Sexual predation is real but the potential for another day care scandal – ask the Duke lacrosse team or the frat at Virginia – lies in he said/she said incidents with a political or sexual factor. Accusations encourage prurience and self-righteousness. But often neither the he nor the she lies; if children are vulnerable to suggestion, no less are adults whose perspective from forty years is hazy. We all like plots and prefer to see our selves more positively than others might. Deviations from a truth unknowable today are less rhetorical tricks than a natural desire to create favorable narratives.
Hannity is excitable; perhaps he meant to corner Moore. But both question and answer assumed certainty could be achieved. And Hannity conflated the story from the girl whose memory was of her fourteen-year-old self in her underwear with older girls who said he had shown undue interest in them, coming later to categorize it as inappropriate. That Moore may not remember his encounter with the 14-year-old says something about a memory dismissive of other’s feelings, of the intensity of such a moment to a 14-year-old and not to a 32-year-old. It may not be attractive but it is not surprising. But Moore was forceful: No he said firmly. Forty years later does he remember a relatively pyrrhic episode?
But implicitly, both seemed to accept that a 32-year-old dating girls in their late teens was also perverted. Those assumptions seemed, at least to me, silly. Also, with such denials comes another question – that he knew and remembered the ages of the girls he, apparently unsuccessfully, pursued? Do men categorize their pursuits by ages (a thought more perverse than the acts described).
My husband and I looked at each other as later news gave that sound bite. Our youngest daughter phoned and as we muted the television, we told her what had just been said. She laughed out loud. The man she has selected as her partner is 14 years older than she.
Moore is not my kind of senator – or guy; he always seemed at best a loose cannon and at worst, well, Lonesome Rhodes. I suspect I wouldn’t have wanted him near my daughters. And my mother’s first child was at 28, mine at 32, my oldest daughter’s at 30. But I recognize other cultures, other life patterns, and other times. J.D. Vance describes his Mamaw’s early life in Hillbilly Elegy: at 13 she had slept with her best friend’s boyfriend, at 14 and pregnant she had married him and set off for Ohio from Appalachia. That was 1947; Moore’s inappropriate attentions were in 1979; it is now 2017. If you don’t think those dates are important than you know little of post war Appalachia and the sexual revolution of the 70’s and sexual politics in 2017 – nor of geographic distinctions. Man doesn’t change that much, but society does.
In the last couple of decades, our daughters have chosen life partners as has the girl who lived with us when she was 18, on her way to being an Austrian lawyer but finding happiness and fulfillment with an American academic. Of those 4 relationships, three are to men 14 years their senior; all relationships began in their teens or at 20. I’m not saying that is what I’d advise. But these are certainly better choices than I would have made at their ages – perhaps because they were looking at adults and could see more fully formed mates; more probably, they were not the idiots I was. There is an equality and independence in these relationships that belies that difference in age. They appear no less fulfilled or more dominated than the daughter who chose a partner of her age (though that choice – not surprisingly – produced children easily). All four are respected by their mates.
So, at this point, I am not all that much impressed by the charges in the Washington Post, though they don’t seem absurd. They do seem opportunistic. And little about the Post’s charges about any Republican should be accepted at face value. An incident almost forty years old may be ugly but a lot happens in forty years. The media’s definition of sexism, of sexual deviance, even of rape is drawn subjectively – harshly one day, loosely the next. I wish Ray Moore hadn’t entered the race; I would rather he hadn’t won. But I share with others a suspicion about the motives of these charges. And I’m hoping that though I felt similar misgivings about Trump, a cabinet that devolves power, judges that read the Constitution and a belief that kicking the can down the road isn’t an option have more than reconciled me.
Maybe Moore has a potential I don’t see. (I’m beginning to learn how blind I can be.) But in a Senate that sorely needs to pass tax reform, I’d hate to lose a vote – which is, I suspect, the motive of this belated “research”. (Besides how many neighbors will attack Republican senators mowing their yards or crazies will decide to herd Republican representatives into a dugout? There don’t seem too many to spare.)
In General
It seems to me that the shock here is at Moore’s general unseemliness – both sides of the aisle would just as soon he didn’t join their club, even though members in good standing certainly did more (with both boys and girls) than Moore. But the charge comes at an appropriate time for outrage, for Weinstein has whipped up a good deal of self-righteousness.
