Good luck trying to convince a rational judge or jury that Franken's intent in the photo was anything other than an exhibition of humor by a comedian.
As I wrote
over two months ago↗:
Thus, to use "showbiz": Look, I recognize that behavior, and am willing to use the word "sophomoric", but that is as much as either Mr. Franken or myself can push. There is a question of what passes muster in showbiz, and that absolutely needs to be settled. Furthermore, what we might, in a prior time, have written off as sophomoric bullshit boys club behavior according to the irreverence of comedic showbiz, is not ours or his to define in the moment.
It kind of cuts both ways: To the one,
if Mr. Franken is a comedian, what is the
then that licenses such behavior? And therein we find the hook: Once upon a time, there existed an expectation that this was somehow okay because, you know, fill in the blank about creativity and the fact of an entertainment industry. I don't actually disagree with "humor by a comedian" anymore than I would disagree with "persuasive business tactics" in taking the international businessmen out to the strip club. Yes, this is how things have been for a long time,
and that is in and of itself problematic.
And now the bell tolls on this one, as it periodically does.
If you might say the "rational judge or jury" will excuse such behavior, then I would challenge the rationale. I can think of a jury that decided a rape victim was asking for it because she was wearing a bikini ... in Florida. I can think of a judge who placed a girl in the care of her father because he feared the lesbian mother might abuse her, and let me specify, that he was so worried that the respectable lesbian might abuse a daughter that he placed the girl in the care of a convicted murderer and accused child abuser. Perhaps one or both of these outcomes falls outside your personal definition of what counts as a rational result. In order to find behavior like Franken's acceptable, what is the rational argument delineating what boundaries?
If comedian,
then what?
To blithely say, "Good luck trying to convince a rational judge or jury that Franken's intent in the photo was anything other than an exhibition of humor by a comedian", relies, functionally, on presupposing a rational justification for sexual violation having to do with the acceptability of such behavior according to an unreliable arrangement of particular, specialized, unenumerated customs.
Thus, yes, I wonder how that mysterious rational justification works.
And like I said, it cuts both ways:
In November, I reflected on why I actually am not a fan of meshing the Moore and Franken cases together, but also suggested to "watch what Al Franken is doing; he is stuck with a process, is not resigning during a period when the news can only get worse, and he has precisely one way through this with no guarantee of where and how he lands".
In assessing a number of allegations against an accused man, that we might defend him by license of custom in a particular case only requires that we consider the assertion of customary license in the general framework; that will not speak well of the accused; that is to say, the defense you postulate regarding the photo only reinforces the broader complaint about Mr. Franken's behavior.
But in considering "showbitz" and "sophomoric" humor, there was also this:
I would ask Sen. Franken's supporters, for instance, to bear one particular point in mind as this goes forward: He actually knows what he's doing at this point. He got himself into this, and now he needs to get himself through this, and one of the things he knows is that he does not get to choose where he lands, this time ....
.... This is the time in which Al Franken needs to keep his head bowed, simply hit his marks, and do his job, and "what he gets in return" is as mysterious a notion as it would be foul demand.
This time later, and after all the contention in between, I can comfortably stand on those points. Which brings another issue to its moment: Some of Mr. Franken's most vociferous defenders simply don't trust him.
He knows what he's done; he knows what he hasn't; he knows the score. He can parse in his own conscience all he wants, but he is smart enough to know where he stands. I actually think he might have a path forward that has much to do with what passes muster in showbiz. And he knows it's there; but it's a question of perfection or self-destruction, so I would not know how to flip coins or throw bones on questions of wisdom or obligation. It suits him and everyone else best that he stays miles—astronomical units—away from the subject unless he can hit every last mark
perfectly; to the other, some might argue a context by which he owes it, and I would have to see the construction on that before choosing to quibble or not.
The thing is that Al Franken is very smart in a number of ways. What people generally mean when they say they don't know what they were thinking is that it made sense at the time in its own way they can no longer explain without feeling like a complete idiot because at some point it's a matter of how to avoid literally saying, "I'm in the performing arts, and we do this kind of shit to each other, by which I mean to women, all the time."
Just like he's smart enough to not say, "What, it's fucking
showbiz! She's fucking lucky that's as bad as it got!"
(In television comedy, that would be the moment when some hitherto ignored female character clears her throat and says, "Yeah, y'know, about that ...." The difference 'twixt that moment in comedy and drama is that according to the one, we're supposed to think it's funny. Meanwhile, one really ought not need be extraordinarily intelligent in order to be smart enough to not say certain things.)
Al Franken was in show business. He was in television comedy. When it comes to the bad news of treating women poorly, yeah, when it rains it pours, and while the fact of the rain explains why he is all wet, that speaks nothing about his decision to play the shark.
There came a point at which he recognized it was his turn, and the news was only going to get worse. And this time later, his loudest defenders simply don't trust him.
He knows what he's doing. His biggest danger, right now, is letting egotism speak. First rule is don't make things worse. And if at some point, knowing what he knows about what he has done and not, Al Franken decides the best thing to do is stay away, yes, actually, I will trust his assessment. He has exposure in an industry sector that quite literally bleeds the stuff. When the first accusation hit, he knew there would be more, and could only hope he knew how many; generally speaking, no, we don't know how many; we only count the ones we remember.
