Okay, now I’ll weigh in on Al Franken, abuser du jour

The New Neo Posted on by

Today it’s Al Franken. The story is told by Leann Tweeden, and it dates from 2006, which in today’s abuse-accusation terms seems very very recent, comparatively speaking. It was also before Franken became a senator; at the time of the events, he was a comedian.

Tweeden is “a TV host and sports broadcaster, as well as a model,” and was emceeing a USO tour that Franken was on. She writes:

I was only expecting to emcee and introduce the acts, but Franken said he had written a part for me that he thought would be funny, and I agreed to play along.

When I saw the script, Franken had written a moment when his character comes at me for a ”˜kiss’. I suspected what he was after, but I figured I could turn my head at the last minute, or put my hand over his mouth, to get more laughs from the crowd.

On the day of the show Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, “We need to rehearse the kiss.” I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ”˜Relax Al, this isn’t SNL”¦we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’

He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.

He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ”˜OK’ so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.

I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time.

I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.

I felt disgusted and violated.

Not long after, I performed the skit as written, carefully turning my head so he couldn’t kiss me on the lips.

Pretty slimy/creepy behavior, if true. And although I think this one might indeed be true, we have no way of knowing; it’s another he-said/she-said story. But even if true, what does it mean? On the basis of that story, if that was all, it seems to me that Franken—compared to other accused abusers in the entertainment business—is pretty small potatoes, even though I can’t stand the guy. Is it a crime to French kiss someone when they’re expecting a regular kiss? If so, do we really want to prosecute something like this?

But the French kiss wasn’t all. According to Tweeden, when she returned home she came across this photo of what Franken did while she was asleep on a returning cargo plane:

Tweedon writes:

I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep.

I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated.

How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?

I told my husband everything that happened and showed him the picture.

I wanted to shout my story to the world with a megaphone to anyone who would listen, but even as angry as I was, I was worried about the potential backlash and damage going public might have on my career as a broadcaster.

But that was then, this is now. I’m no longer afraid.

I have studied the photo, and I have to say that I don’t see what Tweeden sees. To be fair, what I see is Franken fooling around and pretending to grope her while she’s asleep.

Look at his hands. As best I can see, he is not touching her. There are shadows under his fingers, and his hands are positioned a bit away from actual contact with her breasts. I’m not a photo expert, but that’s what I see. And that’s what makes sense—because, had he actually touched her, unless she’s in a coma or an unusually deep sleeper she would have woken up, or at least he would have run the risk of having her wake up. He wasn’t doing this in private, either; they were on a plane with other people (unless it’s a selfie of Franken’s, which it certainly doesn’t appear to be).

I could be mistaken about my interpretation of the photo; I’m not a photo expert, and I haven’t seen anyone else writing about this who sees what I see. But if I’m correct, then he was fooling around here and not actually touching her. It’s a stupid tasteless joke, more suited to the fraternity than to a grown man (he would have been in his mid-50s at the time). Is there anyone on earth who would expect anything different from Franken than being sophomoric?

So if there was no actual groping of a sleeping woman, we are left with an allegation that Franken went further than a stage kiss with Tweeden when they were rehearsing, and that it became an unwanted (unwanted on Tweeden’s part, that is) French kiss. And she was too scared—and too ambitious—to report it at the time, although to tell you the truth, I doubt anyone would have done anything about it if she had, although it would be a creepy act and a wrong one on Franken’s part.

[NOTE: I’m beginning to think I’m some sort of weird dinosaur (actually, I’m not just beginning to think it). As far as I can tell I seem to be the only blogger or pundit or commentator discussing the actual photo. Everyone else seems to be accepting it as photographic evidence of groping rather than photographic evidence of a joke about groping. The Democrats are excusing it in various ways and the Republicans making the most of it. But does anyone really care what the photograph actually shows?]

I would not sit on a hot stove…

The New Neo Posted on by

…until Congress passes a tax reform bill.

But it looks as though it might happen. The House seems poised to do it. If the Senate manages to pass one, it will probably be somewhat different, and then those differences must be ironed out.

