I was just listening to the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast on which Kenneth
Gestola and Rania Khelek discussed the Al Franken situation and these two very
young, very radical people, agree with me. First of all, whatever Franken did,
it was, perhaps stupid, maybe disgusting, but it wasn't assault. It wasn't
rape. Senator Giligrandt's statement that we shouldn't make distinctions among
these behaviors, but rather, lump all behavior related to sex together, is
wrong. And the Democratic Party is insane for attacking someone whose votes
have been pro woman, as well as valuable on other issues, because of his
clownish sexual behavior when he was working as an entertainer. And, once
again, the Democratic Party is being self destructive. William Blum pointed out
in his report the other day that Al Franken's bigger sin was to support the
Iraq War in 2003. And one other case, why is the representative resigning
because he asked a woman to act as a surrogate and carry a child for him? Since
when did that become sexual immorality? There are surrogacy clinics which
arrange this for people on a regular basis. And Rania pointed out that as a
young, powerless woman in the media, she is sexually harassed on a regular
basis and this, "Me Too", campaign and all of the fuss about powerful men, is
making no change in her day to day life. Why do the Democrats have to look for
Trump campaign collusion with Russia in order to get rid of Trump. Why can't
they just impeach him for molesting women, using the presidency to enrich
himself, and putting our country in danger by his threats and his actions? Why
is he in office while Al Franken has to leave office for acting stupid 14 years
ago when he was an entertainer?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2017 11:55 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Al Franken and the Selective Force of #MeToo
The battle cry of indignant People, everywhere should be, "Remember the Salem
Witch Hunt!"
Witch hunts have rules of their own. We all pay lip service to, "Innocent
until proven guilty". But under Witch Hunt rules we see the accused as Guilty
whether proven innocent or not.
Witch hunts depend upon Mass Hysteria. Remember Senator Joe McCarthy and his
"Red Scare"? More recently we have the example of our Nation being threatened
by wicked Whistle Blowers. And the double danger of the Muslims sneaking into
our Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
And now we are in the Day of the "Maybe Sexual misconductors." These Male
Devils, mostly men in high public visibility, such as in entertainment, and
Democrats, are being found out in order to make America safer for our womenfolk.
It's a pretty good guess that this witch hunt will not improve anyone's life,
except probably a few lawyers. Show us where the Red Scare, the Whistle Blower
Scare, and the Muslim Terrorist Scare have made any improvement in Life in the
USA?
As with all witch hunts, we are being scammed. If you doubt it, just take a
look in the Locker Room at who is fanning the flames around the stakes holding
those evil offenders. At the head of the class is that man who believes he is
so irresistible that gorgeous women are lining up to have him fondle their
B----s and grab their P----s(Some letters deleted in case children are reading
this ramble). No wonder that Great Man is backing a Senator Wannabee in
Arkansas. What's the old saying? "Birds of a feather F--- together".
And shame of all shames, women...yes, American Women will line up at the poles
and vote for these Macho Men. And down the road they will wonder why nothing
has changed. They and their daughters and their grand daughters and beyond
will have no changes in their lives because of the few brave women who "outed"
those men who touched them without permission, or shoved their dirty tongues
into their mouths. So as nasty as that sounds, why in God's Green Earth do
they turn around and support men who would do exactly the same thing, if given
half a chance?
Carl Jarvis
On 12/9/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Senator Al Franken. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
Al Franken and the Selective Force of #MeToo By Masha Gessen, The New
Yorker
08 December 17
On what he called the worst day of his political life, Senator Al
Franken articulated two points that are central to understanding what
has become known as the #MeToo moment. In an eleven-minute speech, in
which Franken announced his intention to resign from the Senate, he made this
much clear:
the force that is ending his political career is greater than the
truth, and this force operates on only roughly half of this country's
population-those who voted for Hillary Clinton and who consume what we
still refer to as mainstream media.
There was one notable absence in his speech: Franken did not
apologize. In fact, he made it clear that he disagreed with his
accusers. "Some of the allegations against me are simply not true," he
said. "Others I remember very differently." Earlier, Franken had in
fact apologized to his accusers, and he didn't take his apologies back
now, but he made it plain that they had been issued in the hopes of
facilitating a conversation and an investigation that would clear him.
