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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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Franken was right to step down.
“Hey, it’s just a joke” stopped being a valid justification sometime between my parents and my grandparents generation.
Even if that conduct was “normal” and “everyone did it” doesn’t fly either- because there’s plenty of times women will just go along because they’re afraid of what happens when they don’t. Or because peer pressure, or, you’re Senator Al Franken and they’re scared of loosing their job.
Truth is, it doesn’t matter if it’s accurate or not. The behavior was deeply inappropriate for anyone, never mind a senator, and as a senator he should have known cameras are everywhere and photos are very easy to misconstrue.
That said, he didn’t resign nearly as gracefully as they seem to remember- it took prettty much every female democrat politician stepping up and demanding it before he did.
You're misremembering how the whole scandal went down. Virtually all the allegations against them had huge holes in their stories and many of them were just straight up proven nothingburgers. It was such an obviously targeted character assassination. The ONE instance where he said "it was obviously a joke" was a picture that was taken where it was pretty fucking obvious that it was a joke. The comedian in that picture had similar pictures of her wrapping her leg around a married Robin Williams And pretending to smack his butt on tour. The pic of Al Franken pretending to "grope" her boobs while she's sleeping in bullet proof armor is a gag and not even the thing she made a complaint about (and in the pic his hands are very visibly NOT actually touching her).
Is it okay? It's definitely something I wouldn't have done, but I hardly find it an issue to lose your job over 15 years after the fact.
Anyway, check your facts before continuing to hate on the guy. Just remember that not all allegations are true, and virtually every senator that asked him to step down ended up regretting it later.
Am I remembering all this incorrectly? Because from what I remember, none of his objectionable behavior happened while he was a Senator, and in fact it happened before he even ran for office. Some of it happened in the context of a USO show he was acting in. I'm not making excuses for his behavior, but I think it's a very bad precedent to hold someone in office to a higher standard retroactively. I think Franken deserved a chance to keep his job and show redemption.
But contrast this directly with Menendez, who is accused of much worse behavior, while in office, that relates directly to his integrity.
Of course menendez should step down. And be prosecuted and all that.
Yes, he’s worse, my point is, Franken wasn’t wrong to step down.
Losing*
Loose is the opposite of tight