Thursday, November 16, 2017

This Is How You Do It

Yeah, that's the picture.

So Al Franken releases a statement:



Not even close to it. Jesus, Senator, there’s a picture!
....
But, really, that statement is wholly useless.
The problem is not with the statement per se, it's with the internet age, where outrage and our ability to respond immediately sometimes means the news has to catch up with what we just said:

“The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women,” Franken said.

The Minnesota Democrat said he was “ashamed” that his actions could give anyone a reason to doubt his respect for women, but he said the recent wave of harassment claims against public figures has given men a new perspective on their behavior.

“I don’t know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn’t matter. There’s no excuse,” he said. “I look at it now and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn’t funny. It’s completely inappropriate. It’s obvious how Leeann would feel violated by that picture. And, what’s more, I can see how millions of other women would feel violated by it — women who have had similar experiences in their own lives, women who fear having those experiences, women who look up to me, women who have counted on me.”

"The intentions behind my actions aren’t the point at all,” he said. “It’s the impact these jokes had on others that matters. And I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come to terms with that.”

Franken said he doesn’t recall the incidents described by Tweeden in the same way she does, and he called for a Senate ethics investigation and promised to “gladly cooperate.”

“What people think of me in light of this is far less important than what people think of women who continue to come forward to tell their stories,” Franken said. “They deserve to be heard, and believed. And they deserve to know that I am their ally and supporter. I have let them down and am committed to making it up to them.” 
Not meaning to get up in Mr. Pierce's face, because his response was justified; but the instant ability to broadcast that opinion isn't always the best thing about this brave new world.

And as apologies go, that's the way you do it.  Lessons could be taught from what the Senator from Minnesota said, especially if he is true to his word.

ADDING:

I have to extend my remarks a bit further because, as TPM reports, there are already calls for an investigation into Sen. Franken's conduct.  Compare and contrast with the stories swirling around Roy Moore, and consider another adage of mine:  "There is no power without resistance."  Sen. Franken is not resisting calls for an investigation, nor resisting claims that his actions are indefensible.  I don't mean that Sen. Franken has rendered his accusers powerless, but he has refused to empower himself by resisting the claims.  Sen. Franken's is an example of service, no matter how the Senate investigation comes out.  Roy Moore's example is all about his power to resist; the stronger the force against him, the more he resists and seeks to accrue power to himself.  He wants to store it, like a battery, and release that power against his enemies, against those who accuse him or block his efforts to impose his views on the country and its laws.  "There is no power without resistance" recognizes that power is not a good, not even when employed for ostensibly good ends.  Sen. Franken is emptying himself of power in order to be a public servant; Roy Moore is trying to accrue as much power as he can, in order to serve Roy Moore.

On a practical note, Sen. McConnell has called for the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate Sen. Franken's actions.  It will be interesting to see if the same calls are made for Sen. Moore, if it comes to that.

It's an interesting contrast.  Between Franken and Moore who, in the end, is truly "powerful"?
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Can We Talk?

Bill Clinton should have died for your sins.

For me, it started yesterday morning with Matt Yglesias:

In her 2014 Vanity Fair article looking back on the scandal, Lewinsky wrote, “I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.”
Bill Clinton, according to Yglesias, should have resigned.  And while Lewinsky said herself, at the time (unlike Yglesias I was an adult at the time, and father of a new born daughter to boot), that she pursued Clinton because he was Clinton (and probably because he was the President), Clinton is responsible for her "abuse."  She was 22 at the time, and the "abuse" (she puts it in quotes) came from dallying with a President.  Lots of people have faced "abuse" for being friends or even family of Presidents.  The leader must be protected for the sake of the nation, even if the protection is only of his/her ability to show leadership.  Intern or family member (anybody remember Jimmy Carter's brother?  I don't think Yglesias is old enough to.), you can find yourself on the wrong end of that need.  It comes with the office.  I don't quite see how that is grounds for resignation.

Should Clinton not have had an affair with Lewinsky?  No doubt.  Should Kennedy have resigned, then? Johnson (yes, LBJ)?  How far back do we go to "correct" history? (I'm old enough to remember Kennedy, though an "affair" at that time would have meant nothing at all to me.  You'd have had to explain "sex" first.  It was a more innocent era.).

And now, we have to acknowledge Bill Clinton was a "cad" (a delightfully archaic term.  I mean, when was the last time anybody said that outside a '40's movie?):

I’m not saying Bill Clinton explains the world. There are multiple cultural trends at work here. Bad people have been doing bad things since time immemorial, so we can’t lay everything that happens at the feet of Bill Clinton (or the men and women who enabled his behavior). What is more, Hollywood (I’m thinking of shows like Mad Men, Californication, and Entourage and movies like Woody Allen’s Manhattan—but I’m sure there are tons of others) has also contributed to mainstreaming norms that are suddenly no longer condoned as… normal.

Ah, where to begin with analysis like that?  "Mad Men" is not praise of Madison Avenue in the '60's: it's rather as if James Bond was much more introspective about his "loves 'em and leaves 'em" attitude.  If anything, I ended that series feeling sorry for the wreck that was Don Draper.  I mean, what's the point of looking like a cartoon pilot (hat tip to Tina Fey) if you're as empty as one of Eliot's "Hollow Men"?  "Californication" I'll give you; but it was a Showtime show meant to be soft-core porn and provide an excuse for women to take off their clothes and mimic sexual activity for people paying premium dollars for fresh access to that stuff (I watched it on Netflix).  "Entourage" I skipped, but I'm reminded frequently of P.G. Wodehouse's quaint (and subtle) criticisms of Hollywood churning out stories that depended on sex to sell tickets (Wodehouse was writing about movies in the '30's, sexually as quaint as "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".  The fundamental, however, hasn't changed, only how blatant, or "graphic," the sex (and the violence) is.  Those "cultural trends," in other words, have been at work for a long, long time before Bill Clinton came along.)

"Manhattan"?  Oh, please; can't we let that tired malarkey go?  There were no sex scenes in the movie, I don't even remember a kiss (there must have been one), and Muriel Hemingway played a young woman mature beyond her years.  It was an honorable and remarkable performance, and yet the only way we can speak of it is as the first indication Allen was a sleaze (still not quite sure why, since there are no stories of Allen exposing himself to women, or masturbating in front of them, or actually dating young girls.  The worst I know is, according to Hemingway, he came to ask her parents' permission to take her to Paris for a weekend.  She declined the offer, and he politely and quietly went away.  Not exactly Roy Moore territory, any of that.  The question of his wife is a separate matter.  They started dating after Allen had ended his relationship with Mia Farrow; and when they married, both were adults.)  This whole discussion of "cultural trends" inevitably leads to some kind of Puritanism we both want and don't want, and it also puts responsibility on someone else, not on me.  In this case, we're pushing responsibility all the way back to Bill Clinton.  Why?  Because these writers don't remember JFK?  Clinton did.

