Before I get to what I want to say about Michelle Goldberg's response to the Franken sexual misconduct case, I want to try to insulate myself as far as possible from the charge that as a man I have no standing to comment on or judge anything that a woman might have to say about another woman's pain when that pain results from a man's bad conduct. Michelle Goldberg is a writer with whom I find myself in agreement much more often than not, but I believe that her recent opinion piece "Franken Should Go" (New York Times, 16 November, 2017) is problematic in at least a couple of respects. I will get to these, but first, I want to say that I'm not arguing with her recommendation. I don't myself think that Mr Franken should resign from the US Senate (nor does Leeann Tweeden, the woman towards whom he behaved badly), but I can think of at least a couple of reasons why Franken might think that resignation was the best course, and I wouldn't be appalled if he did resign. Also, I'm not inclined to "blame the victim" here. Ms Tweeden was badly treated, and she says that she felt that she was at the time. I understand how, in the heightened awareness of unacceptable behavior that has followed the Cosby/Weinstein/Trump/Moore disclosures, her own experience with Mr Franken might now appear to her even more unacceptable than it was at the time, to a degree that made her want to go public with her story. I have no quarrel at all with her having done so. My quarrel -- if that's the best word -- is with Ms Goldberg in this case.
There are two points in her essay that bother me. The first, and lesser in importance, concerns her treatment of "the picture." It shows Mr Franken grinning at the camera while placing his hands on the kevlar-covered breasts of a sleeping Ms Tweeden in the course of a flight home from a USO tour of Afghanistan in 2006. Clearly, he thinks this is funny. He was at the time not a senator but a comedian, associated with Saturday Night Live. I would want to say that the picture itself really isn't the point. It gives offence only in the context of the larger narrative in which Ms Tweeden has placed it. By itself, shorn of context, it's cringe-inducing without being publicly interesting, for one can imagine circumstances in which such a picture might have seemed funny to Ms Tweeden and Mr Franken both. For example, Ms Tweeden pretending to be asleep and Mr Franken (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) pretending to "check her kevlar." Because we know that Ms Tweeden really was asleep, and that Mr Franken had already behaved inappropriately towards her, we see the picture in a very different light. I would just want to insist, though, that it's the story that counts, not the picture per se. It would seem that Mr Franken, whose behavior towards women as a Senator seems beyond reproach as far as we know, made a wrong judgment about what Ms Tweeden was willing to tolerate. It should go without saying that the same behavior towards a woman who was in a comfortable, "flirty" relationship with Mr Franken would have been a different story. It might justifiably have been a serious matter for Mrs Franken, but not for the rest of us. Some readers of this might be offended by willingness to consider other ways in which the "same" behavior (i.e. the same physical interactions) might be "read" -- but surely actions, like pictures, don't carry their meaning always on their face. Intention and context are what matters here.
My larger problem with Ms Goldberg's piece comes near the end. She writes:
"That horrifying photo of Franken will confront feminists every time they decry Trump’s boasts of grabbing women by the genitals. Democrats will have to worry about whether more damaging information will come out, and given the way scandals like this tend to unfold, it probably will. It’s not worth it. The question isn’t about what’s fair to Franken, but what’s fair to the rest of us."
The question I want to ask is, "Who are us?" Americans? women? Democrats? feminists? And the idea that "what's fair to Franken" ought to be overlooked is shocking. If Mr Franken's conduct in office has been exemplary, then fairness requires that that fact be considered in making judgments about both what he did and what he should do going forward. The political enemies of "us" (whoever "we" are) will rub our noses in that picture whether Mr Franken resigns or not. The idea that "fair[ness] to the rest of us" requires Mr Franken's resignation seems overwrought, just as Ms Goldberg's earlier plaint does: "I thought he [Franken] was one of the good guys. (I thought there were good guys.)" But we all know that there are good guys. I'm even willing to bet that Ms Goldberg knows a few.
NOTE: Some commentators have deplored Ms Tweeden's decision to "go public" on Fox News with Sean Hannity. I have no time for Hannity, but really -- if Ms Tweeden thinks that the discomfort of being "outed" on Hannity's show is what Mr Franken deserves, I'm not going to blame her.
UPDATE (11/20/17): Wouldn't you know! Two days after my having written the post above, we hear of another woman who claims to have been inappropriately touched by Mr Franken, and this time after he had taken office as Senator from Minnesota. This doesn't really change my judgment that Ms Goldberg's original article was not a well-conducted argument. I still think her handling of the photograph and her dismissal of "fairness" in Mr Franken's case undermined her argument. But it's clear too that I have to adjust my own thinking about the issue of resignation. I said above that there are arguments for Mr Franken's resignation -- arguments that he would have to consider compelling -- and, of course, these are not the same as arguments for dismissal from the Senate (which a majority of Senators would have to find compelling). I also said above that "If Mr Franken's conduct in office has been exemplary, then fairness requires that that fact be considered . . . etc. etc." In light of what we know now, we don't throw "fairness" out the window, but clearly that fairness has to be considered in relation to a different set of facts, and in light of these new facts, I am much less disposed to think that Mr Franken should continue in the Senate.
And I should credit Ms Goldberg with some prescience. She wrote that "Democrats will have to worry about whether more damaging information will come out, and given the way scandals like this tend to unfold, it probably will." At the time, I didn't know whether she was talking about Mr Franken or talking more generally. If she was thinking that a person who has behaved inappropriately toward one woman is unlikely to have so behaved towards only that single person, then this latest news seems to be evidence for that. So . . . while I still don't care for the original essay, I now say with Ms Goldberg, "Time to go, Al!" Agh!!
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