This is disconcerting, to say the least.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Defending the Indefensable
So it's been awhile since I put up a new post and a lot has happened since the end of October. The biggest thing going in the cultural realm is the avalanche of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault claims that started in Hollywood and that have hit all across the political and cultural landscape. The Harvey Weinstein scandal was definitely the catalyst and, given the accusations of actual criminal acts and subsequent police investigations, the most serious to date.
Close to home, GOP representative Jeff Hoover is the biggest name in KY politics to have been taken down because he chose to let "little Jeff" make decisions instead of his brain. Representative Hoover's misdeeds are, in the grand pantheon of sexual misadventures, fairly lame. Yes, sexual harassment is wrong, particularly given the power imbalance that is alleged. But at the end of the day, we've got nothing but dirty talk.
I spent a couple of sessions in Frankfort as a registered lobbyist for the FOP. Frankly, our representative form of government would be better served if all citizens who were registered to vote were required to travel to our Commonwealth's capital and observe a legislative session. Think of it like jury duty. You'd get a summons and have to attend three or four days of the General Assembly. You'd have to attend at least two committee hearings in both chambers, watch floor debates, and sit in the gallery and watch as your elected representatives vote for or against your interests.
But mostly, you'd have to walk the halls or sit in the cafeteria and watch how the third rate lawyers, real estate shills, liquor store owners, and used car dealers that we send to the legislature comport themselves when they're away from the rubes who keep electing them. You could watch the lobbyists, particularly the lobbyists from the pharmaceutical companies and other moneyed interests, stumble around with their tits about to pop out of their blouses as they try not to fall off of their 8- inch stiletto heels, sidle up to your elected representatives and touch their arms and laugh too loudly at their terrible jokes while they tell remind Sen. Dipwad of the mingle that they have scheduled for tonight in a hospitality suite they have rented at the Capital Plaza.
Hopefully, everyone would then go home and vote out all of the incumbents of both parties in the next election. Either that, or a good old- fashioned mob with pitchforks and torches would burn the place to the ground. One way or another, a mighty reckoning would be at hand.
But enough about Frankfort and the debauchery of our locally- elected knaves. On the national scene, Roy Moore, candidate for the U.S. Senate from Alabama, is having his campaign blown up by allegations that he sexually abused a 14 year- old when he was a 32 year- old district attorney.
I think that I'm tired of watching people or pundits that I generally respect try to justify the despicable in order to protect the tribe. Roy Moore, as a thirty- something year-old, continued to pursue romantic relationships with individuals who were his intellectual and emotional inferiors instead of women his own age.
Whether or not he committed a criminal offense is not the point. At the age he admitted to pursuing some of these girls (and, yes, he has admitted to seeking romance with teenagers) a "normal" adult male with healthy sexual and romantic drives would have not been interested due to the difference in maturity. What kind of conversation can a thirty year-old have with a 14, 15, or 16 year-old? What interests could they have in common?
The honest answer is none, outside of compatible body parts. The only reason a fully grown adult male wants to spend time with teenaged girls is because they're more easily impressed and easier to manipulate into bed than women who are adults.
We should also remember that in 1977 or so, when this behavior is alleged and some of it admitted to have occurred, that 32 year-old men were practically considered middle-aged and expected to have already shouldered adult responsibilities like full- time employment, marriage, and children. Roy Moore was, bluntly, a creep. Sure, we can laugh at it when Matthew McConaughey's character in "Dazed and Confused" tells us that his favorite thing about high school girls is that he keeps getting older, but they stay the same age. In real life, it's weird and morally suspect.
I know that it seems that we've all decided that character doesn't matter and that winning is all that does. Maybe that was true last year when the question was Trump vs. Clinton due to the power of the executive branch. But the worst thing that happens if Roy Moore loses to his Democratic opponent next month is that the junior Senator from Alabama is a democrat for the next three years, at which point he will either change his party registration to the GOP if he wants to remain the junior senator from AL, which Alabama democrats are known to do, or the good people of Alabama will replace him with a GOP candidate who doesn't have Moore's baggage. And Moore had plenty of significant baggage before all this came out.
