Here's another thing that bothers me about Franken's assassination: the pattern [View all]
it's important to be careful with allegations of sexual assault and impropriety - people's lives and reputations can be ruined by them. Both accused and accusers.
When faced with an accusation against a public figure, we have to weigh it against what we consider their character, and what we might expect them to do based on what we know of them. Each additional accusation weighs towards someone's character, that they could behave this way, that there is a pattern here, that the stories are credible, similar, backed up by the evidence of past conversations or written matter. Often the other women in a serial offender's life will confirm that things get creepy with them.
We see this happen with people like Bill Cosby. the accusations are credible, numerous, similar, and involve two people alone, with one of them using his privileged status to prey on the other.
And this is where the "pattern" that Franken's accusers describe run against the rocks of the obvious bullshit they are pedaling. Nearly every accusation is about something that happened in broad daylight, in front of multiple witnesses, and often while being photographed. The one that wasn't was someone thought Al was going to kiss her, but then he didn't.
Are there people who can claim that Franken cornered them somewhere alone and threatened their careers or offered them rewards for sexual favors? Did he flash them? And what do his colleagues say? Instead of stories coming out about how creepy Franken is, we get letters from hundreds of his associates vouching for him.
It just doesn't add up. The pattern is all wrong. There may not even be a pattern there, if most of the accusers are KGB agents or whatever (which hasn't been ruled out).
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