Close encounters of the Bush I type
…and by “the Bush I type” I mean the fanny-grope during the photo-op.
So now we have a new accusation against Al Franken by a woman named Lindsay Menz:
According to Menz, she attended the Minnesota State Fair with her husband and father in the summer of 2010, almost two years after Franken was elected to the Senate…
Then, as her husband held up her phone and got ready to snap a photo of the two of them, Franken “pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear,” Menz said. “It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek.”
Menz’s husband and several relatives say she told them shortly after the incident occurred, and there’s the following exchange on her Facebook page way back when:
Menz posted the photo with Franken on Facebook at the time, on August 27, 2010. Her sister, Cari Thunker, commented under the photo: “Sorry, but you two aren’t Bibles (sic) width apart” — a reference, Thunker explained to CNN, to how physically close Menz and Franken were in the photo.
Menz responded to her sister on Facebook: “Dude — Al Franken TOTALLY molested me! Creeper!” (The exchange is visible to Menz’s Facebook friends.)
That Facebook exchange could have merely been a joke referring to the closeness of the two in the photo (that’s what her sister had noticed), because the tone of Menz’s response seems rather light. However, if you take everything into consideration—the whole picture, as it were, including the Facebook post from 2010—I’d say this accusation has an excellent chance of being true, although we’ll never know with absolute certainty.
But for the sake of the rest of this post, let’s assume that it is true.
What on earth is this strange passivity on the part of groped women about? Seriously—this is a young women raised in the supposedly brave new world of female empowerment, and she didn’t do anything immediately (like, for example, let out a yelp and jump away from him)? Just the startle reaction alone might have caused such a thing, but apparently nothing of the sort happened. She says:
Lindsay Menz told CNN that she walked away as soon as the photo was taken, without saying anything to the then-first term senator. When she reconnected with her husband moments later, she told him…
And he said Franken was already gone.
Perhaps Lindsay Menz failed to react quickly because of the element of surprise and disbelief, but I still find it a bit odd that she didn’t seem to react at all in the photo. If more women raised a public stink if something like that happened to them when it happens, I bet it would have a chilling effect on the abusive behavior.
How many politicians have photos taken with random people? Just about every single one, practically every day they’re out in public. There are millions upon millions of photos of “me and the famous politician” out there, and every single woman (or perhaps the men, too) who possesses one now has a weapon in her hands to destroy whatever politician she might have it in for.
I don’t like that situation.
In the same article, Lindsay Menz describes a photo taken at the same venue with another politician, Minnesota Rep. John Kline:
As she was getting ready to take a picture with Kline, Menz said the congressman asked her whether they should “mutually put our arms around each other” — an interaction that struck her as being in stark contrast with what she had experienced moments ago with Franken…
[When later interviewed by CNN for this story, this exchange occurred] “If somebody wanted a picture, I would ask: should I put my arm on your back or your shoulder?” Kline said. He said that as a congressman, he was particularly inclined to do this when taking photos with women.
Now, there’s a smart—and very prescient—man.
So I went back and looked at a couple of photos I have of the “me and candidate X” variety. I was surprised to see that in each of them, the candidate in question had his hand very visibly on my shoulder. Now, if the photos had been very very close-cropped, I suppose their hands wouldn’t be seen. But they are very obvious in the photos as taken.
I suggest that every politician start adopting that approach immediately.
The problem with this entire hysteria as it plays out is it seems like the consequences for the accused ‘offenders’ is almost always the same no matter the degree of supposed behavior.
I guess it’s a sign of our times that the freakout would be to the nth degree when in reality most rational people if someone put their hand in a borderline area or made an unwanted pass would put the encounter in their memory banks and think ‘what a jerk’ and then move on but now we need tearful social media posts followed by banishment (unless a ‘D’ politician then, reasons)from acceptable society.
The line between rude and assault has been blurred to a ridiculous level by some of these people. This was all foreseeable I guess when you think about the college rape trials of the last few years. Pathetic.
Next up…Charlie Rose!
My first roommate in college used to randomly pinch girl’s buttocks (those that met his standards). His claimed it was his Italian roots at work.
Was it an Italian tradiiton? I googled it and this is what I came up with from the blog http://livingwithabroadintuscany.blogspot.com/2012/11/is-bottom-pinching-in-italy-legal.html
From the post:
“…I thought I should also comment on the allegations of Italian men pinching women’s bottoms. This practice was rumored to be common some years ago but is said to be pretty much obsolete now. I have not heard of it happening to any women I know. However, while searching for other opinions about Italian men, I read this entry on a blogger website:
“In 2001, the Italian Supreme Court ruled a man grabbing a woman’s ass was not sexual harassment as long as the act was not premeditated. (Does ‘premeditated’ mean the defense team must prove the man sat at home for three weeks and planned exactly how he was going to pinch the buttocks?)”
