Al Franken resigned this week.
(hoping I'm wrong about all this, BTW)
I can't stop thinking he got swift-boated. GOP went after him solely because he's been very strong on Equality issues.
It's basic Debate (and Salesmanship) training: If the opponent can knock down your strongest point, they can ignore everything else you have to say and revert to their comfortable assumptions.
There's a strong element of False Equivalence too. Kristen Gillibrand has led the charge, saying that when we argue over Degrees of Offense, we're having the wrong conversation - harassment is harassment is harassment, and we simply cannot have it.
I think I get it - we all have to be called to account, including our friends and political allies.
But this looks a lot like the GOP has played the Hypocrisy Card, and the Dems have bought in like it's Everything On Sale At Whole Foods.
AKA: taking your strength and turning it against you. And as usual, Dems have been most obliging by going into navel-gazing mode, picking fights with their own, and imploding with self-recrimination.
Meanwhile, we are in fact very busy being drawn into having Ms Gillibrand's Wrong Conversation anyway - because when you overreact, you can lose some credibility, which means you give up the edge, which means the other side gets more control over the subject of the argument.
To wit: we're talking about why The Librul Media cropped out one of their Silence Breakers.
"It's intentional, to represent women who aren't able to come forward," Rosner wrote. "In this case, it is an actual woman with a tale of harassment who was unable to be public, but here she represents all women who remain silent (for whatever reason)."
Rosner also compared this cover to New York Magazine's July 2015 cover, which depicted the 35 women who had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault at the time. The cover left one empty space to symbolize the women who hadn't come forward with their stories.
"When New York Magazine did their Cosby accuser cover they similarly left an empty chair — it's an elegant and powerful gesture, a visual ellipsis," she wrote.
(hoping I'm wrong about all this, BTW)
I can't stop thinking he got swift-boated. GOP went after him solely because he's been very strong on Equality issues.
It's basic Debate (and Salesmanship) training: If the opponent can knock down your strongest point, they can ignore everything else you have to say and revert to their comfortable assumptions.
There's a strong element of False Equivalence too. Kristen Gillibrand has led the charge, saying that when we argue over Degrees of Offense, we're having the wrong conversation - harassment is harassment is harassment, and we simply cannot have it.
I think I get it - we all have to be called to account, including our friends and political allies.
But this looks a lot like the GOP has played the Hypocrisy Card, and the Dems have bought in like it's Everything On Sale At Whole Foods.
AKA: taking your strength and turning it against you. And as usual, Dems have been most obliging by going into navel-gazing mode, picking fights with their own, and imploding with self-recrimination.
Meanwhile, we are in fact very busy being drawn into having Ms Gillibrand's Wrong Conversation anyway - because when you overreact, you can lose some credibility, which means you give up the edge, which means the other side gets more control over the subject of the argument.
To wit: we're talking about why The Librul Media cropped out one of their Silence Breakers.
"It's intentional, to represent women who aren't able to come forward," Rosner wrote. "In this case, it is an actual woman with a tale of harassment who was unable to be public, but here she represents all women who remain silent (for whatever reason)."
Rosner also compared this cover to New York Magazine's July 2015 cover, which depicted the 35 women who had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault at the time. The cover left one empty space to symbolize the women who hadn't come forward with their stories.
"When New York Magazine did their Cosby accuser cover they similarly left an empty chair — it's an elegant and powerful gesture, a visual ellipsis," she wrote.
And suddenly, we're not talking about the problems caused by harassment. The folks who need to be thinking about, and talking about harassment aren't thinking or talking about it.
So Dems, you assholes better make this work, cuz this is USAmerica Inc, where we really suck at nuance. Maybe you're trying to move against that; trying to demonstrate a stark contrast between the two parties, but the Rule Of Unintended Consequences is against you.
If you think this is a low-cost proposition, you're probably in for a rude surprise. I think you can count on a serious backlash against the perception of "Dems being Dems - always looking to tell us how to live our lives - they're a buncha pinch-faced blue-nosed prigs who just love the smell of their own farts, and the Nanny State! and blah blah blah".
If you make it about Purity, we lose the best opportunity we've had in 50 years.
Don't fuck this up.
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