Moore, Franken, Trump, Sex, and Power

Harvey Weinstein. Bill Cosby. Bill O’Reilly. Bill Clinton. Kevin Spacey. Louis C.K. Michael Oreskes. Roy Moore. Donald J. Trump.

Abusing power to get sexual jollies is as old as humanity. After all, what is power for​?

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” How much Roy Moore smoke must choke Alabama before it sets off a fire alarm?

Of course, this is politics, and as I’ve recently written, for many Americans today, politics trumps everything. And so we come to this: Alabama Republicans sticking behind a sexual predator and molester of underage girls, because it’s their team, their side. They can’t vote for the other guy. Can’t give the other side a win.

One Alabaman I heard interviewed said he believed Moore because Moore has always been an upright man of God. But how does he know that? Well, Moore has always postured as a man of God. I’m reminded of the old Soviet joke: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” Moore pretends to be godly, and Alabama Republicans pretend to believe him.

And now Al Franken. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the photo. It’s obvious he thought he was just being funny (he was a professional comic); not taking sexual advantage, but mocking that. It was stupid and juvenile, but that’s all it was. (There was also a kiss — while rehearsing a script that included a kiss.) Franken has acknowledged behaving badly, and has apologized.

President Trump — while refusing to condemn Moore — tweeted: “The Al Frankenstein picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps?”

Really bad? Did Trump forget this little bagatelle: “I moved on her like a bitch. I couldn’t get there and she was married. Then all-of-a-sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything . . . I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything . . . grab them by the pussy.”

(Trump said that was just talk, he’d never actually done it. The number of women saying otherwise has reached 16. Only seven have accused Roy Moore, so far.)

“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The pot calling the kettle black.” Trump’s attacking Franken for sexual misbehavior shows, yet again, that he suffers from a severe psychological defect. Self-perception divorced from reality.

Some have seen the Weinstein story as triggering a witch-hunt. Well, some real evil has been exposed, including Roy Moore’s, but when Al Franken gets sucked in, with what is really a very trivial transgression, then it does start to look like a witch-hunt. But meantime, with all the men who have lately been punished and made pariahs for their sexual misdeeds, why not Trump? Former “family values” Republicans continue supporting him. Politics trumps everything.

There is no comparison between Franken’s behavior and Trump’s own. Asked about it, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made this remarkable statement: “Senator Franken has admitted wrongdoing and the President hasn’t. I think that’s a very clear distinction.”

I agree with her.

This is the world we live in.

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