The motive is to pass something that can be called a victory for the GOP. And the Democrats’ motive is to thwart that, if possible—and if that’s not possible, then to stand united against it and label the bill as a bad one.

There had been reports that the bill might include a repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate. There was an effort to do that, but it failed. There’s still a possibility that something of the sort might be included in a later version of the bill that could emerge in the ironing-out process.

This is how sausage is made—or not made, as the case may be.

[UPDATE: The bill passed the House:

The vote was 227-205, with 13 House Republicans joining all Democrats to oppose the bill. As the vote tally passed the majority mark, Republicans in the House began to cheer. At the same time, Democrats on the other side of the chamber also began to cheer — and wave goodbye to their colleagues across the aisle, as both sides see the legislation as a polarizing issue going into next year’s midterms.]

]

This is called staying on message

The New Neo Posted on by

Courtesy of Gloria Allred. She wants a Senate hearing on a matter that has nothing to do with the Senate and nothing to do with the federal government, but repeats her demand no matter what is asked of her. I’m not in the habit of listening to Allred (I’ve been fortunate enough to mostly avoid her till now, except for reading about her), but she sounds ludicrous here. It starts getting particularly funny around 3:15, when the repetitive staying-on-message-no-matter-what begins:

Some announcements in the Moore-Nelson controversy

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch Moore’s attorney’s news conference, but here’s a report on it that mentions two things of interest:

Moore’s attorney raised two issues: 1) that Roy Moore was the judge on her divorce case, and 2) demanded Nelson’s attorney, Gloria Allred, hand over the yearbook to a neutral party so the yearbook can be properly forensically analyzed.

I applaud the second; it’s something I mentioned in an earlier post today as something I’d like to see happen.

As for the first—boy, is that interesting. Is it true? I would guess it must be (although I’d like to make sure), because it’s certainly a little detail that could be important in establishing some sort of possible motive for a lie by Nelson. It would help to know not only if Moore really was the judge, but also how the divorce settlement turned out for her and whether he had any sort of role in it other than rubber-stamping an agreement between the parties.

Of course, even if she had reason to be angry at him for some ruling during the divorce, it doesn’t mean she’s lying. It just means she might have a motive to lie other than straight politics. The truth or falsehood of her assertions must rest on more than having a possible motive.

So, was Moore the judge? So far we just have Moore’s attorney’s report, but I doubt they’d be so stupid to allege this if it wasn’t true, because it is very easily verifiable. Here’s the allegation by Moore’s attorney:

Moore’s attorney, Phillip Jauregui, pointed to two things that he said people “ought to know.”

“During the press conference Ms. Nelson and Gloria Allred had on Monday, they both said that Ms. Nelson after the allegations had never seen nor had any contact with Judge Moore. As it turns out, in 1999, Ms. Nelson filed a divorce action against her then-husband Mr. Harris,” Jauregui told reporters in Alabama.

“Guess who that case was before? It was filed in Etowah County and the judge assigned was Roy Moore, circuit judge of Etowah County.”

Also:

Moore’s attorney also noted that Moore told him he never signed “D.A.” after his signature as he was never a district attorney. He instead was an assistant district attorney. However, Jauregui did say that “D.A.” appears after Moore’s name in a filing in Nelson’s divorce case.

This was due to Moore’s assistant, whose initials were “D.A.,” stamping D.A. after Moore’s name in documents.

I was wondering about that “DA” part, since he was not the DA.

Moore’s attorney also mentioned that Judge Moore dismissed Nelson’s divorce action, but doesn’t explain why. I offer a theory, but it’s a theory only. Alabama has had no-fault divorce since 1971 (see page 8 of the link). But, as with many states, a person can petition the court for a fault divorce nonetheless. The fault grounds remain actionable, and people sometimes ask for a fault divorce for various reasons, among them a desire for revenge about a marital offense, and/or because they think (sometimes correctly) that a fault divorce will award them more property.

