Vaudeville vs Villainy II
The Russians have landed. Kompromat is easy in the USA, especially among liberals who seem eager to shoot down men, not for actual sexual assault, but for vaudeville and clumsy flirting. My girlfriend is calling this wave of overreaction a new "red menace." Republican operatives and trolls can send a few hints to colleagues of any targetted progressive and whoosh! Let the gossip percolate!
The newly fallen victims of American Kompromat:
—NPR's Leonard Lopate for risqué talk after work with colleagues from another department.
—Detroit's progressive, pulitzer prize-winning Stephen Henderson for flirting after hours.
— NPRs Garrison Keillor for unwanted advances.
Surely the O'Reilly's and Weinstein's of the world deserved to be removed from their posts, but the recent stories sound too flimsy to warrant the punishments meted out.
Why fire the the clumsy Vaudevillians when you could be going after the actual VILLAINS: the THOUSANDS of CEOs, HR staff, lawyers, bankers and accountants, male and female, who engineer and enable the non-living wages of millions. Those people cause hunger, strife and broken families. THAT's abuse – and come to think of it, when people are hungry, holding down several jobs, and sleeping in their offices, their sexuality is more than assaulted, it's completely extinguished.
In contrast, what have our media heroes done? Many have shed light on such injustice. They may have also made a number of foolish remarks, an awkward pass or two, a clumsy photo shoot. But surely they can be handled through other means –suspension, sensitivity training, etc. I've had female bosses and co-workers make passes at me, place their head in my lap and break into tears, jump on my lap to share a car ride, take revenge on me when I rejected advances, make rude comments about my underwear.... but not once did I ever call for their being fired.
If the women's movement can't draw the line and direct its energy to real abuses of power, the growing oligarchy will turn us all back into peasants. And THAT's a condition where sexual assault will fluorish.
