On the sexual charges du jour
Right now I’m not inclined to write about the accused offenders du jour: Conyers and Charlie Rose. Conyers is denying the allegations and Rose has admitted them. Conyers remains in his position and Rose has been fired.
It’s not that these aren’t interesting stories. I’ve just written so much on the topic recently, and since every day there’s a new set of people being accused, I’ve decided I’m not going to try to write about every last one.
There is one thing I have to say about the Rose accusations, though. It’s something I’ve noticed in a lot of the stories about a lot of these men (take Anthony Weiner—please, as Henny Youngman would say): the prevalence of displaying one’s private parts in the hope of arousing (or intimidating?) the woman. Or perhaps it’s just something that sexually excites the men themselves.
I guess they never got the memo: women are aroused by different things than men are, ordinarily. I am certain there are plenty of women who would love nothing better than to have some guy expose himself, but they are still in a heavy minority. Men, on the other hand, are more visually oriented, and may project this tendency onto the women they’re seducing/assaulting. Or maybe, as I said, they don’t take the women into account at all, and it’s all about themselves or about power.
I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never been propositioned in the workplace or in academia (I’ve spent a lot of time in academia, and I was a fresh young thing at the time). But I certainly have seen exhibitionists, particularly in the subway. I remember seeing one when I was about ten years old, a creepy old guy in a moderately deserted subway car, and the expression on his face—of seeming triumph—was especially disturbing.
Looking up the phenomenon of exhibitionism just now, I found articles such as this, for example. Neither that site nor the others I found deal with anything other than people like the subway flasher. There’s no discussion of someone like Weiner or Rose. But my guess is that what drives them is a combination of narcissism, abuse of power, projection of the notions of male sexuality onto women, and their own titillation at engaging in the supposedly-forbidden activity.
In Rose’s mea culpa, he said:
I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realise I was mistaken.
Do you think that last sentence is a self-serving lie? Or do you think he actually thought that? I think it’s a combination of the two, although his perception of the women’s feelings may not have been based on anything they did or said, but rather on the fact that he felt himself to be pretty much irresistible.
Ooops, I guess I wrote about this after all.
I’m certainly not an expert in exhibitionism, but I feel there’s something missing in your list of motives: a man who shows his private parts is maybe not only trying to arouse or to intimidate, he is also showing a weakness and openness. That’s of course a delusional thought, but those men MUST be delusional, while a another NOT so delusional part of their reckoning may still tell them that the risk is small and the possible reward huge.
“Shared feelings” can mean: I share with you my weakness, my desire, my sin. I give up my self-restraint, I show you a truth about myself I wouldn’t show everyone.
I see it even somehow related to flagellants, but while those are ascetic, show their pain and beg for atonement, those offending men are everything but ascetic, show their lust — and also want some kind of approval.
Arousing the woman is not part of the trade they offer, I guess, it is more about sharing intimacy. But between people who are not equal, whose power is distributed so one-sided, such a trade is impossible. The trade comes disguised as a kind of submission of the male, but that’s the dishonest and sickening part of it, it is in reality the opposite of submission.
Interestingly Neo I have been asking my husband (since back in the Carlos Danger tweeting days) what kind of a man thinks a pic like that is a turn on to women. His responses have ranged from trolling for gays, to having the opinion that the offenders schlong is so humongous it just needs to be seen. LOL
In my nursing education we were told that male exhibitionists needed their manhood validated.
LOL
Nothing says you’re pursuing shared feelings quite like parading around without any pants on. As I recall, Ted Kennedy was reported to be fond of this technique.
Molly NH: my wife and I have had similar conversations recently, e.g.; what sort of man thinks that sticking his tongue in a woman’s mouth during a staged kiss is funny?
@ Steve, Franken cold hardly be playing that behavior for laughs, to me it was designed to humiliate her & remotely a *signal* that HE was available for more. Hopefully she said out loud she needed a sink to brush her teeth and rinse her mouth out, & everybody heard her. Insult for insult.
could not cold
All these men must have been terminally stupid. I can’t understand how on earth they made such envious careers.
You’re probably right about that. The power/intimidation angle often seems to be the only logical explanation for these behaviors.
I tend to believe Charlie Rose when he says, “I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realise I was mistaken.” He is, after all, a man well trained in feminist thought, part of which says that women are just like men in their sexual desires.
@Ann You re on to something there
The subway reference brought back this ancient memory of a passage in a book I must have read more than 50 years ago:
He stepped out from a small recess under the stairs that had an entrance to the cellar. He walked softly but with lunging steps. He was thin and undersized and wore a shabby dark suit with a collarless and tieless shirt. His thick bushy hair grew down on his forehead almost to his eyebrows. He had a beaked nose and his mouth was a thin crooked line. Even in the
semi-darkness, Francie was aware of his wet-looking eyes.