I have no idea whether Nelson’s divorce petition (the one that was supposedly dismissed by Judge Moore) was something of that sort, but it’s a possibility. He may have dismissed it because he felt the claim was frivolous, or because there was some other problem with the filing. I’d really like to see more information on this.

Two elephants…

The New Neo Posted on by

…walk into a bar:

Not really very funny to be there, though, as a human.

I think the elephants came for the salted peanuts.

Which for some reason reminds me of:

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says, ‘What is this, a joke?”

And speaking of false accusations…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the Trump dossier has been a very successful one so far, hasn’t it?:

‘Wall Street Journal’ columnist Kimberley Strassel makes the case to Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson that the Steele dossier, which was funded by the DNC and Clinton campaign to smear President Trump, is one of history’s most outrageous political tricks.

“We do a disservice when we even refer to it as a ‘Dossier,'” she explained. “That gives it too much mystique. This is an oppo research document of lower quality than even oppo research documents.”

“All campaigns do this, but usually you dig up a driving under the influence conviction, or you didn’t pay your taxes one year, you plant it in the press to make the candidate look bad. This is a document based on unnamed, anonymous Russian sources, apparently. They’re never been proven, a lot of them have been disproven,” Strassel continued. “But here’s where they have been particularly clever: They didn’t give it to the press, they sent it to the FBI and then they briefed the press, and then the press was able to claim that this was intelligence that the FBI possessed, which gave it some air of credibility.”

Nice.

Found in the comments: “This is far, far. more than a dirty trick – this is the use of police power to harm political opponents. It is third world behavior and by far the biggest scandal in American political history.”

Well, the biggest one of which we’re aware. But how “big” can it be if most Americans don’t even know or care what it is or where it actually came from?

Reflections: on witch trials

The New Neo Posted on by

I was a strange child. When I was about ten or eleven years old I got hold of a book catalog for some mail-order house, right before Christmas. I’d never seen one before (this was way way before the internet existed, of course) and it seemed like a dream come true. I could ask people to give me books! Books that sounded interesting to me—not just books someone thought might be interesting to me, or books I was required to read for school (which up till that time had been uniformly and profoundly uninteresting to me).

One of the books I chose was this one:

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles its subjects in three parts: “National Delusions”, “Peculiar Follies”, and “Philosophical Delusions”.

I can’t say I understood every word, or close to it. But I still got the gist of it. Witch trials were touched on, and it seemed ghastly to me that such a thing had happened in so many places. A bit later I read more about our local witch trials in the Salem area—which happened as the movement in Europe was dying down. The colonies are often a bit behind the times.

We weren’t yet the USA back then. Massachusetts was a British colony, and the safeguards we have built into our judicial system to protect the innocent weren’t in operation. Reading about the Salem trials unnerved me and helped to engender a lifelong desire to resist the temptation to jump on a condemning bandwagon. Even then I had a skepticism about charges, and the knowledge that false charges (whether through outright lying or self-delusion) were not the least bit impossible and could be contagious.

Not for nothing is a prohibition against bearing false witness one of the Ten Commandments.

As I’ve gotten older, nothing has changed those feelings. If anything, they’ve only gotten stronger with incident after incident. False accusations are repulsive to me (and a constant possibility), and the willingness of so many people to jump on the bandwagon of belief without significant proof has horrified me. Whether it be accusations against bereaved parents such as the Ramseys, or the 9/11 Truthers who think Bush did it, or really any accusations at all not backed up by solid evidence, my default position is skepticism.

I believe I am quite consistent in this, particularly with political figures (for example, unlike many on the right, I’m not a believer in the “Bill Clinton is a rapist” story). And Roy Moore (despite my not being a fan of is) is no exception to the rule. I want to see authentication of his signature in that yearbook (although even if it’s authentic, it doesn’t mean the accuser’s story about what happened later is true). I want to hear when the yearbook came out, and if it really was the prior June I want to hear a plausible explanation of why the accuser had it with her that day in December. I want to hear from others who worked at that restaurant about what they remember. I also want to know the details of the questioning of some of the other accusers by the WaPo—how was the first contact with the paper made? Were their stories fully-fleshed out at the time? Was each person ignorant of the stories of the others, or were they told what others had said? And much more in that vein.

