Close encounters of the Bush I type

The New Neo Posted on by

…and by “the Bush I type” I mean the fanny-grope during the photo-op.

So now we have a new accusation against Al Franken by a woman named Lindsay Menz:

According to Menz, she attended the Minnesota State Fair with her husband and father in the summer of 2010, almost two years after Franken was elected to the Senate…

Then, as her husband held up her phone and got ready to snap a photo of the two of them, Franken “pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear,” Menz said. “It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek.”

Menz’s husband and several relatives say she told them shortly after the incident occurred, and there’s the following exchange on her Facebook page way back when:

Menz posted the photo with Franken on Facebook at the time, on August 27, 2010. Her sister, Cari Thunker, commented under the photo: “Sorry, but you two aren’t Bibles (sic) width apart” — a reference, Thunker explained to CNN, to how physically close Menz and Franken were in the photo.
Menz responded to her sister on Facebook: “Dude — Al Franken TOTALLY molested me! Creeper!” (The exchange is visible to Menz’s Facebook friends.)

That Facebook exchange could have merely been a joke referring to the closeness of the two in the photo (that’s what her sister had noticed), because the tone of Menz’s response seems rather light. However, if you take everything into consideration—the whole picture, as it were, including the Facebook post from 2010—I’d say this accusation has an excellent chance of being true, although we’ll never know with absolute certainty.

But for the sake of the rest of this post, let’s assume that it is true.

What on earth is this strange passivity on the part of groped women about? Seriously—this is a young women raised in the supposedly brave new world of female empowerment, and she didn’t do anything immediately (like, for example, let out a yelp and jump away from him)? Just the startle reaction alone might have caused such a thing, but apparently nothing of the sort happened. She says:

Lindsay Menz told CNN that she walked away as soon as the photo was taken, without saying anything to the then-first term senator. When she reconnected with her husband moments later, she told him…

And he said Franken was already gone.

Perhaps Lindsay Menz failed to react quickly because of the element of surprise and disbelief, but I still find it a bit odd that she didn’t seem to react at all in the photo. If more women raised a public stink if something like that happened to them when it happens, I bet it would have a chilling effect on the abusive behavior.

How many politicians have photos taken with random people? Just about every single one, practically every day they’re out in public. There are millions upon millions of photos of “me and the famous politician” out there, and every single woman (or perhaps the men, too) who possesses one now has a weapon in her hands to destroy whatever politician she might have it in for.

I don’t like that situation.

In the same article, Lindsay Menz describes a photo taken at the same venue with another politician, Minnesota Rep. John Kline:

As she was getting ready to take a picture with Kline, Menz said the congressman asked her whether they should “mutually put our arms around each other” — an interaction that struck her as being in stark contrast with what she had experienced moments ago with Franken…

[When later interviewed by CNN for this story, this exchange occurred] “If somebody wanted a picture, I would ask: should I put my arm on your back or your shoulder?” Kline said. He said that as a congressman, he was particularly inclined to do this when taking photos with women.

Now, there’s a smart—and very prescient—man.

So I went back and looked at a couple of photos I have of the “me and candidate X” variety. I was surprised to see that in each of them, the candidate in question had his hand very visibly on my shoulder. Now, if the photos had been very very close-cropped, I suppose their hands wouldn’t be seen. But they are very obvious in the photos as taken.

I suggest that every politician start adopting that approach immediately.

The Martyrdom of Man

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back we had a discussion of popular and/or highly-thought-of books of the past that we’ve never heard of, and that don’t seem all that great if we try to tackle them now.

Well, I recently came across The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade, which may just be the most influential book you never heard of. I had certainly never heard of it before. Nevertheless:

It is not an exaggeration to say that it provided a view of History as revolutionary as Darwin’s view of Science – an entirely new and non-religious way of looking at the subject. It was very popular and influential on publication in the 1870’s and long after – Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells and George Orwell were all heavily influenced.

Even Sherlock Holmes said “Let me recommend this book, — one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade’s ‘Martyrdom of Man.'”

I came across it in a biography of Churchill—I forget which one—that said Churchill thought it to be an important work.

If you want to have a go at it, you can find it online here.