She took another step, then, as she got a better look at him, her legs turned into cement. She couldn’t lift them to take the next step! Her hands clutched two banister spokes and she clung to them. What hypnotized her into being unable to move was the fact that the man was coming towards her with his lower garments opened.
Francie stared at the exposed part of his body in paralyzed horror. It was wormy white contrasted with the ugly dark sallowness of his face and hands. She felt the same kind of nausea she had once felt when she saw a swarm of fat white maggots crawling over the putrid carcass of a rat. She tried to scream “mama” but her throat closed over and only air came out. It was like a horrible dream where you tried to scream but no sound came. She couldn’t move! A Tree Grows In Brooklyn By Betty Smith
Am I the only one who is not very supportive of these allegations. First, opportunities for career advancement is pretty much the only thing a powerful but ugly and over the hill man can offer ladies in exchange for their affections, if you label a powerful man compensating his lost youth and look with an offer of opportunities as sexual harassment than you are pretty much saying only young and handsome men deserve love.
Am I a bad man agreeing with a lot of things Morrissey said regarding the issue?
Neo, as anyone who has spent more than a few minutes around Charlie Rose could assure you, he definitely felt he was “irresistible.” Isn’t it sad that we have to be discussing things like this?
There is another possibility. Maybe this kind of behavior works with some women. Maybe some women like the direct and blatant indication of sexual interest.
These women probably won’t admit to it now, given that the public stance is that this is outrageously crude. But it seems more logical to me that these methods have had some success rather than these guys spending years trying a method which repulses all women.
It kind of reminds me of catcalling. Conventional wisdom is that catcalling is crude and outrageous behavior. But catcalling is lower class behavior, and girls in that class know how to deal with it, either reciprocate interest or turn it down.
Another possibility is that it is like spam. Most spam is obviously fraud to most people. It’s designed to weed out anyone remotely suspicious very quickly. Similarly, these kind of crude, blunt passes are very obvious, and quickly identify women who are interested.
The behavior (as reported) of these men is both mysterious and uninteresting to me. Uninteresting that I have little or no curiosity about what was going on in their minds, what effect they hoped to achieve, or what in their childhood or early life might have inspired them to act in such a manner.
Punishment, for me, is enough.
Here’s one good thing to come out of the stroll through the sewers of Congress. Considering most of us never had any idea that our tax dollars were enabling this sexual misbehaviour, any reform is better than the continued business-as-usual functioning of an office that ought to be shut down. If the harassment is that bad, file a police complaint. If it isn’t, pick another line of work, and tell people why you left. Gag rules and payouts are despicable.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/paulmcleod/she-complained-that-a-powerful-congressman-harassed-her?utm_term=.ivV4vpZ3Yl#.pj5W8vqJkp
“California Democrat Rep. Speier and colleagues in the House and Senate have introduced legislation that would overhaul the complaint process, including requiring the Office of Compliance to publicly name the office of any member who enters into a settlement. The bill would also allow complainants to waive mediation and counseling, set up a victims’ counsel, and require all congressional offices to go through harassment training every year.”
@dave, oh brother please. Do you work in reputation repair ?
My husband is no longer a young man but most deserving of
loads of love from me, his family,his grandkids,his daughter inlaws, his pets, & myriad others because he is a good man with integrity.
Humans are among the few species in which generally females, rather than males, “display.” It may be that with the destruction of sexual identities and mores, males are starting to display more frequently. This phenomenon may also be reflected in the increased popularity of tattoos, piercings, and exaggerated facial and head hair among certain groups of males – athletes and hot rodders, for example
Geraghty on NRO at least has a sense of humour. He gives a good (bad?) round-up of the perps to date, and includes some Dem “introspection” that looks a lot like “sexual misbehavior is only abuse in the third person: their abuse”.
http://www.nationalreview.com/morning-jolt/453940/sexual-assault-accusations-are-now-creeping-journalism
“At a recent gathering of conservative bloggers, a few of us joked about creating a “sexual impropriety pool” – wagering on which public figure will next face accusations of improper or repulsive behavior. We concluded that too many of us had heard rumors through the grapevine to make it work; essentially every prediction would amount to insider trading.
Then again, none of us had Charlie Rose in the pool.”
“As a second accuser comes forward with a description of Minnesota senator Al Franken behaving inappropriately – this time grabbing buttocks, while he was a senator – New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, who called for Franken’s resignation after the first accusation from Leeann Tweeden, suddenly backtracks . . .