The best thing would be for him to drop out, but it doesn't look like Moore will go voluntarily. So, nope, I'm not going to try to convince myself its a matter of life or death that he get elected. I don't live in AL, so it's really not my problem anyway. I will certainly not bother to defend him.
Close to home, GOP representative Jeff Hoover is the biggest name in KY politics to have been taken down because he chose to let "little Jeff" make decisions instead of his brain. Representative Hoover's misdeeds are, in the grand pantheon of sexual misadventures, fairly lame. Yes, sexual harassment is wrong, particularly given the power imbalance that is alleged. But at the end of the day, we've got nothing but dirty talk.
I spent a couple of sessions in Frankfort as a registered lobbyist for the FOP. Frankly, our representative form of government would be better served if all citizens who were registered to vote were required to travel to our Commonwealth's capital and observe a legislative session. Think of it like jury duty. You'd get a summons and have to attend three or four days of the General Assembly. You'd have to attend at least two committee hearings in both chambers, watch floor debates, and sit in the gallery and watch as your elected representatives vote for or against your interests.
But mostly, you'd have to walk the halls or sit in the cafeteria and watch how the third rate lawyers, real estate shills, liquor store owners, and used car dealers that we send to the legislature comport themselves when they're away from the rubes who keep electing them. You could watch the lobbyists, particularly the lobbyists from the pharmaceutical companies and other moneyed interests, stumble around with their tits about to pop out of their blouses as they try not to fall off of their 8- inch stiletto heels, sidle up to your elected representatives and touch their arms and laugh too loudly at their terrible jokes while they tell remind Sen. Dipwad of the mingle that they have scheduled for tonight in a hospitality suite they have rented at the Capital Plaza.
Hopefully, everyone would then go home and vote out all of the incumbents of both parties in the next election. Either that, or a good old- fashioned mob with pitchforks and torches would burn the place to the ground. One way or another, a mighty reckoning would be at hand.
But enough about Frankfort and the debauchery of our locally- elected knaves. On the national scene, Roy Moore, candidate for the U.S. Senate from Alabama, is having his campaign blown up by allegations that he sexually abused a 14 year- old when he was a 32 year- old district attorney.
I think that I'm tired of watching people or pundits that I generally respect try to justify the despicable in order to protect the tribe. Roy Moore, as a thirty- something year-old, continued to pursue romantic relationships with individuals who were his intellectual and emotional inferiors instead of women his own age.
Whether or not he committed a criminal offense is not the point. At the age he admitted to pursuing some of these girls (and, yes, he has admitted to seeking romance with teenagers) a "normal" adult male with healthy sexual and romantic drives would have not been interested due to the difference in maturity. What kind of conversation can a thirty year-old have with a 14, 15, or 16 year-old? What interests could they have in common?
The honest answer is none, outside of compatible body parts. The only reason a fully grown adult male wants to spend time with teenaged girls is because they're more easily impressed and easier to manipulate into bed than women who are adults.
We should also remember that in 1977 or so, when this behavior is alleged and some of it admitted to have occurred, that 32 year-old men were practically considered middle-aged and expected to have already shouldered adult responsibilities like full- time employment, marriage, and children. Roy Moore was, bluntly, a creep. Sure, we can laugh at it when Matthew McConaughey's character in "Dazed and Confused" tells us that his favorite thing about high school girls is that he keeps getting older, but they stay the same age. In real life, it's weird and morally suspect.
I know that it seems that we've all decided that character doesn't matter and that winning is all that does. Maybe that was true last year when the question was Trump vs. Clinton due to the power of the executive branch. But the worst thing that happens if Roy Moore loses to his Democratic opponent next month is that the junior Senator from Alabama is a democrat for the next three years, at which point he will either change his party registration to the GOP if he wants to remain the junior senator from AL, which Alabama democrats are known to do, or the good people of Alabama will replace him with a GOP candidate who doesn't have Moore's baggage. And Moore had plenty of significant baggage before all this came out.
The best thing would be for him to drop out, but it doesn't look like Moore will go voluntarily. So, nope, I'm not going to try to convince myself its a matter of life or death that he get elected. I don't live in AL, so it's really not my problem anyway. I will certainly not bother to defend him.
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