Irony is a harsh mistress.  In a proof she is not dead, you can find links to all the major on-line outlets concerned with this topic, at the New York Times.  How the universe does not eat its own tail at this point is quite beyond me.

I understand the desire to "take the women seriously."  But considering the utter nonsense that was "Whitewater" (or, now Hillary's e-mails and "Uranium One") James Carville's dismissive comment about Paula Jones (“If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.”) has a context of its own.  Should we reconsider the stories of Ms. Jones and Anita Broaddrick?  Probably; but does that prove Clinton was a rapist?  No; anymore than Beverly Young Nelson's accusations prove Roy Moore is guilty of criminal assault.  It certainly does raise the question of his fitness for office, which has been the argument in response to the defense that there is no proof Moore committed any crimes.  The criminal standard of evidence, however, is not the political standard for voters.

And last I looked, Bill Clinton wasn't running for office anymore.  Should we take him down a peg or two, regardless?  Well, I have no problem with acknowledging the humanity and fallibility of Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton or even Abraham Lincoln.  Hagiography is always a problem.  And I've never considered Bill Clinton one of the unspoiled exemplars of American exceptionalism.  On the other hand, purging our history by re-writing it, or wishing we could, seems kind of pointless to me.  Retroactively damning Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky sounds like a lame attempt to clean up your own attitudes and bring your history in line with your preferred present, or imagined future.  Maybe you need to do that for yourself, but the adult thing to do is to take responsibility for what you did, and move on.  Bill Clinton did that; why don't we, as well?

Besides, looking to punish people so you feel better, is a mug's game.  What Bill Clinton did to his victims is one thing; what he did to you, me, or Matt Yglesias, is another.  We don't square that circle by wishing now we could punish him, or anyone, then.
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Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Oh, THAT'S where it came from!


Louie Gohmert actually presented this chart at a Congressional hearing, and while it is a hot mess it is  not sui generis, but has an ancestry, of sorts.  Or at least a precursor.

Behold:


We look it up so you don't have to.  Will we find that all roads lead to Sean Hannity?  Oh, let's hope not....
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Checking In


Still nothing on his Twitter feed about northern California, but he has time for this:
Because what's the point of being President and helping out American citizens abroad if you can't garner public thanks for it?  (and the fact the players were black?  Purely coincidental to Trump's question, donchaknow.)

Oh, and he thinks he negotiated a trade agreement, single-handedly and without signing a thing:


Third time's the charm:

“So my relationship with Shinzo got off to quite a rocky start because I never ran for office, and here I am,” Trump remarked. “But I never ran, so I wasn’t very experienced. And after I had won, everybody was calling me from all over the world. I never knew we had so many countries.”
I'm pretty sure the New York Times did.  The NYT also knows the difference between central Texas and northern California.  Four more tweets and still no word.  Maybe it's too soon to talk about it.

Adding:  The UCLA players were more gracious than the President (quelle surprise!):

"I am embarrassed and ashamed for disappointing my family, teammates, coaches and the entire UCLA community," Riley told reporters. "To President Trump and the United States government, thank you for taking the time to intervene on our behalf. We really appreciate you helping us out."
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Texas? Or Alabama?

Or maybe "Texabama"?

“What’s it going to take before you realize that your family values, my-sin-is-better-than-your-sin, conservative voting approach has produced a state government filled with lying, cheating, sexually assaulting, money-grubbing criminals who have embarrassed us countless times, and on top of everything, mismanaged the hell out of this place?” 
New styles of architecture?  A change of heart?

All I can say is, Texas is now the second most populous state in the country, which means a lot of people have moved here in my lifetime.  And the political culture of the state has not changed one jot; if anything, it's moved backwards since the days of John Nance Garner and Sam Rayburn and even the Killer Bees.  I can't explain it because it's not like everyone living here now was born and raised on post-Reconstruction Southern politics, but they sure act like they were.

Nowt so queer as folk.
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Sean Hannity, Tower of Jell-0

This is how you do it.

First they came for the advertisers, and we said we'd smash our coffee makers.  Then we realized:  advertisers=$$$$$.


And we threw the corrupt and immoral politician under the bus:

″For me, the judge has 24 hours,” Hannity said Tuesday night. “He must immediately and fully come up with a satisfactory explanation for your inconsistencies that I just showed. You must remove any doubt. If he can’t do that, then Judge Moore needs to get out of this race.”

Now if 500 Hannity fans smashed their Keurigs and won the lottery to get a replacement free of charge from their erstwhile hero, all will be well.  And if they didn't....

ADDING:  To take this all a bit more seriously:

So when Hannity told his viewers that Moore may not have assaulted a 14-year-old girl — that it's possible the mainstream media and liberal strategists made this up to take down a political opponent — many believed him. He made it feel true that this was made-up.

A few days later, pollsters asked people in Alabama whether the news about Moore made them more or less likely to support him.

About 33 percent said it made no difference. About 29 percent said they were more likely to vote for him (which as Vox’s Ezra Klein explained likely signals they don’t believe the allegations).
So, will Hannity influence the vote the other way?  Or is this the problem with theorizing about the importance of conspiracy theories?
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Another Day, Another Mass Shooting



They pretty much blur together at this point.  (For the historical record, the shooting that probably prompted this tweet was in Northern California, a week after the mass shooting in Texas.  Can't tell the players without a scorecard; or a map.)

UPDATE:  You're not seeing the tweet anymore because it has been removed.  All we have left is the text itself.  Somebody on the staff, despite John Kelly's statements, must be paying attention.  Trump has posted, since that tweet, tweets about Sean Hannity, CNN, news reports flattering to him, tweets flattering to him, how Fox&Friends will be flattering to him this morning:  but nothing else about the shooting in California.
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Tuesday, November 14, 2017

"I do trust! Help my lack of trust!"*

*Mark 9:24, SV.  Curiously, this pericope doesn't appear in the Revised Common Lectionary.
  Well, something has to be left out, but make of that what you will.

So I came across this comment at Religion Dispatches, a comment I don't mean to critique or evaluate (that would be unfair, in this forum.  I've given a brief version of my thoughts there, and this post is for my thinking alone), so I'm taking it out of context and only in the pieces I want to use.  But reading it, and thinking about it later, I had something of a revelation about the difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists (whom I grew up among, if not with; my mother's family are all Primitive Baptists) and my own understanding of my religious faith.  First, excerpts from the comment:

One phrase from your article really stands out for me.

