Saturday, December 9, 2017

My Al Franken Mind-Split

I am uncomfortably on the fence regarding the Al Franken resignation.

The feminist part of me applauds his forcing-out at the hands of female senators. Maybe he posed for that dumb picture with a fellow entertainer for what he sincerely thought were harmless entertainment reasons. Nonetheless, the image did send a harmful message to immature males everywhere. That message is that women are objects of harmless fun, particularly women who are unconscious and helpless. So perhaps Franken's forced ouster will send its own message to immature men of all ages: Better think twice before playfully thrusting your tongue into an unwilling mouth, or affectionately pinching a bottom during a routine photo op.

The traditional (small d) democrat in me abhors his forced resignation by a handful of female senators. The voters of Minnesota put Al Franken into office, and they should be the ones to take him out, by recall, if they wanted to. Franken was railroaded out of The Swamp even before the ethically challenged Senate ethics committee got the chance to drag out another investigation. Franken absolutely does have a right to feel very bitter about the whole thing. The last thing a powerful man expects is to made an example of by a bunch of women. He must have felt like the hog-tied boss in Nine to Five as he delivered his bitter farewell speech.

Our Cathartic Moment of Zen

Meanwhile, the traditional democrat part of me also finds it very hard to be sympathetic to Al Franken, given my previous longstanding disenchantment with him. Despite the fact that his Minnesota constituents overwhelmingly chose Bernie Sanders in last year's Democratic Party caucuses, Franken, as a committed Hillary Clinton super-delegate, refused to change his own support. He explained that, since those same caucus voters had also elected him to the Senate, they "trusted" him to be the ultimate decider.

As a sort of precursor to his not remembering his well-meaning attacks on women the same way the women remembered them, Franken stressed that he didn't actually mean to imply that he thinks he is smarter than his constituents. He simply ignored them for their own good.

Meanwhile, both the democratic and feminist sides of me absolutely believe that my senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, railroaded Al Franken out of office for her own self-serving political purposes. Still something of a starlet among the overcrowded roster of rising Democratic stars, she knew a wedge issue opportunity when she saw it. Since the party slogan, "A Better Deal" was going nowhere fast, ambitious Democrats are hastily co-opting the #MeToo movement to differentiate themselves from the slimy Republicans, particularly alleged pedophile Roy Moore of Alabama and the admitted serial abuser in the White House. If the Democrats can't and won't run a campaign of economic justice for all, they'll grasp at any convenient straw they can. It'll be a war against the men who wage war against women.

Although the socialist part of me thinks that selective Me-Tooism is deeply reactionary as well as threatening to devolve into another McCarthyite cult, there's that other part of me who, still feeling the sting of my own prior victimization, is absolutely thrilled by the Fall of the Great Hogs as well as some of the lesser oinkers. 

True, Gillibrand was a conservative upstate New York Blue Dog long before she became an overnight opportunistic New York City-style progressive. But she has been known to buck bellicose male tradition from time to time. She dared to criticize Barack Obama for refusing to take sex assaults outside the chain of military command. And although she eventually tried to walk back her heretical disownment of the Clintons after suggesting that Bill should have resigned the presidency for his own sexual sleaze, she was the first member of her party in the Age of Hillary to do so. Regardless of ulterior motives, you have to admit that took some chutzpah.

So I'm ambivalent about Gillibrand too. Would it be better for her and other female lawmakers to just shut up about congressional predators? Of course not. But then I get hung up on due process, and I also can't help thinking about The Scarlet Letter with Kirsten Gillibrand starring as Roger Chillingworth. And then I think about how stone-cold silent she and her fellow legislators have been about the still-pending corruption charges against Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey. His first trial ended in a hung jury last month, but he's calling it an acquittal, and he's still sitting pretty in his own legislative seat.

Of course, the other problem with the #MeToo movement is that, thus far anyway, the media coverage has been largely confined to men in high places abusing women (and men) in somewhat less-high places, or at least those who ambitiously aspire to high places. For the most part, the Narrative is about  elites vs. elite wannabes. We haven't heard too many stories of working class women and men getting abused and/or fired, without the cushion of lucrative "settlement" deals to soften the blow of their low-wage job losses. There is no  corporate or taxpayer-funded hush money slush fund set aside for waitresses and office temps and Uber drivers.

