Crazy Like a Fox

One of the more interesting things President Donald Trump is an extended interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, which chock full of Trump saying interesting things, was that “I’m not a fan of Fox. They’ve changed a lot since Roger Ailes.”

Which seemed an odd thing to say during his 92nd presidential interview with Fox, or 10 times more than the number of interviews he’s granted to any other network, but we’re not surprised he was nostalgic for the days of Ailes. The late Ailes was a media consultant for Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush before becoming chairman and chief executive of Fox News and building it into a ratings powerhouse as a conservative alternative to the existing cable news networks. He was ousted in 2016 due to the high cost of settling with 23 women employee who had sued for sexual harassment, including two of Fox’s most prominent female reporters, then became a campaign advisor to Republican presidential nominee Trump, who was not offended by Ailes’ alleged behavior.

Fox News was largely unchanged by Ailes’ departure, remaining a conservative alternative to the other cable news outlets and apparently maintaining hostile workplace environment for women. Despite big ratings pundit Bill O’Reilly was shown the door when his sexual harassment lawsuits became to expensive to settle, and now there’s another round of lawsuits. This one involves former anchor Ed Henry, who was fired July 1 for “sexual misconduct in the workplace,” and now stands accused by longtime Fox Business News employee Jennifer Eckhart of a sadistic rape. The same lawsuit alleges she was fired for complaining about a “toxic work environment,” and also claims that other Fox employees, including star opinion show hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, sexually harassed her.

This is Carlson’s second recent scandal, by the way, following the revelation his now-fired head writer had for years used a pseudonym to post outrageously racist and sexist post on white nationalist web sites.

None of this will likely trouble Trump’s mind, of course, but he has other issues with the network. The early morning primetime opinion hosts remain as slavishly devoted to Trump as ever, but the straight news reporters in the afternoon occasionally report things Trump would rather not hear, and have an annoying habit of interviewing Democratic politicians as well as Republicans, and their polling has long displeased the president. Wallace is a very tough interviewer, which Trump surely knew when he agreed to the interview, and all the ringside observers think Wallace won by points if not a technical knockout.

So now all the cable news networks are “fake news” except for the One America Network and the Sinclair Network, which are steadfastly sycophantic to the president but only reach a small percentage of America’s televisions. The good news for Trump is that if all the current polls prove true and he loses reelection by a wide margin he’ll have something to blame.

— Bud Norman

Looking for Some Alternative to the Lesser of Two Evils

America’s last presidential election was perhaps the most desultory moment in our nation’s political history, with two of the worst Americans ever as the major party nominees. They advocated very different but equally appealing policies, and in the end it all came down to which candidate’s character you thought was more awful. This year isn’t looking any better.

Last time around both finalists for the highest office in the land were scandal-ridden scoundrels, and in eerily similar ways. Republican nominee Donald Trump was credibly accused by a dozen women of decades of sexual assault, and was caught on audiotape bragging about it in the most vulgar terms, but Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was a longtime enabler of her ex-president husband’s just as egregious sexual piggery. The Clintons had a phony-baloney family foundation supported mostly by big-bucks donors courting Hillary’s Clinton’s influence as Secretary of State, but Trump had his own phony-baloney family foundation that did made all sorts of questionable spending including a big campaign contribution to a Florida Secretary of State who immediately withdrew from a multi-state lawsuit against the fraudulent Trump University that had bilked hundreds of suckers out of million dollars and Trump eventually settled that for $25 million and the family foundation was put out of business by the New York state courts, who also decreed that anyone named Trump would have to take an ethics course before they were ever again allowed to be involved a New York charity.

Both the Clintons and the Trumps had decades of financial shenanigans, ranging from the former’s Whitewater dealings to pretty much the entirety of the latter’s career as an oft-bankrupt billionaire mogul, but for the most part they got away with it. Clinton had to hide records of the millions she and her husband had made from giving speeches to special interest groups, but ran as an heiress to the mostly scandal-free administration of President Barack Obama. Trump had openly bragged about buying off Democratic and Republican politicians to get favorable treatment in his very fishy business dealings, and went to extraordinary lengths to hide his educational and military and health and tax records, but argued that made him the ideal guy to lock up “Crooked Hillary” and “drain the swamp.”

This time around looks to be every bit as tawdry. The apparent Democratic nominee after a truncated-by-coronavirus race is former Vice President Joe Biden, an underwhelming career politician with all the baggage you’d expect after four decades of riding trains to Washington, D.C., and Trump is once again the Republican party’s nominee. Biden’s son seems to have made a lot of money while in Ukraine while Dad was in charge of America’s foreign policy in that country, but the Trump kids have also been doing well in China and other countries while their father is president, and although the details of both stories are complicated it looks bad no matter how closely you look.

Both men now stand credibly accused of rape, too. A former Biden employee has come forward by her name, Tara Reade, to allege that 27 years ago then-Sen. Biden pushed against a wall in an empty hallway and penetrated her with his fingers. This is on top of another dozen women Biden’s behavior made them feel “uncomfortable,” and ample photographic and videographer evidence of Biden being somewhat creepily touchy with women. Some two dozen women have accused Trump of even worse behavior, of the sort he’s bragged about on a surreptitious audiotape and on Howard Stern’s nationally broadcast shock jock radio shows, and a woman named E. Jean Carroll has publicly come forward to allege that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the ’90s.