(block quote) If Democrats “set this precedent in the interest of demonstrating our party’s solidarity with harassed and abused women, we’re only going to drain the swamp of people who, however flawed, still regularly vote to protect women’s rights and freedoms,” she wrote. “And when the next Democratic member of Congress goes down, there might not be a Democratic governor to choose his replacement. I’m partly persuaded by this line of reasoning, though conservatives mock it as the “one free grope” rule. It’s a strange political fiction that anyone can really separate partisanship from principle. In general, the character of the party that controls the government has a much greater impact on people’s lives than the character of individual representatives. Those who care about women’s rights shouldn’t be expected to prove it by being willing to hand power to people devoted to taking those rights away.”
Uh-huh. It’s okay if you take away an individual’s rights so long as you protect women’s rights. Sounds like we’ve heard that line somewhere before.
Seconding Jim’s addenda, as I saw the Prager video yesterday and think it is very perceptive and useful.
ADDENDA: Sorry for all of the depressing and unsavory news today; I’ll try to be cheerier tomorrow. In the meantime, some wise thoughts from Dennis Prager: “You can’t be a happy person if you aren’t grateful, and you can’t be a good person if you aren’t grateful . . . Ingratitude guarantees unhappiness . . . Ingratitude is always accompanied by anger. Perceiving oneself as a victim may be the single biggest reason people hurt other people. People who think of themselves as victims tend to believe that because they’ve been hurt by others, they can hurt others.”
Moore is fighting back here, and seems to have some witnesses on his side (despite the clearly biased headline)”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/moore-campaign-attempts-to-refute-mall-ban-and-one-accuser%E2%80%99s-story/ar-BBFrevj?li=AA5a8k&ocid=spartandhp
“A former waitress said the restaurant didn’t hire anyone under the age of 16, but Nelson said she was 15 when she started. Two former employees questioned the location of the dumpster, saying it was on the side of the building, not the back. A few of Moore’s witnesses said there wasn’t an entrance to the building from the back of the parking lot and another former employee said the restaurant never closed before 11 p.m., which they said contradicts Nelson’s claims that the restaurant closed at 10 p.m. the night of the alleged assault.
The campaign also claimed that these witness accounts had been shared with multiple news outlets, but “the outlets have failed to report.”
The second statement included quotes from three former employees of Gadsden mall, one of whom oversaw mall security, attempting to discredit reports that Moore was banned from the mall because of his alleged behavior toward teenage girls.
One witness, Johnnie V. Sanders who the Moore campaign said was an employee of Gadsden Mall from the late 1970s to the mid-2000’s, said there was a different “prominent” man who was banned from the mall for similar reasons and said he may have been confused with Moore.
“There was a prominent man of Etowah County, whom is now deceased that was banned for reasons such as the allegations against Judge Moore. However, due to respect for the family, I decline to reveal his name,” Sanders said in the statement. “Despite allegations against other patrons of the mall, I never heard of Roy Moore’s name come in conversation with any such misconduct against women or a supposed banning from the Gadsden Mall.”
Moore campaign strategist Brett Doster said the campaign put out the statements to combat the “one-sided reporting” on the accusations against the former judge.”
They report; we decide.
Is anyone else bothered as much as I am by the fact that Conyers is 88 and has been in the House since 1965?
Another of the sterling arguments for term limits and retirement ages.
For a long time for example I thought Bruce Willis was the star of 9 and a half weeks
I have been saying for a long time that Roy Moore was not a famous man 40 years ago, no way these women can recognize him as some strangers who had groped them 40 years old, probably they mistaken him for someone else.
Roy Moore is very likely completely innocent, but his reputation has been damaged no matter what. If you can judge a person by his face Doug Jones probably looks way more like a typical pervert than Roy Moore tbh.
Maybe there should be a course in the art of seduction.
Amen to AesopFan. Whatever happened to that moderately strong term limits movement? When was that, the early 1990’s? I think a possible mistake they made back then were the proposal of aggressively short terms. This guy has been in office for 52 years. Lordy!
_____
The sex accusation du jour that caught my attention was actor Jeremy Piven’s resort to a polygraph test administered by the folks at the American Polygraph Association. Three accusers and Piven’s blanket denials pass the test.
I read the APA’s roughly 6 page doc on their testing standards. I was disappointed to see no reference to drug use (such as tranks) by the test subject.
I’d give the nod to Piven, but only by a small margin.
Richard Saunders:
Males of other times and cultures have often been the ones to display. I give you the codpiece and koteka and this sort of thing.
Ralph Kinney Bennett:
I found him so resistible that I can’t recall ever even watching his show.
Dave:
I tend to retain skepticism about allegations, although I think many are probably indeed true. But in Rose’s case, he confessed (after the fact).
vanderleun:
And written in 1943.
Oh for the quaint days of my youth when as a good Catholic boy you confessed your sins privately, and said your Hail Mary’s on a kneeler, in church, with head bowed and contrite. Your sins were between you and God. None of this public vulgar display, this almost staged Soviet show trial atmosphere, this faux outrage as one after another wronged woman gets her revenge, and as reputations built over a lifetime are destroyed. For what, so that one more knife can be plunged into the dying American culture?
