JUST IN: Women staff of "Saturday Night Live" sign letter in support of Sen. Al Franken

[apnu]

35. Its both a political hit job and harassment.

I'm sure my comment is going to fall flat with most because I am not taking part in the binary nature of the Internet's desire to distill everything down to black and white choices.

1) it is harassment.
No matter how we look at it, Franken was party to toxic sexuality towards women. It doesn't matter if Tweeden is in on a hit job or being used as a prop for a hit job or none of that and she's sincere or that she's a liar and all this is a set up. None of that matters.

Al Franken was party to juvenile toilet humor objectifying women's bodies. That he's a comedian doesn't matter. That the culture approves of it doesn't matter. That the target audience (soldiers) supposedly want that kind of entertainment doesn't matter.

Al Franken is a grown man with decades of experience and judgement and he let his judgment fail him. He took part in objectifying women, and today he knows it and he's apologized for it and I hope he'll work to stop it in the future.

2) it is a hit job.
The fact that Roger Stone tweeted about this a full day in advance is all the evidence I need to know this is a hit job. I don't know what Tweeden's involvement in it, and I don't care. She didn't come out with this on her own, this was planned and premeditated to injure Al Franken. Maybe Tweeden is willing in this, maybe she's been manipulated, the end result is some people in the Republican party ARE trying to co-opt #MeToo for their political gain. It fits a story they've long told that all Hollywood liberals are amoral jerks so they're running with it.

This is not to sway independents or rile liberals, though both of those things are fringe benefits. This is about feeding red meat to the base who was flagging thanks to that pedophile asshole Roy Moore.

There's a long list of creepy Republican sexual adventures and anything that lets them say "everybody does it" takes the pressure off them.

So they're trying to turn Al Franken into another Bill Clinton, a ghoul to be trotted out every time they need to change the subject.

Because they don't want to talk about Donald Trump's pussy grabbing. They don't want to talk about Larry Craig's bathroom games, they don't want to talk about David Vitter's Diapers and they don't want to talk about Mark Foley's pages. And they absolutely don't want to talk about Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.