Al Franken may have been collateral damage, but the rest of us just keep getting -- pardon the language -- fucked. Not groped, or pinched, or distastefully riffed upon while we doze in the company of fellow USO entertainers, our most lucrative assets tucked demurely into a flak jacket (has the photographer been fired by the way?). Fucked.
Seriously, sorry for the language; as a woman, I should be more articulate, less offensive, downright more holy than the other 50 per cent. While I'm at it, I might as well be weaker, a perennial victim, and climb back up on that dusty old pedestal where, to quote the self-righteous general turned chief of sycophants John Kelly, women are "sacred." Lose the potty mouth, just shut up and look pretty. Too late for all of that, I'm afraid.
I had reservations about the "Me Too" movement from the outset, worried that lines would get blurred, that true abominations would get confused with bad taste. I'm not condoning the unwanted gropes or the crass joking or the jerkiness, whether it's in the locker room or by the office Nespresso machine. I am concerned, though, that the plight of the truly abused is becoming diminished, and that, frankly, every good man (and lots of women, too) that I have ever known will now be ineligible for public office or have to live in constant fear of being fired and tarred and feathered by some ghost of past ickiness.
When I first saw a "Women Only" train car pull up in front of me at a station somewhere in Japan, I was puzzled. My son explained to me it was public transit's answer to unwanted groping. I was amused by the concept, not to mention discouraged that my stereotype of the impossibly polite Japanese gentleman had been debunked. With the other brazen risk takers, I purposely avoided the "Women Only" car, trusting in my capacity to swat away a stray hand or stomp on an unwitting foot. Naive, maybe, but I was willing to take my chances. Frankly, I'd be fine if one of my daughters ended up on a train car with Al Franken. Not so much with Weinstein or Lauer or Moore. With 45, well that's just too offensive.
While we willingly devour the prurient details of past indignities suddenly remembered by sometimes anonymous women, the threat of nuclear war looms, the Middle East has been further destabilized, and propaganda spewing media has fanned out, largely under the radar, to all sorts of local outlets to undermine our democracy.
It took the travesty of last year's election to bring a lot of us out of our bubbles and face the reality of the shocking, lingering pervasiveness of racism and ethnic discrimination and misogyny and other sorts of vile hatred. It's taken the sacrifice of Al Franken to bring a lot of folks out of their knee-jerk progressive bubbles to step back and wonder what the "Me Too" end game is.
How many wake up calls do we need?
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