It’s no joke, Senator Franken
An editorial from the Los Angeles Times:
Stories about powerful men engaging in sexual misconduct are becoming so common that, as with mass shootings, the country is in danger of growing inured to them. But unlike the tragic news about that latest deranged, murderous gunman, the massive outpouring of previously repressed tales of sexual harassment gives us reason to hope.
The latest revelation comes from L.A. radio anchor LeeAnn Tweeden, who says U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) forcibly kissed her while they were rehearsing for a USO show overseas in 2006, just before Franken began his campaign for the Senate. She also says he groped her without her consent, and there’s a photo that adds legitimacy to her tale. In it, Franken grins over his shoulder at the camera as he reaches for her breasts — possibly touching her, possibly not — while she sits asleep in a military plane jump seat.
Franken has apologized, though says he doesn’t remember the incident the way Tweeden does, and he asked for an investigation of his own behaviour by the Senate Ethics Committee. Such a probe would be welcome. The committee can also investigate whether it’s an isolated incident or part of an offensive pattern.
We’re having a moment of reckoning, America. Stories that would have been waved off at the time they occurred as harmless or aberrational are now gaining currency.
Yet we are just scraping the surface, hearing mostly about the misdeeds of very powerful men — not the harassment and intimidation meted out daily in society’s lower echelons. And thorny questions remain about how society should treat decades-old allegations or differentiate among the many gradations of bad behaviour alleged.
Yet it is important that we see the whole picture, even if the tales are decades old, describe murky, unwanted advances or seem at first, in some cases, like nothing more than meanspirited jokes. We need to understand the breadth of the problem if we are going to begin to address it and to change attitudes in a meaningful way.