Okay! That’s it! I’ve had enough. This Me Too thing has just gone too far.

Al Franken resigns.
A man who has admitted, all on his own, that he feels free to grab a woman’s pussy simply because he is famous sits in the White House and another man who chases after young, underage teenage girls when he himself is in his 30s has a good chance to become elected to the Senate and Al Franken is the one who resigns and leaves politics.  A man who during his two terms in office has fought “for the people who needed his help. Kids facing bullying, seniors worried about the price of prescription drugs, Native Americans who have been overlooked for far too long. Working people who have been taking it on the chin for a generation. Everyone in the middle class and everyone aspiring to join it.”

That is who is resigning and I am so angry!

It started with Leeann Tweeden. She claimed that it happened at a USO show. It was a USO show! And, following in the fine tradition of USO shows since the time of Bob Hope and Marilyn Monroe, it was going to be raunchy. It was supposed to be raunchy! What other kind of jokes or skits do you do in front of a bunch of young military guys but off-color, bad taste and sexy ones? Just so you know, that was a rhetorical question. Franken wrote a bunch of the skits – they included kissing and probably touching. But Tweeden claims that Franken kissed her without her consent and that he groped her tits while she was asleep. I’ve seen that picture. He’s not even touching her – his hands have shadows under them, and I doubt she is actually asleep. It looks like the kind of posed, goofy fooling around that one does when you’re supposed to be tasteless.  And I’ve seen a video of Tweeden on stage next to a country western singer trying to do his part of the show – make music. She sidled up to him, rubbed her body against his and grabbed his ass. Maybe he should complain Me Too too. Because that is also “sexual harassment” isn’t it? In any case, Ms Tweeden knew what she was getting into when she signed up to do a USO show. I don’t believe her one bit.

But the floodgate opened and a number of other accusers raised their voices to claim he grabbed their asses while taking pictures with him. Al Franken is a shrimpy guy, he’s pretty short. Yeah, I know, every guy is short to me. But he is only 5 foot 6 inches tall. When asked to take a picture with someone, you might put your arm around their waist. And if you don’t bother to raise your arm, there’s a good chance it goes below someones waist and ends up near the ass. Especially if you’re a short guy like Al. When you’re asked to take hundreds of pictures in a day – real quick like – you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about where to put your hand. It just lands where it lands and then you’re on to the next photo-op.

Another accuser says he put his hand around her waist and that she felt that was inappropriate “groping”. Another claimed he tried to give her a kiss. She described it as a “wet” kiss. We have only her allegations to go by as to how “wet” she thought it was.  Still another claims he tried to get her to go into a bathroom with him. This he denies categorically and says, “I did not proposition anyone to join me in any bathroom.”  Another accuser claims he demanded he get a kiss from her as his right as an entertainer. This accusation he also absolutely says is completely untrue and he could never even imagine saying something like that. I think maybe this woman is getting him confused with the man who does believe that, Donald Trump.  Four of these accusers are anomalous. And I think that stinks too. Especially in America where you have the right to meet your accuser face to face.

I read somewhere that someone said that these accusations against Franken must be true because they have a lot in common. Well, there is another reason that they might sound the same – someone coached them to say what they said. There wasn’t anything to accuse him of that was really bad – no outright rape or threats to end their careers if they didn’t let him have his way with them, no actual pussy grabbing or physical threats – just a few misplaced arms and hands, actions not even serious enough to remember doing. And if you can’t remember doing them, how can you prove you didn’t?

But then Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Dianne Feinstein, Tammy Baldwin, and Heidi Heitkamp and other Democratic senators came out demanding he resign. Shame on you, ladies, and men too!  I’m sure they are trying to show they are taking the high road, to prove their finely tuned sense of morality.  But the Republicans, who have no sense of morality at all, as proven by their support of Trump and Moore and the despicable tax bill they are trying to ram down America’s throat, are just sitting there laughing at them. The Republicans don’t even have to win an election to get rid of one of the most aggressively anti-Trump Democratic senators. The Democrats are doing their work for them. The R’s are laughing all the way back home to their big money donors.

Probably since we humans were still living in our caves, men have been able to be the ones who decided everything; first, because of their greater physical strength,  then their greater economic power and greater political power.  After all, we shouldn’t forget that it’s probably not much more than 100 years since women were still considered the legal property of men and in many places in the world still are. So we women have been getting used to being raped, beat up, killed and harassed in zillions of ways, for a pretty long time. But things are changing. In some parts of the world, mainly the industrialized west, women are no-one’s property any longer. They own themselves. They can decide for themselves what they want to do, how they want to live and how they want to use their brains. And just now they are willing to stand up and tell how they have been abused and harassed and they are being listened to for like probably the first time! And I think that is fantastic. But there is something to remember. Even women can lie – for lots of different reasons. And not all men are guilty. Even if a woman says so.

Now, even more so due to the influence of Donald Trump, the US is undergoing a period of isolationism (Trump’s America only), religious extremism (in the Republican Party), false accusations (fake news), and lapses in due process (Lock her up). The last thing we need is a kind of mass hysteria like what happened in the 17th century, during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. I applaud women who are willing to speak up about rape, abuse of power and true sexual harassment. But, please, equating a mis-placed hand, a kiss, a hug, or a bad joke with these things makes the rapes, the abuse and the truly awful harassment seem trivial. Standing out in the public square screaming Me Too and pointing a finger at someone is not the way to make true changes. You have to judge a person, Man or Woman by what they stand for. What the lives of Trump, Moore or Harvey stand for is not the same thing as what Al Franken has worked for his entire political life.

Don’t let Me Too confuse you too.