s supporters probably went too far in defending him. It’s fairly clear to me that there was at least some pattern of sexual misconduct that went beyond consensual extra-marital sex. That pattern does, at minimum, suggest that Bill Clinton had a tendency, on occasion, to use his supervisory and political authority to make unwanted sexual advances. I would at least acknowledge that much.
However, when it comes to Juanita Broadderick’s rape charges, there just isn’t enough evidence to substantiate it. I’m not saying she’s lying, only that there’s not enough evidence to support her claim. And unlike Trump’s and Moore’s accusers, nobody else has stepped forward to claim that Clinton committed rape. It’s possible that Clinton did it this one time, but without reliable witnesses and/or incriminating statements from Clinton himself, there’s no evidence and no real corroboration.
On that note, Clinton did pay to settle his lawsuits. He paid a political price in terms of the damage sustained to his reputation, and his spouse also sustained damage to her own reputation for trying to defend him. But beyond that, the Clintons, the Democrats, and progressives generally have never claimed a position of moral purity or superiority – that’s what Republicans and conservatives do. They dishonestly use character smears to turn elections that should be objective evaluations of political candidates and turn them into subjective purity tests.