I don’t take their so called confessions seriously, they are more like mystic river confessions, confessing regardless of existence of guilt to shorten the process and end the humiliation asap, a lot of payouts are like that. People need to stand their ground more regarding wrongful accusations.
Mystic river confession is the “we don’t care if you did it or not, just confess it and we will let you go easy” type of confession
Methinks Rose’s explanation, “I always thought I was pursuing shared feelings,” is just another variation of the age-old excuse that everything was consensual. Charlie seems to think that’s a gentlemanly way to explain accusations of very ungentlemanly behavior on his part. The dirty old man is a stereotype for a reason, Charlie.
At least he’s finally “retiring.” About 20 years too late. And this time it’s his colleagues Gayle King and Nora O’Donnell who (like Captain Renault in Casablanca) are “shocked, shocked to find gambling going on here.” Right, ladies. You had no idea.
I am a dinosaur. I was taught to honor and cherish females. Women and children first. I realize that women lie about rape/harassment. But I also realize some men are predators. Sorting it all out requires time and patience.
Seeing a scuzz expose himself on the subway (as an adult) is disgusting but not something that causes your self-respect to plummet, your dignity to be undermined, and cause a lifelong feeling of shame. If it’s Harvey Weinstein, however, it does. Why? Because you don’t want anything from the scuzz and have no trouble calling him one, looking at him with contempt and alerting a cop. Your lingering shame and loss of self-esteem is because you didn’t treat Harvey the same way. Both deserved to be called out and shamed, but it’s your response to a moral crisis (how much are Harvey’s favors worth to me) that caused your suffering. I know it’s hard, all moral crises are hard – but to not hold women accountable for their decisions is to infantalize them. We’ll never stop some men from handling their sexual insecurities inappropriately or abusing power even if we send them to re-education camps. But would not it make sense to also prepare women to handle themselves with dignity and courage when men misbehave and to recognize their power of choice? (I’m obviously not talking about being overpowered and raped.)
If Charlie Rose is now gone – fired, exposed as a buffoon and thoroughly disgraced – then we are the less for it. For all of his liberal orthodoxy he was able to bring us interviews that are gold. Here is one of his most prophetic. It was November 15, 1994 when he interviewed Sir James Goldsmith on GATT. After watching it I drove to the book store and purchased The Trap, a book that should be required reading by any Republican who thinks unfettered free trade is good. As it turned out, both Goldsmith and Rose were womanizers. Big effing deal. It has absolutely nothing to do with the truth that was broadcast that day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwmOkaKh3-s
I agree completely with The Other Chuck’s excellent point decrying the current mood running in favour of soviet-style denunciations.
Only in a society under the confident control of hubristic, intolerant elites could one witness what we now see occurring everyday: accusers coming forward to publicly denounce an accused and on the basis of that denunciation only, without it being tested in any court, demanding and usually receiving an immediate confession, a public (and useless) mea culpa, and a withdrawal from public life by the accused as he retires in disgrace to lament his ruined career and reputation. And all this to the cheer-leading of the elites and their commentariat.
Public discourse and popular culture truly grows more ugly and tyrannical, seemingly with each passing day as the sensible and decent majority stay largely silent and retreat inwards, unplugging from cable, turning their backs on free to air tv, sports and movies, and all the other activities once commonly shared between them and which reflected common values and a united people.
There was a time in the US when the public denunciation of innocents was seen by the majority as evil and unacceptable even though the dictators of the time could point to a real danger they purported to be fighting. Even though it was silent for a time, public opinion finally re-asserted itself. Fortunately we have such a moment captured for ever on film.
It occurred on a day in June 1954 during a session of the Army-McCarthy hearings which arose in large part from Senator Joseph McCarthy’s wish to punish the Army for refusing a commission and other special favours to one of his favoured young men.
Following an exchange with Joseph Welch, special counsel for the Army, McCarthy is seen to arrogantly and glibly name one of the young lawyers in Joseph Welch’s law firm as having been a member of a young lawyer’s association with leftist sympathies whilst at College and for a few months afterwards.
In doing so, McCarthy was doing nothing he had not done hundreds of times before but the film captured his malicious demeanour and broadcast into homes for the first time his wanton cruelty in the service of punishing Welch for his opposition by destroying a young man who wasn’t even taking part in the hearing and whom no-one seriously considered to be a communist or to have committed any crime.
McCarthy was shown on the film to be exactly what he was – and what his spiritual descendants are today – supremely arrogant bullies so confident and cruel in their power that they believe that simply naming their enemies ought to be enough by itself to permanently destroy them.
Joseph Welch understood this and his response was electric. What he said doesn’t qualify as great oratory but was so very powerful because he spoke simple sense and truth and called out the cruelty of those who think that mere finger-pointing is, of and by itself, conclusive proof of sin or crime.