Which will certainly take a lot of the fun out of the next election for a lot of people, who might well conclude that we’re choosing between two rapists to lead our country.

Our sixty-some years of observing human nature have convinced us that women sometimes do make false allegations of sexual harassment and rape, but that it’s by far more common for men to sexually harass and rape women, so we’re usually inclined to believe women who have nothing to gain and much to lose with accusations against powerful men. We try apply that same standard regardless of the accused’s party affiliation, and we’ve long noticed Democrats and Republicans are about equally as likely to land in the docket. In this case, we can’t look at either man’s life history and say he’s too much a gentleman for us to even imagine him ever doing such a thing.

We’re instinctively disinclined to look at anything from the Democrats’ perspective, but if you want to get deep into the weeds of all this theDemocrats have the slightly better argument.

Reade is only now making her 27-year-old allegation, after staying silent through Senatorial campaigns and Biden’s vice presidential nomination, and he’s asked the Senate to release any complaints she might have made at the time, and she’s admitted to the press that she only filed a vaguely worded complaint about being “uncomfortable,” and Obama’s thorough vetting team didn’t turn up anything to keep him off the ticket. Carroll didn’t file any charges against Trump at the time, but she did report it to friends who are willing to come forward by name to talk about it, and she has a reputation as a journalist and comedy writer that she’s put at stake, and Trump denies it by saying she’s not his type, which leaves one to wonder on what type of woman he might rape.

As for all the financial shenanigans, whatever Biden’s ethical lapses he’s not become nearly so rich from them as Trump claims to be, and there’s no reason to believe his son got rich in Ukraine by the same sort of quid pro quo deal with the Ukrainian government that got impeached and should have had him removed from office, and Trump’s kids have done pretty well in Dad’s negotiations over the past three years. With apologies to Irving Berlin, we can hear them at the debates singing a rendition of “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Awfuler.”

There’s really no need to wade so deep into the weeds, however, as it really won’t matter much in the election. The public will wind up reconciling itself to a a presidential choice between two scoundrels who are obviously corrupt and quite possibly rapists. So far Trump hasn’t hypocritically seized on Biden’s rape problem, instead noting that powerful men are targets for such allegations, but that’s obviously self-interested and is likely to change between now and election day. A large segment of the Democratic party sticking to principle and trying to somehow find some other nominee, but we expect they’ll mostly fail line and turn out in November to vote against Trump.

A small but decisive minority of independent and independent-minded voters will wind up deciding the election, and what they do depends on what happens between now November, which we admit we have no way of knowing. There’s a chance that a couple hundred thousand Americans will be dead and millions more unemployed and bankrupt, with many more voting by mail if the postal service still exists because they’ve been cooped up at home and grocery shopping in face masks for months, and they’ll care more about that than the candidates’ grotesque character flaws.

Neither Trump nor Biden seem to have any answers for the crisis of the moment, though, nor any inspiring ideas about what to do when we eventually get past it no matter how badly it’s been bungled. Our Republican and Democratic friends alike are once again telling us it’s a binary choice and we have to pick a side, and that the fate of our nation once again hangs on it. Ignoring such shrill and panicked cries, for the second time in our lives we’ll probably pick some obscure protest candidate as a “none of the above” vote.

We’re trying to muddle through the current crisis and see beyond the weeds and past the swamp toward a country that can choose between two candidates of stellar character who strive to unite a great nation of 330 million free men and women behind a plausible program for a better future. We invite dispirited Republicans and Democrats and independents of all races and sexes and classes to join us on this quixotic quest.

— Bud Norman

Biden Time in a #MeToo Moment

A second woman has come forward to accuse former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of inappropriate behavior, and we’re sure she won’t be the last. Type “Creepy Uncle Joe” into any internet search engine and you’ll come up with more than a million results that include countless videos of Biden acting undeniably creepy around women.

Which is interesting to us, because all the way-too-early polls show Biden currently leading the Democratic party’s crowded field of presidential candidates, and the Democratic party has also lately declared a zero tolerance policy regarding anything that might offend any woman for any reason. The Democrats kicked Minnesota Sen. Al Franken out of Congress for a single accusation of an unwanted kiss and a photograph of him pretending to grope a woman’s breasts and some rape jokes he proposed telling back during his days as a Saturday Night Live comedian, even though he was a big fundraiser for the party, and they’ve also cut off from some big-bucks Hollywood donors caught up in the anti-sexual harassment “#MeToo” movement. In Biden’s case, despite his undeniably creepy behavior, it might prove a tough call.

The Democrats’ current obsession with male misbehavior is quite fine by us, as we were raised by fearsome Church of Christ women to treat the fairer sex with exceedingly old-fashioned respect, and it’s about time the Democratic party came around. For decades the Democrats had been the party of hound dog Presidents John Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and the Hollywood-New York City entertainment industry complex that undressed its actresses and unleashed a Sexual Revolution that hasn’t always worked out well for women. Today the Democrats and cultural left decry a “culture of rape” in American universities, and although they don’t acknowledge their role in destroying the fuddy-duddy cultural traditions that once governed male behavior, and have overreacted with kangaroo courts in academia for any romantically inept college kid accused of making an unwanted pass, we’re glad the party’s women are asserting themselves against all the boorish male behavior that truly is out there.