That’s the way I’m constructed, I guess. That’s my natural tendency. Sometimes, if I’m entertaining the thought that there might be past lives, I think maybe I was falsely accused in my last life. I’ve also been falsely accused in this life (of quite minor things, fortunately), but those accusations came after this aspect of my personality was set, not before.

I doubt we’ll ever learn whether Moore is actually guilty or not, because if he’s forced out of the running or if he’s defeated in the election we’ll probably never hear another thing from or about his accusers. That’s the way it often is. But his ultimate guilt or innocence is not the basis on which I resist judging him now as guilty or innocent. I’m not an Alabama voter and I don’t have to make a decision about voting for him. At this point I merely point out the lack of evidence against him, as well as its timing and antiquity, and the fact that any statements such as “women always tell the truth” or “women always lie” are absurd.

Speaking of evidence—in the Salem trials, something called “spectral evidence” was initially allowed:

Much, but not all, of the evidence used against the accused, was spectral evidence, or the testimony of the afflicted who claimed to see the apparition or the shape of the person who was allegedly afflicting them. The theological dispute that ensued about the use of this evidence was based on whether a person had to give permission to the Devil for his/her shape to be used to afflict. Opponents claimed that the Devil was able to use anyone’s shape to afflict people, but the Court contended that the Devil could not use a person’s shape without that person’s permission; therefore, when the afflicted claimed to see the apparition of a specific person, that was accepted as evidence that the accused had been complicit with the Devil…

Increase Mather and other ministers sent a letter to the Court, “The Return of Several Ministers Consulted”, urging the magistrates not to convict on spectral evidence alone. (The court later ruled that spectral evidence was inadmissible, which caused a dramatic reduction in the rate of convictions and may have hastened the end of the trials.)

Twenty people were executed (and five others died in prison) on spectral evidence and other “evidence” just as bizarre and unacceptable to us today. Later, they were exonerated:

In the decades following the trials, survivors and family members (and their supporters) sought to establish the innocence of the individuals who were convicted and to gain compensation. In the following centuries, the descendants of those unjustly accused and condemned have sought to honor their memories. Events in Salem and Danvers in 1992 were used to commemorate the trials. In November 2001, years after the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the trials, the Massachusetts legislature passed an act exonerating all who had been convicted and naming each of the innocent.

Actually, expressions of regret for the trials and the campaign to rehabilitate the reputations of the executed and accused began quite early:

John Hale, a minister in Beverly who was present at many of the proceedings, had completed his book, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft in 1697…Expressing regret over the actions taken, Hale admitted, “Such was the darkness of that day, the tortures and lamentations of the afflicted, and the power of former presidents, that we walked in the clouds, and could not see our way.”…

Various petitions were filed between 1700 and 1703 with the Massachusetts government, demanding that the convictions be formally reversed…

Repentance was evident within the Salem Village church. Rev. Joseph Green and the members of the church voted on February 14, 1703, after nearly two months of consideration, to reverse the excommunication of Martha Corey. On August 25, 1706, when Ann Putnam Jr., one of the most active accusers, joined the Salem Village church, she publicly asked forgiveness. She claimed that she had not acted out of malice, but had been deluded by Satan into denouncing innocent people, mentioning Rebecca Nurse, in particular, and was accepted for full membership.

On October 17, 1711, the General Court passed a bill reversing the judgment against the twenty-two people listed in the 1709 petition (there were seven additional people who had been convicted but had not signed the petition, but there was no reversal of attainder for them). Two months later, on December 17, 1711, Governor Joseph Dudley authorized monetary compensation to the twenty-two people in the 1709 petition. The amount of £578 12s was authorized to be divided among the survivors and relatives of those accused, and most of the accounts were settled within a year…

However, nothing can change what happened to the actual people who were accused, tortured, and executed on the basis of what was either hysteria or illness, coupled with a legal system that did not protect the rights of the defendants.