And with so many liberals now turning on Gillibrand for ruining Al Franken's life for the good of a weak and corrupt Democratic Party, the dreaded backlash has already begun. The #MeToo movement, which so quickly advanced to a cult-like status thanks to the crusading journalism of the New York Times, threatens to go the way of the pink pussy-hat: into the discontinued yarn bin of history.

The irony is that the movement started out as a proxy fight against Donald Trump. The destruction of Harvey Weinstein, a vile proxy for the ages, got the whole bandwagon morphing into a runaway freight train. There are new accusations against new men every day, and the media prints them as hastily as their routine vetting procedures permit. Actual time, though, is not of the essence; some of the stories, such as those involving famed conductor James Levine, go back half a century.

And Donald Trump is not only still sitting pretty, he even champions his fellow predators with absolute impunity. In endorsing Alabama's Ray Moore, he's outed himself as a pedophile-phile, and proud of it. So, apparently, are a slim polled majority of Alabama's voters.

Also ironic is the possibility that, had Al Franken not gone against the wishes of voters and clung to the flawed and fatal campaign of Hillary Clinton, he might still be sitting pretty in his own Senate seat. It is now a truth universally acknowledged (at least by Donna Brazile and the leaked Podesta and DNC emails) that the primary process was rigged against Bernie Sanders. If he had secured the nomination, many believe that his left-wing populism could easily have trounced Trump's right-wing populism.

But don't tell that to the Democratic Party's elite faction. Pundit Paul Krugman, among others, is still artificially and uselessly confining his angst to the far-right wing of the reactionary Uniparty. His latest op-ed oh so originally points out that "Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias." In other words, if the GOP says the moon is made of green cheese, and the Democrats say it is made of moon rocks, it therefore follows that the Democrats own the moral high ground, even as they gleefully appropriate three quarters of a trillion dollars to the war machine of their predatory faux-nemesis, Donald Trump. Krugman righteously writes in the New York Times:
Surveys done by the University of Minnesota and George Mason University have shown that the supposedly impartial “fact checking” news organization rates Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims and twice as much, respectively.
Notice the implicit assumption here – namely, that impartial fact-checking would find an equal number of false claims from each party. But what if – bear with me a minute – Republicans actually make more false claims than Democrats?....
....Whatever the deep explanation, however, the parties are not the same. And trying to pretend that they are the same isn’t just foolish, it’s deeply destructive. Indeed, it’s one important reason Donald Trump sits in the White House.
My published response: 
The relentlessness of the GOP's lies has a "gaslighting" effect, serving to block normal minds from perceiving the actual truth. Since it's human nature to search for the "middle ground" between the truth and its opposite, too many of us end up settling for a counterfeit compromise. And this is precisely the intent of the liars and their media enablers.
They serve up their "news" not to keep us informed, but to ensure that we remain comfortable consumers in a very pathological situation.
It's like trying to find a magical healthy spot between stage 4 cancer and a benign tumor. Rather than calling the terminal disease a terminal disease, and rather than admit that a cancer-free body is the ideal, they settle for the stage 2 disease and pronounce it as healthy as can be expected.
Of course the Republicans and the Democrats aren't the same. But the Dems have to do more than indignantly moralize against the GOP pathocrats. They have to do more than point to "Russia" as the root of our divisiveness. They have to do more than brag about getting rid of their own in-house predators while pointing their virtue-signaling fingers at Trump and Roy Moore.
 They have to prescribe an actual cure to what ails this sick society. They have to champion Medicare for All, college debt relief, strong public education and housing policies, and living wage legislation. Maybe then they can start winning back some of the thousand seats they've lost to the GOP liars over the past decade.

10 comments:

Misandry said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Pearl said...

I was surprised to learn that Al Franken had supported Hillary
instead of Bernie Sanders which makes me feel much less
unhappy about his having to resign. Perhaps he should recognize
his current anguish is similar to Bernie’s
feelings of that time.