He did not appear attractive, either, but did seem more the kind of person you’d expect at a board meeting. We blame him for abusing the access to fame and the real power he had. It seems we should – he sounds like a terrible man. He was manipulative and self-centered, he saw others as means to his own rather vulgar ends – whether in celluloid dollars or in bed. But if we see him as an evil man, corrupted by lust and greed, pride and taking joy in his power over others, then the devil was also the tempter. Few are greedier for money and power than those longing to be stars. Streep’s vaunted “empathy” wasn’t evidenced when it might have protected others. Are those speaking out brave? Some were, those that had skin in the game and faced his revenge. Their charges appropriately shame and punish a man against whom authorities may be impotent given the nature of the offenses.
We should sympathize with his accusers, but we want to instill in our daughters a strong sense of private space, of integrity, but as important, a practical sense of caution and common sense. Valorizing victimization works against those goals – the best antidote is the best preventative: to feel and act as agents, as grownups with private selves and personal values.
And we need to consider habits that help. Restraint is something we lost a taste for in the sixties and seventies, but it gives us armor. We wanted to throw ourselves into experience. Those with a romantic, irrational experiential vision often value the loss of inhibitions, the effects of drugs and liquor. But those who have nurtured a self under difficult conditions, respect rationality and value integrity; they are considerably less enamored of lost consciousness. Constructing and armoring the self is a difficult business; two men who understood that and triumphed were Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. They were also for prohibition, seeing alcohol as robbing both them and others of identity, control, manhood.
Respect for ourselves and others, for a separation of the private life from the public but an integrity that moves from the one world to the other can lead to a more peaceful life. But these will only come through a culture that reinforces values, assimilated by the self through example, practice and quiet. Litigation and the media are not mediums where these work out well. And when The Washington Post and Weinstein productions define that culture, we won’t find our bearings easily.
Noel Coward on Weinstein:
Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington
Don’t put your daughter on the stage
The profession is overcrowded
And the struggle’s pretty tough
And admitting the fact
She’s burning to act
That isn’t quite enough.
“If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
We need to get back to a system that is constructed so that even pedos, predators, Clintons, Kennedys, etc, can only do so much damage to us all.
The Washington Post is the house organ for the DNC and DC swamp.
They have a history of political hit jobs going all the way back to Nixon and the Mark Felt directed coup d’etat on Nixon.
They did something very similar to George Allen several years ago, recruiting a number, including Larry Sabato, of Allen college friends to allege unprovable racist actions.
I have not trusted Sabato since,
Elect Moore and, if real evidence surfaces, he will resign.
The women who attacked Herman Cain disappeared once he dropped out. I suspect something similar here,
I wrote this elsewhere a couple of days ago:
I will add to that, that those making the accusations a) seem to be tied to the Hillary campaign, b) were offered money by the Washington Post for their statements, and c) it is bloody strange that we heard none of this when the Left was targeting Judge Moore over the 10 Commandments outside the Alabama Supreme Court. When it would probably have destroyed him and ended all of his political influence. cui bono?
Totally agree with Mike and SB. This has all the ear marks of a political hit job. The orchestration is too perfect and the “incident” reports appear too carefully crafted for factual rebuttal. It worked on Cain, so why not again?
Death6
>> But Judge Moore has the right enemies. That will have to do.
This sounds right.
I cannot know the man. I do know his enemies.
And someone who would deny McConnell “Unanimous resolutions” required to make the Senate function for things like blocking Pres Trump the ability to recess appoint judges and other high level positions seems a net gain.
Dems have placed grand knights of the KKK, Killers of women and users of child sex slaves in the Senate.
Someone who -may- have dated and sexed up a 14-year old girl in 1979 Alabama seems very small beer.
The Faux outrage of the GOPe over Judge Moore when Sen Graham of SC is testifying to the “character” of the NJ Senator who used child sex slaves pretty much places me in “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” mode regards Judge Moore.
Moore, like Trump, is too useful of a tool against the Swamp to put him down.