"Christian subculture whose influence far exceeds its numbers"

To me that leads back to the question of exactly what is Christianity? I think it is hard to pin down, and I suspect that is intentional. I see Christianity as divided into two major divisions, conservative and progressive. Conservatives believe everything from traditional Christianity, heaven and hell, Bible is God's word, Trinity, everything that you hear in church. Progressive Christians can see the problem with that, so they have made every belief optional. There might be no actual literal heaven and hell. The Trinity is more of a mysterious theological concept and is open to interpretation. The Bible can be questioned because of all the studies that show it should be. My question is exactly what does it mean to be a progressive Christian? The strategy seems to be never answer that because any answer could lead to problems.

I think it all leads back to that influence that you alluded to. Christianity is a continuous spectrum of belief or non-belief, and it supports itself in that when any part of the spectrum is under question the answer is always to shift to another part of the spectrum. All parts can question other parts, but as long as they don't destroy other parts the spectrum kind of holds itself together. They don't really have any need to destroy other parts of the religion because they have so many other non-believer parts of society that they can lash out against instead.

I would first say that Christianity, or rather living as a Christian, is itself a continuous spectrum of belief or non-belief, although I'd put it in the terms of the Scholars Version translation of Mark 9:24, and use the word "trust" instead of "belief."  The presumption of this argument in the quoted material is one sponsored by evangelical and fundamentalist theologians:  that belief or faith is a possession, a good one can own and keep or give away; or it is an attribute available to some and not to others.  Skills in word working or cooking or music are examples of attributes one might have; few of us are born a Mozart or a Schumann, so we recognize both the talent and it's rarity when it occurs.   More of us are saints, but few still; and sainthood tends to be a matter of living out a conviction, not acting on an ability.

If I can identify God as a set of specific characteristics; if I can, say, insist that God created the world and all that dwells on it, and the sun and the stars, in seven solar days and anthropomorphically walked on earth in the Garden of Eden and had to seek Adam and Eve there, if I can declare the Bible, a set of books written over centuries, "God's word" implicitly written by God as one text, if I can identify "traditional Christianity" with one set of assertions and claims irrefutable and inalterable (even Roman Catholicism is not so doctrinaire), then I have a set of ideas and beliefs I can possess.  I have things.  I have control over ideas.

Which raises two important questions:  1) (in keeping with this blog's informal motto)  Where are the people?, and 2)  is God a reducible thing I can so easily define, so easily describe, so casually possess?  I have known my wife for 45 years, my daughter for 25, my closest friends for over 50 years:  can I say with absolute certainty how they will and must behave in any given set of circumstances?  Or do they continue to surprise me, while never acting exactly contrary to the persons I know them to be?  But "traditional Christianity" teaches me God can act in only one way, without surprises, as predictably as the sunset and as reassuringly as the next day's sunrise.  I do not have that assurance even of my wife, and yet I know God better?  Any answer I could give about who my wife is would lead to problems, and a wise husband would never claim to be so sure he knows her so well.  Yet to have the same relationship to the living God is problematic and an indication of...what?  Insincerity?  A lack of faith?  Something other than belief?

If I can be wise enough to know my wife is a cherished individual deserving of the deepest respect for her individuality, for not being merely an extension somehow of me, why is that a failing when I come to describe my relationship to God?  And yet isn't that the basis of the criticism?  If I cannot claim to posses God, to be absolute about God, to limit God, then I cannot "believe" in God.  And is what that belief is?  Knowledge that God is as I say God is?  And when God is not, doesn't that shatter my belief?

But if that isn't my belief, why can't I be said to believe?  Maybe because my belief is neither my possession nor an attribute peculiar to me, like my love for my wife, which no one else on the planet is expected to share.  And yet we all understand what I mean when I declare that I love my wife.  Is my love for her a matter of belief, of everything you hear in modern culture?  Is my love for her an attribute, like musical talent?  In that case was I meant to love only her?  That's a bit simplistic, isn't it?  I mean, how convenient that of all the people in the world I should go to the same high school she did.  If it isn't an attribute, is it inevitably a part of who I am?  What, then, of the mutual friend who introduced us?  Was that introduction inevitably part of my character?    Is love will?  Or emotion only?  Or is it something other than both, something not exercised or aroused, but still subject to attention and intent?

And then what is "belief," what is "faith," especially if we understand faith as trust?

Conservative and "traditional" Christians treat belief and faith as matters to possess, items of spiritual and personal ownership.  My faith in God, my trust in God, is the same as my love of my wife and daughter:  it is because.  It is who I am and I can be no other way.  Does that make it an attribute peculiar to me?  No, it isn't a talent like my skill at certain small tasks (none of which are valued enough by society to be remunerative, the way we usually gauge talent).  It is a conviction, an activity, like my trust.  It is not an acquiescence toward "believing what you know ain't so."

My love for my wife (or my daughter; different kinds of love, to be sure, but still we use the same word for each relationship) is not a matter of will or emotion.  I don't force myself to love my family, and my love for them is not a matter of a persistent emotional state (indeed, my emotional states in my '60's are not at all what they were in my '20's.  I see this most distinctly with a 25 year old daughter still in my daily life.)  How do I explain my love for her, except, in part, as trust?  I trust her, not just physically or materially (she won't empty the bank account, say, or destroy my possessions) but humanly.  I don't know how more accurately to put it:  I trust her emotionally, but the trust is deeper and more significant than that.  And my trust is that I know that, in all things, she can be trusted.  I can trust her with me.  If that is not faith, I don't know what it is.

I don't have faith in her attributes, in her statements of love for me, or in what I expect her to do or in who I think she is.  If traditional Christianity rests on doctrines and statements about God and particular interpretations of scripture (all reading is interpretation; it's unavoidable.  Of course, we interpret each other's actions and words, too.  Again:  it's unavoidable.), then those are things I can, and must, possess, in order to "believe" in the sense implied (and commonly accepted) by "traditional" Christianity.  But that is not Christianity, and "progressive Christianity" some other nature of thing with, confusingly, the same label (like my love for my wife, my love for my daughter, and my love of coffee and theology and philosophy; all very different matters described by one word.  How we manage to say anything at all is a mystery.).   No, there is no one Christianity, and even to say it is all connected by a belief in the Trinity is to rely on the ambiguity (again!) of the word "belief."  I can recite the Trinitarian formulas in the creeds and confess the Trinitarian recital of the baptismal vow, but do I "believe" as a fundamentalist Christian does?  Probably not, right down to how we both use the word "believe".  But does that mean I'm refusing to answer because my answer would lead to problems?  Or does that mean you (the generic "you," let the reader understand) are asking the wrong questions?

There is, after all, a strong strand of wisdom in the Scriptures, and so in Christianity; and wisdom is not strong on giving definitive answers, largely because those answers tend to lead to problems, and not to wisdom.

I understand.  Help my lack of understanding.  Somewhere in there, is where the people are.
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Because I can resist anything but temptation

Be careful who you give advice to....