A moment of epiphany for the average person in the US, Welch’s words caught and expressed the mood of the decent majority of sensible people who recognise fair play, the presumption of innocence and the right of an accused to speak his own truth and to demand that evidence be brought to ground a charge against him which he can challenge and test before he can be condemned and cast out of society.
How sad that it was once the left that stood up to the finger-pointers and paid the price for the principles that mere denunciation is not proof of guilt and that one may even dissent from public policy and yet not be disloyal to one’s people.
The finger pointers du jour say that there is a war on women by men and that it is necessary that accused men be purged to protect their victims. The unjustly accused men are apparently to them justified as collateral damage.
But wasn’t the US of yesteryear that responded to Mr Welch’s words also under threat ? And wasn’t it a much more real and serious one ? The cold war was no less a war for that and it was played out between the US and Soviet Union in shooting wars around the globe by proxy.
Communist infiltration was a reality and official Soviet policy that had to be resisted but US popular opinion still tempered the fight with fairness and decent regard to protection of the individual.
From the moment the American people at home heard Mr Welch’s condemnation of McCarthy’s callousness and cruelty he and his hubristic crusade were a spent force.
McCarthy never recovered from this moment of common sense uttered by one exasperated lawyer and taken up by the people.
How the US and the west have fallen in so short a time.
Oops, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8llS0ZkLVGA
Stephen:
Thank you for the reference and detail from the Army/McCarthy hearings. Yes, what irony that it is the left that is now dishing out the accusations, smashing free speech at universities, and engaging in character assassination.
The Other Chuck Says:
November 21st, 2017 at 9:30 pm
Stephen:
Thank you for the reference and detail from the Army/McCarthy hearings. Yes, what irony that it is the left that is now dishing out the accusations, smashing free speech at universities, and engaging in character assassination.
* * *
And the Left still claims it’s only the Other Side that does such horrible things.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/20/when-democracy-failed-blacklist-215849
“There are striking similarities between the Red Scare and our own perilous political moment. There’s no congressional roadshow touring the country today, as in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. But both eras have been defined by the rise a paranoid, populist, neo-isolationist movement of angry, disenfranchised “Americanists” who believe their country and its culture has been secretly hijacked and undermined by usurpers who need to be exposed, shamed and rooted out. Back then, it was communists, Jews and liberals; today, it’s the media, Muslims, immigrants, transgender people and other vulnerable groups who are cast as enemies of the people. Congressional hearings were the main vehicle for the Red Scare, with TV and newspapers feeding off the anti-communist frenzy; today’s vectors of populist rage are social media, cable news shows like Fox’s primetime lineup, and right-wing websites like Breitbart, Gateway Pundit and The Daily Caller. And there are direct personal links between that era and our own–President Trump, a master of false accusation and vituperative innuendo, learned much of his political brutalism at the feet of mob lawyer Roy Cohn, who in turn learned the art of the smear from his former boss, Senator Joseph McCarthy, the supreme con-man of the Red Scare.
What’s been largely overlooked isn’t the historical analogy–many have made the comparison–but its deeper meaning. For the blacklist became a test of our democratic institutions, both governmental and nongovernmental, and their commitment to uphold our deepest values, most especially our civil liberties–a test that by and large they failed.
…
No one under investigation was allowed to cross-examine their accusers, nor examine the incriminating documents that the FBI supplied the committee. No one was allowed to consult their own lawyers during the sessions. Defiance was not just an act of bravery but of martyrdom. If you refused to cooperate and took the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, you lost your job and were blacklisted. But acquiescence alone was not sufficient. To achieve redemption, witnesses were required to go through a three-step ritual of public humiliation: acknowledge their prior left-wing activities with the deepest regret, praise the committee for its important and heroic work and demonstrate the credibility of their transformation from Red to red-blooded American by naming others as subversives. The demand for names was no longer a quest for evidence, writes author Victor Navasky, “It was a test of character. The naming of names had shifted from a means to an end.”
The hearings blatantly violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. Congress is supposed to make laws, not judge the innocence or guilt of those accused of violating them. But from the start, the committee functioned as judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner. ”
It’s a great article – if you’ve been asleep for the last few decades.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1819347108076131&set=p.1819347108076131&type=3
Poster children for “hypocrisy”
This is classic: a list of 16 people accused and mostly confessed, and it appears to me from their employers that all are leftists (we are talking Media, after all) — but the final graf is a real kicker.
https://www.axios.com/journalists-accused-of-sexual-harassment-2511069329.html
“Don’t forget: Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes started the chain of sexual harassment and assault allegations in big media companies.”
It’s always the fault of Republicans.