Being pulled in different directions
as a woman or man, democrat/progressive, etc.etc.
back and forth wouldn’t be necessary when one realizes they all represent
the tumult of the entire capitalist system which is an amorphous mass of
spliced parts fighting each other to gain power and credit in the marketplace.

But if the various revolutions going on below the surface
now could organize and learn to get along, that is where
real overall change might occur.
The fight against sexual harassment connects to other
vile methods of keeping women or men and/or minority groups
silenced and controlled for the same purposes.

You touched on a lot of bases, Karen, which should begin to teach
us how to interpret the news warnings. I fear
the only way thinking mankind can learn anything is by admitting
the planet is disintegrating,
the markets drying up, their children growing up
disfigured and their agendas bleeding.

A great insightful column, Karen and much food for thought.
Could it be time for a woman president?!

Bill said...

This is just fantastic. I am quite sick of being lied to after 7 decades. Indoctrination happens from all sides and amerika is full of lies.

Bill Sprague said...

I sort of imagined - fool that I am - that no one else thought the same things...

Jay–Ottawa said...

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., coined the term "the vital center" in the late Forties. The term may have stood for something worthwhile back then. But when, in the Nineties, Bill Clinton misappropriated the term and redefined it as his carefully recalibrated "middle of the road" between the principled and the criminal, Schlesinger roused his old bones to object that Clinton's "middle of the road" was really "the dead center," the motive word being 'dead.'

Well, at least almost dead, as, for example, the Democratic Party under the direction of DNC-type liberals. They are comfortable enough in the pit between principle and crime. By another route the "lesser of two evils" rationale will take you to the same pit every time.

Karen's invincible metaphor, addressing this distortion of "the vital center," makes the whole business crystal clear in only two sentences, the wisest verbal twist driving at the truth since Solomon's proposal: "Why don't we just cut the baby in half?"

Now if we could only find one single principled politician in Washington to begin hammering, tirelessly, something along the following lines––call it the Stage 2 Fallacy––before the voters....

"It's like trying to find a magical healthy spot between stage 4 cancer and a benign tumor. Rather than calling the terminal disease a terminal disease, and rather than admit that a cancer-free body is the ideal, they settle for the stage 2 disease and pronounce it as healthy as can be expected."

Comrade Pinko said...

The media keeps referring to what Franken and others are accused of doing as "touching women inappropriately" or in some cases "sexual misconduct". Why does the media keep watering down these things? Rape is 'Rape', not sexual assault, and sexual assault/abuse/and harassment is 'Sexual Molestation'. Weasel words only trivialize and minimize the impact and seriousness of it.

I noticed that Senator Franken only says he regrets that the women he sexually molested felt disrespected. And of course HE was embarrassed and HE was ashamed. Did he admit that he engaged in disrespectful behavior which brought shame and embarrassment to the women? I'm not going to miss him.

Gillibrand blew it with her Women's Club power play, more typical of the direct bullying men are more known for. What she should have done is shamed Franken and every other molester and rapist around the country using a general, non-direct approach and educated the country while she was at it. She should have given a RESPECT speech and tied it into the responsibility that comes with POWER.

She could have gently ripped Donald Trump, Roy Moore, and others a new one without addressing them specifically and could have started by talking about all the forms that power comes in: from wealth (Trump), status (Conyers), profession (Weinstein), military rank (rampant problem she has championed), celebrity (Franken), intelligence (Wayback Machine: BF Skinner at Harvard molesting young autistic Temple Grandin), etc. Then go into how abuse of power stems from a belief in one's own superiority and how one capitalizes on opportunities to take advantage of others to satisfy one's own desires - money, sex, more power.

She could also have mentioned that sexual abuse is hardly the only abuse of power and addressed how financial power is abused for gain - examples are everywhere. Usurious payday loans? Car mechanics ripping off women much? The point is, there's a universal problem when it comes to abusing power. War much? Ruling Class of the U.S. Empire, I'm talking to you! A fundamental not to be ignored is the belief that there is a right to take advantage of those who are deserving of being taken advantage (fi not eliminated from the face of the earth) of because they are inferior, weaker, dumber, or less worthy. It's civil rights problem writ large.