Has there been…

The New Neo Posted on by

…a coup in Zimbabwe?:

Tensions have been building in Zimbabwe since Mr Mnangagwa, a powerful figure in the ruling Zanu-PF party, fled to South Africa last week after he was fired and was then stripped of his lifetime membership of the party.

The move was widely seen as part of a battle between Mr Mnangagwa and Mrs Mugabe, the first lady, over the presidential succession when Mr Mugabe dies or steps down. The Zimbabwean president, who is 93, fights his last election next year. Many expected Mrs Mugabe to be appointed vice president in Mr Mnangagwa’s place at the Zanu-PF special congress next month.

Rumours were swirling this on Wednesday morning that Mr Mugabe and his wife have been offered safe passage to Singapore, but this could not be confirmed.

Hard to tell at this point, but it seems to be a serious crisis at the very least. Mugabe has been wreaking havoc in Zimbabwe for a long time. He’s been president since 1987 (that’s thirty years) and before that Prime Minister beginning in 1980:

Mugabe’s initial calls for racial reconciliation failed to stem deteriorating race relations and growing white flight. Relations with Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) also declined, with Mugabe crushing ZAPU-linked opposition in Matabeleland during the Gukurahundi between 1982 and 1985; at least 10,000 people, mostly Ndebele civilians, were killed by Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade. Pursuing decolonization, Mugabe’s government emphasised the redistribution of land controlled by white farmers to landless blacks, initially on a “willing seller-willing buyer” basis. Frustrated at the slow rate of redistribution, from 2000 Mugabe encouraged the violent seizure of white-owned land. Food production was severely impacted, generating famine, international sanctions, and drastic economic decline. Opposition to Mugabe grew, particularly through the Movement for Democratic Change, although he was re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2013 through campaigns dominated by violence, electoral fraud, and nationalistic appeals to his rural Shona voter base. Internationally, Mugabe sent troops to fight in the Second Congo War…

Wouldn’t it be nice if whatever is happening now signaled an improvement in Zimbabwe’s policies, both in terms of human rights and the economy? I wouldn’t bet more than a nickel on it, though.

The ivory tower contemplates the world

The New Neo Posted on by

By Frank Bruni:

…there is and always has been disagreement about the very mission of higher education. Should it grapple with the world as it is or point the way to the world as it should be?

The article goes on for quite some time, and I read the whole thing, but it was that last sentence in the quote that made me pause in thought for a long long time.

“…Should it grapple with the world as it is or point the way to the world as it should be?”

Excuse me? Are these two endeavors mutually exclusive?

And how on earth could a person or persons “point the way to the world as it should be” without deeply studying and “grappling”with the world as it is?

Maybe there’s something I’m missing there; after all, I haven’t really been part of any discussions about the “mission of higher education.” But it seems to me that the passage by Bruni illustrates the very essence of the expression “ivory tower.”

So, “higher education”–and educators–ought to tell us how the world should be (and by implication, how to get it to that point) without “grappling with the world as it is” first (or simultaneously)? That would be like repairing a refrigerator without knowing how the refrigerator works.

That’s the same hubris that Communist true believers (the idealists among them, that is—and there were and are quite a few of those) have long operated under: that they could “fix” a complex system that they don’t understand. This is a common dream on the left. Hey, it’s a common dream of humans in general, which probably explains the continual and enduring appeal of leftism.

On unverifiable sexual allegations about political figures

The New Neo Posted on by

It has become extremely common for people running for election (or newly-appointed to a political post) to be accused at the eleventh hour of sexual offenses. The accusation may take place at the eleventh hour, but the time of the alleged offense is almost always many years ago, and sometime many many many years ago. The accusations vary from sexual jokes in the workplace to unwanted touching, mistresses, and sexual kinkiness, all the way to more serious crimes such as assault and rape.

They are not ordinarily from completely random people; the accusers usually have had a moment when their paths either crossed with the accused (in the workplace, for example) or might have crossed (living in the same town). Sometimes the accusations were brought as part of a divorce by the person’s wife and the records are unsealed and published (this was Obama’s early m.o. against rivals).