PowerLine fisks the article that I linked yesterday (somewhere – there are too many similar posts now), but has the best drop-mic line at the end.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/11/the-democrats-dilemma.php
“It is great fun to watch liberals squirm as one after another of their favorite politicians, journalists and cultural figures are swept up in the vortex of sexual assault and harassment. In today’s New York Times, columnist Michelle Goldberg frets—out loud!—about what to do “When Our Allies Are Accused of Harassment.” The ally she has in mind is Al Franken:
..
The problem with feminists’ standards isn’t that they are unrealistic but that they are fictitious. They are used offensively for political gain and ignored when that is politically convenient.
“Ultimately, (wrote Goldberg) however these dilemmas play out, we lose: either the moral high ground or men whom we need, admire and maybe even love.”
I’m not sure I can resolve the Democrats’ dilemma, but I would offer this word of advice to Ms. Goldberg and her fellow feminists: you lost the moral high ground a long, long time ago.“
Related directly to the Moore case rather than the on-going collapse of the entertainment and media Oppressive Patriarchy (if I may be so snide).
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/21/doug-jones-can-beat-roy-moore-but-theres-one-big-problem-215856
“He’s going to have to tone down his rhetoric on abortion if he wants to win over evangelicals.”
By MICHAEL WEAR November 21, 2017
So, Wear advises Alabamans to accept unsubstantiated complaints about Moore because “The fact that he identifies as a Christian should not obscure or absolve him from his actions for evangelicals.”
..and instead vote for a man who, despite his credentials as a Christian (he has a video interview to prove it), asserts that “he is a “firm believer that a woman should have the freedom to choose what happens to her body,” and affirmed his support for contraception and for a woman’s right to “the abortion that they might need.” When Todd then asked if that meant he would not support a ban on abortion after 20 weeks, Jones replied that he was “not in favor of anything that would infringe on a woman’s right to choose.”
A lot of evangelicals have a problem with that stance on abortion, which even Wear calls “extreme”.
Wear is also afraid that evangelicals might be concerned about this:
“Jones has also seemed unfamiliar with the state of, and diversity of opinion, regarding religious freedom. In the rare cases he’s spoken to one of the signature issues of his opponent, he has virtually ceded the ground. ...If religious freedom means “discrimination,” then he won’t protect it.”
Wear is pretty clear-sighted about Jones’ problems with the Alabama electorate:
“It is not just that Jones’ positions on abortion and religious freedom are out of step with Alabama voters–his answers suggest a disinterest in understanding the legitimate concerns of many Alabamians.”
However, Wear’s understanding is limited, and his solutions are convoluted to say the least, and pretty cynical to boot.
“Moore looks like a prophet to some, because he’s warned all along that Washington would force its values on places like Alabama. In 2006, 81 percent of Alabama voters supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and fewer than 10 years later their vote was overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States. Jones should be able to affirm that decision, while also making clear that he does not think it mandates the government to exert pressure to change the teachings of Alabama’s churches or faithful. This may sound obvious, and it is, but that is exactly why Jones should say it: Demogogues like Moore prey on the fears of evangelical voters, relying on Democrats’ unwillingness to even make basic attempts to speak their language or appeal for their votes.
None of this would require Jones to compromise his integrity, though national Democrats and some activists might get queasy if, say, he does promise to vote “present” on abortion. If that happens, they should remember: Jones would represent another key vote on protecting Obamacare, the social safety net, voting rights and criminal justice reform.”
Wear hasn’t noticed that what he sees as pluses for Jones are considered negatives to people who understand that the Four Policies of the Apocalypse do more harm than good in their current implementation under Democrat auspices.
“It would also mean that Alabama would no longer be sending two pro-life votes to the Senate, which would be extraordinary in itself, and could play a deciding factor in key votes. And even more importantly, a morally repugnant candidate would be kept out of the world’s greatest deliberative body and denied a national platform to spread his noxious, divisive views.”
For a lot of Alabama evangelicals, maybe Jones’ political positions make him the morally repugnant candidate.
This post by Dyer ties Moore’s case to the imploding liberal hierarchies.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2017/11/19/whats-worse-roy-moore-accused/
“Consider that we now mistake ritually denouncing Roy Moore for behaving morally. That in itself is an entire sermon’s worth of moral indictment.
But we also have no plans to end the practice of coexisting with all the myriad moral compromises and slippery slopes infecting our society today — many of them administered as government programs and mandates. Doing that would be an effort so huge no one can even see how to start.
…
If you really think, for example, that it’s bigoted to object when 14-year-old girls are targeted with graphic pictures in a teen magazine of how anal sex works, and are given tips for experimenting with it, then you forfeit any presumption of moral seriousness about the protection of 14-year-old girls.
If you think a pregnant 14-year-old should have an abortion without her parents’ knowledge or involvement, as a “solution” to whatever her situation may be, you are not morally credible on the matter of protecting 14-year-olds.
