âFranken apologized when the Tweeden allegations came out and asked for a Senate ethics committee to probe the allegations.â
Star Trib needs to dial it back a little. Of all the accused, I think Franken is the ONLY one encouraging an investigation. Can we let that play out prior to calling for him to step down!?!
No, no!â said the Queen. âSentence firstâverdict afterwards.â
âStuff and nonsense!â said Alice loudly. âThe idea of having the sentence first!â
âHold your tongue!â said the Queen, turning purple.
âI wonât!â said Alice.
Off with her head!â the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.
Where is the MST on the disgusting predator behavior of Moore ,Trump ,Conyers etc. Are they on a mission to clean up the sleaze so pervasive in DC or reserving their vitriol for Franken. Maybe they will get with the Don and buy into his new claims that the access Hollywood tape was fake newsâŚnice workâŚsnark off.
See, this is the reason why I get pissed when Franken insists on throwing himself on the funeral pyre with apologies. it just doesnât matter with some; theyâll never believe or forgive even if Tweeden does.
The Strib isnât reading carefully ⌠Franken hasnât countered any of the stories; he said he simply doesnât remember them, but acknowledges the hurt he caused. Thatâs very different from what the paper describes as his position.
Frankenâs internal monologue: I didnât grab any butts, and I didnât forcibly kiss anyone, but I did mug for that stupid photograph, and since Iâm a future liberal lion in the Wellstone mold I canât in this Harvey Weinstein cultural moment both defend myself and accuse Roy Moore and Jeff Sessions, so I better shut up and act with extreme humility and shame even though I really didnât do anything wrong.
I donât know what Franken has or hasnât done over the years. But Iâm sure I donât want to be a whatabouter and minimize bad behavior on a partisan basis. Weâre supposed to be better on this stuff, and I donât think itâs good ethics or good political strategy either to let that distinction get blurred.
If that is his internal monologue he needs to make it his external monologue to the media.
The other issue being that a lot of news agencies still believe that they must equate something bad that one side of the political aisle has done as being just as bad as something that the other side has done.
Thatâs the reasoning (at least I believe) as to why there are plenty of news outlets arguing that what happened with Franken is on the same level as what Roy Moore did with young women in his past. Itâs completely and boneheadedly wrong, but it doesnât stop them from pushing a black & white narrative, instead of the shades of grey that some issues actually are.
Have you seen that? I donât read every news outlet but I donât remember seeing anything like that.
Precisely. Once accused, due process with an ethics investigation should ensue but even the individual who may be innocent of allegations gets lumped in with the worst of the worst. Character succinctly hijacked.
I wish he would be more forthcoming about what he really feels. I can identify with him somewhat, as a kind of smart-alecky person who has to dial it down around severely earnest people. If heâs innocent of the charges, he should proclaim it whatever the political climate.
I wonder what exactly the that Minneapolis Star Tribune thinks that Franken should do? Heâs called for an ethics investigation into his own actions, apologized multiple times, had his apology accepted by the one credible person (Leeann Tweeden)âŚand heâs called for an ethics investigation into his own actions!
They also, most conspicuously, failed to note that Tweeden accepted his so-called ânon-apologyâ, and that she said that she didnât think Franken should resign. The Star Tribune is like the Pavlovâs Dog of Newspapers; theyâve been called the Minneapolis Red Star so many times by the Reich Wing in the state that they now never miss an opportunity to bash Democrats for the exact same behaviors they routinely downplay (with the classic, âDemocrats say the earth is round, Republicanâts disagreeâ coverage) or flat out overlook from RepublicanâtsâŚ
Then again, Franken didnât run on a platform of Evangelical Christian Family Values Morality and fealty to the Ten Commandments. In fact, Liberals have been routinely characterized as being Perverted Sexual Deviant Libertines by CONservatives for at least the last 50 years, so why are CONservatives even taken seriously when they act so outraged by Liberals who act in the manner constructed for them by CONservatives? This isnât to excuse any bad behavior that Franken may or may not have engaged in. But fuck CONservatives! They are the hypocrites when it comes to this kind of shit! And yet all they have to do is say they asked God for forgiveness and all is cool. Plus itâs all a plot by the Liberal Media. Fuck those fucking fuckersâŚ
Constantly. Every discussion on CNN or MSNBC I have seen consists of âMoore did this, but Franken did this. They are both bad peopleâ
@aurizendarkstar has it right, I believe. The press has an internal mechanism, that if they report something very bad about one side, they feel they must report on something from the other side in roughly the same veinâŚotherwise they might be accused of the dreaded bias.
Itâs a large part of the reason why they simply ignored sooo many stories that were/are just sitting out in the open about Trump, because while they overplayed her emails, the simply didnât have enough anti-Hillary stories to balance it out. So they chose to keep them off the scale in some sort of twisted version of âbalanceâ.
The same thing is at play here. WaPo did a very thorough job on researching their story(s) on Moore. And they are very damaging. The media was/is so desperate to balance the scales, because they were already being attacked for showing bias for reporting on Moore. Enter Roger Stone to the rescue with a right wing Fox radio hack. Her accusations have/are falling apart (because they werenât thoroughly researched like the ones against Moore. The only research was her claims. Keep that in mind when reading the Project Veritas scam busted by the WaPo today), yet the press isnât reporting on that, they continued to follow the Stone attack line and push out more unsubstantiated claims.
Likewise, they have basically turned a blind eye to the head of the Trump state fundraising committee in OK, and a state legislator, being sentenced for child trafficking. Or Tony Perkins covering up for one of his senior people carrying on an underage homosexual affair. Too damaging, and in the wake of Moore, it would open them to accusations of bias.
The press is desperately hoping Moore loses and Franken resigns. They will make them feel their internal struggle for balance has been met. The underlying facts of both stories donât matter in this bigger struggle.
So this is the same âTop Minnesota Newsaperâ thatâs owned by Glen Taylor, who vowed to make it more conservative when he bought it in 2014? And we are discussing the opinion page, not actual news? After reading the garbage, Iâve ignored it accordingly.
This âheâs not denying it enough for meâ, or âheâs not saying what I want him to so he convinces meâ crap is really frustrating. Itâs not a movie script. We donât get to tell Al Franken what to say or do. He is saying what he feels is accurate and respectful to the feelings of the women who have said they felt offended. The rest of us are just spectators until we act somehow. Franken respects that they were upset at face value, because they have a right to feel how they feel (accurate or not). And he immediately apologized for any offense he may have caused. Know who does that? Men who actually respect women in their core values. Itâd be way easier to simply call them liars, deny everything, and skip on back to work, having damaged those women further as well as the entire #metoo movement. But he wonât, because he actually respects them even in their accusations. And we arenât standing behind him in whatâs now an obvious character takedown to move a vocal opponent out of the senate, are we?
My question is whether anyoneâs explicitly said the alleged offenses are on the same level. God knows we see a mindless and pernicious bothsiderism all the time. But âon the same levelâ? Thatâs a remarkable claim and to say something like âboth are violationsâ is not the same as equating them. And when I asked the question I was at least implicitly hoping for examples.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune never had much use for Franken.
They endorsed Coleman in 2008. Flipped and endorsed Franken in 2014, but it was a very weak, lukewarm endorsement- without the headline stating such endorsement, you wouldnât know which candidate they were endorsing.