In regard to the cases currently in the news, since abuse stems from power, then as long as the abuser has power, they will continue to abuse because it's considered a perk, an entitlement. If there's even one victim/accuser of a powerful person who had the courage to come forward, I'd look long and hard for more and not be inclined to give the accused a free pass or benefit of the doubt as long as they still have that power. I would try to get them to take themselves out of the picture though. You'd think the Womens Club could have come up with something quietly effective instead of helping Franken portray himself as the victim. It helped him save face but they set themselves up to look like witches. Who cooked up that scheme? Schumer?

Gillibrand's judgment is off. For unfathomable reasons, sometime this past year she was in the news for repeatedly and gratuitously used a certain loaded obscenity that carries sexual connotations. "If we can't (blah blah blah), then we should go the f**k home!", then used 'f**k' again in another context. Since when do Senators speak that way publicly, especially a woman and a Democrat? It was an example of poor judgment of the classic Hillary kind. Instead of swigging beers to relate, Gillibrand resorted to the F word. Not genuine.

The Congresswoman who seems solidly grounded and real,and earns my respect is Jackie Speier, Representative from California. When she speaks, I listen.

RS Arvidson said...

Karen, thank you for this, as always, lots to think about. I too had mixed feelings about Franken, and also felt uneasy about Gillibrand's opportunism. But my biggest worry these days is also something you alluded to: that the Democrats, now completely consumed with the diversions of Trump & Co., still don't seem to have a plan, a program, any axis around which to coalesce other than "not Trump". I don't understand why the major papers, the NYT, Wash Post, et al., devote so much time to DJT: there's nothing there. What you see is what you get, and Lordy, it ain't much: a 71 year old playboy bully-blowhard, incurious about anything save his own gratification, who would have been nothing without his family's money, whose only real success as a businessman was playing one on TV. Clearly, a disastrous choice for POTUS, an obvious truth ignored only by his smitten base, who also blame any misfortune that visits them on someone else. End of story. To recover any active political voice, the left (from progressives to middling center) absolutely have to recognize both how they got into their current predicament, and how to get out. And the only strategy that makes sense to me is to focus on the common issues that matter to the vast majority of citizens who collect a W-2 at year's end (or hope to): jobs and economic security, fighting monopolization of most major industries, education, housing, health care, debt, a path to improvement, how to move America forward as individuals, as families, as citizens, as a nation. When I was a kid this is all I remember Dems stumping on. Now .... I just finished a long NYT piece (Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation https://nyti.ms/2kLyMRS) that describes Pelosi almost excusing Trump's incompetence. That left me even more depressed. I keep wondering when things will improve, only to conclude they will probably worsen. If Dems don't get their collective act together soon, I fear 2018 and 2020 will be familiar catastrophes. Can't they dispense with the virtue, can't they stop being bated by division? And figure out how to represent real people, figure out how to win.

Erik Roth said...


Dealing with this issue is like punching a tar baby, so I commend Ms. Garcia for her candor about ambivalence in the case of Senator Franken.
As a Minnesotan, but also a flaming radical, I'm remarkably of the same view on this as our former governor, Arne Carlson, for whom, incidentally, I never voted.
He writes:

“While I am not always in agreement with Senator Al Franken, I firmly believe in due process which is a cornerstone of our democratic way of living. He was elected by we, the people, and he should continue to serve until a legal determination has been made.”

I, too, am not always in agreement with Senator Franken, but rather because I take, shall we say, a sardonic view of politics.
Yet note Carlson's full opinion, at least so far as was reported in today's local paper:

http://www.startribune.com/former-gov-arne-carlson-says-franken-should-remain-in-senate-pending-investigation/463282063/



Jay–Ottawa said...

Zephyr Teachout has just written a NYT op-ed in the same vein. Could she be the next big hope for disenchanted lefties? Her only serious negative, so far as we know to date, is that she's a lawyer.

Jay–Ottawa said...

From Alabama this morning, good news and bad news. First, the good news: Moore went down to defeat. The bad news, a Democrat won.

The DNC may continue doing what it's doing and not doing, as of old. As Republicans continue to self destruct, the Dems will simply pick up the pieces and assure us they feel our continuing pain.