Biden’s well-documented uninvited shoulder rubs and prolonged hugs and close facial contacts with women of all ages certainly strikes us as boorish male behavior, and judging by the uncomfortable looks on their faces they seem to agree. At the very least we don’t consider it at all presidential, and hope that the party’s primary voters will take that into consideration as they weigh their choices in the crowded and sorry list of candidates.

On the other hand, the Democrats could do worse than Biden. He’s too far left for our centrist and old-fashioned Kansas Republican tastes, but he’s much closer to the center than several of the other leading contenders for the Democratic nomination, and although we’re not in the habit of giving advice to our Democrat friends we think he’d be a formidable opponent against President Donald Trump, presuming Trump will be the Republicans’ 2020 nominee.

Over his long career as a Senator from Delaware and vice president to an unaccountably popular President Barack Obama, Biden has employed the same populist and crudely “authentic” rhetoric as Trump, and enjoyed the support of the same aggrieved Rust Belt blue collar workers that helped elect Obama and somehow provided Trump with the few thousand votes that won him an electoral majority in the last election. He’s been caught plagiarizing speeches, but Trump has claimed credit for coining the phrase “priming the pump.” All the right wing talk radio hosts have long ridiculed Biden’s admittedly ridiculous hair plugs, but when running against Trump’s “We shall overcome” hairdo that shouldn’t be a problem. Biden once shocked the racial sensibilities of Democratic party by describing presidential primary opponent Obama as “clean” and “articulate,” but all was forgiven when Obama tabbed him as a running mate, and Trump has a far more troublesome record of racialist remarks, including his long and now recanted insistence that Obama was an illegitimate president. Biden is on videotape touching women’s shoulders and necks and waists and smelling their hair inappropriately, but former strip club mogul Trump is on audio tape bragging about grabbing women by their pussies, and the political discourse has been degraded to a point that we’d feel silly bowdlerizing that.

Once upon a well-remembered time the Republicans were always vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy, as they espoused an old-fashioned standard of decorum that mere humans have a hard time living up to, but in the age of Trump they no longer make any pretense of providing moral leadership. These days the Democrats are espousing a very newfangled puritanism that horny college kids and other mere humans have a hard time meeting, and no matter who the Democrats come up with, he — or even she — will probably have some explaining to do about something or another, even if he or she is running against Trump.

We don’t expect either party to nominate anyone other than a mere human, and maybe the Democrats were right all those years they insisted that moral leadership was expected from our government, but we hope that the next presidential election will make all the women out there less uncomfortable with all the boorish male behavior that’s out there. If the political process can also yield someone who can lower the budget deficits and restore relationships with longtime allies, and keep things going at least slightly better than before,  so much the better.

— Bud Norman

Draining the Swamp, Building a New One, Then Repeat

Political corruption scandals, much like those “me too” sexual harassment and assault scandals that keep popping up, are a bi-partisan problem. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are immune to the all-too-human temptations of power, so the side with more power tends to be the one with the more scandals. For the moment the Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress and a putative member of the party in the White House, and they’re busily making the judicial branch Republican for the next generation, so it’s no surprise that mainly Republicans are getting pilloried in the political press these days.

The past week has seen a federal indictment of New York’s Republican Rep. Christopher Collins, who was the first congressional supporter of President Donald Trump’s candidacy and one of his most die-hard apologists, on some some pretty darned convincing insider-trading charges involving a company whose board he sat own while he also sat on congressional committees overseeing its industry. The week also saw Trump’s former deputy campaign manager Robert Gates admitting to various financial crimes during his pretty darned damning testimony against former business partner and one-time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who will later face another federal trial regarding his alleged shady and unregistered dealings with the Russian-backed Ukrainian government he represented.

All of which comes in the aftermath of the resignations of Trump’s picks to head the Health and Human Services Department and the Environmental Protection Agency resigning in the wake of mounting ethics allegations and some undeniably lavish spending on the taxpayers’ dime. Not to mention the ongoing “Russia thing” about Trump’s son and son-in-law and campaign manager and deputy campaign manager and Trump himself, and an ongoing federal suit about violations of the constitution’s emolument clause, all of which is lately looking worse and worse by the daily developments.

There’s still a convincing argument to be made that the Democrats are at least as bad, or surely will be again just as soon as they inevitably regain power, and we well remember the satisfaction we once took in all the well-documtened outrages the Republicans once accurately pined on them. We’ll not join in the “lock ’em up” chants at the never-ending Trump campaign rallies, though, but we’ll try to be just as principled and objective in judging our putative fellow Republicans.

At this point no one in politics looks good, but we’re not chanting for any of them to locked up, and are instead holding out faint hope that America’s government will look more like it was described to us in civics class. Something in our post-lapsarian Judeo-Christian souls tells us that the temptations of power are irresistible, though, and the scandals will continue no matter which party is in power.