Having posted on the Keurig inanity sponsored by Sean Hannity, I had to include this.  The tweet above shows the original poster that this is mocking so brilliantly:

UPDATE:  In case you're wondering, that tweet has been pulled, too.  Apparently it was not such excellent advice for leftists, after all.

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Monday, November 13, 2017

Pass the Popcorn


Charlie Pierce finds the pearl of great price:

Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, opined that, should Moore win the Alabama special election in December, the Senate should immediately expel him—which, I guarantee you, would result in one of the most spectacular circuses in the history of that august body because, by all indications, Roy Moore isn’t going anywhere.

In an afternoon statement, Mr. Moore’s campaign described Ms. Allred as “a sensationalist leading a witch hunt, and she is only around to create a spectacle.” The statement, issued before Ms. Allred’s news conference in New York, denied again “any sexual misconduct with anyone” by Mr. Moore. Republicans here and in Alabama have been up in arms over the accusations, published last week in The Washington Post, that Mr. Moore pursued sexual or romantic relationships with teenagers when he was in his 30s. The reports have upended a race in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator in 25 years. In a fund-raising appeal, Mr. Moore reached out to his supporters with the subject line: “Mitch McConnell’s plot to destroy me.” “Apparently Mitch McConnell and the establishment G.O.P. would rather elect a radical pro-abortion Democrat than a conservative Christian,” he wrote. And Mr. Moore’s wife, Kayla Moore, lashed out in a Facebook post on Monday, complaining about “a witch hunt” in Alabama and claiming that “we are gathering evidence of money being paid to people who would come forward.”

If that’s his attitude now, in the teeth of a howling shitstorm, imagine what he’s going to be like if he wins, and The Washington Establishment declines to seat him. Fox News will have a field day and the Breitbart people, who already have two people on the ground in Alabama digging out the scandal of one of the accuser’s teenage telephone habits, will go absolutely insane. Where the president* would come down on this is anybody’s guess.
And if the Senate does allow Mr. Moore to take his seat?

Unless you think the whole Weinstein-inspired current state of affairs will be forgotten by Xmas, and the elections earlier this month were a passing fancy that will be forgotten with the rest, the GOP legislators declining to ride this storm out are going to look like the rats bailing off the ship just before the iceberg looms.

Pass the popcorn.
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How to Protest: An Internet Guide

Pretty apt, actually.

1)  Start with a tweet:



2)  Decide this decision by a coffee-maker company is a blow against freedom and that liberals love Keurig coffee-makers:

3)  Throw out your expensive K-pods, too:

4)  Have Sean Hannity revel in the nihilism of it:
5)  Have Keurig CEO kind sorta take it back:

[Keurig CEO Bob] Gamgort argued that it was “unacceptable” for the social media team to broadcast the company’s decision on advertising strategy.

“This gave the appearance of ‘taking sides’ in an emotionally charged debate that escalated on Twitter and beyond over the weekend, which was not our intent,” Gamgort said of the company’s tweet, according to the Washington Post. “I want you to know the decision to communicate our short-term media actions on Twitter was done outside of company protocols. Clearly, this is an unacceptable situation that requires an overhaul of our issues response and external communications policies and the introduction of safeguards to ensure this never happens again.”

“I apologize for any negativity that you have experienced as a result of this situation and assure you that we will learn and improve going forward,” he added later in the letter, per the Washington Post.

(But not pull back the decision to pull their ads from Hannity's shows until further notice).

6)  Declare victory before anybody notices how pointless this is, and is only hurting people who shelled out big bucks for Keurig coffee makers:


7)  Wonder why it took this long for everyone else to figure out just how dumb this boycott was, and why we're supposed to care about the opinions of "Right Wing and Trump" if they're this dumb.

8)  Ponder how this reflects on Keurig users and Sean Hannity's audience, especially if, like your esteemed host, you aren't in either class.


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Everything new is old again

A poll like this is implicitly posing a question: Do you believe the Washington Post, with its decades of hard-won credibility, its numerous sources, and its adherence to the standards of journalism? Or do you believe Moore? Few of us have the time or capability to investigate the story for ourselves, and so we have to choose. And given what Alabama’s conservatives have heard about the mainstream media for years, is it any wonder some of them choose Moore?

The problem with this argument is that I'm old enough to remember Watergate, another creature of the Washington Post (which puts them well ahead of the New York Times, home of Jeff Gerth and Judith Miller), and I remember people in Texas who dismissed the story as false even after Nixon resigned.  And they hadn't been bathed in criticism of the "mainstream media" for years; they simple didn't consider the Washington Post "mainstream media."  Nor did they consider a non-Texan, non-Southern, non-conservative newspaper to share the standards of evidence and accuracy that they shared.

Never doubt the power of regionalism and parochialism, and the fact that all politics is (still) local.  So 29% of Alabama voters say they are more likely to support Roy Moore after the Washington Post article?

Doesn't surprise me one bit.  So, is this true?

If one side rejects the epistemic authority of society’s core institutions and practices, there’s just nothing left to be done. Truth cannot speak for itself, like the voice of God from above. It can only speak through human institutions and practices. There is no longer any settling such arguments. The only way to settle any argument is for both sides to be committed, at least to some degree, to shared standards of evidence and accuracy, and to place a measure of shared trust in institutions meant to vouchsafe evidence and accuracy. Without that basic agreement, without common arbiters, there can be no end to dispute.

Well, only if you believe "basic agreement" means you must agree with me; which is, ironically, the whole basis of the critiques of standards by multiculturalism and post-modernism, which are still not the bug-bears they were ever made out to be by conservative critics.  The "epistemic authority of society's core institutions and practices" have always been under attack.  Consider Luther's Reformation; the Enlightenment; Descarte's skepticism; the Romantic revolution; Darwin's theory of evolution; the Declaration of Independence.  Truth has never spoken for itself, the voice of God from above has always been a myth and a shibboleth (much like the "ghost in the machine" was not a description of Cartesian dualism, but a critique of it).  The argument Ezra Klein quotes so approvingly is an argument for hegemony, for one side is acceptable and no others need apply.  And it is an argument generally reconciled in the law and in governance where extremes may arise from time to time, but consensus eventually and finally emerges.  What never emerges in the body politic is a commitment to "shared standards of evidence and accuracy," because those are always being challenged and are always in flux, even in law; nor even an agreement on what standard of measure yields the proper "measure of shared trust in institutions meant to vouchsafe evidence and accuracy" if only because, as Hume pointed out, those measures are either irrelevant, or never absolutely established.
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The Perfect Storm


Take this:

MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart got the ball rolling, stating, “This whole thing is so other worldly that the Republican Party I thought I knew they were, evangelicals, god fearing, upright, moral — all of that now gone. It’s one more piece of evidence of just how far the Republican Party has gotten away from the Republican Party.”

