I'll Miss You, Al

As a former Minnesotan, one who refused to change my residency to Arizona until after voting for him for his second term in the US Senate, I find very little to feel good about in the resignation of Al Franken.

I knew him from SNL as Stuart Smalley with his stupid affirmations. I wasn't that impressed. Then I started listening to him on Air America Radio. I actually followed Catherine Lanfer when she switched away from MPR to join him in a show that combined humor, biting satire, and a great depth of political knowledge which did a lot to inform my viewpoint and move me politically from ho-hum Democrat to intensely liberal. When she left the program, I continued to listen to him. I bought - and read - his books. I admired his dedication to our troops stuck in an unjust war by regularly entertaining them in USO shows.

The last person I even heard of doing USO shows was Bob Hope.

During his 1st Senate campaign, he visited our little rural county and I actually met him and shook his hand. Nothing special, since I was already sold on his credentials for the job, but I bothered to go to a political meet-and-greet for one time in my life. I didn't even do that back when I was a candidate for office, though I won three times.

When his narrow margin in the election with Coleman was challenged, I followed the news faithfully, proud of how particular and honest the process was, and with both witnesses and video to prove it. The process delayed his entrance to the Senate until summer, giving the Democrats a majority for only 5 months in which to get things done. (If you didn't keep track, things changed with Teddy Kennedy's death.) We got the Affordable Care Act during that narrow window of time, with Franken fighting to limit the percentage of healthcare premiums which the insurance companies could put into overhead/profits before they had to refund excessive premium charges to customers. He fought for net neutrality, another one of those things Trump is busy working to disassemble right now. There was a lot more he contributed, but mostly made the national news when he was insisting on asking the tough questions of people who didn't think they needed to answer to the public.

His resignation announcement leaves a lot of questions, ones we may never get answers to. Don't get me wrong: I have few issues with the MeToo movement. It's way past time women got respect and freedom from sexual harassment and assault. Publicly shaming those who used their powerful positions to abuse women is a powerful tool and doing a lot of good. At least in the short term. I'm cynical enough to believe the lessons will fade and need to be repeated, over, and over, and over. As long as this culture predominately puts men in top positions of power, there will be those who abuse it. And no, I'm not locked into thinking only men can abuse power.

Given all that, I still have to wonder about the balance of hearsay vs. proof, of innocence until proven guilty. As a culture, right now there seems to be some magical number of women who have to come forward in order to be believed, and it varies from situation to situation. How many is the right number? 1? 2? 10? How many false claims would it take to wind up discrediting them all? There will be a false claim sprinkled here and there, possibly for animus, for fame, for money, for politics, for whatever. Everybody knows somebody who tells lies sometimes. Maybe just exaggerates, a bit more with each telling? And one lie, maybe two, can discredit a whole lot of truth tellers. How do we tell? How long do we have to wait for truth to come out? What are the costs in reputations and careers, or does it even matter for the greater good?

And how do we decide, and who gets to decide, where the lines are drawn in a long spectrum of behaviors between acceptable behavior for some, most, or nobody? Does a dirty joke do it for you? How much touching and where? When can it be an invitation for a date and when an abuse of power or an assault? Are there universal standards, and if not, why not?

Clearly we have a lot of questions to raise and decisions to make. Age is a factor but standards vary, depending on both people. An adult and a teen is a whole different couple than two similar-aged teens, but an 18th birthday can turn an affair into a crime. How much consent can be given in the presence of drugs or alcohol, and how much does it matter - or does it? - whether their usage is voluntary? What about when my clothing doesn't give the message I want to send? When does joking turn into invitation, or not?

I don't pretend to have the answers. Heck, I don't even know all the questions. I just think we need to give some thought to them as part of the whole discussion. In the meantime, changes are happening with or without that thought going into the process. I can't judge how predatory a whole lot of individual men are, without personal experience of their worst behavior. Did Franken need to step down? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I can only say, for all the positive contributions he's made, I'm gonna miss you, Al.