I swear, sometimes I think Caitlin reads our posts from other stories and pulls new stories from there 
I just linked the politico article in another thread!!
“…the breast-shaped stress toys were a gift “from a former female general counsel of his company years ago as a joke for his birthday.”
Unless this alleged “former female general counsel” is identified by name, I’m calling bullshit on this. I’ve known many women in my working life, and I can’t think of a single one who would give a creep like Bittle anything shaped like a breast, or any other female body part. The only body part women would associate with this guy is an asshole.
Give him his chance to defend himself,
For anybody who has to work with women on a daily basis—especially a fucking Democratic Party official—keeping “breast-shaped stress toys” anywhere in his office is only marginally less idiotic than keeping dick pix on his phone.
There’s a template of sorts. Name and party affiliation need to be filled in, some specificity about the nature of the “inappropriateness”, space for abject apology, and it’s ready to run. Same with our responses.
Give him his chance to defend himself, give the women a chance to continue to make their case and if it’s credible, as it appears it likely will be, get rid of him. He’s abusing his position with people who work with and for him. It’s what Clarence Thomas did too.
First Latvala and now Bittel – seems like women in Florida’s state legislature have had quite enough of this crap.
Florida.
Unfortunately, I am not going to be to make too many comments on this particular story.
Janet Cruz, the minority leader in the FL Legislature has made a statement backing him.
Andrew Gillum and Gwen Graham, running for governor, have made statements for him to step down
Besides which… Y’know, like, don’t keep the gag gifts in the office, moron. Or at all.
From Daily Beast: “But privately, I’ve been worried that we’re cruising toward the #MeToo moment’s trip wire, the point where a public’s over-credulity means that opportunists could exploit the movement and bring it all crashing down, worse off than before. And then stories of sexual misconduct will again be relegated to cocktail hours and DM’s—feminist ghost stories women share with each other with the knowledge that the demons that torment us still lurk in corner offices.”
I’m worried about this too … there have to be some lines of delineation.
I just read that, and it’s accurate. Everyone is weighing in probably because this is the moment others are listening. But they risk having the topic trivialized and losing the power to shock by daily heaping servings of horror stories. But the calling out of Bill C. by today’s pols has no value. It’s spiteful and nothing more…
If every man in America who has leered at women or made leading sex-related comments stepped down from his job, the unemployment rate would be somewhere around 25%.
Their comments are de rigeur for candidates for a governorship. But they’ve gone off half-cocked by relying only on accusations from one side.
More information is needed before such actions are taken.
A rather astute comment I got this morning, regarding this particular incident, is to be aware that everyone making comments about this story, (the state GOP, Cruz, Gillium and Graham), also has a separate agenda that they want to move forward.
That’s not to see that the accusations we see being made are not valid. Its just to point out how quickly the accusers become pawns of other agendas.
To me, at least, I think that is hugely true in the Franken case, as even the accuser’s motives are suspect to many.
I said, when all this started, that it reeked of the phony child-abuse in day-care centers (the McMartin case in California) when hysteria took over and dozens of innocent lives were ruined.
We seem well on the road to duplicating that fact-free foofaraw and it is very disturbing to see the mob mentality taking over the minds of otherwise responsible people.
One of the advantages the GOP has here is that everyone expects them to be sexist, leering , groping assh*les. So many women are on their guard, and others are team players.
He should go ahead and resign. Whey does each party seem to nominate creeps to run the party. I live in Florida and I am not happy with the democratic party here. I don’t think they did enough to help Hillary, and I don’t think they are doing enough to help Senator Nelson. Florida democrats get new leadership, and get it soon.
I guess we’re going to have to weed guys like this out of every position of power they occupy. Too bad it’s necessary, but it has to be done.
The standard of behavior is simple BTW:
You don’t treat any woman in a way that you wouldn’t want some other man to treat your Mother, your Sisters, your Wife or Girlfriend, your Daughters or any woman you care for.
What is so complicated about that?
We need to clarify here. One of the allegations against this guy was that he said that women were attractive. So, can it be sexual harassment if I say to a woman in my office, “You look great today?” But if I say to her, “You look like hell,” that’s OK?
Certainly any gag gift shaped like a body part that you wouldn’t expose in public.