I don’t want to brag, but I have never taken a picture of my genitals.
I have also never grabbed anyone’s rear end at work, and no one has grabbed mine.
There was a time when I desperately wanted to date a 14-year-old, but that was when I was 13.
So, I do have to admit that there are some things I don’t understand about the wave of sexual misconduct revelations that is sweeping the nation. Like, what took so long?
Did we really need a “historic moment” to know that Oxford County Sheriff Wayne Gallant was violating social norms when he texted out a selfie that showed what’s under his duty belt?
Does anybody else need to hear that most workplaces would consider that a firing offense? If it’s not clear now, let’s get that message out.
And can we retire the use of the term “witch hunt” for the process of exposing powerful men who harassed or assaulted the less powerful people around them?
The thing about witch hunts is, witches don’t really exist. People couldn’t defend themselves against charges that had been hallucinated. What we are living through is disturbing and discouraging, but it’s not mass hysteria. These offenses are real, they are happening all around us, and we all kind of knew it, even if we preferred not to notice.
And my liberal friends need to stop complaining about “due process,” as in “Al Franken was denied due process.”
No, he wasn’t. If Al Franken had been expelled from the Senate or sent to prison, you could say that he had been denied his day in court. But he resigned voluntarily.
That happened after a majority of his Democratic colleagues, including 13 women, plus Republican Susan Collins, said that they didn’t trust him anymore, and he determined, to his credit, that his political toxicity would not be good for the causes he cared about or the people he represented. He could have hung on and let the Ethics Committee investigate the charges. He could have run for re-election, and he may have even won. Why not? Voters have a fairly low estimation of politicians’ character and are more motivated by partisanship than idealism. Instead, though, another one of the 5.5 million residents of Minnesota will fill the seat until the next election. That’s plenty of process.
This “national conversation” on sexual harassment that we are supposed to be having focuses almost entirely on a relatively small number of celebrity offenders, over whom we can sit in judgment without paying much of a cost. It lets the rest of us off the hook, so we don’t have to take on any difficult aspects of our own behavior.
I am just as fearful and awkward about this subject as the next guy. I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I grew up in this culture. I learned very little about sex in school and never talked about it with my parents. For a long time, what I knew about women came from older kids who said things that sound a lot like the monologue that future President Donald Trump delivered to Billy Bush and his crew on the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.
“I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her,” Trump is heard saying at one point. “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – 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.”
Not exactly the Gettysburg Address, but it is about the most succinct description that you will find of the phenomenon we have now been forced to acknowledge. “When you’re a star … You can do anything.”
What has changed is not that men are getting in trouble for doing things that used to be OK. It’s that stars are not getting out of trouble for doing things that everyone has always known were wrong.
So, while I can proudly say that I have never used my cellphone for the same purposes as a certain former sheriff, I can’t say that I’ve always been braver than pathetic Billy Bush when someone I wanted to impress took advantage of their star power to say demeaning things.
That might seem like a small sin, but it’s what lets all the other stuff happen. And that’s what we need to talk about.
Greg Kesich is the editorial page editor. He can be contacted at:
Twitter: gregkesich
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