All the attention on the sexual harassment front Thursday was devoted to Minnesota’s Democratic Sen. Al Franken’s announcement of his upcoming ignominious resignation, which is indeed a riveting tale, but we were more intrigued by the sidebar story about the resignation of Arizona’s Republican Rep. Trent Franks. Like most of America we’d never heard of Franks until he bowed out, whereas we’d been aware of Franken since his days on “Saturday Night Live” way back in the ’70s, but Franks’ denouement had one of those diverting twists that can only occur in these modern times.
Franks was apparently as impeccably a Republican conservative as Franken was a Democratic liberal, and still stands unaccussed of the alleged forcible kisses and groping and otherwise ungentlemanly behavior that brought Franken down, but in his statement of resignation he did admit it had to do with an investigation regarding his “discussion of surrogacy with two female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable.” Some unnamed sources to The Washington Post fill out the story by explaining that Franks and his wife had been frustrated by their inability to conceive a child, and although Franks’ statement insists he never “physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my staff,” he also pretty much admitted that he did ask a couple of young female staffer if they’d bear his progeny.
“However,” Frank’s statement stated, “I do want to take full responsibility for the ways I have broached a topic that, unbeknownst to me until very recently, made certain individuals feel uncomfortable. I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress.”
We can well understand how uncomfortable Frank’s young female staffers might have felt when he broached the topic, and the distress such a discussion might have caused them, but we’ll give this Franks fellow for taking taking full responsibility right up the point of offering his resignation, but we’ll offer him some sympathy. It’s not been at all unbeknownst to us until recently that female co-workers are uncomfortable and even distressed by broaching the topic of bearing our children, but impeccably Republican conservatives such are ourselves tend to be nerds un-hip to the ways of the modern world, and we readily believe his claims that he never intimidated or coerced or attempted to have any sexual contact with his female staffers along with the rest of his admission of guilt.
That’s a shrewd move, because Republican President Donald Trump and the Republican Senate candidate he’s backing down in Alabama stand credibly accused of similar or even worse misbehavior, and we can’t blame the 50 percent or so of the electorate that is female for being fed up about now. They’ll no doubt try to make some political hay of Franks’ resignation, and we can’t blame them for doing so, but he’s a lot less famous than Franken and in the end he’s just another conservative Republican nerd who doesn’t understand how to go about negotiating such modern world matters as surrogacy childbirth. Franken’s an old-fashioned creep posing as an impeccable Democratic liberal and unapologetic to the nd, and although the Democrats can still point to Trump and that Alabama senate candidate the day on the sexual harassment front wound up in a desultory tie.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 