The Franken anomaly, a few thoughts

[planetc]

It strikes me that the swirl of stories about the accusations against Sen. Franken has a feature the other swirls don't have. It has two groups of women speaking out, and their messages are in stark contrast.

For the last year, we have had a number of prominent men hauled up for public scrutiny by groups of women who all testify to sexual harassment or worse, much worse, from these men. The pattern has been that one or two women speak up, and in a matter of days, at least ten more hit #metoo. This is the story: that lots of women have the same complaint to make. And it's a great thing that women as a class are now being believed, or at least listened to, in substantial numbers. There was the occasional whispered rumor about Bill Cosby for years, and no one thought there was a story to run with. But once the number of women passed 40 and approached 50, even our myopic press finally decided there might just be something there. Excellent, if belated. But here's where the Franken stories contrast with the standard story.

After the first story from Ms Tweeden, nothing much happened until the second woman with the State Fair story chipped in. And now we have the two anonymous women. Not, as been noted on DU, the best conceivable testimony. So, first, there was no wave of corroboration following the first story. But even before the last two accusers, we had two groups of women testifying to the opposite of the complainers: first a group of office and professional staff, and then a larger group of SNL women, and both groups wanted to register the fact that they had good professional relationships with Franken, and no monkey business. So, we have two groups of yea-sayers, all willing to sign their names to their statements, and together the two groups number 39 women, if my numbers are correct---14 professional staff, and 25 SNL women. At this moment in time, the score is 39 for to 4 against, if we count anonymous complaints, and 39 to 2 if we don't.

Recent experience has taught us that the credibility of complaints is increased by the numbers of women who want to complain. We don't have any experience with separate batches of women who came to praise, not accuse. So, which group should we believe?

I can imagine a scenario in which both groups could be found credible, which is that most of the time, Franken behaves like a decent guy and women who work for or with him have nothing to complain of, BUT he has this secret urge, mostly suppressed, to grope when the opportunity presents itself. If this were to be the case, then both groups of women would be telling the truth, and we'd know what to think. I will leave you to make up your own minds about that scenario.

We are certainly at a welcome and long overdue moment in our history, when women's testimony is no longer automatically discounted. This country and this world seem to be full of Anita Hills finally being heard. But we also have our usual and normal duty to get stories straight, to check the witnesses out, and avoid accidental injustice if at all possible. If Franken doesn't have the secret groper urge, then we will have to account for the other witnesses testifying. If the professional group and the SNL group wish to speak up, we need to weigh testimony, and if we don't believe them, say why.

I have managed to get to this point without mentioning the white hot political fumes poisoning our country, but feelings are running high. I just wanted to point out that the Franken story does not yet make sense, and we should insist that it does before deciding we know what's happening.

[chowder66]

1. He's been respectful in the face of their accusations which says a lot.

He also apologized to Tweedon and it was accepted plus he welcomed an investigation.

His situation is being handled more eloquently than, really, any others.

[localroger]

2. Also, after he invited the investigation, Tweeden backed off

...accepted his apology and said oh no investigation not necessary. Considering she is a proven liar and partisan hack in other contexts this smells an awful lot like she doesn't want that investigation because it will find that she has again been a liar and partisan hack and cooked it all up as a hit job.

Generally, yes, we should tend to believe the women in cases like this. But not absolutely. If you are too consistent with anything like that it can be used as a weapon against you. So yes, you tend to believe the women, but keep an open mind and pay attention to what follows. What followed for Franken is very different from what followed with Trump, Weinstein, Spacey, Moore, et al. There are no credible additional accusers of Franken and multiple groups of female colleagues speaking up for him. The incident that is on record was in public, in front of the "victim's" husband, in the context of a USO show which are historically bawdy. And it is oh so convenient for so many monsters that Franken is "in the barrel," innit.

[JI7]

3. Huge change in her tone after he called for investgation