He had, it seems, been attempting to buy calm time to work while a
Senate ethics committee looked into the accusations. But, by Thursday
morning, thirty-two Democratic senators had called on Franken to
resign. The force of the #MeToo moment leaves no room for due process,
or, indeed, for Franken's own constituents to consider their choice.
Still, the force works selectively. "I, of all people, am aware that
there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has
bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval
Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns
for the Senate with the full support of his party," said Franken,
referring to Donald Trump and the Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
Trump and Moore are immune because the blunt irresistible force works only on
the other half of the country.
That half is cleaning its ranks in the face of-and in clear reaction
to-genuine moral depravity on the other side. The Trump era is one of
deep and open immorality in politics. Moore is merely one example.
Consider Greg Gianforte, the Montana Republican who won his
congressional race earlier this year after not only being captured on
tape shoving a newspaper reporter but then also lying to police about
it. Consider the tax bill, which is stitched together from shameless
greed and boldface lies. Consider the series of racist travel bans.
Consider the withdrawal from a series of international agreements
aimed at bettering the future of humanity, from migration to climate
change to cultural preservation. These are men who proclaim their
allegiance to the Christian faith while acting in openly hateful,
duplicitous, and plainly murderous ways. In response to this
unbearable spectacle, the roughly half of Americans who are actually
deeply invested in thinking of themselves as good people are trying to
claim a moral high ground. The urge to do so by policing sex is not
surprising. As Susan Sontag pointed out more than half a century ago,
Christianity has "concentrated on sexual behavior as the root of
virtue" and, consequently, "everything pertaining to sex has been a 'special
case' in our culture."
The case of Franken makes it all that much more clear that this
conversation is, in fact, about sex, not about power, violence, or
illegal acts. The accusations against him, which involve groping and
forcible kissing, arguably fall into the emergent, undefined, and most
likely undefinable category of "sexual misconduct." Put more simply,
Franken stands accused of acting repeatedly like a jerk, and he denies
that he acted this way. The entire sequence of events, from the
initial accusations to Franken's resignation, is based on the premise
that Americans, as a society, or at least half of a society, should be
policing non-criminal behavior related to sex.
While this half (roughly) of American society is morally superior and
also just bigger than the other half (roughly), it is not the half
that holds power in either of the houses of Congress or in the
majority of the state houses, and not the half that is handing out
lifetime appointments to federal courts at record-setting speed. And
while the two halves of this divided country may disagree on the
limits of acceptable sexual behavior, they increasingly agree on the
underlying premise that sexual behavior must be policed. As I wrote in
an earlier column, drawing on the work of the pioneering feminist
scholar Gayle Rubin, we seem to be in a period of renegotiating sexual
norms. Rubin has warned that such renegotiations tend to produce ever more
restrictive regimes of closely regulating sexuality.
While policing such unpleasant behavior as groping or wet kisses
landed on an unwilling recipient may seem to fall outside the realm of
sexuality, it is precisely this behavior's relationship to sex that
makes it a "special case"-and lands us in the trap of policing sexuality.
Outside the #MeToo bubble, the renegotiation of the sexual regime is
happening right now in the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the Court heard
arguments in the case of a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake
for a same-sex wedding. Justice Anthony Kennedy surprised many
observers with his seeming sympathy for the baker's argument. "Suppose
he says: 'Look, I have nothing against gay people,' " said Kennedy. "
'But I just don't think they should have a marriage because that's
contrary to my beliefs.' It's not their identity; it's what they're
doing." It was an oddly refracted expression of the understanding that
our behavior toward others may be based-perhaps ought to be based-on
the way they conduct themselves in areas related to sex.
There are many differences between the case of the senator who lost
his job and the same-sex couple who couldn't get a cake; undoubtedly,
there is a difference between acting like a jerk and getting married
(though the plaintiff in the cake case claims to have been offended by
the gay couple's intention to get married). Oddly, though, these cases
stem from a common root. If only Franken's heartbreakingly articulate
expression of his loss were capable of focussing our attention on this
root, and on the dangers of the drive to police sex.
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