If you are just fine with adults in the public schools “teaching” children to question their “gender identity,” and to obsess over their sexual urges and what their orientation may be, and indeed to feel that it is especially enlightened and interesting to choose being “non-traditional” and make a political cause of it, you have zero standing to posture sanctimoniously about what any other adult may do to invade the sexual space of a 14-year-old.
….
Nothing that is done or not done about Moore will change the course of America’s long descent into that cesspool.
Rather, the voters who still support Roy Moore are 100% right from this perspective: they see the very particular freezing and polarizing of his case for the single-minded political campaign it is.
…
But here’s what’s going to happen if the chorus raised against Moore achieves the political goal it seeks; i.e., his ouster from the Senate race.
Nothing. Nothing will be made better. In any way. First, we will never have any public accounting for what Moore may or may not have done with the 14-year-old – the accusation that would be prosecutable under Alabama law.
And none of his current political-class critics will care. They will drop the matter entirely, because they don’t care about the woman who was 14 in 1979. The outrage about Moore’s “victims” will simply evaporate overnight, as long as he steps aside.
The various people on the left who have suddenly found religion about abusers among the Democrats — mainly Bill Clinton — will fall silent again. Their new-found compunction is awfully convenient. There’s no reason to think it will last. Even as they discover remorse about having ignored Clinton’s accusers for years, they are busy ignoring the abuse and harassment others have more recently been not just accused of, but arrested for. Everything will go back to normal, if Roy Moore can just be crowded out of the Senate race.
… No will exists anywhere, including among the old-guard right, to pursue Moore’s case, or any related kind of case, in such a way as to better protect 14-year-olds girls from sexual abuse.
Since sexually abusing 14-year-old girls is already a crime in every state — as are sex crimes of other kinds, which also figure in the mix of this broader societal mess — the indicated remedy in law would be to make an example of a whole lot of people, with a slate of vigorous prosecutions. Show all politicians and senior officials that they can’t get away with having bad histories, or doing bad things while in office.
But that’s not going to happen. Roy Moore’s critics will be satisfied if he steps down. If he doesn’t, and he loses to the Democrat, Doug Jones, that will also make an end to the outrage over 14-year-old girls. There is no appetite in the political class — the class that makes the decisions about prosecutions and priorities — for a moral crusade against their fellows who are accused of sexual abuse.
…
But the appetite that exists at the moment is the very specific one to override the primary vote in Alabama.
That is simply not impressive as a moral motive. In the context of all the apparently tolerable social ills that depend on our current structure of government and politics, demanding political consequences for Moore — and only Moore — over still-unproven allegations looks an awful lot like straining at a gnat while swallowing camels right and left.
…
We are endlessly able to make a socially-binding virtue of accusation. Our history with remedying evil conditions — or caring about outcomes beyond their political convenience — is, by comparison, pathetic.
Like many commentators, I’m glad I don’t face voting in Alabama on 12 December. Unlike so many folks out there, I don’t know what Roy Moore did 40 years ago. I don’t expect to before the 12th. Nor do I have great certainty about what he would do, regarding issues of law and policy, if elected to the Senate.
I am certain of this, however: getting him ousted from the race through the pressure of unproven allegations and political criticism will do nothing to make even one 14-year-old girl safer. We can all stop pretending it’s about that.”
* * *
This was written before the latest accusations — with credible evidence and confessions, or at least firings and resignations — of the last few days (including not only Rep. Conyers but Pixar’s John Lasseter!) and it may be that her pessimism about “no lasting effects” is going to be up-ended, because of the breadth and depth of the persons involved; the sheer magnitude of the revelations, even if some of them are not verifiable, may be a tipping point in society’s acceptance of at least part of the cesspool.
I certainly hope so.
Dyer should know better than to assume this is all about Judge Moore. It started before he became an issue, and it will continue whether he is elected or defeated. It’s at the heart of the sick secular religion that is engulfing our country.
You remark: “It’s not that these aren’t interesting stories. I’ve just written so much on the topic recently, and since every day there’s a new set of people being accused, I’ve decided I’m not going to try to write about every last one.”
The new Jacobite Swamp is the story now. Why are there suddenly so many denunciations that Citizen Robespierre is smiling? We all sense that there is something terribly wrong with the civil conversation. The job of the commentariat is to make sense of what terrible departure from the constitution is causing it?
Accusation should beget investigation and legal action, not execution.
Why is the legal system being completely circumvented if not ignored? What mad terrorist conspiracy causes the working press to destroy lives at the behest of the legal community, who actively recruit aggrieved accusers? The blogging community is dropping the ball, focused on the wrong issues as intended by the authors of said fascist denunciation? Surely, there are real offenses out there to be punished. But the medium is the message and you are what you eat?