If all that stands between us and doom is Roy Moore, then God is not looking upon us with favor, and losing the Alabama senate seat is the least of our worries. Sorry, I am not willing in this case to say the nature of the man’s enemies should predispose us to favor him. We do not know what the future holds, but we can choose a better way forward than this.
YMMV, but I find when we and our country are facing mortal enemies, and pretty much everyone who had claimed to be on our side is actively working for those enemies and is blatantly at war with us and openly lying to us as a matter of course; then whoever those enemies and those who the traitors to our cause actively oppose may be the only indication we have, at least as long as things remain political.
It looks like a lot of Alabama evangelicals agree with the consensus here
http://winwithjmc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Alabama-Senate-Executive-Summary-General-Election-Poll-2.pdf
And now we’re supposed to believe he’s a violent rapist? Can’t we at least have the story consistent for two straight business days while we try to make sense of it?
Has a political party ever cracked in half WHILE it was in such control of government?
Here’s why I don’t believe the Moore charges–we’re supposed to believe that it was an “open secret”, “everyone talked about it”, etc., and yet I see ZERO evidence that it was written down ANYWHERE before last Friday. Come on. This is age of the internet. When the news leaked that the NYT was working on a story on Harvey Weinstein, I easily found LOTS of stories online going back years talking about him being a predator. Ditto for stories about Louis CK, when someone more or less accused him openly in Time magazine a few months ago. And yet for Moore, there is no record at all about any of this. I don’t buy it, not for one second.
What Brian said – my daughter was an aficionado of D-Listed for a long while – and she had cottoned on to all the stories about Weinstein-The-Molester-of-Starlets-&-Plants at least a decade and a half ago. So, yes – he had form, as it were.
But for Judge Roy Moore? Not so much – although, completely different area. Yes, the internet never forgets. But takes mad skills to make it remember what never was.
An additional note – I recall when one of the major national news orgs tried to float a narrative about Rick Perry being gay, (on the thin basis of him having been a yell-leader at his college, back in the day) and how his sexual orientation was the talk of political media in Texas, according to their flacks … er, reporters. Umm. No. No such talk about town, in local media, and that line got shot down, faster than a German fighter over England in the summer of 1940. He’s been in politics in Texas for decades – in a place where political discourse is conducted with brass knuckles. Rick Perry has been accused of a lot of things in local media – but being gay was never one of them.
One might speculate that this kerfuffle over Roy Moore is more of the same; that is, a national media outlet trying to create a back-date a local kerfuffle out of thin air.
Laugh and vote Roy Moore. Peeps have fun with nonsense.
“look at me” just like the kneeling negros. assholes the lot
I’d heard rumors of that about Perry too, from U.T. types. I’ve always suspected that was the rumor mongering of the democrats in Austin, and – I agree with you – a misunderstanding of Aggie culture.
I just wonder who is paying Gloria Allred. She turns up at all the Democrat hit jobs.
I also don’t believe this was “common knowledge” in that area. If this had come out in the primary, where a lot of money and effort was spent, I could believe it much more easily.
Now, there is a question about the signed yearbook provided as proof by Allred and company yesterday,
This is getting quite involved. Could Allred use a forgery in promoting a theme ?
Somebody could investigate when the yearbooks were printed, for example. I have four from my high school. I don’t recall when they were printed and made available but it seems that it was late spring. Her description of the incident is odd, too. It sounds a lot like the Allred client who attacked Herman Cain.
Anyway, it seems that this will become an even bigger story.
Meanwhile, Trump is doing very well in China and the crazed threats of a Trump hater in California will never make the national news.
Is it true that the yearbook signature uses 2 different colors of ink?
It seems to me that what we are seeing here is the real cultural divide in America. I can’t imagine that Moore was/is more misogynist than the lion of the senate (whose loyalty to his wife was only a version of his loyalty to his country – who else would send letters to the head of the KGB in 1983 to ask for his help in sidelining Reagan). Of course, I would be appalled if some guy asked me if he had my permission to date one of my daughters. I didn’t own them. I may be wrong, but I suspect that Moore did that in the seventies was more a sign of his culture than of the ickiness with which it was viewed by women discussing it on television (that was on Fox, God knows what they think on The View).