— Bud Norman

Cherchez la Femme, For a Change

The latest sexual harassment scandal comes from right here in Kansas, so of course there’s a peculiar twist to it. This time the notable target of the allegations is a woman, Andrea Ramsey, who withdrew from the race for the third congressional district’s Democratic nomination after The Kansas City Star called to ask about a lawsuit her former employer had settled with a man who alleged she had subjected him to “unwelcome sexual comments and innuendos.”

Ramsey denies the charges, notes it was her employer who settled the suit with a cash payment but no admission of guilt, and insists that if she had been a party to the suit she would have endeavored to clear her name. In a brief statement announcing her withdrawal from the race, however, she added that “In the rush to claim the high ground in our roiling national conversation about harassment, the Democratic Party has implemented a zero tolerance policy. For me, that means a vindictive, terminated employee’s false allegations are enough for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to decide not to support our promising campaign. We are in a national moment when rough justice stands in place of careful analysis, nuance, and due process.”

Indeed, the DCCC issued its own statement that “If anyone is guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault, that person should not hold office,” and that it’s holding Democratic candidates to a very high standard. Ramsey had previously won the endorsement of Emily’s List, a well-heeled outfit that supports women candidates, but it also issued its own statement supporting the candidates withdrawal and wishing her well.”

We’re sure that both the DCCCers and the Emily’s Listers hated to do it, as Ramsey would have made a formidable nominee. Kansas is a reliably red state, but its third district is mostly comprised by the mostly affluent suburbs of Kansas City, which gave a slim majority of its votes to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the last election, so Republican incumbent Rep. Kevin Yoder is considered vulnerable. Since Republican nominee Donald Trump became president those mostly affluent suburbs have proved a problem for his party in special and off-year elections almost everywhere, even here in the more rock-ribbed fourth district, where a gun-toting and outspokenly centrist Democrat gave the Republican a real scare and actually wounding up winning Sedgwick County with its big city of Wichita and surrounding suburbs, and the dramatic drop-off in Republican votes in the suburbs of such purplish states as Virginia and Pennsylvania suggest it’s a very scary trend for the GOP.

Which makes it hard for the Democrats to defenestrate a real contender in a state such as Kansas, but then again it must have also been hard for them to do the same to such a popular figure and potent fund-raiser as Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and such a longstanding civil rights icon as Michigan Rep. John Conyers, but they went right ahead and did that, despite the similarly disputed nature of the allegations. The Democrats are deadly serious about a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment, and Ramsey is right to note that they don’t care much about due process, even if she didn’t publicly object until her own head was on the chopping block, and sooner or later someone’s going to be vindicated and a backlash will ensue, but until then it might be well worth the cost.

If the backlash doesn’t develop by next November the Democrats can at least credibly claim a high ground in our roiling conversation on harassment until the crucial mid-terms. The Republicans have lately been defenestrating its misbehaving congressional members at a rapid rate, with almost as much moral outrage as they mustered for the accused and quickly defenestrated Democrats, but there’s as yet no window big enough to throw their grab-’em-by-the-wherevers President through it. The Republicans just lost a Senate seat in even deeper red Alabama, thanks in some part to defections from affluent suburban Alabamians, but there’s no so getting past the president’s full-throated endorsement of a nutcase credibly accused of having an unsavory interest in teenaged girls back when he as a 30-something prosecutor. Women are slightly more than half of the electorate in every election, and our guess is that much more than of women will have a problem with that.

Probably even more than that in those affluent suburbs where the women might otherwise be tempted to vote the upcoming Republican tax bill and the salutary effect Trump’s rapid de-regulating has had on their stock portfolios. In our white collar experience they’re almost as likely to tell “me too” stories as are the barmaids and factory women we’re more likely to chat with after hours, and college educated types are more likely to make a federal case of it. Most of our women friends, who range across the entire socio-economic scale, regard Trump as one of those creeps they’ve had to deal with too often in the past, and we can’t blame the Democrats for taking advantage of that.

We usually nod in agreement whenever our women friends tell their “me too” stories, because based on what we’ve seen after so many years in offices and bars we rarely doubt their accounts, and we more rarely raise our concerns about due process and the inevitable backlash. Even when the backlash comes we’ll still hold to our old-fashioned notions about respectful treatment of women, and be glad that our women friends will attest that at least we’re not one of the creeps they’ve to off had to deal with too often in the past. We trust that when the backlash comes they’ll be more open to arguments about due process, and we hope that it works out in the end.

In the meantime that won’t do any good for Andrea Ramsey, who has been offered by the feminist sisterhood as the first sacrifice of their own on the altar of the greater good. We have no idea if she actually did what that man alleged, and although we can remember several times when female co-workers mad sexual comments and innuendoes, and a few times when they were unwelcome, we didn’t make a federal case of it. None of those women were our boss, though, and empathy only gets you so far to the truth. As far as the politics of the moment go, though, it’s hers and some unlucky guy’s tough luck if their innocent. Still, like Emily’s List we wish her well in her future endeavors.

— Bud Norman

A Tie Score in the Sexual Harassment Game

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 Persons of the Year

Time’s “Person of the Year” isn’t President Donald Trump, which surely annoyed him, and he was surely further annoyed by the choice the magazine made. This year’s pick is the “Silence Breakers,” as Time calls all the women who have come forward with tales of inappropriate sexual behavior by prominent men.

