Even The Wolf likely can't clean up Harvey Weinstein's pending troubles

I’m not sure that’s a road we really want to go down. The next guy will say “she was wearing a fleece jacket and a padded bra, does it really count?”

 

Yeah, I forgot that angle of the story.

I don't disagree with that at all. I just wondered if the body armor might complicate it.

 

The attempt to characterize it is honorable, I guess, but irrelevant.

Al Franken took a photo, for laughs, where he at the very least pretended to grab a sleeping woman's breasts without her consent.

 

I'm not sure that, in November 2017, the question is whether it's criminal or not. And given the current environment, and the context of her story, if it all went down the way she said it went down, then yeah, it's certainly something about which Franken should be very embarrassed.

On the other thread, I said he should "resign today." I'm not sure that I'm totally ready to walk that back yet, but: If We The People continue to insist on employing entertainment-industry figures as public servants, we're going to have to realize that if one's résumé is entirely in the entertainment industry, one is very likely going to have in one's history a stupid social miscue that wasn't particularly frowned upon in your then-circle of friends/co-workers. At some point, we may have to start making allowances for these things in people's pasts. Or maybe stop basing so much of our voting on "name recognition."

 

Her thinking he “groped” her, off that photo, is a misestimation. I don’t think he’s touching her.

The kiss story, however, is fucking awful.

 

Speaking of more accusations ...

Spacey scandal: Old Vic's investigation finds 20 counts of alleged inappropriate behavior

 

If we don’t make allowances, we increase the chances future generations won’t need to make allowances.

 

I think you and I agree on a lot of things, but that's really sugarcoating things. This isn't like Franken used the wrong fork.

 

When do we reexamine the multiple claims against Al Gore?

Two More Massage Therapists Accuse Al Gore of Sexual Assault

 

Sure. But just remember that I and several other board liberals are immediately and without qualification calling for Franken to resign, and his accusation pile is a pittance next to the current President.

 

Agreed, and that's why I'm still on "resign today." I'm just saying that in a world where Dick Whitman would lose to John Mellencamp in a race for governor of Indiana because people have heard of John Mellencamp, despite the fact that Whitman is law school-educated and has no skeletons in his closet while Mellencamp spent 30 years as a rock star, people can't act shocked, SHOCKED! when it turns out that Mellencamp lived like a rock star for those 30 years.