“There’s a story that people who worked with Roy Moore knew that he frequently would date teenagers and that he was known to hang around places where teenagers would hang out,” the AM Joy host offered. “He’d troll football games looking for dates.”

After sharing a clip of Breitbart founder Steve Bannon attacking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for not standing up for Moore, Rubin weighed in on the state of the GOP.

“That’s the mentality of things that are going on,” an animated Rubin began. “You have a Republican Party that’s devolved into tribalism. Whatever they have to do: lie, cover up, violate their own oaths because the tribe is everything. That majority is more important than keeping a child molester out of the Capitol.”

“The second thing that’s going on is Bannon is trying to remake the party in his image,” she continued. “He wants them all to be as crazy as he is. This is an ego trip for him, this is an ego trip for the president — punish their allies.”

“What would they do with a majority? They can’t legislate,” she snapped.
(That last a sentiment being echoed by GOP donors.)

Combine it with this:

Signs posted on college campuses in Georgia have launched a viral social media discussion about rape on campus, CBS 46 in Atlanta reports. The signs were placed on the contiguous campuses of Morehouse and Spelmen colleges.

“Some, accuse men from Morehouse of raping women from Spelmen,” anchor Sharon Reed explained.

“Others say the schools are covering up sexual assaults,” anchor Ben Swann replied.
The signs used the provocative hashtag: #WeKnowWhatYouDid, which became the top trending topic on Twitter in Atlanta. Signs read “No More Secrets,” “Morehouse Protects Rapists – Spelman Protects Rapists,” with other signs listing the names of specific men.
“Hey, I stand with women,” Reed noted. “If someones done something like this, you’ve got the right to call it out.”

“Let the chips fall where they may,” Reed concluded.

“Definitely, there’s got to be something there,” reported Kim Passoth added. “There’s a lot trending on Twitter tonight, 3,000 Tweets from students. Obviously there’s something going on that they need to talk about.”

And even this:

At least five companies have announced they will not advertise during Sean Hannity’s TV and radio shows following the host’s coverage of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is accused of sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old.*

As well as the fact more and more Senators are telling Moore to quit the race, and you have the makings of that tired old cliche, a perfect storm.

If the GOP doesn't refuse to seat Moore, the shit-storm that will rain down on them a year from now will be like Harvey in Houston all over again.  If they don't seat Moore, that storm will come in the GOP primaries, and again, they will lose the general because those who survive those primaries will make Steve Bannon look like a Rhodes scholar and a placid statesman.

Yes, by the way, that discussion is already in the public sphere:

McConnell said he is willing to lose the Senate seat to a Democrat rather than have a child sexual predator in his caucus, which Siegfried applauded, but then said, “I wish Mitch McConnell would go a step further and say he wouldn’t seat him if he won.”

“There’s a lot of talk about innocent until proven guilty,” Siegfried continued, “but this isn’t a court of law, this is a political opinion and what we stand for as a party.”

Saying that it would be better to have a child sexual predator in the Senate than a Democrat, the strategist said, is putting party over country and is “a cancer” on the GOP.

Roy "Fruit Salad" Moore still says he's going to sue the Washington Post.  They've got 30+ sources as well as the four women, and NYT v. Sullivan.  He's got bupkis, and a civil suit would invite all manner of investigation into his penchant for dating girls so young he felt compelled to ask their mother's permission.  Polling now indicates that may be his best case scenario:

Moore trails Democratic candidate Doug Jones 46 percent to 42 percent among Alabama voters, a lead for the Democrat that is well within the poll's margin of error of 4.1 points, according to the new survey by Louisiana-based JMC Analytics. That finding is consistent with two overnight polls that were released since the allegations came to light Thursday.

Before the news broke, Moore had an eight-point lead in the race, reflecting Alabama's heavily Republican tilt. The election is scheduled for Dec. 12.

So he could lose the seat to a Democrat; or force the Senate to refuse to seat him; or gain the Senate, and be an albatross around the neck of the GOP in 2018, because this issue (how men treat women) is not going away.

Let us all thank Roy Moore, our man on their side.

*An act which has led, hilariously, to Hannity fans smashing their Keurig coffee makers.  But Keurig doesn't sell the K-cups everyone uses, they sell the coffee makers these clowns have already bought.  Smashing one doesn't hurt Keurig at all, and certainly won't affect sales of K-cups.  So.....
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"Do you understand what you are reading?"


Maybe we could lock Valerie Tarico and the Alabama state auditor in a room, and not open the door until the screaming stops:

Moore is a former Alabama judge, now senate candidate, who believes emphatically that the Bible should take precedence over the U.S. constitution and American tradition of jurisprudence. He fought long and hard to keep his preferred version of the Ten Commandments—carved in stone—on display in the state supreme court. Moore boldly proclaims his allegiance to the Bible, citing verses at will. So, when he was accused recently of making unwanted sexual advances toward several young teens while a lawyer in his 30s, people accused him of hypocrisy. But if Moore’s only transgression was exploiting his greater age and status to seek sex or intimacy from teenagers, the accusation is unfair.  His behavior was perfectly biblical.
First, there is no such thing as "perfectly Biblical."  If there were, Biblical theology itself would not be a failed field of endeavor (I know, probably too inside baseball, but stick with me, it gets better).  "Bible," after all, comes from the Latin for "books."  The Bible, then, is not properly a book, but a set of books.  I grew up with pictures sort of like the one above.  The division into categories can vary widely, but the general idea is basically sound.  It's the fundamentalists, who raised Tarico, that treat the entire volume as one work written from beginning to end by one hand (God's, if you were wondering).  The rest of us are bit more sanguine about what "the Bible says."

Which is where the problem with all of Tarico's analyses of scripture starts:  she cherry picks the stories she finds most outrageous and fails to notice how much things change over time.  She would benefit from reading some of the feminist Biblical scholarship, scholarship which points out both how women actually have power in Scripture, are important to it (the presence of the Creation story in Genesis 1, followed by the second story, of Adam and Eve and the Garden, in Genesis 2, is an interesting statement on priorities, if you pay attention to it; Tarico doesn't), as well as ways women were pushed out of the canon (most notably the song of Miriam that isn't, which once followed Moses's song on the other shore of the "Red Sea," but is lost now forever).  It is, in other words, a much more complicated picture than Tarico allows.

And then there is the community reading the scripture.  If Taricot is going to pluck stories from the Bible, why don't we?