Such differences influence the Harvard educated as well. Apparently the ABA (which appears to speak for lawyers as thoughtfully as MLA does for lit professors – MLA feels obliged to take stands on issues such as stem cell research) doesn’t approve of conservative lawyers.
Criticisms included his choice for his children’s school. Thankfully the Senate includes those from flyover country. Sasse turned a Lutheran college around financially (the opposite effect, of course, of Bernie’s wife) and was baptized a Lutheran. The school the lawyer’s children attended was Lutheran. (These are common throughout Nebraska, which is heavily Missouri Synod – we even had one in Kenesaw where the graduating class at the public school was 25.) Sasse’s book describes why and how he chose home schooling for his kids – another choice that I suspect the left would not approve. Oh, well.
Are we so separated that the coasts really have no idea of what is happening in between? (Or anywhere it would sometimes seem.)
LOL. Apparently he has been a predator for a very long time. This is about a mall he used to frequent:
” Legat, now 59, said an off-duty Gadsden police officer named J.D. Thomas told him about various people he should look out for when he was working. This was around 1981, and Thomas worked security at the mall.
One of the people was a pickpocket, he said, while another was someone prone to pick fights.
One was Roy Moore.”
“…said…told him…”
I lost track–is that a third-hand account, or fourth?
“the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislative power, the executive, and the judiciary. And one would then like to ask: By what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?”
-Solzhenitsyn, who I’m sure you hate
The press is both your governments propaganda arm, and it’s worse enemy.
Works for me. That bit about Moore is from some local rag I stumbled across. Oh gee, I’ll help out:
Googling the “Legat, now 59, said an off-duty Gadsden police officer named J.D. Thomas” gets you:
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/11/gadsden_residents_say_moores_b.html
PenGun finding the obvious in the obvious places.\
Colleagues and others who knew Moore told the Washington Post that he often walked alone around the Gadsden Mall.
If someone could come up with something published before the WaPoo hit piece, it might inspire more confidence.
A very big and expensive primary campaign just finished without a peep of this.
Why now ?
Shorter PenGun:
[b]”It’s Not the Nature of the Evidence; It’s the Seriousness of the Charge.”[/b]
“Is it true that the yearbook signature uses 2 different colors of ink?”
maybe
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/11/14/rush-limbaugh-is-wrong-alabama-is-not-mcconnell-vs-bannon-its-bigger/
Also Moore graduated law school in 1977 wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Moore#Education_and_military_service
I usually rely on CTH with these questions but they have held back.
Nobody knows what credence to give to these accusations because none of this appeared in a vigorously fought primary. Why not ?
I honestly don’t know what to believe. It seems impossible to believe that someone would try to pass off such a blatant forgery, which is why I ask whether that black/blue image is real. I’ve been well and truly gaslit. That is some Dan Rather level fraud, if it is true.
So it seems very clear what the new Dem/MSM plan is–next year, roll out every single accusation of sexual improprieties against Trump, no matter how preposterous, because now we’ve established everything must be believed–they’re even going to sacrifice Bill Clinton’s legacy in the meantime–use that to help boost their efforts to take over the House, impeach, and the GOPe is telegraphing quite clearly that they’ll be on board with removal from office.
“So it seems very clear what the new Dem/MSM plan is–next year, roll out every single accusation of sexual improprieties against Trump”
Yes, that is the reason why Bill Clinton is being thrown under the bus.
It is battle space preparation.
Running over the Bubba Clinton corpse will have very little cost, so why not? Perhaps Hillary will shut up, finally. I don’t think this will particularly help the progressives in the next cycle and Trump has built up some pretty substantial callouses.
If Moore wins and this stuff blows over, the GOPe will have suffered a second black eye in this one episode of As the Swamp Turns. McConnell will be further marginalized, I hope. I never thought he’d be re-elected last time by the voters, but the pork barrel value of swamp gas is quite high these days.
I was very disappointed that Mike Lee hopped on the band wagon. Can’t figure that one out.
Death6
It looks to me like the black/blue image is an optical illusion, a trick of the light resulting from the yearbook being held up at an angle. If you look at it, the last “7” in the first date also looks blue, as does part of the upper loop on the name “Roy”.