So by now the tactic is not only not unusual; we’ve actually grown accustomed to it, as we’ve grown accustomed to the sight of attorney Gloria Allred standing next to the accuser du jour (see this and this). Just to refresh your memory, here’s an excerpt from that first link:

In a completely predictable development in the [Herman Cain accusation] case, Gloria Allred digs up another Cain accuser, Sharon Bialek, who ups the ante and accuses him of genital groping in a car in July of 1997. In another enormous surprise, the accuser failed to report the offense to the NRA or to come forward until now.

Why do I call such accusations of sexual misconduct “unverifiable”? Because ordinarily there’s no evidence whatsoever except the accuser’s words. Usually the closest we come to getting evidence is the unsealed divorce record (which usually merely contains the allegations of the accuser) or a settlement by a business (which is not an admission of guilt or even of a good case). But it’s not at all unusual to have no evidence at all, except that of proximity and opportunity (and sometimes not even that).

It’s quite different with incidents such as Trump’s “pussy” remarks, or Weiner’s penile emails, or anything with real evidence or physical evidence or documentary evidence rather than the unsubstantiated word of the accuser. In contrast, the unverifiable stories rest mostly on our evaluation of the veracity of the person making the allegations and whether their accusations are “believable” or “credible” based on what we know of the person being accused. In the case of Mitt Romney, for example, there were plenty of allegations but no sexual ones, and if there had been I doubt they would have gotten much traction (although in the current climate, they might have).

The accuser is generally someone we’ve never heard of before. How can people decide if that person can be trusted to tell the truth? Well, some listeners (way too many, actually), use the rule: “if the accused person is in my party, then the accuser is lying; if the accused person is in the opposition party, then the accuser is telling the truth.” Other observers try to look deep into the accuser’s eyes and decide if he or she (it’s ordinarily a “she” accusing a “he”) is telling the truth or is lying. In the law business, that’s called evaluating “demeanor,” and it’s always something that juries must take into account when a witness testifies.

In a trial, though, we don’t just decide these things on hunches—which is an awfully good thing, because apparently we’re not so very good at detecting who’s lying and who isn’t. In a trial, we’re supposed to decide if someone is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and there is ordinarily a great deal of additional evidence presented other than a witness’ narrative.

What’s more, in a trial we can actually see the witness (there are certain circumstances where this is not the case, but they are the exception and not the rule) and evaluate his or her demeanor for ourselves. Tone of voice, facial expression, body language—all of these can help, although we still make mistakes. In a trial the lawyers for the defense also are entitled to what’s called “discovery,” the right to receive certain kinds of evidence and information from the prosecution, as well as to receive what’s called “exculpatory evidence” (any evidence that would tend to exonerate the accused). In addition, the witness making the accusations can be cross-examined, and defense witnesses can be called. And of course, a jury’s verdict must be unanimous for conviction.

Those safeguards are meant to protect the innocent from being falsely convicted in a trial. But there’s nothing like that sort of protection for the accused in the current flurry of accusations. People are free to say what they want about a public figure because it is almost impossible for that figure to win a defamation suit. Most of the time we don’t even see the accusers, and when we do we get only their side of the story. The cross-examination process—what there is of it, because it’s not true cross-examination—is left to blogs and whatever newspaper might want to defend the person (ordinarily relatively few are in that position, if the accused is on the right).

The MSM prints the stories it wants to print—which often means accusations against Republican candidates, because those stories serve the political leanings of the MSM. The accusers say what they want to say, and although they may be subject to questioning or ridicule or scathing blog posts, they will never be subject to cross-examination because one of the hallmarks of such accusations is that charges are almost never filed against the accused, because the cases are so weak legally. Paradoxically, though, the weakness of the case—whether it be due to the mildness of the offenses (in some cases, anyway), or the lack of corroborating evidence that could hold up in court, or the antiquity of the charges—means that the left often gets more bang for its accusatory buck. That is, the repercussions for the accused can be very serious with far less proof needed, or no proof needed at all.