26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[a] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
    and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
    Who can speak of his descendants?
    For his life was taken from the earth.”[b]

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.  (Acts 8:26-35, KJV)
Scripture is not meant to be self-explanatory, nor read in the vacuum of individual experience and interpretation.   How scripture is understood and interpreted is always a matter of a community doing the interpretation.   I know communities of faith that read the scripture as Tarico wants to.  Interestingly, a number of evangelical Christians of some prominence have stepped forward to condemn the interpretations being applied to Roy Moore, who pretty much has his own hermeneutic that pretty well serves Roy Moore; which is the problem with exegesis gets unmoored from the larger community of believers, the larger Church to which all Christians should (but don't) aspire to be a part.  Tarico, in other words, is taking an interpretation as peculiar and blinkered and narrow as Moore's, and declaring it the true, if disastrous, interpretation.  Well, it's a interpretation, but we Christians don't all agree on any one interpretation of scripture; we don't even agree that the Bible should be read as a single text.  I mean, has Tarico heard of midrash?  It's ancient commentary on the text, with commentary on the commentary on the commentary.  There are volumes of commentary adhered to by some believers, and not others; and every sermon every Sunday in every pulpit is commentary on the commentary as well as on the text.  Which of those do you prefer?

And which of those is the only interpretation of scripture, or even Christian doctrine and exegesis, which is valid, however damaging you think it is?  Does the Bible speak to us?  Or do we interpret it?  I suppose you can interpret it as Taricot does; but that doesn't mean you have to.
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Sunday, November 12, 2017

Now that he gets to Vietnam


Because of the international dateline, he missed posting this on 11/11.  Huh.  And no, he really means it's all about being friends with Trump:
And remember when W. looked into Putin's soul?
Who knew it could get worse?
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which seems to be pretty counter to what we as Christians believe in.”


We may soon look back on Roy Moore and ask what hath God wrought?

First, Alabama Marion County GOP chair David Hall told a reporter, "It was 40 years ago, I really don't see the relevance of it. He was 32. She was supposedly 14. She's not saying that anything happened other than they kissed… It wouldn't affect whether or not I'd vote for him.”

OK, really? Did he really just say that?

Let’s be clear, she is saying a lot more than that they kissed. But, seriously, a 32-year-old even kissing a 14-year-old is OK with you, David Hall?

Hint: it’s not.

But the most widely reported comment came from Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler, who told the Washington Examiner, “Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became the parents of Jesus… There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

So…after I got over my initial shock of this statement, I admittedly got angry.

If this is evangelicalism, I’m on the wrong team.

But it is not.

Christians don't use Joseph and Mary to explain child molesting accusations.

I agree.  Interesting, though, that somebody had to say it; and had to say it in defense of evangelicals who are not Roy Moore or rabid supporters of Roy Moore.  And lines must be drawn:

So, let’s be clear. No. Normal. Evangelical. Believes. This. About. The. Bible.

Furthermore, and addressing evangelicals:

We should be angered, first that politicians think they can lie to us so easily by appealing to biblical language and characters. Second, that we so easily fall for such tactics.

For the past decade, evangelicals have been easy marks, and I hope that people won’t fall for these things.


Whether they do or not, two points need to be made:

Either way, Jim Zeigler needs to read his Bible quite differently.

And to all you reporters out there, THIS IS NOT WHAT EVANGELICALS BELIEVE.

Scripture, you see, is read by a community of believers; or it is utterly useless and used only for harm.  Mr. Stetzer here speaks for that community, against those who would abuse that community and its beliefs.

These defenses of Moore may leave a mark:

Asked by host Witt, “You have Roy Moore’s defenders comparing what he did to the Bible, most notably the parents of Jesus Christ — Joseph and Mary — even though one of his accusers was just 14 at the time. Where are these responses coming from? Is this the evangelical wing of the party speaking here? Is it the anti-McConnell wing or is it something else?”

“I think it’s a combination of a few things,” Setmayer began, “I’ve been very open in my criticism of evangelicals, even back to the presidential election with the support of Donald Trump and all of his transgressions and his openness in being an indecent human being, which seems to be pretty counter to what we as Christians believe in.”

“I just find it really abhorrent that the evangelical community is even going this route, particularly now in Alabama,” she stated. “It’s shameful that they’re perverting Biblical Scripture to try to normalize or rationalize the actions of someone that possibly molested a teenager. They’ll have to reconcile that when they hit the pearly gates, I guess.”

“As far as what’s going on here, using other aspects of the media and the Senate Republicans and Senate leadership as scapegoats, this seems to be what the Bannon-side of the political spectrum is doing,” she explained. “This is straight out of their playbook. It’s everybody else. They’re persecuted by the media and by Senate leadership. It becomes more about sticking it to them than actually upholding standards, which we used to have.”

“As Republicans, we used to be the Moral Majority party remember that?” she ruefully added. “I’m old enough to remember those days when Ralph Reed and the Family Research Council, they were very adamant about family values and common character and decency and that mattered. What happened to that? Now it’s some kind of weird tribalism going on here and us versus them —  establishment and media versus what? I think this is a very dangerous precedent and potentially irreparably damaging for Republicans.”

Editor's note:  if you're appealing to the example of Ralph Reed, who escaped by the skin of his teeth from the scandal that took down Jack Abramoff and others, as well as the extremely sketchy Family Research Council, you're actually on pretty weak ground and much as you're being cited approvingly, we can't let that slide.  Chickens coming home to roost, as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright famously said.

And I'm pretty sure Frank Schaeffer doesn't even consider himself a Christian anymore, but:

“Back in the day when my dad and my were going around the country establishing the religious right based on our anti-abortion stand, one I’ve moved a long way from since,” Schaeffer explained. “The whole idea was bringing America [back] to some moral stand.”

“Think about the Republican Party now,” he continued as his voice rose. “Throw some words out that are associated with them: mass shootings, Milo, Trump, Moore, Bannon, rape, child molesting, neo-Nazis, white supremacy. What the hell is going on with the Republican Party?”

“I’m not shocked by Donald Trump, he’s an ass. I’m not shocked by Roy Moore. he’s a loud mouth, a gun-toting fool,” he exclaimed. “What I’m shocked by is the complicity. We are in a political climate that’s built on one lie after another. I just want to say for the record, by the way, I believe a woman who stands up, which is very difficult to do and comes forward with a story like that. She was a Trump voter. She’s a Republican.”

“I believe her,” he added. “I just want to say that as a father and grandfather and someone that respects women that I believe her.”

Yeah, at some point you can't call everything you do "moral," and everything your opponent does "evil".  We may finally be seeing the whip crack on that one.
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Saturday, November 11, 2017

Veteran's Day 2017: "Ain't gonna study war no more"


Pope Francis at the Sicilian-American cemetery, Nettuno, Italy, November 2, 2017:

“We pray for all the dead, and especially these young people, in a moment in which so many young people die in battles every day because of this world war ‘in pieces’.”

“Even children are dying.  Death is the fruit of war, and may the Lord give us the grace to cry.”