We have seen that Reade’s longing to achieve something which should cause him to be remembered after his death was an abiding passion, and how all the efforts that he consciously made towards this end failed, in his own judgment, to achieve it. Yet a book that he wrote in great measure to ease his conscience was destined, in spite of the most violent opposition, to make its way where his other endeavours failed, and is still read with pleasure by a large and apparently increasing public among the generation which sprang up after his death. Such a phenomenon is almost without parallel in the history of literature, and cannot, I think, be attributed merely to the subject-matter of the book. Perhaps Reade’s style had benefited, as sometimes happens, by the long period of literary idleness that it underwent at Falaba, when, as he tells us, he found it impossible to write anything intended for the public; or perhaps it was purified by the abandonment of the conscious striving after effect noticeable in his earlier works;””the fact remains that the Martyrdom of Man shows just that touch of genius which is lacking in its author’s romances and travel-books, and merits in full measure the eulogies which such different critics as Sir Henry Rawlinson, Charles Reade, and Sir Harry Johnston have bestowed upon its literary style.

It’s interesting that I’m unfamiliar with those three guys mentioned in that last sentence, too.

I just couldn’t get through the first few pages of the book; you can read about it here. Sounds fairly leftist and anti-religion in nature, but that Churchill endorsement gives me pause on that. Here’s an even more thorough description, one that doesn’t incline me to read the book, either.

The ex-classics website where the book can be found has an interesting concept:

The Ex-Classics project was founded in 2000 to fill an unmet need. When reading the blurb etc. to a book by Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte, say, we would often come across sentences like “Favourite reading included . . .” If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us. So off we go to the library or bookshop, to be met first with blank stares and then with the information that the book has been out of print for decades. Our first two books were Gil Blas and Hudibras, which are prime examples of this. This web site is dedicated to rescuing these works from obscurity and making them available online, both for reading directly, and for downloading.

It takes a lot to stand the test of time. Homer, The Bible, Plato, Shakespeare—how many others are there, really?

Evaluating sexual offenses: Part I

The New Neo Posted on by

Like just about everyone else, I’ve been mulling over the allegations (some ancient, some quite new) against Bill Clinton, Clarence Thomas, Roman Polanski, Harvey Weinstein, Anthony Weiner, Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump, Roy Moore, Al Franken, et alia. It would take a book to analyze the charges against each and their truth or falsehood and the degree of heinousness of the acts of which each is accused. But that’s a book I’m certainly not planning to write. In my mulling, I’ve been reading a bunch of opinions on the subject from the left and right sides of the web, and everything in-between, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I have a rather idiosyncratic and unusual take on this.

Some people are inconsistent—and nakedly political or self-serving—in who they think is guilty and who innocent, and the relative seriousness of their acts. Some are consistent, and I try to be able to count myself among that crew. But the consistent ones often are consistent in saying something like “always believe the women.” I’m consistent in always being skeptical.

My basic position is skepticism, which means that I am aware that people sometimes lie (accusers and accused). It means that I think it’s absurd to say that any class or group of people always tells the truth or always lies, whether that group be women or men or members of some race or class or ethnicity or profession. To me it’s not just wrong to say “group A always tells the truth,” it’s an absurdity and an abomination and against our devotion to judging people as individuals and judging them on actions and evidence.

And by “judging,” I don’t just mean in the legal sense. I don’t mean as though we are a jury needing proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But I think we do need evidence—not “evidence” in the purely legal sense, either, but evidence in the sense of something that backs up a person’s naked unadorned word for it, or something that tells us that there’s a reason to trust the person telling the story. I’ve heard too many false stories told by people who seem for all the world to be sincere and telling the truth.

It used to be that women were automatically distrusted when they told stories about abuse by powerful men. It’s wrong to do that, and it needed to be corrected. But the idea that women are always to be trusted on this is an over-correction. I would think that fact would be obvious, but it’s not obvious to a host of people.

It also used to be that women who told such a story ran a great risk of being blamed for it, or being called liars. That still sometimes happens, of course, but nowadays it is more likely that they will automatically be believed and called heroines. That represents something relatively new, an incentive to make charges of this sort, a phenomenon that could lead to a greater incidence of false charges.

Something similar (although different in its details) used to be true of accusations by children that someone sexually abused them. Long ago, children were uniformly disbelieved when they came out with an accusation like that. But later, it was often thought that children were sexually innocent and oblivious about sexual matters unless they had been abused, so a sexual abuse accusation coming from a child was thought to represent sexual awareness on the part of that child that could only have come from having actually been abused. So the more common belief came to be: “children always tell the truth about sexual allegations.” Sound familiar? Well, that idea was later somewhat corrected when it was acknowledged that children these days are much more sexually aware than they used to be, and that sometimes they have their own reasons for lying and/or are manipulated or forced into lying by some of the adults in their lives.