That includes the dozen or so women who are still accusing Trump of the same behavior he boasted of in that “Access Hollywood” tape, as well as the eight women who are accusing Trump’s favored Alabama senate candidate of pursuing them when they were teenaged girls, but it also includes a countless number of women alleging bad behavior on the left. This year’s long, long list of men whose reputations and careers have been damaged by allegations of sexual misbehavior also includes several Hollywood heavyweights, some well-known figures in the liberal media, and a couple of once-revered Democratic politicians.

After 52 years Michigan Rep. John Conyers was congress’ most long-serving member, and the beatings he endured during the civil rights crusade and his founding role in the Black Congressional Caucus and a long record of legislative activism had made him a saint-like figure in the Democratic party, but even he stepped down this week after a spate of accusations of sexual harassment by former staffers. He was allowed to do so for plausible reasons of deteriorating health, and it looks as if either his son or nephew will inherit his seat, but his future biographers will have to acknowledge that his career came to a disappointing end. Former comedian and Minnesota Sen. Al Franken was similarly lionized by the left because of his impeccably liberal voting record and harshly anti-Republican rhetoric, and was even considered a contender for the party’s presidential nomination, but a series of women claiming that he had forced kisses and gropes on them have left his career in doubt. By Wednesday most of the Senate’s Democrats and all of the Democratic women in the chamber were calling for his resignation, with Minnesota Public Radio reporting that he would resign today during a scheduled announcement, and although Franken’s staff has “tweeted” that he’s still undecided it’s clear that he won’t be the party’s presidential nominee.

Some prominent Democrats are even apologizing for their support of once-beloved President Bill Clinton despite all his indisputable hound dog ways, and with the support of such media as Time magazine and all those networks and publications that have recently defenestrated prominent men they seem set on a zero-tolerance policy for misbehaving men. It’s such a shrewd political move, especially given that anyone Clinton has outlived his or her usefulness to the party, and that Conyers had clearly grown too old and Franken was always one of those celebrity politicians whose shtick soon grows tiring, that we assume some cynical motive. We nonetheless give some begrudging credit to the party for taking this sensible stand, and wish the Republicans would do the same.

For now our once-beloved Republican party is stuck with Trump and his boastfully hound dog ways, though, as well as that Alabama Senate candidate who sure sounds a a lot like a child molester to us and a lot of other people around the country. Trump and the talk radio talkers and the rest of the modern day Republican apparatus will continue to feign great indignation at the allegations against any Democrat, believing every word the women coming forward might say, but they’ll continue to insist you just can’t believe any woman who might say the same thing about a Republican. That worked well enough back when the Democrats were defending their guys and believing any woman who made allegations against Republicans, but the Democrats’ shrewd move makes that harder to pull off.

There’s no telling for sure, of course, but our guess is that most of these “Silence Breakers” are telling the truth, whether they’re breaking the silence about either a Democrat or a Republican. Some of them are bound to be lying, sooner or later, but the truth has a way of eventually asserting itself. Our experience of working and living in America tells us that men do often misbehave badly, and it takes a cynical political calculation to make that less common we’ll take it.

— Bud Norman

On the Bipartisan Problem of Misbehaving Men

The economy seems to humming along well enough and the stock market is humming along a bit too far ahead of it for our feverous tastes, and for the moment none of the nuclear threats around the world seem especially imminent, but every day seems to bring more stories about men behaving badly toward women. As much as we’d prefers to mull other matters, there’s no ignoring it.

The latest round-up of men credibly accused of sexual misbehavior includes an impeccably Democratic senator who was once considered a presidential contender, a star of the impeccably liberal Public Broadcasting System, and a New York Times reporter who has been a very effective tormenter of Republican President Donald Trump. All the Republican talk radio hosts are having a grand old time of it, and one can hardly blame them, but they also have to deal with a Republican president who has been credibly accused and caught on tape bragging about his bad behavior towards women and is still standing by a Republican senate candidate in Alabama who still stands credibly accused of even worse misbehavior toward considerably younger women, not to mention all the undeniable Fox News scandals.

It’s such a bipartisan mess that neither party or any political ideology will emerge unscathed, which is fine by us, but there’s no avoiding it even when you stop reading the news. Last week we stopped for a beer at a favorite dive of ours on the north end, and an old friend invited us to join her and a couple of other women on the still-warm patio, and we found ourselves in the middle of yet another conversation about men behaving badly toward women. All of their hair-raising tails about fellow students and co-workers and passersby seemed completely believable, based on what we’ve observed over the past decades of American life, and when our friend frankly declared that women have a certain unshakeable fear of men we could only sympathize.

Being the nocturnal sorts given to long brooding walks, we’ve often found ourselves on an an empty and dimly street-lighted avenue when suddenly a woman will round the corner just ahead of us and start walking in the same direction, and we assured our friend and her friends that from half a block away we can palpably sense her anxiety about the big scary man who is suddenly following her. Just to let them know there are still some nice guys out there, we explained how we always handled the situation by stopping to tie a shoe, even though it’s not come untied, and then crossing the street and looking at nothing in particular in shop window for a while, and then taking a smoke break until she gets safely behind a locked door or turns a corner or at least gets far enough ahead of us that we are no longer shivering with that uncomfortable sense of her fear of us.