Right now there’s extra motivation for such accusations because it’s become au courant to make them, and that increases their general credibility. When there’s a popular hashtag “MeToo,” you know that there’s a contagion effect and we have a movement here. It becomes impossible—literally impossible—to tell who is lying and who telling the truth. That politician who was famous for saying “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy” wasn’t running for office today, when it’s unnecessary to be actually “caught” with anybody.

At least, if you’re a Republican. Bill Clinton had to be “caught” with the DNA evidence on the famous blue dress before the media was willing to concede that there had been some sexual acts between Clinton and the youngish (but not teenaged) Lewinsky. And it was up to the National Enquirer to out John Edwards for his affair; the MSM wouldn’t touch the story.

Not only is the MSM far more eager to spread the word about supposedly erring Republicans, but it is aided in this endeavor by the fact that the public judges Republicans more harshly in the sexual sphere. “They’re hypocrites!” is the refrain, if suspect behavior is alleged. Unlike Democrats, Republicans often profess to care a great deal about things such as fidelity.

Actually, the MSM and the Democrats are in an excellent position when Republicans are accused:

(1) Because of the moral principles (or moral posturing, if you will) of Republicans, GOP members have a greater tendency to abandon their fellow Republicans candidates at the merest hint of scandal. That’s quite different from Democrats, who tend to circle the wagons.
(2) The accused person, nearly abandoned, sometimes drops out. That can easily pave the way for a Democratic win no matter who replaces the candidate for the GOP, in part because many voters on the right will blame the Republican establishment for their rejection of the candidate, and decide to punish them at the polls.
(3) If the accused decides to hang tough and not drop out, a Democrat might win because voters on the right are torn and divided, unsure whether the charges are true.
(4) If the accused stays in the race and somehow manages to win against all odds, the opposition can say that Republican voters are scum who don’t care about morals and don’t care about women.

So there is a great deal of reward for making these accusations. If they are true (and some of them probably are), all the better. But if they are false, it’s highly unlikely that fact will ever be uncovered, and they will have done their job.

[NOTE I: By the way, “unverifiable” doesn’t mean “untrue,” although sometimes these accusations are untrue. It means “impossible to tell.” And defending a person’s right to not be judged on the basis of unverifiable allegations does not mean defense of the behavior alleged, although the accusers would have you think so.]

[NOTE II: Remember the classic story (perhaps apocryphal) about LBJ:

[This is] a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”]

The Republican civil war: have you noticed…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the proliferation of comments all around the right side of the blogosphere that blame the GOPe for the accusations against Roy Moore?

This is in the vein of the sort of thing I’ve written about for years: the Republican civil war.

For example:

If these groups [on the right] persist in tearing each other apart, they will splinter into two parties””and, as I’ve written before, help assure a lengthy hegemony for the liberal/left.

I wrote that in early 2013, and I’ve written similar things before and after. It’s only gotten worse over time, and the only group that I see reaping the benefits is the left.

Nobel Peace Prize for the nuclear disarmament group ICAN

The New Neo Posted on by

I missed this news when it happened, about a month ago:

A nuclear disarmament group has won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its decade-long campaign to rid the world of the atomic bomb.

As nuclear-fuelled crises swirl over North Korea and Iran, the International Campaign To Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the honour on Friday.

“The organisation is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons,” said Norway’s Nobel committee president Berit Reiss-Andersen.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to a great many recipients who are all hat, no cattle, as they say in Texas. This one seems to be in that mold.

But I want to give them a fair shake. After all, who on earth would disagree with the idea that nuclear weapons, if used on humans, have “catastropic humanitarian consequences”? They had such consequences from the very start, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although those bombings may have prevented even greater humanitarian catastrophes, something often denied or ignored by the pro-disarmament forces). And the use of nuclear weapons could have even greater negative consequences in terms of carnage because if they were to be used now they might be used in greater numbers and spark more retaliation.

So, trying to keep an open mind, I attempted to understand what Nobel-winner ICAN (interesting acronym) and its director were actually proposing for enforcement of any such “treaty-based prohibition.” So far I haven’t found the answer, but I found this:

Beatrice Fihn, the leader of the grassroots ICAN organisation, was “delighted” with the prize, adding that US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un should “know that nuclear weapons are illegal”.