“Hope does not disappoint, but hope is often born and takes root in so many human wounds, so much suffering. Yet, amidst so much suffering, one looks up and says: ‘I know my savior is alive, but stop, Lord.’

“This is perhaps the prayer that naturally arises, looking at this cemetery, ‘Please Lord, stop, no more, no more war, no more this useless slaughter, as [Pope] Benedict XV said.”

“This is a place of hope, but also of tears. Humanity must not forget these tears. Humanity hasn’t learned the lesson of these tears, and seems not to want to learn it.”

“That’s war, the destruction of ourselves … it leaves wounds in the heart, and so many tears.”

“The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, [is] “merciful and companionate with every people, and every person who’s oppressed.”

A prayer from the Hymnal of the E&R church:

O Christ, son of the living God, have mercy upon us.
Thou that sites at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us;
And deliver us for thy Name's sake.

AMEN.

O Christ, when thou didst open thine eyes on this fair earth, the angels greeted thee as the Prince of Peace and besought us to be of good will toward one another; but thy triumph is delayed and we are weary of war.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, the very earth groans with pain as the feet of armed men march across thy mangled form.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, may the Church, whom thou didst love into life; not fail thee in her witness for the things for which thou didst live and die.

TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, the people who are called by thy Name are separated from each other in thought and life; still our tumults, take away our vain imaginings, and grant to thy people at this time the courage to proclaim the gospel of forgiveness, and faithfully to maintain the ministry of reconciliation.

TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER

O Christ, come to us in our sore need and save us;
O God, plead thine own cause and give us help, for vain is the help of man.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ of God, by thy birth in the stable, save us and help us;
By thy toil at the carpenter's bench, save us and help us;
By thy sinless life, save us and help us;
By thy cross and passion, save us and help us.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.
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Friday, November 10, 2017

Jesus, Mary and Joseph!


Keeping track of the Roy Moore news of the day.  Item one:  they really need a new set of metaphors; these Biblical ones ain't workin'!

Yup; Roy Moore and Jesus know what persecution is!  Besides, Mary was a teenager, she knows what it's like to be molested by an older man to whom she's not married!  Wait a minute, that's not right....

Meanwhile, back at the ranch the nut-cutting has begun (sorry; ranch humor):

A day after explosive allegations of sexual assault surfaced against Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore, the Republican Party’s senate campaign arm has severed financial ties with the embattled former state supreme court justice.

A joint fundraising committee benefitting Moore and a handful of Republican Party organs filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Friday removing the National Republican Senatorial Committee as one of its beneficiaries. Going forward, the committee’s fundraising will benefit Moore’s Senate campaign, the Alabama Republican Party, and the Republican National Committee but not the NRSC.

Besides:  Jesus, Mary and Joseph!  And it ain't like it was rape or something:

“It isn’t like they’re saying rape or molestation,” he added. “It was unwanted advances. I think it has absolutely no volition.”

No, I don't understand it, either,  Must be an Alabama thing.  And the funny thing is:  this is a GOP problem:

“Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, (Sen. Richard) Shelby and probably a few more in the establishment,” Thibado believed were the culprits of the story. “They’d rather have a Democrat in that’s going to toe the line.”

Which, frankly, is just fine with me.  The Senate is making noises that they don't want Moore there.  If I were Roy Moore, I wouldn't be making much book that the Senate is gonna let him in.  If the GOP lets Moore have a place on the floor, the Democrats are going to hang it around their necks and go to town in 2018 and beyond.  If the GOP blocks Moore, they're gonna have hell to pay in their primaries in 2018, especially in the South.

Gotta go make some popcorn.....

But before I do, please to note Roy Moore himself is now saying he didn't do it, but he did, and besides, it was okay that he did!

Moore claimed he never met Leigh Corfman, the woman who said she had sexual contact with him when she was 14.

Uh, yeah, stop right there a moment.  From WaPo:

Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.

It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.

“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”
Nancy Wells is one of 30 sources for the WaPo article, aside from the four women who accuse Moore of inappropriate behavior and relationships with them as children.  Now, carry on:

“With regard to the other girls, you understand this is 40 years ago after my return from the military, I dated a lot of young ladies,” he said, responding to claims made by other women. He went on to say he does recognize the names of two of the women, Debbie Wesson Gibson and Gloria Thacker Deason, whose maiden names he remembered.

As journalists on Twitter noted, Moore’s story seemed to change multiple times — he claimed both that he never dated girls even in their “late teens” but also that he never dated any girls without the permission of their mothers.

“You don’t specifically remember having a girlfriend that was in her late teens even at that time?” Hannity asked him.

“I don’t remember that and I don’t remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother,” Moore responded.

I know my daughter's boyfriend asked my wife's permission to date her because...well, that never happened, as they're only about a year apart in age, if that much.

Later in the interview, he said he never engaged in any sexual relationships with the girls, and that they were wholly appropriate.

“Obviously, we never had any sexual activity, there was never anything like that, and the behavior was altogether appropriate,” the former Alabama Supreme Court Justice said.
Well, you think it was, but they don't.  And besides, how could this have happened if it never happened?  I thought your wife was going to sue WaPo for defamation.  Isn't truth an absolute defense in such suits?

But wait, there's more (almost used the pun!  Almost!):


Yeah, that's another Senator who won't be anxious to vote to allow you a seat, Judge.  Jeff Flake can't be counted on, either:


And, by the way, Judge, what is truth?
And apparently aware of what he'd just said to Hannity, Moore changed his tune before the program ended:
This is how you circle down the drain.....

and because I can't stop once I've started, I have to say:  why do you think we used to call 'em "yellow dog Democrats"?

 And once more with feeling:  don't seat Roy Moore!
I'm gonna need more popcorn! 

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Open mouth, insert....


I wrote this, then shelved it.  The premise is that the allegations against Roy Moore were being accepted as fact, but the facts weren't all that bad.  Most of the Alabama GOP has argued there are no facts, but if there are, it's like Mary and Joseph, or Zechariah and Elizabeth (which has as much grounding in the gospels as the names and number of the wise men, hem-hem.)  But then Ann Coulter weighed in:

“Yes, he dated girls who were 17, 19 when he was 30,” Coulter said. “We might find that a little creepy today, but this was nearly 50 years ago. The one serious allegation is a woman—or at the time she was 14 years old who claims actual molestation. But—And who knows. I’d like to see what his response is. But, you can’t help thinking about the timing here, Laura.”