God knows that woman’s fear of us isn’t our fault, but she doesn’t know that, and God knows and we know that it’s also not her fault. Some big and scary men have suddenly been suddenly been following us as rounded the corner on some empty and dimly street during some of our late night walks, so we can empathize with their anxiety, and for reasons that have nothing to do with partisan politics we strive not to menace anyone. Nor do we remark on women’s breasts and buttocks, no matter how remarkable they might be, and we most certainly don’t touch them without an explicit request, and we even try to lay off the saltier jokes in our repertoire until a woman has made clear she’s likely to re-tell them to her friends,.

Our old friend vouched to her friends that we’re among the rare good guys, although she also noted that we’re old-fashioned Republicans and she’s a newfangled Democrat. We asked them what percentage of men they figured were among the good guys, and were distressed to hear them all agree that about 80 percent of men are irredeemable pigs. The next day we ran into an older woman friend of longstanding who still performs in the local burlesque revues and is quite a colorful character in her own right, and when we put the same question to her she figured that only one out of five men are irredeemable pigs, which seemed more right to us, and she also vouched that we’re among the good guys even though we’re old-fashioned Republicans and of course she’s another one of those new fangled Democrats.

There seems to be a bipartisan consensus about men not behaving badly toward women, and we hope it prevails despite how awful both parties are at the moment. One of those friends of our old friend at the north side dive was a very young and very attractive woman who paid us a very welcome compliment that might be construed as sexual harassment if it had come from some big scary man, but instead of filing a human rights complaint we’ll relish the non-threatening remark and hold out hope that whatever percentage of men are irredeemable pigs, no matter what party or ideology, they’ll eventually figure it out.

— Bud Norman

Sen. Franken Takes the Spotlight

The latest in a long, long list of prominent men accused of sexual misbehavior is Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, and the former comedian’s timing couldn’t be worse. Not so very long go the Democratic party and its media allies would have rallied to the defense of a such a stalwart liberal soldier, but at the moment they’re unable to do so.

A popular Los Angeles radio and television personality named Leeann Twidden told the local American Broadcasting Company affiliate that Franken forced a kiss on her and briefly groped her while they were rehearsing a skit on a USO tour of of the middle east in 2006, and she had a picture of Franken grinning as he reached to fondle her breasts as she slept on the flight back home. Franken issued a statement that said he remembered the rehearsal differently but apologized but apologized nonetheless, and described the photo as a joke that he know admits wasn’t funny, and after that was met with widespread criticism by his fellow Democrats and their media allies, he offered an even more apologetic apology.

That once would have sufficed for Franken, who is beloved in the Democratic party for his undeniably sharp with and his fund-raising prowess as a celebrity politician, but fellow Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar was still demanding an ethics investigation, and so was minority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and so were several other prominent congressional Democrats, and by day’s end Franken himself was demanding an investigation and promising his full cooperation. Our guess is he’ll probably keep his job, but might well be censured by the Senate and that all the crazy talk about him launching a presidential race will be quashed for a while, and will never again be quite so beloved in the Democratic party.

Which is fine by us, as we never liked the guy. He was often funny back when he was writing and starring on “Saturday Night Live,” which was reportedly a drug-drenched den of rampant sexual harassment backstage at the time, but the wit devolved into witless ad hominem attacks when he switched to politics, and he first won election with some suspicious vote-counting, and despite all the religion-bashing he did back in his show biz days he’s also posed as a paradigm of political correctness and therefore more righteous than any of those holier-than-thou types on the Republican side. Franken has a goofy smile and endearing self-effacing quality, but he also has a well-documented temper that occasionally becomes violent and is widely considered something of a jerk by those who run into him off-camera. He’s long claimed to be the loyal long-time husband of a wife bravely battling alcoholism, but he was married to her during that USO tour and his apology didn’t mention his wife or family.

Franken is also an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, but as one of the first politicians to substitute celebrity for credentials in a run for office and making witless ad hominem insults a part of the political discourse we also blame him in part for Trump’s presidency.

As awful as Franken’s behavior apparently was, though, it’s just one woman and it happened a while back and was not nearly so awful as what several other Democratic politicians have done without suffering the opprobrium of their party. President Bill Clinton immediately comes to mind, more recently even New York Rep. Anthony Weiner got a tentative defense for his weird sexual proclivities right up until he went to jail for them, and that’s not to mention all the decades of indulgences for the entire Kennedy family. The Democrats haven’t claimed to champion old-fashioned values of chivalrous manhood and chaste womanhood for a long time, which has long spared them the added charge of hypocrisy when these things pop up, so the party used to take a more forgiving attitude toward their own members if not any Republican who stood similarly charged.

Lately, though, the Democrats find themselves obliged to be more strict. The long list of prominent men who have recently been accused of sexual misbehavior includes a lot of heavyweight Hollywood types who of course were big Democrat donors and previously added some glitzy cache to the party’s image, as well as some media and academic types who are also associated with the party’s high-brow image, and having one of its sitting Senators on the list is no longer tolerate. By now well more than half of the party’s voters are women, as demonstrated by all the exit polls in every race everywhere for the past few decades, and by now many of them — ranging from movie stars to office workers to waitresses — are throughly fed up with such behavior no matter the party affiliation of the accused.