Yes, I think the last sentence is a self-serving lie. I think the whole statement is a self-serving lie. And I’m appalled that so many people seem to be buying it. (The responses on twitter are astounding; lots of people are supporting him for this statement.) He respects women, now, does he? That happened overnight?
Neo @ 11/21 with respect to codpiece and koteka:
You seem to overlook the fact that penises have a urinary function, a much more utilitarian function than the occasional insemination. Codpiece was a pre-zipper way to get it out to pee! And the New Guinean kodeta had a protective function, since those men were basically naked year-round and thrashed through cover while hunting.
It is indeed tough on us males to have our genitalia more prominent, more anterior than you women, whom I have occasionally heard referred to as “split-tails”.
I recall a story by Robert Ruark, the great writer on African safaris and big-game hunting whom no one reads anymore, about an African safari porter whose genitalia were ripped from him by a hyena as he slept (a most rude awakening!)
Frog, have you been watching Portlandia on IFC? I see an episode in the making.
Neo 11/21 @6:10 PM- As I said, “generally females, rather than males, “display.”
On exhibitionism, if women practice exhibitionism, why shouldn’t men? I thought we were supposed to believe in gender equality?http://www.livingly.com/The+Most+Daring+Red+Carpet+Gowns+of+2017
The problem with bringing up the “Red Scare” of the ’50s is that there were Communists in the State Department. As there were in Hollywood. A few years ago, the Writer’s Guild magazine had a tribute to the Hollywood 10. Almost all (or all, I forget which) admitted to being Communists, some underground Communists, and some had joined the Party well into the ’50s, long after the Ukranian famine, the purges, the Gulag, the Doctor’s Plot, the Night of the Murdered Poets, and other of Stalin’s atrocities were known.
Richard Saunders:
There is a difference between display and exhibitionism. The latter is a disorder. The former is a cultural custom. True exhibitionism (the former) is almost exclusively a male domain.
As for display—in the cultural sense—I gave you a few cultural examples of male human display. They are by no means the only ones. I do not think it is necessarily correct that females are generally the ones who display, as far as the human race as a whole goes. In terms of other cultures and other times, there have been plenty of cultures that feature human male displays, and I have never read a discussion of whether, over time and geography and culture, it is much more generally a human female cultural activity as opposed to a human male one. There is plenty of each.
But neither constitutes extra-cultural male exhibitionism in the clinical sense.
Neo –
Perhaps so, but in a society, or at least the Left sub-culture, that has rejected the notion of sexual mores, how do Harvey and Charley know there’s a difference?
There are some data out there:
Male Cosmetic Surgical Procedures: 0.2 million (2016)
Female Cosmetic Surgical Procedures: 1.4 million
Male Minimally Invasive Procedures: 1.1 million
Female Minimally Invasive Procedures: 12.8 million
https://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/plastic-surgery-statistics/
So women are roughly ten times as likely to pay real money to improve their appearance?
I can’t find the comparison figures for cosmetic purchases, but would bet that the trend is roughly the same.
Considering most of us never had any idea
Hrmph, most yes.
Stephen Ippolito Says:
November 21st, 2017 at 9:06 pm
The film you mention is surely a masterwork of the Left’s propaganda, on par with Leni Riefenstahl.
In doing so, McCarthy was doing nothing he had not done hundreds of times before but the film captured his malicious demeanour and broadcast into homes for the first time his wanton cruelty in the service of punishing Welch for his opposition by destroying a young man who wasn’t even taking part in the hearing and whom no-one seriously considered to be a communist or to have committed any crime.
McCarthy was shown on the film to be exactly what he was — and what his spiritual descendants are today — supremely arrogant bullies so confident and cruel in their power that they believe that simply naming their enemies ought to be enough by itself to permanently destroy them.
School of Darkness by Bella Dodd already mentioned how Marxism had in the 1930s infiltrated American institutions and brought about Stalin show trials to keep the faithful in line. These were the same forces accusing McCarthy of the things the Marxists were doing. Why? Because of ALinsky’s rules, or rather the prototype.
It’s a good example of how the Leftists manipulated humans that fell for their propaganda movie con. Americans have been falling for the Left’s cons since long before this century started.
A moment of epiphany for the average person in the US, Welch’s words caught and expressed the mood of the decent majority of sensible people who recognise fair play, the presumption of innocence and the right of an accused to speak his own truth and to demand that evidence be brought to ground a charge against him which he can challenge and test before he can be condemned and cast out of society.
How sad that it was once the left that stood up to the finger-pointers and paid the price for the principles that mere denunciation is not proof of guilt and that one may even dissent from public policy and yet not be disloyal to one’s people.
That is the lie and deception, yes. The presumption of innocence isn’t given to M, Bush II, McCarthy, or other targets of the Hussein Regime, the Leftist alliance, or the Deep State.
Why would they? This is a war, and you all are casualties of it: some without even realizing it.