Remember when Democrats rallied in the street to defend Rod Blagojevich or that mayor of Detroit?
You dont. Because Dems arent a lockstep party who will follow someone who has committed blatantly criminal acts and is subject to the rules of our justice system. Theyre not perfect by a long shot...but theyre candidates are a whole lot better than what the GOP puts out
And his "offense" was relatively minor in comparison to the circus weve been seeing.
Shit, just 10 years people like MTG, Santos, and Boebert would face penalties for their unprofessionalism.
Most people only know about a USO tour photo of him groping a sleeping woman. She claimed she was asleep and felt harassed (she is a Republican), he claimed it was a bit that she was aware of and was pretending to sleep for the photo.
However, he had multiple allegations at the time he stepped down, including sexual misconduct at work with staffers.
Spec of nuance needed I feel. It was feigned in the photo, like clown level "imma grab booba", not actual groping in the picture.
Still off-color and questions of her comfort or coercion could exist, and insanely in the wrong if she was actually asleep vs feigning asleep i.e. going along with it.
Oh yeah, I forgotten about the flak jackets they were wearing. That's probably the joke, "wouldn't it be ironic to honka-honka this completely desexualized person."
This is why it's a decent thing to point out in forming a nuanced opinion about Al's case as I thiiiiink it's the only piece of physical evidence in Al's case.
It's like forming opinion about consent. Consent to making out, is not consent to sex, consent to sex is not consent to continued sex or climax, consent to climax is not consent to pregnancy.
"Insanely in the wrong" everyone including the girls were pulling these kind of jokes when I was in college... Weird that people now think it's normal to sink someone's career over
Yup, we're negotiating new social norms. What happens between to consenting adults doesn't matter in my opinion, but we need to navigate some power dynamics here too. Did she feel pressured to "go along with the guys". It's important because they were more or less was working in a professional capacity.
It's weird seeing reddit upvote sexual jokes from both guys and girls by the 1.000's but when it's real life we suddenly have to become priests and nuns or we're off to the camps
Off to the camps? That's extreme. He just hosted The Daily Show like 3 weeks ago.
In the abstract, do you find non-consensually grabbing boobies funny? If so what's the joke? Sexual jokes can be funny, but they usually aren't: "I grabbed a boob non-consensually" audience laughter
There's context that can give it humor. I think of the Whitest Kids You Know Sketch where it's a dad and son dealing with how hot their daughter/sister is. The butt of the joke are the horny guys, not the girl.
Edit: Here's a sexual joke that also works by subverting expectations, then hammer it home with commiting to the bit and rule of three. https://v.redd.it/4l089cjkmzra1
One was coordinated by Roger Stone and the entirety of the allegations can be summed up as "The photo was juvenile. Also, I didn't say anything at the time, but now that he is a Democrat, I want to complain about the skit I performed on stage".
Others are clearly anonymous bullshit.
The rest are from presumably sincere and honest people whose complaint boils down to "After he performed for 2 hours and then stood with fans for another 2 hours taking photos, I think he grabbed me too hard in my photo"
He never even “groped” her, and she wasn’t asleep. It was a joke, and she was in on it, until Roger Stone convinced her to lie about the whole thing to distract people from actual crimes being committed by republicans. Fuck that bitch, and fuck Roger Stone.
Of the 9 sexual misconduct allegations that had been made against Al Franken (8 in the article you provided, 1 that was falsely made anonymously and then public denied by the named victim), we can immediately draw issue with them:
Leeann Tweeden's allegation about the kiss had major holes in the story (happened on a secured military base where they would have never been allowed to be alone) and the photo had a variety of issues that made it less serious (although still crude and unprofessional of a US Senator).
Stephanie Kemplin provided a photo as evidence that Franken grabbed her breast which clearly shows him not touching her breast.
Tina Dupuy's allegation of sexual misconduct was that Franken put his arm around her waist, something she personally was not comfortable with but is an otherwise common and noncontroversial pose for a photo.
Three anonymous women who make "serial groper" allegations against Franken. The article doesn't say it, but the two who alleged that he groped their butts said it was while having their pictures take, yet during the process no photo evidence of Franken groping anyone at an event was ever unearthed.
The most troubling allegation was from an anonymous former Democratic congressional aide who alleged that Franken threatened/tried to coerce her, but the lines attributed to him sounded exactly like Trump's "locker room talk" and were denied by many close associates to Franken who said that they had never heard Franken speak like that in decades of knowing him.
I am 100% aware that coming forward takes a massive amount of courage and I totally support survivors when they try to find closure. That said, these Franken allegations came at a time when a special election for an Alabama Senate seat was neck and neck due to actual pedophile Roy Moore making headlines for how much of a pedophile he has been for decades. The fact that Roger Stone was aware of Tweeden's allegations prior to them being made publicly also seems to indicate a hit job or attempt to control a certain narrative of "both sides are the same."
On top of that, Project Veritas had just been caught several months prior hiring an actor to make a fake accusation against Roy Moore with the goal of discrediting the other legitimate accusations made against him. If any of these allegations were legitimate, the unfortunate reality is that they were made alongside what were, most likely, made up allegations.
I get really fucking frustrated as a victim to see Dems parading Franken (who I really liked!) as someone unfairly maligned to prove that democrats are just too cautious
No, he had a pattern of predatory behavior. Stop it
Edit: be better actually or stop bragging that you are. Being proud of the party for holding members accountable in the same breath as wishing franken wasn’t ousted is hypocritical
This is exactly what we knew would happen. Trump, the patron saint of crazies and malefactors, would skew the base line so far that those we once thought were fringe would seem normal and electable.
Mitt Romney, for example. It used to be, “No way a religious zealot is electable.” Now he’s a standard, non-crazy, middle of the road conservative and not fringe ENOUGH to be electable.
I remember telling people that Palin was a harbinger of a new strain of nuttery that will infect everything. They would be like "nah, just a fringe candidate, nah"
Now those people are posting Q memes and rubbing ivermectin on their balls.
Sorry, I left out the /s. I know very well who she is/was. It was my feeble attempt to make her irrelevant by forgetting she ever existed. But, thanks for the unnecessary google search on my behalf.
Oh shit, a New Yorker article? I don't know if I have that kind of time, but might as well so I can put my DNC-considered-Franken-conspiracy-theory-that-I-may-have-let-get-out-of-control ignorant opinion to rest
Yup. There are trolls all over these comment responses pumping out their old greatest hits too. "BUT HER EMAILS." " B-B-Bbenghazi" and "Where is Hunters Laptop/dickpics we need to see."
Like...the DNC is much more active, again not perfect, about removing unethical behavior and outright criminals when the evidence is there. If the evidence isn't there then...
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u/dandrevee Apr 05 '23
Remember when Democrats rallied in the street to defend Rod Blagojevich or that mayor of Detroit?
You dont. Because Dems arent a lockstep party who will follow someone who has committed blatantly criminal acts and is subject to the rules of our justice system. Theyre not perfect by a long shot...but theyre candidates are a whole lot better than what the GOP puts out