The Democrats suddenly find themselves the champions of chivalrous behavior, even as they write polemics against toxic masculinity, and the defenders of chaste womanhood, even as they celebrate women’s sexual empowerment and freedom to choose whatever is required to deal with the consequences, and as complicated as that is it clearly doesn’t allow any forgiveness for Franken or any of those other Hollywood guys. For now the Democrats and their media allies are no longer making even any excuses for Clinton, and for all his fund-raising prowess Franken never did achieve that level of influence in the party. There’s also another reason all Democratic men are advised to go straight home to their wives and avoid any sort of encounters with other women along the way for the foreseeable future.

As ridiculous as the Democratic party looks at the moment, the Republicans have more pressing problems of their own that the Democrats are eager to exploit. The Grand Old Party is currently running a candidate in a special senatorial election down in Alabama who stands credibly accused by nine named women of far-creepier-than-Franken behavior, and so far he still has the half-hearted endorsement of a Republican president still stands credibly accused by more than a dozen named women of the creepier-than-Frank behavior that everyone in America heard him bragging about on that “Access Hollywood” tape. One can hardly blame the Democrats for wanting to be known as the party with zero tolerance for such behavior, and concluding that giving a pass to the small-fry likes of Franken is hardly worth blowing the opportunity.

Up until Trump was nominated and elected the Republicans used to enjoy that zero tolerance reputation, even if it did get them branded as the party of self-righteous old fuddy-duddies back during the go-go ’90s of the Clinton era, and it’s hard to see how they’ll get it back.

Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore poses as a champion of old-fashioned chivalrous manhood and chaste womanhood, and with an admirable contempt for that newfangled gobbledygook about toxic masculinity and empowered female sexuality, but by now you’d have to be a die-hard fan not to conclude that he used to be that creepy 30-something guy hitting on teenage girls at the mall and is now lying about it attempting to trash the reputation of the women he once preyed on. No matter what Trump is eventually forced to say about it, the creepier-than-Frank accusations against still stand as credibly as ever, and so long as he remains in office the party won’t have any claim to zero tolerance for such behavior.

The Republican party’s senatorial campaign office and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell have said they believe Moore’s accusers and have withdrawn their support of his campaign, as have many other Republicans officials, as well as such such rank-and-file Republicans as ourselves, and Trump might yet join us, but it won’t amount to a complete reputation of such conduct. Even if they’re not a majority of the electorate a lot of those Alabama Republicans who defiantly vote for Moore, Trump will still be the president and putative leader of the party, and neither the religious nor the secular wings of the party will go untainted.

As cynical and opportunistic as the Democrats’ newfound religion clearly is, we welcome it nonetheless. All of those women who make up more than half of their reliable votes are quite right to be outraged by Moore and Trump, as far as we’re concerned, and they’re just as right to be outraged by Franken and all the rest of those sleazy show-biz types. There are a few Republican politicians who have staked out a similarly non-partisan position on all the bi-partisan sexual misconduct that has come up over the past several decades, along with such grass-roots Republicans as ourselves, by now by they’re all considered “establishment” and Trump is still the president.

Just maybe, though, there’s a chance that both parties will someday agree not to put up with stuff any longer. Our hope is that chivalrous manhood long endures, and that whatever “toxic masculinity” is it disappears, and that women are sexually empowered, whatever that means, yet chaste womanhood is still protected. At this point we’re no counting on either party to bring that happy day, though.

— Bud Norman

Things Go Further South Down South

That awful Senate race down in Alabama somehow got more awful yet on Wednesday, and by now it’s hard to see how it ends well for the Republican party. Two more women came forward to the Washington Post alleging Republican candidate Roy Moore acted quite creepily toward them when they were teenagers working at the mall Moore was said to hang out at, yet another woman told a similar but even creepier story to the Alabama-based and widely read AL.com site, which brings the running total to eight accusers.

None of the women have any apparent reason to risk their reputations among their mostly Republican Alabama neighbors by telling a lie, all have named and unnamed women who recall them telling the very same stories from time the incidents allegedly happened, and the national and state media have found co-workers of Moore who recall his well known predilection for teenaged girls, along with workers at the mall who recall that Moore was not welcome there because of frequent complaints about his behavior there. Already it adds up a compelling case, with more sure to come, and so far the rebuttal hasn’t been at all convincing.

Moore himself went on Sean Hannity’s exceedingly friendly radio show  before the latest accusations, and wound up answering questions about whether he’d ever dated teenage girls while a 30-something assistant district attorney by saying “not generally, no,” and “it would be out of my customary behavior,” and regarding one of his specific accusers he replied that “If we did go out on dates, then we did, but I don’t recall that,” and offered assurances that “I don’t remember dating any girl without permission from her mother.” The former state Supreme Court justice’s lawyer has proved just as inept, trying to ingratiate himself to the dark-skinned and funny-sounding-named host on a liberal network by noting that different cultures have rules regarding courtship, which prompted his co-host to note that “He’s from Canada,” and he kept referring to an even-darker skinned host on another liberal network by constantly calling him by a chummy nickname, which prompted his host to say “That’s what not what my mother named me, and I’d never call you by anything other than your given name,” and the rest of it went as badly.

