The Current Crisis

For John, BLUF:  If all crimes are equal, then everyone deserves the same harsh punishment, but that is foolishness.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Here are two articles that suggest we should be careful not to go on a witch hung with regards to sexual impropriety and in particular sexual harassment and sexual abuse.  It is easy to say "always believe the accusser" but the accuser is not always truthful.  The other thing is that if the accusation is wrong, where does the accused go to get his (or her) reputation, job, and savings back?

Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?

From The LA Times and Author Brendan O'Neill, 16 November 2017.

Here is the lede plus one:

I want to praise Jeremy Piven.  That’s a risky thing to do, I know.  Piven is one of Those Men.  One of those big entertainment figures who has fingers pointed at him.  He has joined Harvey Weinstein, James Toback and many others in facing accusations that he abused his power to sexually abuse women.

Yet Piven has also issued a principled statement that should give pause to all those taking pleasure in the #MeToo movement’s instant-destruction of men’s careers.

After describing the accusations against him as “absolutely false,” Piven laments the fact that “allegations are being printed as facts” and “lives are being put in jeopardy without a hearing, due process or evidence.”  He wonders what happened to “the benefit of the doubt.”  To “tear each other down and destroy careers based on mere allegations is not productive at all,” he says.

He’s right.  In defending himself, Piven is also defending one of the core principles of an advanced society: the presumption of innocence.

The great liberal English barrister John Mortimer called this presumption the “golden thread” running through any progressive idea of justice.  And it’s a thread that is being weakened in the febrile post-Weinstein climate.

It is now astonishingly easy to ruin a celebrity or near-celebrity.  You can do it with a social media post.  Spend five minutes writing a Facebook entry about how so-and-so in Hollywood once did something bad to you and — boom — that person is done for.  You can dispatch him from polite society with a press of a button on your cellphone.The great liberal English barrister John Mortimer called this presumption the “golden thread” running through any progressive idea of justice.  And it’s a thread that is being weakened in the febrile post-Weinstein climate.

#MeToo has lumped trivial in with legitimate sexual assault

I guess I would change the headline by deleting "legitimate" and replacing it with "actual".

From The New York Post and Author Andrea Peyser, 17 November 2017.

Here is the lede plus one:

It’s gone far enough.  What started as a necessary mass-rejection of sexual harassment and assault is sliding into absurdity and irrelevance.  A backlash is looming against the very people the spontaneous battle against sexual villainy was meant to help: powerless women and men.

The fight is being waged not with force, but with the rather bland Internet movement, #MeToo.  The battle by hashtag conflates genuine sex crimes with mere childish behavior — blending the Harvey Weinsteins and Kevin Spaceys with the Al Frankens and George H.W. Bushes.

How long before we stop taking victims seriously?

Franken, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer and performer and now staunchly liberal senator from Minnesota, has been tossed into the guillotine without a trial.  And while I reject his leftist politics — even more so his inability to be funny — I don’t think confusing childish, even lewd, behavior with clear, intimate violations helps anyone.  Rather, it threatens to make accusers, many of them women, appear unserious.  Or “hysterical,’’ to use a term commonly wielded against humans bearing XX chromosomes.

On Thursday, former Playboy model-turned-radio host Leeann Tweeden claimed Franken stuck his tongue in her mouth.  He claimed he doesn’t remember the tongue-lashing that evidently occurred as they were “rehearsing” a scene for a skit on a USO tour to the Middle East in 2006, before Franken was elected to office.  But there exists photographic evidence that he took things a few notches further.  Franken was snapped, with a doofusy grin on his face, groping Tweeden’s flak jacket-covered breasts as she slept.

Lewd and crude?  For sure.  Grounds for public censure?  Perhaps.  But potentially career-ending?  I don’t think so.

So, before we gin up another set of witch trials, we need to calm down a bit.

And, besides, I am tired of every week, or a couple of times a week, The Instapundit writing another blog post about some female school teacher having sex with one or more students.

It would be nice if we could all have a sense of proportion.  As cadish as Senator Al Franken was with regard to Ms Leeann Tweeden, he was no Harvey Weinstein.  And Actor George Takei is no Actor Kevin Spacey.  It is not about liberal or conservative principles, but about a sense of justice.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff