Month: November 2017

THE REAL CESSPOOL OF POLITICS: CREEPY GUYS WHO GROPE

Another day, another cringe-worthy tale of men who grope. Following the news hasn’t been this depressing since the body count days of the Vietnam War. Tongues jammed into mouths, breasts fondled, hands up skirts, all unilaterally executed by men because nothing stopped them, not their sense of decency, not their warped notion of consent, and certainly not the power imbalance that gave rise to these encounters.

It has been said – to the point of becoming a cliché – that we are now engaged in a “national conversation” about sexual harassment and assault. If this little chat is going to take on any real heft, we desperately need a change of venue to someplace – anyplace – outside of Washington. The nation’s capital is an unholy shrine to the very worst of male privilege and the notion that sex on demand is a perquisite of power, one that rises to sexual misconduct only in the opposition party. Letting these folks revamp the moral hierarchy of sexual interaction would be like turning a conversation on pedophilia over to the College of Cardinals.

Only in Washington would a “national conversation” on sexual propriety devolve into partisan chatter over the comparative sins (alleged of course), of Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, and Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota. What’s worse, a 32-year-old Republican stalking and fondling teenage girls as young as 14, or a 55-year-old Democrat forcing his tongue into the mouth of a fellow USO performer and then placing his hands on or near her breasts while she slept? As an exercise in moral relativism, the allegations against Moore are far more serious than those against Franken. Yet, if this moment of reckoning is to be truly transformative, our “national conversation” has to be about more than predation parsing. It also has to go beyond the political leanings of the accusers, as was the case in both the Moore and Franken stories.

Most of the key players in Washington are currently incapable of looking at sexual misconduct accusations through anything other than the lens of their own political interests. So you have GOP congressional leaders urging Moore to drop out of the race because they believe his accusers. Of course they never wanted the albatross of Roy Moore in the Senate in the first place, and are worried about the adverse consequences a pederast senator might have on the 2018 elections. Yet, this same crew of Republican leaders remains perpetually silent on the sexual misconduct accusations made by 16 women against Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the Donald is rooting for Moore to win the December 12 election because “we don’t need another liberal person in there.”

This issue was easier to deal with six weeks ago when the only culprit was Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. There was such moral clarity then. The evidence was as overwhelming as it was sickening. The guy made a career out of forcing himself on hundreds of women. Police in multiple jurisdictions are pursing possible rape charges (here, here and here). For those inclined to view morality through a binary lens of black and white, good and evil, Harvey was pure black and evil.

Then, thanks in large part to the #MeToo movement, things started to get a bit more complicated. Women – and some men – who had been silently churning with the pain of sexual abuse for years, if not decades, started to rise up and name their predators. The list has been growing daily, even hourly. In addition to Moore and Franken, here is a small sampling of the accused: Democratic Rep. John Conyers, television host Charlie Rose, New York Times White House reporter Glenn Thrush, comedian Louis C.K., NPR executive Michael Oreskes, New Republic president and publisher Hamilton Fish, actor Kevin Spacey, political reporter and author Mark Halperin, former president George H.W. Bush and 40 state legislators from 20 states. The allegations run the gamut from rape to fanny pinching. The accused share two common denominators. They all achieved outstanding success in their given fields, and they all stand accused of forcing sexual contact on multiple unwilling partners.

What needs to be part of our “national conversation” is that sexual misconduct is not a behavioral aberration limited to Neanderthal thugs. Men we have come to respect and admire, whether for their art, intellect or leadership, are just as capable – and culpable – as the more stereotypical villains when it comes to sexually harassing and abusing women. We need to grapple with a deeply embedded and toxic cognitive dissonance that separates the virtually universal notion that all sexual contact must be consensual, and the behavior of an alarmingly large number of men whose actions blatantly defy that principle.

This isn’t going to be easy. The daily deluge of #MeToo stories has revealed a gaping hole in our social fabric, one that tears into the basic constructs of human interaction. Sadly, it’s something we should have dealt with long ago. Instead, it comes now, right smack in the middle of one of the most hyper partisan battles ever waged. We have all picked our sides and suited up. The most natural inclination in combat is to rush to the aid of a fallen comrade. Yet, that approach is totally inconsistent with a meaningful national conversation about sexual misconduct.

On a personal level, the Al Franken accusations really hurt. As both a liberal and a native Minnesotan, I put him on the same elevated tier as my other home state political heroes: Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone. I understand that the accusations against Franken are significantly less severe than most of the others. I’ve also read the stories suggesting that Republicans set him up. It still hurts. A good man made bad choices. He is not alone. And that is precisely why this eternal plague of sexual misconduct is so insidious and pervasive. It’s not just the serial predators like Weinstein, Moore and Trump, it’s also all those good guys who made some bad choices and added to the #MeToo Chorus.

Our challenge now is to learn from this. Most guys know the rules. What they have trouble with is the boneheaded notion that there is a waiver for frat parties, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. It might help to read the #MeToo statements and absorb the deep, lasting, tormenting pain of those who have been abused. This has to stop. Now.

DONALD TRUMP: AMERICA’S MOST UNPATRIOTIC PRESIDENT

When it comes to demonstrating patriotic respect for this country and all that it stands for, Donald J. Trump takes a knee. To be sure, it is a metaphorical knee, totally lacking the focused purpose and quiet grace of a Colin Kaepernick or Eric Reid. For the first time in American history, we have a deeply unpatriotic president who repeatedly spews disdain and disgust on the very foundations of government he was elected to lead.

Hours after an alleged terrorist killed eight people in Lower Manhattan last week, Trump went on a rant about the need to quickly execute the suspect. Here’s what he said: “We need quick justice and we need strong justice – much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke, and it’s a laughingstock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place.”

Now, there was probably a guy on a barstool in every American tavern who said the same thing last week. But none of them were elected president of the United States. It is easy, and sometimes therapeutic for coping purposes, to tune out the daily stream of inanities from our 45th president. But this one is too stunningly deplorable to ignore. Read that quote again. The leader of our “home of the free” called our system of justice a “joke” and a “laughingstock”. It’s one thing for a citizen, or even a political candidate, to besmirch the integrity of our government. Dissent is as American as apple pie. But when you occupy the Oval Office, when you are this country’s chief representative to the world, those words reverberate with an unpatriotic fervor that no kneeling NFL player has ever approached or contemplated.

But the Donald was just getting warmed up. Later in the week, the president had some choice words for the non-imprisonment sentence handed down in one of the country’s most prominent desertion cases. In 2009, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his military base in Afghanistan, was captured by the Taliban and spent five years in captivity. He pled guilty to desertion and was sentenced to a dishonorable discharge but no prison time. Within minutes, Trump’s Twitter fingers pronounced the judge’s decision “a complete disgrace to our country and to our military.”

As commander in chief, Trump outranks the military judge who conducted a lengthy hearing on Bergdahl’s sentencing. Nevertheless, that judge, Army Col. Jeffrey Nance, had to consider a key defense argument that the president had stomped on Bergdahl’s due process rights. As a candidate, Trump repeatedly called Bergdahl a “dirty rotten traitor” and said he should be executed or returned to the Taliban. As president, he recently referred back to those remarks, indicating they still applied. Judge Nance said Trump’s comments concerned him and warranted mitigation in sentencing.

So, in the course of three days, this president managed to denigrate the country’s justice system by calling it a “joke”, and pull the rug out from under military jurisprudence by labeling a judge’s decision as a “complete disgrace”. But he wasn’t quite done. Just as the special prosecutor in the Russia investigation released two indictments and a guilty plea against former Trump campaign aides, the president renewed his call for an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, insisting once again that she belongs in jail. Like a responsive reading in church, Trump automatically responds to adversity with the call for Clinton’s incarceration. After all, he promised in a 2016 debate that he would put her in jail if he won, a pledge that seems to have gone the way of the Mexican wall and Obamacare repeal.

Not only are these presidential rants against our justice system anti-American, they are also counterproductive to the Donald’s own cause. Bergdahl, for example, would probably have been given prison time if Trump hadn’t called for his execution. In the case of the recent New York terrorist attack, prosecutors anticipate difficulties in jury selection because of the president’s prejudicial remarks. And if any career Justice Department attorneys ever entertained an idea of going after Clinton, Trump’s repeated calls for that prosecution would undoubtedly hold them back just to avoid the aura of political persecution.

“But you know the saddest thing,” Trump said in a radio interview last week, “because I’m the president of the United States I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.” Poor guy. If he had known he couldn’t obstruct justice by tossing his enemies in jail like they do in a banana republic, he would have never taken the job.

Despite the flags he uses as props, despite his National Anthem militancy, despite his “America first” rhetoric, Donald Trump does not love this country. The core of this nation’s democracy is predicated on an independent judiciary, one that dispenses justice through the rule of law, not by political fiat or authoritarian dictate. It’s a system based on a presumption of innocence and a fair trial, not an “off with their heads” order from a strongman dictator. It’s not perfect, this system of ours, and it needs periodic care and maintenance by lawmakers. But for 241 years this has been the essence of American justice. Far from being a joke or a laughing stock, it’s who we are as a county. It’s what America is all about. To reject that, Mr. President, is to reject America. It doesn’t get more unpatriotic than that.