What went wrong?

I’ve never been an angel. I had a couple run-ins with the police when I was a younger man, both for what are commonly called street fights, although one incident was in a professional baseball park and the other was in a pizza parlor and spilled onto a sidewalk. I was not charged in either case because it was determined I was not the instigator, although I did get to know how it feels to wear handcuffs and how they’re particularly uncomfortable when one has a badly broken, grossly swollen hand.

I also was taken into custody by county sheriff’s deputies when I was a teen after a group of us put boards over the spikes in the exit lane at the drive-in movies to allow friends to enter through the exit. Juvenile charges were expunged after I did roadside cleanup for several weekends.

All of this probably would come up if I ever ran for public office or happened to be nominated for an important position. (Hah! Like that would ever happen.) I also was a boss with an explosive temper who banged his desk and sometimes yelled at employees I thought weren’t trying hard enough. That’s no secret, either, and it also would surface if I ever came under consideration for a position of prominence.

So now it’s all out there. I got into some trouble when I was a younger man and was a jerk at times as a boss.

Here’s what I’ve never done: I’ve never forced myself on a woman, never used my position of power as a newsroom boss or college professor to coerce women into doing sexual acts.

And I never would. Simply, I was raised better than that.

My father, brought up by horrid alcoholics, was rough around the edges. Actually, he was rough throughout his entire chunky being. Pop could be crude and unmannered. But one thing he taught his sons is we were not to abuse women in any way. We were taught to be gentlemen around women.

I certainly am not a prude or a prig, and I have a particularly irreverent sense of humor. That’s no secret, either. But there are lines that should not be crossed, and I’ve tried hard throughout my life to not cross those.

It makes me wonder how these public figures accused of sexual misconduct were raised. Many, including our president, and to a lesser degree Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, grew up in wealth, attending expensive, lauded private schools, yet they may have never been taught, or learned, to treat women with respect. I grew up lower middle class in a rough town, yet I learned those simple lessons of decency.

This is not a partisan rant. This is a musing. I simply don’t know how or why so many men in positions of powers think they have the right to use those positions to abuse women. I’m talking about men in politics, the entertainment industry and various other professions. I’m talking about Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Roy Moore, the Tangerine Menace-in-Chief and countless other men who have used their power, as men, to be sexual abusers, to be outright perverts.

I truly hope the sexual abuse allegation against Brett Kavanaugh is false. I would hate to think an abuser of women had made it as far in our system as a Supreme Court nomination (and I will refuse to accept the excuse that he was drunk at the time.)

Young men make mistakes. That can be expected. I certainly made a few.

What should never be accepted is men using their power — physical, professional or societal — to abuse women.

And such abusers should never be on the Supreme Court … or in the White House.