This Statement Is Not Enough, Senator Franken
This is not an adequate response:
NEW: Statement from Sen. @alfranken: “I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann. As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasn't. I shouldn't have done it.”
- Tom Weber (@webertom1) November 16, 2017
Not even close to it. Jesus, Senator, there’s a picture!
Today’s chapter in the apparently neverending saga of men behaving crudely comes from LeeAnn Tweeden, a former model and currently a news reader at KABC radio in Los Angeles. She went on a USO tour in 2006 along with some country music stars and then-newly-elected Senator Al Franken. According to Tweeden, this was not a pleasant experience.
He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ‘OK’ so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth. I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time. I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.
Then, while Tweeden was sleeping on the flight home, still in Kevlar and a helmet, the picture got taken, and the picture is worth 1000 words, a few of them even printable.
I am sure that this will result in another spate of learned commentary about how Democrats have to “reckon” with these events. (We will discuss the whole Reckoning With Clinton business in another post soon.) I stand where I stand on Roy Moore, and where I always do in these situations - as far as their political careers go, once the facts get out, the decision is between them and their constituents. (Although I suspect that the Franken 2020 bandwagon may have cracked an axle.)
Way back when Barney Frank was in Congress, and he got involved with a male prostitute named Steve Gobie, The Boston Globe went into full Hibernian Sex Panic, demanding that Frank resign of the grounds of "Oooh, Icky!" Appearing on Nightline, George Will, of all people, took the Let The People Decide position.
If the voters of Alabama want to be represented by the Don Juan of Cinnabon, that’s their choice and nobody else’s. When Al Franken stands for re-election, the voters of Minnesota deserve the chance to weigh his qualifications in the light of this episode. Anything else is substituting moral theater for political reality.
But, really, that statement is wholly useless.
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