Moore still has his defenders in the most die-hard redoubts of the conservative media, but they’re also having a hard time of it. Even Hannity expressed doubts after some advertisers threatened to pull out, although he’s gone back to his presumption of innocence after winning one back. On Wednesday he led his Fox News show with decades-old news about Presidents Bill Clinton’s hound dog ways, rightly recalling how many Democrats who are now offended by Moore’s behavior were willing to give their a man pass for purely partisan reasons, and so far as we can discern the argument is that Hannity and other Moore apologists are therefore entitled to do the same for their man. Right-wing talk radio king Rush Limbaugh reminded his audience that Moore was a registered Democrat at the time he was alleged to have been the creepy 30-something guy hanging out at the mall, and as far we can discern the argument is that whatever Moore might have done it should be held against his Democratic opponent, then went on a longer rant about how it’s all being cooked up by Republican majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the rascally Republican establishment, which fears the populist insurgency that President Donald Trump has unleashed.

That’s a popular theory among all the talk radio show callers and the commenters on every conservative web site, too, but it’s a hard sell to the rest of the country. McConnell has indeed clearly stated that he believes the women who have accused Moore, the official national Republican party has withdrawn its financial and logistical support for Moore’s campaign, and several other prominent officials have taken the same stand, but so have such grass roots old-fashioned heartland Republican conservatives such as ourselves. Those establishment Republicans have also let us down more than a few times over the past years, but they’ve a won a few battles along the way, and we have to figure that if they were smart to enough to come up with eight ordinary Alabama women and former district attorney office employees and mall workers with corroborating witnesses and documentary evidence in their devious plots they probably would have been able to repeal and replace Obamacare and pass a massive tax cut by now.

Those establishment Democrats are by now admitting that Clinton was an indefensible hound dog, as Hannity and Limbaugh and the rest of die-hard insurgents gleefully note, but the only ones who have consistently maintained an anti-hound dog stand up to now are those establishment Republicans and such grass roots types as ourselves. Way back before the biggest Clinton scandals McConnell led the effort to expel Republican Sen. Robert Packwood from Congress for sexual harassment, he voted to impeach Clinton for lying under oath about his well-documented hound behavior, he’s applying the same standards of proof during the current imbroglio, so we’re pleased to see he’s earning some begrudging respect from his die-hard Democratic critics.

There’s a big chunk of the party that hates him and the rest of the Republican establishment all the more for it, though, and it’s not clear where the party is heading. Putatively Republican President Donald Trump has only warily waded into the controversy so far, citing his preoccupation with a trip to Asia, and upon his return he pretended not to hear any of the reporters’ shouted questions about Moore, so it’s not at all clear what he’ll do. Trump supported McConnell’s choice in the Republican primary, which mightily annoyed his supporters in the die-hard redoubts of the right wing, and although he did so half-heartedly and with open reservations he’s not tied to Moore, but he did endorse Moore after the primary, and fully cutting ties will be troublesome.

Trump is politically savvy enough to know that he doesn’t want to associated with a candidate who is credibly accused by numerous women of creepy behavior, but he can’t join with his party’s Senate majority leader or his own Attorney General in saying “I believe the women” without the next question asked by those pesky reporters being why the public shouldn’t also believe the larger number of credible women who accuse him of creepy behavior. After an audiotape of Trump boasting to an “Access Hollywood” host that he grabbed women by their wherevers several witnesses went on the record about how he had done just that. A short time later the media dug up an old tape of Trump yukking it up with shock jock Howard Stern about how he liked to invade the dressing rooms at the teenaged beauty pageants he produced, which was followed by by interviews with several former pageant contestants who recalled Trump doing exactly about what he’d bragged about.

Trump won anyway with the Hannity defense that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s hound dog husband had gotten away with worse, because of course none of those women were lying, and therefore Republicans are entitled to a pass, but these days even the Democrats aren’t defending the formerly lovable rascal and most of the American seems fed up with such behavior no matter the hound dog’s party affiliation. The official statement from Moore’s campaign about the latest accusations says that “If you are a liberal and hate Judge Moore, apparently he groped you. If you are a conservative and love Judge Moore, you know these allegations are a political farce.” It’s true enough that if you’re the sort of conservative who loves Moore you probably somehow know these allegations are untrue, and might eke out a win in Alabama, but around the rest of the country and even in the establishment sort of Republican households that’s not a winning electoral majority.

Which seems to leave Trump and the rest of party he putatively leads in a no-win situation. They can enrage a vocal and energetic and significantly sized part of the conservative coalition by jettisoning Moore, or embrace a candidate who was the Democrats’ dream caricature of a Bible-thumping and gay-bashing and law-defying theocrat even before he started looking a lot like the creepy 30-something guy who used to hang out at the mall. The Republicans were already stereotyped as the party of old white men, and as much as it would pain us all to lose a Senate seat in Alabama of all places it might be worth it to avoid the reputation as the party of dirty old white men.

— Bud Norman