Now, she's conveniently picking the least salacious stories and scandalous ages (she rejects the story of the then-14 year old, even though other witnesses confirm it), but taking those as true and, again, saying:  no harm, no foul!  The only problem is, if the Senate takes those stories as true, Moore might not be allowed a seat in that august body.  Despite excuses from the Alabama GOP and Coulter and Breitbart, this is what the Senate leadership understands:

“My daughter is 14-years-old, she’s a little girl,” [Donnie Deutsch] explained. “You have to picture it. If you know 14-year-old, picture that. Now visually picture this 32-year-old slimebag attorney actually coddling up to her, just play that movie out in your head.”

Yup.  Lots of fathers of daughters playing that tape right now.  This story is national, and all the defense of the Alabama GOP doesn't change that.  Lots of fathers probably also considering what it would be like for their daughters to come forward with allegations like this:

“If they believe this man is predatory, they are guilty of allowing him to exist for 40 years,” [Republican Alabama Representative Ed] Henry fumed. “I think someone should prosecute and go after them. You can’t be a victim 40 years later, in my opinion.”

It's my understanding that there is a criminal statute in Alabama that Moore could have violated; and that there is no statute of limitations on that law.  So maybe Alabama needs to change that law?  And, as Josh Marshall noted, Sean Hannity has decided this is all about money, although what money these women are in line for is not yet clear.

So this is very much of our times, and the backlash is very much of our times, too.  Either these women are all opportunistic liars, or they are all gold-diggers, because if there's money to be made, it means we aren't getting any and they're getting money for nothing, and that ain't fair!

It's money that matters.  Although what money the accusers of Harvey Weinstein or Kevin Spacey or Louis C.K. or any of the other accused and accusers, will make is unclear to me.  Frankly, I don't see any money in it for them at all.  But as the father of a daughter, I'd certainly want her to put herself in this spotlight in order to get that sweet easy cash.

Sure, because, you know, she's just my daughter.

The GOP in the Senate is a bit less sanguine about this, and quite a bit more defensive.  John McCain calls the allegations disqualifying; Alabama's other senator, Richard Shelby, says Moore should not be seated if the allegations are true, as does Mitch McConnell.  So now they're faced with Pilate's question:  what is truth?  Alabama may decide this guy should be in the Senate, but the Senate is made up of representatives of the rest of the nation, and the rest of the nation may not want Roy Moore in their Senate.

One of my students this morning, in reference to these controversies, told us the military taught him explicitly that "perception is reality."  Certainly that's how Donald Trump rose to public office:  the perception that he was "tough" and could "make deals." He's singularly failed at the latter, and was fawning over the Chinese leadership this week, proving he's not the former, either.  But perception is reality, and what you perceive matters more than what the rest of us perceive.

But the GOP is perceiving the clamor over sexual harassment and assault, the "disappearing" of Kevin Spacey from a movie set to release in December, of Louis C.K.'s connections to HBO, and they know  the Senate is not immune to that rising tsunami.  If Moore has a few more defenders like this, or Breitbart (as discussed below), he may find he wins the electoral battle only to lose the war.

First Breitbart defended Roy Moore by saying the alleged relationships with four women some 40 years ago were all "romantic."  No, you can't make this stuff up.  Which sounded an awful lot like admitting the women's stories were true, but it still ain't that bad; all while Moore is denying the stories entirely (so far).

And then this:

The 16-year-old and 18-year-old girls, Pollack said, were legally at the age of consent in Alabama when 32-year-old Moore attempted to have sex with them, encounters which Pollack described as “legitimate relationships.”
“When you read the article, there are several cases mentioned and of those cases, only one would be legally problematic,” said Pollack. “All of the others were legal relationships with women who were of age at the time when Roy Moore was single.”

Well, except for the 14 year old, so I guess that means that story is false and the others are true because nothing to see here, move along people!  Except, of course, a 32 year old man coming on to teenage girls is icky no matter what the age of consent is (and that's really just to keep teenagers from committing rape, not to give 32 year old men a pass).  So if there's no harm, no foul, doesn't that mean the stories are true?  Or might as well be?

Isn't Moore supposed to be a pillar of rectitude and righteousness?  Is his best defense really that it was legal?  Maybe he'll tell us the 14 year old looked 16.  And by the way, why so much interest in this story from Breitbart?  Glad you asked that:

Moore issued a formal denial of the impending story to Breitbart News, in which he said the story was concocted by the Democratic Party to defeat his senatorial campaign.

“These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,” Moore tells Breitbart.

Except Breitbart seems to think the stories might as well be true.  Ann Coulter takes them as true.  Even the Alabama state auditor who compared these alleged relationships to Joseph and Mary, is making an argument that assumes the stories are true.  And what is truth?  Evidence in a courtroom?  Well, if this involves criminal charges, that's necessary; but aside from the 14 year old, it doesn't appear that Moore committed any crime.  The stories themselves are supported by witnesses; must they be cross-examined?  HBO and Sony Pictures and Netflix don't need any more information to cut ties with people who have made money for them.  Silent on those allegations, the White House now says the claims against more are a "mere allegation," but still agreeing he should "step aside if they re true."  And what is truth?  "Mere allegations" alone have driven Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K. from public view and contractual obligations.  Do GOP Senators want to assert any defense of Roy Moore?  Do they need hearings and depositions and oaths to decide the allegations against Roy Moore have merit?  By what standard will they decide these stories are true, or not?  Do they really want to stand that firmly behind this man?

And to Roy Moore, the question:  Who needs enemies when you have friends like this?*

*and what is truth?  Well, this:

“There is no glory in this for a woman,” [Nicolle] Wallace began. “I mean it is — it is reliving the most humiliating, the most debasing moments, days or hours of a woman’s life. To put this in the newspaper attached to her name, and as Heidi says, the story is in exquisite piece of journalism, because these interviewers got these women to understand not just the the risks they were taking to their own reputations, but the risk they were taking that they wouldn’t be believed.”

“I think to re-traumatize the women, is to say, ‘if true.’ To re-traumatize the women is to say, ‘if this costs him the election.’ I mean, yes, it’s true, because no woman lies about being sexually molested as 14-year-old, or being taken advantage of.”

“These women are coming from small communities,” GOP consultant Susan Del Percio jumped in to add. “They’re not movie stars. These are women going to the supermarket every day. Some of their children are in school, there’s real risks they’re putting out.”

“Not to take anything away, the actresses that came out were brave and brilliant and they are our heroes. But Gwyneth Paltrow has an Oscar, a job, a career and a lot of wealth,” Wallace stated. “The victims in this story, and I’m sure she would agree and most famous women who went out and did this and took great risk. It is harder when you have nothing to gain, everything to lose. To see people on television say, ‘oh, if it’s true.’ It’s true!”
(I would make a distinction between allegations and criminal allegations, but that isn't generally the issue here, and criminal charges are rightly subject to investigation.  In the case of Roy Moore this is a question of fitness for office, and the Senate gets the final word in that case.  "If it's true" is going to be a very interesting decision point.)
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