" It's my right as an entertainer."

[Ghost Owl]

143. We don't know Politico's vetting standards.

"Most of her story is pretty easy for Politico to check out, as they would know who her boss was and could easily research if an in studio interview occurred."

Yeah, but did they?

I know they should have, and they could have, but do we know they actually did? WaPo, when it was researching the Moore accusations, thoroughly investigated the claims, independently corroborated their stories. And not because they thought the women were lying, but to make sure they could prove that they weren't.

Not every media outlet investigates like that, some have little to no resources or time devoted to vetting stories and people. It's not like it used to be, and I do wonder at the ability of little outlets like Politico or Jezebel to do research needed for stories like this.

So did Politico check to see if this person was employed by who she said she was, if she was at the studio that day, did they talk to other people who may have been there to see what they remember? Nothing about it is mentioned in the article, they only mention two other people who said Accuser #7 told them about it after it happened. Did they talk to Accuser #7 and their corroborating witnesses multiple times over a period of time, to make sure the stories were consistent (WaPo did this for the Moore accusations)? Did they try talking to other young female assistants and staffers who were ever at Air America to see if anything ever happened to them, if they ever witnessed anything inappropriate.

One of my biggest issues with this whole Franken scandal is the general lack of vetting I've seen, compared to WaPo's Moore stories, or Ronan Farrow's Weinstein/Hollywood stories. Some of these claims were never vetted at all by the media at large (like Tweeden's or Dupuy's), and others are not up front with how the story was vetted (vetting is more than just having the accuser bring in a corroborating witness, which at least most of the stories did seem to have). There are glaring unanswered questions that I can't believe NO ONE in the media asked or tried to find the answer to, like who was the USO photographer who took the picture of Tweeden (because at the least, they are witting accomplice to the harassing and inappropriate picture). Or the USO photographer in Kemplin's case. Or talking to ANY military person who might have been at either event, like Franken's escort. Why didn't anyone try to find a copy of the souvenir CD it was supposedly put onto?

People like Moore or Lauer or Weinstein leave a trail of people who will tell you privately what a creep they were, will have whispered stories and innuendo for years. One of the things that stands out about Franken is that he doesn't. That doesn't mean he isn't a creeper, but it is different than what is typical in these kind of cases. A lot of things are, that's whats bothering people.