I’m sure that will deter them from having them or using them, particularly Kim Jong-un.

Later in the article Fihn is quoted as giving this even more detailed message to Trump and Jong-un:

Asked for her message to Trump and Jong-un, ICAN’s Executive Director Beatrice Fihn said: “Nuclear weapons are illegal. Threatening to use nuclear weapons is illegal. Having nuclear weapons, possessing nuclear weapons, developing nuclear weapons, is illegal, and they need to stop.”

Fihn makes Don Quixote look like a hard-nosed realist; I begin to wonder whether she’s actually a lunatic. But instead, it occurs to me that this is probably one of those post-modern “words are everything and if you can change the word you can change the world” campaigns so popular on the left, and that the Nobel Prize committee (as it did with Barack Obama’s prize) is now committed to awarding the honor to wordsmiths who utter words that make them feel good.

But I kept trying to determine whether there was more to Fihn and ICAN than met my eye at first. That’s when I came across this Atlantic article that discusses Fihn’s viewpoint in greater depth [emphasis mine]:

Fihn leads the Geneva-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which just won the Nobel Peace Prize for mobilizing more than 120 countries to approve a United Nations treaty banning signatories from using, developing, or supporting activities related to nuclear weapons. (The treaty is now open for signatures and will become international law if at least 50 countries ratify it.) Fihn figures that if humans created nuclear weapons and attached significance to them, they are just as capable of destroying these weapons by assigning them a different meaning.

So there it is again.

Actually, I’m very familiar with this technique because it’s used a great deal in family therapy, and can be quite effective there. But in the therapy field it’s called “reframing”: re-labeling the behavior of some spouse or relative or friend and giving it a less pernicious interpretation, which can soften the anger or modify the hopelessness that is leading to a stalemate.

Sure enough, I even encountered that word itself later in the article [emphasis mine]:

The big idea behind her campaign is simple: to relentlessly treat nuclear weapons as weapons, not as some “strategic-stability-magic power tool that relates to world peace,” she said. And not just any kind of weapon, but one that belongs in a class that, by indiscriminately targeting civilians, violates international law and has repeatedly been shunned in international treaties prohibiting biological weapons, chemical weapons, cluster munitions, and landmines.

Nuclear weapons are often described with language that obscures the ugly reality of what is under discussion…

While emerging powers such as Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa have signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Fihn has yet to persuade any nuclear-weapons states or their treaty allies””including NATO members, Japan, and South Korea, which count on protection from their nuclear-armed partners””to support the initiative. She’s even struggling to secure the backing of countries that are more loosely allied with nuclear-weapons states but still hesitant to break with them, like her native Sweden. (“New opinion poll: 9/10 Swedes want Sweden to sign the #NuclearBan,” Fihn recently tweeted. “Who gets to decide over Swedish policy? Its people or the United States?”)

But Fihn claims she doesn’t need these holdouts, at least not right away. Her goal is to “reframe the debate” and “set a clear norm that [nuclear weapons are] unacceptable,” and then use the law to effect change.

So there you have it.

Of course, it’s possible—with the current decline of logical thinking as well as the proliferation of idealistic wishful thinking in the Western world—that a lot of people will actually consider that reframe to be the sort of thing that will matter in reality. But the family of nations isn’t anything like a real family—not that the technique of the reframe even works all that reliably with the latter, but it certainly has no chance of working (IMHO) with the former, unless the entire world magically adopts it simultaneously.

Fihn is Swedish, and has a Master’s degree in International Law. She’s also 34 or 35 years old, awfully young. When I first read of her prize and her work, I immediately thought of the authors of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, one of whom received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929 for work on that agreement to ban war. I wrote about the Kellogg-Briand Pact here, and if you want to see what happened with that Pact (besides World War II, of course) have a read. But Kellogg and Briand were far more realistic about what they were doing and its chances of success than Fihn is, and far older as well as more experienced in the ways of the world, when they engineered their own unenforceable agreement to end war.