Source: http://www.americangirlsareeasy.com/book/2003/04/italian_men.php
I wanted to verify if this was true, so I conducted some research to get to, shall we say, the bottom of the matter. Indeed, I found that a court in Rome did rule in January of 2001 that it was not a crime for a man to pinch or touch a woman’s bottom provided it was “a sudden or isolated action.” In this case, a supervisor patted a female co-worker and then threatened to hinder her career if the incident were reported. She sued and won. The boss’s “hands-on” approach initially resulted in an 18-month prison sentence. Yet a higher court ruled in his favor, as the incident occurred “only once and impulsively.” Judges also ruled there was no proof the gesture was sexual.
But before you rush online to buy your ticket to Italy, I should warn that Italy’s High Court in Rome overturned the ruling in July of 2003. The panel of judges said: “Fondling buttocks unquestionably constitutes a sexual act because the perpetrator commits a substantive and concrete intrusion into the victim’s sexual sphere. Such acts, albeit superficial, amount to assault.”
Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/941804/posts
In the old days, something like that was likely to get the guys face slapped and that would be the end of it. Here’s wishing for the good old days.
I’m not advocating for such behavior, but it seems we’ve criminalized nearly everything in response to our attitude that physical responses aren’t acceptable anymore.
Does a pinch constitute fondling, or does it need to be open handed? And how long does the contact need to be to be considered fondling?
Hmmm. More research needed.
By the way, another post on the blog, titled “Is Italy a safe and healthy place for young women (and men)?” suggests that while flirting is more common in Italy, Italian men respect women more, based on the rarity of rape in the Italian culture.
““The question is, why?” Friedland asks. “It’s not because Roman men don’t look. They are voracious with their eyes, savoring the bodies of women as they pass. After all the time I’ve spent in Rome, I’ve come to think that part of the reason rape is so much rarer in Italy is that Italian men love women more than American men do. Beneath all the sexual jest, the lusty looks and suggestive remarks, Roman men respect women.”
Friedland’s daughters were subjected to this harassment as they entered their teen years, but they learned to cope along with the Italian girls. He said that Italians accept that flirting is part of human nature but is not a precursor to rape. Girls in Italy are free to “swear at the boys, to berate them, hit them on the heads or in the face, belittling them for their pathetic antics.” His girls didn’t regard the advances as dangerous.”
http://livingwithabroadintuscany.blogspot.it/2016/11/is-italy-safe-and-healthy-place-for.html
Wow — CBS has suspended Charlie Rose:
Did you see the accusations that came out against Russell Simmons yesterday? I was reminded of this, because you said this, “What on earth is this strange passivity on the part of groped women about?”
The woman who is accusing Simmons said that after he forced her to give him oral sex, she felt dirty and immediately went into the bathroom (in his hotel room), took a shower and he took this an an invitation to continue his advances. Is there no such thing as a flight or fight reaction anymore? I mentioned my skepticism about showering at that moment on Twitter and people kept telling me how the brain doesn’t react how you would expect in such a situation.
I don’t get it. I don’t doubt the story at all, I just don’t understand her reaction. Don’t we have a natural instinct to flee dangerous situations?
Charlie Rose huh? The left isn’t on a witch hunt for nothing. There is a method to this madness. If they gain control of the House next year you can count on impeachment.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/listening-to-what-trumps-accusers-have-told-us
We witness the very natural progression from the 1970s: Title IX, feminism, sexual liberties of all types (gay, bi-, etc), abortion on demand (60 million slaughtered Americans, another Holocaust of sacrificed souls) along with the progressive obscenification of pop music (rap), movies, the erosion of moral bases like Christianity, the phony campus rape epidemic. “Fuck” has become acceptable as a word used by major Democrats immediately linked to “Trump”. The same Dems who told us to respect the Office of the Presidency in the days of Obama.
Meanwhile, women with their wonderful endowment of tenderness spread their unsupported allegations like Ebola.
Who will protect them? Who will be their warriors?
They have brought it all on themselves. I have complained all these charges are unsupported allegations, many remote in time, with obvious political motives (see Roy Moore), but even level heads like Neo find some of these claims “credible”.
Curiously, sperm counts in the USA have been falling for a generation!
We will become a feminine nation in a demographic death spiral.
The Leftist alliance is more powerful and regenerative than people wish to believe.
They have a plan, and even if they are destroyed, they are merely the Deep State’s cannonfodder. There will be more. Just as with Hussein, plenty of tyrants on the Left to replace him.
There is no permanent solution to their evil. Even killing them is only temporary.