So I don’t automatically believe or disbelieve anyone. When I hear charges of abuse, I try to evaluate the truth or falsehood of those allegations in a systematic way. I consciously try to apply the same standards to all, and to be consistent.

Here are just some of the elements I think people ought to take into consideration in terms of seriousness and/or truthfulness (most of these relate more to adult victims than to children):

Was the coercion overt? What was the age of the victim? Was “no” communicated by the victim (for adult victims only; for a child it’s irrelevant)? Was it just a verbal proposition by the accused with no behavioral follow-up? Was the offender a therapist or teacher or priest or parent? When did the victim report it—was there an enormous time lag? Does the victim have a separate grudge against the accused that might have motivated a false accusation? Is there any other evidence to back up the victim’s report? If so, how persuasive is that evidence? Was there any violence involved? Is the accused a politician who is currently running for office—and has the revelation come out right before the vote, with very little time to evaluate its truth or falsehood? Does the accuser have a history that indicates she/he is a habitual liar? Does the accused have such a history? Are there other alleged victims, and (this next part is very important and not often taken into account) did all the other victims tell their stories only after the initial accusations got a lot of publicity, or had their stories been told earlier? If the latter, was the story told to the police or other authorities, or to some friend or relative whose word we have to take for it? If we have one or more very credible accusations and then a new accusation comes out, is the new one in the mold of the old ones or does it up the ante dramatically? Has each accuser’s story remained consistent, or has it morphed?

There’s much more, but I think you get the idea. Since we don’t usually have a smoking gun (Anthony Weiner’s emailed photos, for example), we have to rely on this sort of thing.

I hate to see abusers go undetected and unpunished, free to continue their abuse with others. But I also hate to see people empowered to make false accusations that are insufficiently scrutinized and could ruin the life of a possibly innocent person. I’ve described the best way I know to try to figure out how to minimize both of these occurrences. Despite its flaws, I can’t think of a better way.

[NOTE: In Part II, I plan to discuss certain specific cases in light of Part I.]

Through a lens, murkily

The New Neo Posted on by

You may have noticed that posting is a bit light today. That’s because I spent a while at the eye doctor’s, learning what I already knew—that my cataracts (particularly in my left eye) are progressing nicely—if you like cataracts, which I don’t. But I don’t need to have surgery yet.

Maybe next year.

I’ve never been keen on going to the doctor, any doctor. I find as I get older, the anxiety about possible bad news becomes more justified, at least in the statistical (hopefully not the personal) sense. Cataracts? A mere nothing, very fixable. Everybody’s got em, if they live long enough. Be grateful I live now and not back then, when cataracts paved the way to almost certain blindness.

And I am grateful, although I know that any eye surgery is not “nothing,” and that my own mother had problems after her cataract surgery. I also have had my own history of a weird complication after a very minor eye surgery for narrow angles.

Nevertheless, it went well today, and for that I’m happy.

What’s going on in Zimbabwe?

The New Neo Posted on by

Nobody seems too sure. But as best I can piece together (from articles such as this and this, for example), here’s the story.

Mugabe’s previous supporters have turned on him, and that’s what turned the tide. Those in charge of the coup don’t want it to be perceived as an actual coup. They prefer to follow parliamentary procedure and impeach him, which looks as though it could happen.

Mugabe is 93 years old and has been in power either as Prime Minister or President for nearly 40 years—40 years that have mostly been very destructive of civil rights, human rights, and the economy. Perhaps his opponents saw light at the end of the tunnel—how long can the guy live?—but the propect of Mugabe’s wife taking over after his death may have sharpened their motivation to get rid of them both. I hadn’t yet read this article when I wrote that previous sentence, but here’s the lede, which certainly is in agreement:

Grace Mugabe, the 52-year-old wife of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, is a national hate figure in the embattled African state, so much so that many believe the military coup launched yesterday against his regime was less about deposing the president and more about getting rid of her.

No one seems to know where she is right now.

My guess is that Mugabe will be removed in the next couple of weeks, and that Grace will go with him. But my guess is also that their replacements will not be a whole lot better, although I wish for Zimbabwe’s sake that I’m wrong about that part.

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: